Roll with the Punches

by Gettinger, Amy

  "They're in Australia, Dad.”

  He shoved his bag at me and latched onto my arm, propelling me toward the door. "Come on. These pants are cold."

  I sucked in air, stumbling along in his grasp. "And wet?"

  He scowled and steamed on toward the door, the cane furiously clanking in his other hand. "Damn legs are slow. Damn shoes are too heavy."

  In the lobby, I turned back to Julie, embarrassed to my toenails. "Do you—um—ever refund deposits?"

  Arms folded, Julie shook her head. "There’ll be carpet cleaning, maybe replacement, and tenants' property damage. I'll send a bill."

  At the curb, Fire Plug Guy hefted Dad's bags into my trunk and cracked a grin. "Dude, these are heavy. Got a rhino in here?"

  I closed Dad's car door.

  Fire Plug Guy went on. "He really went agro tonight. When one dude—er—resident, wouldn't take him home, your dad knocked him down with his cane, ran inside the guy's place, grabbed the guy's car keys off his countertop, ran outside and tried them on all the parked cars. The guy's wife called, and I found Harold swearing and hitting the cars with his cane. I thought he was gonna blow out his squeaker. Made some killer dents, though. Sweet."

  "Uh." I slumped into the car. Dad's bad temper was legendary in our family. When I was little, I had run from it and hidden. Later, I had learned how to answer it with a giant door slam of my own.

  Fire Plug Guy grinned into my open window. "You're kind of cute, dude. You like hockey? I got tickets for Saturday.”

  "Sweet," I said. Then I slammed the door and drove away.

  * * *

  As we cruised down Chapman Avenue, Dad fiddled in his carryall and produced his blue handicapped parking card, which he hung on my mirror. This card was several years out of date. Mom had custody of the current card somewhere, and they'd finally gotten handicapped plates on his car. But Dad would go nowhere without his navy blue bag and this horrid old card, which had suffered greatly with time. It was covered in Lakers and Looney Tunes stickers and it felt gummy from being handled. Some desperate reader had once cut the bottom corner off it for a bookmark. Well, that was just a private guess on my part, of course. A long family investigation into the crime had never uncovered the true criminal, though many had ventured ideas about how the tiny sliver of plastic could have been used: A toothpick? A lock pick? A poison dart? Obviously not having done it myself, I'd never voiced my bookmark theory.

  I pulled the disgusting thing off my mirror. "I can't see around this, Dad."

  Music Man snatched it from me and hung it back up with a growl.

  I reached to pull it down again and found my hand intercepted with one made of iron. I gave up.

  When I turned left on Chapman, he said, "Wrong way. You take me to the hospital. I gotta see Ethel." The iron hand reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and yanked.

  "Ahhhh!" I screamed as the car made a 180-degree turn across two lanes and then hopped onto the island before I could even start to brake.

  "Jesus Christ!" I panicked, stomping the brake pedal and shoving Dad's hand away. The car had its right wheels up on the island and its left ones in an oncoming lane, and was now reaming out its undercarriage as it bounced and scraped along the curb to a stop. Sparks flew behind us and cars came at us, swerving and honking.

  "Rhonda, your language!" Dad said.

  "What the hell?" I screeched as oncoming drivers yelled at me. With shaking hands and a heart doing the samba, I found a gap in the early morning traffic and slowly maneuvered the car back on even ground and turned it the right way.

  "Jesus Christ, Dad!" We lumbered across three lanes to pull into a gas station, where I sat, gulping air.

  "I want to see Ethel. And you should be more polite."

  Sweaty hair clung to my forehead. "Damn it, Dad! Never do that again! I'm the driver here, and we're staying right here in this gas station until you promise to keep your hands to yourself."

  He looked the other way, arms crossed. "I want to see Ethel."

  I gritted my teeth. "Dad, it's four-frigging-thirty in the god-damn morning and your god-damn pants are all wet." I was afraid mine were, too. "We're going home."

  He jutted his chin out. "Well, I don't know about you, but I can go see her any time because I'm her husband."

  Pause.

  "And that guy back there made me put my pants back on when they were still wet. I nearly decked him for it, too."

  I put my head on the steering wheel.

