Seeing that my glass was empty, Charlie passed me the bottle across the table as soon as he’d filled his glass.
I poured gingerly, watching the sunlight pass through the carved crystal onto the white linen tablecloth to create floating fields of red. I wouldn’t always be here, doing this; I wouldn’t go down with the ship. For the moment, though, the wine warmed my insides and made the whole thing bearable. I picked up my fork and took my first bite of turkey, with no particular appetite for it, but it hardly mattered; the food had already grown cold.
Together
CHARLIE, WHITNEY, FRANCES, AND BOBBY—DALLAS, 1993
(by Cheryl Stroh)
Dallas, 1993
Charlie’s condo complex sat just off the freeway, sandwiched between a strip mall and a sprawling warehouse advertising storage units for rent.
“Park over by the gate,” Charlie said to Bobby, pointing to a chain-link fence with a pool on the other side. The condos were a forsaken collection of brown cardboard shoeboxes with mini balconies, each with its own laundry line.
“You live here?” asked Whitney from the backseat.
We all got out of Bobby’s Volkswagen and followed Charlie through the gate and up a cracked concrete path.
It had been a little over a year since I’d seen Charlie, but he had the skin of an old hobo—mottled and bumpy, unshaved and scorched red, as if he’d been drinking moonshine under the blazing sun for the last forty years.
At thirty-two, he’d failed three rehab programs within five years. After a series of scenes at various family events, including Bobby’s wedding, my parents had banned him from coming home for holidays.
When I’d called about coming down to Dallas to film him, he was full of enthusiasm. “I love my family,” he gushed. “You know? I really miss everyone.”
My work had been selected as part of a group exhibition at San Francisco Camerawork Gallery entitled The Family Seen. Video screens of my family members talking would play in a darkened room simultaneously.
We’d all met in Dallas for a couple of days so I could shoot the interviews—the only time the four of us had ever met outside a family occasion. Whitney had come all the way from Missoula, where he was a senior at the University of Montana. I had come from San Francisco, where I lived and worked as an artist. Bobby and Charlie lived near each other in Dallas but hardly saw each other. I liked to think that art had brought us back together.
“Hold on a second,” said Charlie. We followed him past a small play area with a warped plastic slide and a jungle gym. A group of people sat at the pool smoking, complaining in raspy voices about their “asshole bosses.” Charlie leaned over the fence and greeted a shirtless man decorated with a collage of prison tattoos.
The man mumbled something to Charlie in a conspiratorial tone.
Charlie smiled. “Be over soon,” he said.
Whitney gave me an anguished look and Bobby just rolled his eyes. Like my parents, Bobby had given up on Charlie long ago.
The freeway hummed behind us as we took the cement stairs to the second floor. Almost every door had a few pairs of well-worn flip-flops strewn outside. A bag of garbage sat leaking in the hallway. The earthy scent of pot smoke wafted out from someone’s open door, and it occurred to me that this condo complex was likely the last stop, full of drifters like Charlie who’d lived in every condo complex in the Dallas area until this one, been kicked out each time for reckless behavior or failure to pay the rent.
Charlie opened the door. We stepped into a tiny living room that merged with a kitchenette. A beige sofa I recognized from the house on Grayton Road was the only furniture, other than a big Sony TV perched on some wine crates. The air smelled like sheets that hadn’t been changed.
“Anyone want a beer?” asked Charlie, opening the fridge to a shelf full of Coors. I realized how proud he was to be hosting us and, though I never drank during the day, took a can.
“What’s with the piss water?” asked Bobby.
“Got a case on special,” said Charlie, the old yearning for approval audible in his voice; his big brother had finally come over to see him.
“No, thanks,” Bobby said.