One more thing before we go back, he says.
My father swings his arms in a wild, big way. He makes a Froot Loop with his mouth, his eyes wide, rimmed white. From behind his back, he pulls out a stuffed tiger—just like Siegfried’s. I am so amazed I scream.
I sit on his shoulders for the rest of the walk home. I squeeze the tiger to my chest. I bob and sway with his steps and turns, forget to be afraid.
If my mother gave me language, my father gave me magic.
VI.
I’m twenty-seven, and my mother has the flu. We’ll spend the day together! says my father. I’m bored with your mom in bed, come over, let’s have a date.
I drive to their house in Atlantic Beach, New York.
It’s Sunday morning, and we watch television in the living room. My father rocks his knobby knees back and forth on the couch, smiling at Charles Osgood, his favorite anchor. He says, This ought to be good. It’s a special on Houdini. On the show, a voice-over explains Houdini’s escape methods. A man holds up the straitjackets between his fingers, shows us some of Houdini’s old water tanks. The voice-over explains that when Houdini’s mother died, he went around debunking mystics and mediums all over the world.
Why’d he do that? says my father. Nothing better to do?
I think he just missed her, I say. I think he wanted somebody to prove him wrong.
Before I die, he says, should I give you a code word? So you can test it with the mystics?
We decide it might be Fuck.
I’ll definitely know it’s you then, I laugh.
After the show, my father and I take a drive. We cruise along the pale beach, and he shows me the Sands Club, where he had his senior prom, where he saw the Ronettes, the Shirelles. But that was once upon a time, he says, early days. A few blocks away, he waits in the car with the top down as I pick up his dry cleaning, piled above my eyes, the plastic wrap sticking to my arms.
This is not a very good date! I scream.
He drives me to the groomers so we can pick up our dogs. In the car, he talks about love. He likes my new girlfriend, Hannah, warns me not to get too drunk and sloppy at a wedding we will attend. They don’t like lesbos in Mexico, he says, winking. No tongue kissing. This is the first time he brings up my girlfriend on his own. I squeeze his hand. The conversation circles back to Houdini.
You don’t believe in life after death? Not even a little? I ask.
No, he says. But I do know this: I’ll know when I’m going to die. I’ll feel it. The doctors say I’m not doing so hot but I’ll know it, I swear.
He pats me on the back.
I’ll know it, okay?
I nod.
At home, my father eats a bean stew I slow-cooked for him. He says it tastes too healthy, but he’ll take the health. The recipe is ancient, Mayan; legend says that eating a bowl of it every day will make you immortal.
You saved me today, he says. You cooked, you cleaned, you kept me company. So good, he says, you’re always so good to me.
Stay over, he says. Call into work. I need you longer.
Please, stay, he says.
I tell him I can’t, I have a date tonight. I tell him to call me if he feels worse, to call whenever he wants. I promise to come back if he needs me.
You know you can call anytime, you know that.
You fixed for dough? he asks. He hands me a wad of cash. Be good, Kukes.
I kiss him on the forehead. I say, I love you, Dad. I say, I’ll come by next weekend.
This is the last day I ever spend with my father.
VII.
I am eight, and my mother has decided that enough is enough, that Sundays will now be Father-Daughter Sundays and we must have fun, we must have laughs, we must have quality time, no bullshit, no drinking, no drugging, enough.
This week, my father has quit drinking again. On Sunday, he drove another man’s car home from a bar because the valet gave him the wrong key. The cops surrounded our home at four in the morning, and my father answered the door with his fists in the air, naked, screaming, I want to see MY car in MY driveway before I let you take this one.
My father promises my mother that we will have a nice, sober day. He’s going to take me to Sam Ash Music Store, he says. Let me bang the snares off the Pearl drum set I want so badly. Then he’ll take me to La Bamba, he says, the little Mexican restaurant nearby. We’ll share arroz con pollo and Cherry Cokes. If we have time, we’ll even take a drive to the beach.
My mother hugs us both good-bye, smiles with watery eyes. She says, I am proud of you, to my father, as if he is her other child.
My father keeps his word. He drives me to Sam Ash in the strip mall, pulls up right in front of it. He says, First, can we check out the scores? Then we’ll play those toms.
Next door to Sam Ash is a sports bar called Gatsby’s. It’s a horseshoe-shaped bar, with fly tape twirling from the ceiling. A jukebox pulsates with rainbow lights in the corner of the room like a giant jellyfish. My father helps me onto a stool at the bar. He sits next to me, gazes up at the football game, lights a smoke. He’s placed his bets, he tells me, enough money to pay my college tuition. This is another thing he was supposed to quit. He taps his gold pinky ring against the bar in triplets.
A woman named Irene brings my father a glass of orange juice, but I know there’s more to it than that. Irene doesn’t even need his order, she just says, Hi, Boss, I got you, Mad Man. She squeezes my cheeks between her long, sharp nails. What is she, boss? A Oriental?
I ask her for a Shirley Temple, please.
My father takes down his juice. He makes a sound of relief, the same one he makes sometimes when he takes a leak on the side of the road. A second glass arrives before he even asks for it. You’re not supposed to be doing that anymore, I say.
Doing what? says my father. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t shift his eyes from the game. The little men running.
The bad stuff, I say. Sleepy Boy stuff.
It’s OJ, says my father. Made of oranges, pulpy, sweet, full of vitamin C. He dips his fingers in his glass, flicks some of the juice in my face. See?
I know better. I know we won’t make it to the music store or share our chicken and rice. I know we will never walk along the shoreline; we won’t bring home shells.
My father screams at the television. Irene screams with him. Go, Go, Go, Baby, Go!
I take the half-drunk glass out of his hand and chug the bitter down. It stings my throat, makes my eyes well. I take it down like it’s medicine. I cough.
My father finally looks at me, forgets the screen. He stabs his Merit into the amber ashtray. He says, What’d you do that for?, shaking me by the shoulders.
Shirley Temple didn’t come, I say. I was thirsty.
We look directly into each other’s eyes, and I think, for the first time, we understand one another. My face is on fire, but I try to keep my mouth steady, stern.
Let’s go, he says, pulling me off the stool by my armpits.
At home, he locks himself in the bathroom. He doesn’t even watch the rest of the game. I tell my mother he got sick at the restaurant. I tell her it must have been something that we ate.
VIII.
We spend every Memorial Day weekend in the Florida Keys for my father’s birthday. I’m twenty-six, and this will be our last year here. Today, on his sixty-eighth birthday, my father is depressed. His emphysema is making his body work too hard to breathe, causing his muscles to shrivel. His body is fragile, all bulging bones, rust-colored scabs, bandages.
He doesn’t want to go fishing this year. He doesn’t want to go on his boat. He cannot eat seafood for fear of his feet ballooning in a deep-purple gout. He only talks about death and money. He sleeps in the shade all the time, skips meals. He’s barely my father anymore.