  Ten minutes later, as the car rattled timidly back onto the road, he said, "Damn. Ever since my prostate operation, I tell you. Hey, Rhonda, you remember this one?" He sang, "Gloria Swanson had bladder trouble, and she found it very hard to pee."

  "Dad—"

  "So they gave her some Lydia Pinkham's."

  "I'm not in the mood—"

  "And now they have to tube her to the sea." He laughed and tugged at his waistband. "Just wish this belt wouldn't get so wet when I wash these pants in the sink." He started humming an old hymn.

  I said, "Dad, the guy back there said you hit someone."

  He shifted uneasily in his seat, making a squelchy noise. "He's a liar. I did not. I never hit anybody. Besides, no one would listen to me.”

  This was Dad, whining about people not listening? As kids, we had never had any choice but to listen to him. He'd been the loudest guy in our neighborhood and probably in the city, maybe even in the whole world.

  We finally chugged up to 3478 Acorn Street, the house where I'd spent my formative years, from ages ten to twenty-seven. Okay. I'd been slow leaving the nest, but everyone else had taken off so early that this place had been my own little paradise, with my own built-in hostess: Mom. This nice old ranch house was built in the sixties, at a time when developers doled out both front and back yards big enough to play ball in and the difference between a four-bedroom house and a five-bedroom house was about three thousand dollars. With the growth of large, spreading shade trees up and down each block, the neighborhood now felt complete, mature, and safe. Unless you were pulling crazy Harry from the car near dawn.

  As the old coot made his way up the walk, wagging the battered blue card, I picked up a suitcase. Oomph. It really did weigh a ton. I unzipped it and found twenty-two jars of applesauce and a Reader's Digest. The other bag yielded a dozen rolls of toilet paper, a ton of dried fruit, and a few dozen Snickers wrappers. I lugged everything into the house in time to catch my father shedding his wet pants onto the linoleum kitchen floor, exposing enormous tree stump legs which I hadn't seen for years. The view had not improved.

  "Dad, there's only applesauce in this bag." I said.

  He just sang like a five-year-old, "You're my kid, I'm your boss. Let me have my applesauce." He laughed and shuffled down the hall, wheezing, cane clacking.

  Once his pants were safely swishing in the washing machine, I found some Motrin and took a fistful.

  He reappeared in pajamas, looking worried. "Just between you and me, Rhonda, I took a little extra food to that joint, in case they didn't feed me enough. But don't tell your mother, okay? She only lets me have two jars of applesauce and one bag of dried fruit a day.”

  Oh, man. The plumbing—and global warming—implications of this boggled the mind. "But you've packed for traveled before, Dad. There weren't any clothes in your bags.”

  He stopped humming. "No, your mother always does that. I do wish I'd brought another pair of pants, though. It sure was windy last night, knocking on all those doors in the altogether."

  CHAPTER 6

  Harold Hamilton, aka Paul Bunyan of the Blackboard Jungle, ran, naked legs pumping, shirt tails flapping, down the middle of Pacific Coast Highway toward the setting sun. He was singing a wild Irish drinking ditty. I goosed my skateboard velocity to catch up as his bark-covered tree stump legs and strange root-like feet neared a gazebo which sat atop a little lookout point jutting out over the rocks in the swirling ocean below. This was a r
omantic spot where brides from all over SoCal came for those riding-into-the-sunset wedding pictures with unsuspecting Hubbie Number One. Dad neared the cliff railing. Ahhh! I sped up, but the skateboard hit a rock and propelled me through the air backwards. I bounced and scrambled back up, unscathed but frantic. But he was nowhere to be seen. I raced up and looked over the railing, only to glimpse a huge splash in the rocky waters below.

  * * *

  I woke up sweating and gasping, half off the extra-long twin bed I'd used all through high school and college, and then some. My parents' golden retriever, Bing Cosby, had draped himself over the faded blue Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote comforter at my feet, smelling quite strong and licking old dog parts.

  Ugh. This house reminded me of endless homework, loud parental bridge parties, and horrific blind dates. Mom's matchmaking efforts here had been legion. Dinner after dinner, party after party, some church friends' son, neighbors' nephew, or book club member's grandson had ogled my boobs. But either I wasn't religious enough or the cherubic grandsons were hoodlums, gamblers, or couch pumpkins with no visible means of support. Mr. Right had not materialized despite Mom’s schemes.

