I don’t supply the name, Lizette. I don’t say anything.
“I’d go crazy if I had to see things any more closely. Ever since Catherine my brain has been gnawing on itself.”
I know that feeling. “And you drink to stop feeling that way?”
“Oh Christ, I suppose so. If I stop with the booze, I just don’t want to turn into a guy like Bob Wuzzy. Remember him with his diet sodas? Jesus Christ.”
I can’t help smiling. “You won’t become anyone else, Dad.”
He looks out the window. I study the fine crosshatching near his eyes, the thin straight ridge of his nose. “I know you’re right,” he says without looking at me. “I know you are.” His hands are folded neatly in his lap, like a sad little boy in church. “But you’ll go and I’ll go home and it won’t feel like you’re right anymore.”
At least he knows himself this much. I have to be on campus on July ninth, ten days from now, to start an urban kinship project. I can skip the stops to see friends in Madison and Boulder. I can drive straight through, taking catnaps along the way.
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll stay for six more days. You go to AA every day. You have one drop of alcohol and I’m gone. On top of that, you will not make racist jokes or objectifying remarks about my body. Plus you will not be allowed to insult me or my mother, or anyone else for that matter. Deal?” I put out my hand.
He unthreads his fingers and clasps my hand tightly. “Deal.”
“You’re going to be miserable.”
He gives me a thin smile. “I know it.”
13
We take a cab back to Ashing. It turns out my father coached the driver’s son in Little League three years in a row, a team called the Acorns.
“You remember that coach for the Pirates, big guy, big paunch?” he says to my father, looking at him intensely through the rearview mirror.
“The one who always ate the peanuts?”
“The very one.”
“He was a real beauty.”
“Prison. Five to ten.”
“Jesus. For what?”
“Nearly killed his girlfriend.”
“Jesus.” My father looks out the window a moment. We’re off the highway, going past Shining Saddles. Little girls in hard hats, no longer velvet-covered, more like helmets, are posting in a ring. He turns back to the mirror. “You remember that game against the Astros?”
“When we were down by seven?”
“And that little scrawny kid, never hit the ball in his life, Barry something—”
“Barry Corning.”
“That’s it, Barry Corning; he popped one right out there over the fence. You couldn’t wipe the grin off his face for the rest of the season.” My father rubs his hands on his pants, one of his happy gestures. “He was a good kid.”
The dogs, hungry, distraught at the disruption of their routine, circle my father even closer than normal as he comes through the door. He presses down their heads, speaks gently to them, gives them each a long rub, then squats in the middle of the kitchen to receive all their licks and nudges. Finally he gets up and goes to the pantry for their cans, and they leap and shake in excitement, their nails skittering to keep their bodies pressed to him as he moves.
My bag is still near the table, where I dropped it that morning. I look out at my stuffed car in the driveway. I don’t understand why I’m not in it. The dogs receive their food, and their collars begin to clank loudly against their blue ceramic bowls as they jerk down their smelly clumps of brown.
My father stands against the counter with the can opener in his hand, looking at me. He looks older now, as if the years have just descended on him, as if for the first time I am seeing him not as the forty-year-old man of my youth but as the sixty-year-old man he really is. The skin beneath his eyes is dark gray, while the rest is green-gray. His eyes are bloodshot.
“Thank you, Daley. Thank you for being here.”
“You’re welcome, Dad.”
I see him glance at the clock. It’s late afternoon and he wants a drink. I cross the room to the bar. I take two bottles at a time, by their necks, to the sink. My heart is pounding, my body tensing itself, preparing for violence. But he does not strike. The can opener does not come smashing into my head as I pour all the alcohol— first the vodka, then the vermouth, then the gin, the bourbon, the scotch, and the rum — down the drain.
I make us grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, the first time I’ve fixed him something I can eat, too. Afterwards, while my father watches the second of the Red Sox’s doubleheaders, I make some calls and locate the head of the region’s AA chapter, a man named Keith who tells me the times and locations of nearby meetings.
Then I call Jonathan.
“Hey there.” His voice is rich and happy. “How far have you got?”
He thinks I’m calling from a pay phone. He’s entirely certain I have been on the highway all day.
“I’m still in Ashing.”
“Very funny.”
“My father tried to commit suicide.”
“What?”
“We’re home now, but he’s a little shaky. I think it was more a gesture than anything else.” I listen to the silence, then say, “I have to stay for a few more days.”
“You’ve got to get yourself across the entire continent in your car.”
“I know. I’ll make it. But I think you’ll beat me out there. I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“I promised I’d stay for six more days, just to—”
“Six more days? You don’t have six more days. You have to be there on the ninth.”
“I know that. I’ll drive straight through.”
“You can’t arrive having not slept for three days. I’m coming right now and airlifting you out of there.”
“No, Jonathan.”
“I think you’ve lost your grasp on reality.”
“He promised to stop drinking.”
“Of course he did.”
“He admitted it was a problem.” Didn’t he? “He’s never done that before.”
“You are living on a big pink cloud.”
The AA meetings in Ashing are held in the rectory of the Congregational Church every evening at seven. I drive my father there the next night. I need to see him walk through the door. I need to make sure he stays there the whole hour. He’s quiet in the car as we go down the hill and through town, and the silence in the car at this time of night reminds me of the Sunday evenings when he drove me from Myrtle Street to Water Street. I pull right up to the stone path.
“This is going to be good, Dad.”
He nods and gets out of the car. He takes his long splayfooted strides up the path, a handsome well-groomed man in his light blue cotton pants and navy blazer. His hair is still damp from his shower, combed down neatly. I glance at my watch, and when I look up I see him glancing at his. Two minutes to seven. I wonder if he’ll wait out the two minutes, but when he gets to the door of the rectory, he doesn’t pause. He pushes down the brass handle and disappears. Other people come after that. A man in a T-shirt and work pants stops outside the door to finish a cigarette. Two elderly ladies come up and speak to him and then he holds the door for them and they all go in. A woman with long stringy hair comes running up five minutes late. She fixes her sandal strap while holding onto the door and then swings through.
It’s only then that I realize what an absurd amount of faith I’ve put into this idea of AA. Where did it come from? Linda Blair and that Afterschool Special? Bob Wuzzy? Julie’s uncle? I’m not sure, but it now feels like I’ve always believed that if I could just get my father through the door of an AA meeting, all would be well. But when I imagine how it must be in there, a small room with a stained carpet and the smell of old coffee grounds, metal chairs, and a motley group in a circle speaking of their feelings, I see what a complete disaster it’s going to be. I can hear Garvey laughing at me already.