  Then at the age of twenty-seven, I had finally left my parents on their own to move twenty-five miles away to my own condo in Rancho Santa Margarita. The separation had taken so long to achieve that I rarely came home anymore. Which didn’t seem to bother them, since Monica, their good daughter, had been living close by with two angelic grandchildren. Entertainment galore. Who needed me?

  Well, today, I'd have to scurry around and get Music Man settled somewhere until my mother came home. And then I'd pray for Mom to miraculously mend in time to catch that plane to Australia next week and take Dad with her.

  The clock said 8:34 as I patted Bing's head. Wow. Three hours sleep. At least I didn't have to—Agghh! I found a phone and dialed the library. Wednesday was my day off, but I'd promised to sub for Jerome while he took out-of-town guests to Disneyland. Every sub job made me both money and brownie points toward getting my full-time job back. Which was a must now that my book was a total washout.

  Sarah, a dim library volunteer, took my call.

  "Strep tonsillitis," I croaked, "with a touch of dengue fever," and hung up before my boss, Marla, could get on the line and call my bluff.

  Then I went to the chin-up bar in my closet and did a couple dozen to stay in shape for future rock-climbing dates with James. But an acrid smell reached my nose at about the same time as the fire alarm went off.

  Bing and I raced to the kitchen to find the big guy happily scrambling a skillet full of eggs and ham in some blackly smoking bacon grease with a green plastic spoon. A pile of burnt toast shared a plate with the well-done bacon.

  Bing swooped in to suck up bacon bits off the floor.

  "You can butter the toast, Rhonda. I know you like that job," Dad said.

  I had liked that job when I was eight years old. Soon after, I had disdained most animal products. I had gone vegetarian in my early teens along with my whole nerdy cohort. Most of the girls had done it in a fleeting attempt to fit in with the popular clique, but my reasons were more literary. E. B. White's and Dick King-Smith's frolicking pigs and geese had still lived large in my head from childhood readings. Poor Wilbur and Babe would not die because of me.

  I quickly switched on the stove fan and opened the kitchen window and door, but the alarm blared on. Looking around for a broomstick to hit the thing with, I noticed a pile of napkins whose curling brown edges sat an inch from the open range flame. I lunged for them and knocked Dad’s stack of toast onto the kitchen floor.

  Bing gleefully got a piece. Music Man retrieved three, which he buttered for himself while I poked at the red smoke alarm button with the broomstick, missing several times and sending paint and plaster raining down all over.

  Dad yelled over the noise, "Be glad I'm the cook today. Ethel's stingy with the bacon." He peered over bifocals covered with grease spatters and piled our plates high with barnyard proteins.

  I finally stopped the alarm.

  He glanced up. "I wish they wouldn't turn that thing on so often. Hurts my ears."

  Huh? "They don't—wait, Dad, isn't your cholesterol about a million?" I tried to grab his plate, but he hung on.

  A tug-of-war ensued.

  Swatting at my hands, he puffed, "Rhonda, I did my Eagle Scout and got my good grades in college and landed my job with the health insurance and raised four crabby kids. At the age of seventy-nine, I'm not working for any more scores! I don't care how high a cholesterol number they want, they'll just have to take what they get.”

  He won the contest by poking my stomach with a spoon under the plate.

  "Hey! Unfair!" I let go, and food flew left and right, setting Bing's expert Frisbee-catching mouth into action. I sat down, snarling at the cluttered kitchen table, tossed Bing my bacon, and picked chunks of green plastic spoon out of my eggs. Shoot. Had Dr. Seuss had a dad like mine? I made more toast. Dad sat down and we ate in strained silence. Almost like old times.

  In his heyday, Music Man had been a big reader, a dutiful teacher, and an avid volleyball coach, working long hours fulfilling his coaching duties. His time at home had been spent grading papers, writing tests, reading, or watching TV, mostly here in this room. And of course, eating. He and I had done our bonding in companionable silence over these activities, except when he got started with his jokes. Then the whole house had groaned. But the bad jokes were preferable to the times when one of my brothers had done something stupid and Dad blew a fuse. Then all of us cockroaches had run for cover.

  He said, "I don't want you to worry about Mom, Rhonda. She'll be just fine as soon as they put her back together, you know, stuff all the straw back in. You know she's the Scarecrow, and I'm the Tin Man." He burst into song. "If I only had a heart.”

  "No, Dad," I corrected him. "You were the Cowardly Lion, remember? Jerry was the Tin Man. Monica was Dorothy, and Hanky was Toto.”

  "Who were you?" he said.

  "The Wicked Witch." The lot of the youngest. "Those little red shoes don't fit anymore.”

  Music Man loaded his toast with apricot jam and sang, "We're off to see the wizard …"

  I needed Glenda's cell phone number. Quick.

  As I rose from the table, he caught my hand, looking serious. "Listen, Rhonda. Ethel's a fighter. She'll be okay. Don't you worry. Just like my old dad used to say: You've got to roll with the punches." He flashed a half-hearted grin.

  I had a fleeting image of me rescuing Mom from the operating table on my roller skates.

  "But honey, you've got to promise me something." His grasp tightened. "My dad made me promise him, and now I'm asking you.”

  I waited, apprehensive at Dad's rare solemnity. His glasses needed cleaning. The stove needed cleaning. The whole kitchen needed cleaning. Tide spring scent rose from his shirt, and the mantel clock ticked past Bing's snores under the table. My stomach knotted itself twice.

  "You got to promise me never, ever to put me in one of those 'senior' places again. I'd just die in one of those places. They're not cut out for folks in our family."

  Except Granddad had died of a heart attack at age sixty-two after winning a bridge tournament. He'd never needed assisted living. And Dad had packed all that applesauce … "Uh, sure, Dad.”

  Before I could uncross the fingers in my pocket, Mom called my cell phone, a quaver in her voice. "Rhonda, I'm having surgery at 1:30. Could you pick your dad up and bring him over here before you go to work? I want to see both of you. In case I don't make it."

  "You'll make it, Mom. Trust me. But, uh, Dad's already here."

  "Where are you?"

  "At your house."

  "Why? He didn't fall again, did he? I swear, that man has fallen more times lately. Says he's dizzy a lot. But he won't use a walker."

  Not wanting to upset her before surgery, I thought fast. "He got lonely for home. And you."

&nb
sp; She laughed, "That dickens. Well, in that case, don't let him stir the eggs with a plastic spoon, and don't let him have any bacon. He's already had some this week."

  Too late. "The problem is, Mom, I called in sick today, but I really need to work tomorrow."

  "Well, get a housekeeper—one that can cook low-fat and isn't too expensive and is honest and not too young. He's a bottom pincher."

  Right. Super Martha, for five dollars an hour.

  Music Man gathered up the plates, singing Bringing in the Sheaves in his wobbly baritone. At the sink, he changed to another hymn called On the Cross, with his own set of words:

  "In the bar, in the bar, where I bought my first cigar, and the nickels and the dimes rolled away." He caught my eye and I joined in, scraping a plate. "It was there by chance that I tore my Sunday pants. And now I have to wear them every day." We were both grinning at the end.

  Then he noticed that I was filling the large left-hand sink with soapy water.

  "Rhonda. You can't do it that way. We always do it the other way. The soapy water goes over here." He shoved me aside and unplugged the big sink, and with a clatter, hurriedly shifted all the dishes into the tiny right-hand sink, built only for rinsing. Pans went crashing to the floor, making Bing scramble for cover.

  I said, "We've never done it that way. The big pots and pans won't fit in there."

  Doggedly, he kept going. A glass broke, but he continued to fill the little sink until it overflowed.

  "Dad, let me get that broken glass out.”

  He elbowed me away. "You're just like your mother, always wanting your own way, always wanting to change things. I always wash the dishes in the right-hand sink, and I'm not going to change now. Ethel knows how I do it. You just go outside. You just go to work." He hunched over the sink, his great bulk a fortress, protecting his odd behavior from view.

  Standing back offended, I caught Bing cruising my jacket pockets for used Kleenex and candy.

  "Stop that, you beast!" I swatted his nose and shooed him outside, then stomped down the hall to my room, fuming. How long had Dad been this way? Happy one minute, crabby the next, and about as logical as a fish? His temper hadn’t been this volatile since he'd retired from high school teaching a decade ago. The fewer teenagers there are in one's life, the better off one is, of course, so he'd perked right up at retirement.