So I was supposed to tell you about Hank meeting Sue for the first time, but I got sidetracked. These brain meds they have me on are brutal. It’s hard to stick to just one train of thought, so I apologize for my past and future offenses.
I invited Sue over for one of Hank’s “nutritional” and “fair trade” and “certified organic” dinners, which are often completely devoid of meat and bread and anything that tastes good at all. My son makes mashed potatoes with cauliflower, for Christ’s sake. There are no potatoes in his mashed potatoes. No butter either. What the fuck? I asked him what could possibly be wrong with potatoes, which grow in the ground naturally—keeping the Irish alive for centuries—and he said they are high in carbs and then implied that I was fat, only he said it in a politically correct way. According to my son, I am “not heart-healthy.” I prefer “fat” to “not heart-healthy.” And I prefer potatoes to fucking cauliflower.
But dazzling Sue’s taste buds wasn’t even the secondary goal of the evening. If I wanted her to eat well, we would have gone out for a good steak at the Union League, where I’ve been a member for decades, because that patriotic society is pro-veteran and dedicated to the policies of Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican, by the way. The current liberal party, who wants to enslave us all, did not emancipate the blacks. Republicans did that. They serve potatoes at the Union League too. I love potatoes with bacon and sour cream and chives and ketchup. That’s real eating. But back to the goals of the evening. Like I was saying earlier.
First, I wanted to prove to my son once and for all that I was neither a misogynist nor a fucking racist. Having a woman who was also genetically Vietnamese for a best friend was my trump card. Two birds. One stone. I knew Hank couldn’t say shit to me anymore about my colorful language once he’d met Sue, who fully accepts me for who I am, warts and all. And that’s true equality, by the way, because Hank and Femke often acted like elitist snobs. Despite being so-called liberals, they looked down their noses at and hated more people than anyone I ever met.
The second part of my plan doubled down on the fact that I am no lousy fucking racist. Sue is a nice-looking and smart lady who is just about my son’s age, give or take ten years. And she’s a trillion times better than Femke. Femke was cold as ice on your balls, where Sue was like warm South China Sea sand between your toes. I wouldn’t mind one bit having Sue for a daughter-in-law. I knew she’d be a big hit with Ella, and I was right about that too.
Sue came in with flowers for Hank and fun balloons for Ella, who hugged Sue right off the bat. The balloons had some cartoon princess on them that I couldn’t identify, but apparently Ella could. I know because my granddaughter started jumping up and down like she had a firecracker up her ass just as soon as she recognized the princess. Already I could see that Sue would be a good mother for my granddaughter because she knew about the things Ella likes, and also Sue is thoughtful, having been raised by a fellow Vietnam veteran and his classy American wife. Most morons don’t have enough class to bring anything to a dinner party. Pay attention, and you can spot a moron a mile away.
Like I said before, Hank’s eyes popped out of his fucking skull when he saw Sue standing in his living room. It was a hilarious sight, because I knew he wanted to say I never thought I’d see the day when my racist father would bring a Vietnamese woman to dinner, but then he would have to admit that he was wrong about me all along and that would make him look like the bigot, which he wouldn’t want to do, especially in front of a nonwhite.
“You must be Hank,” Sue said once it was clear that my son was just going to stand there holding his dick.
“Actually, my name is Henri,” he said, pronouncing it with a French accent, Ahn-ree. And then he added that his mother had named him after Henri Rousseau. He went on to say that only his father calls him Hank, because his father doesn’t like the French.
Admittedly, the French are a hard race for this American patriot to like, because they let the Nazis take over their country and fucked up Vietnam before we got there too, but the point is this: My son never ever misses a chance to paint his father out to be a racist. He even tries to make me sound racist against other subsets of white people, like the French! I kept my mouth shut here and kept my mind on the greater good that I was trying to accomplish that evening.
“I’m not sure I know Henri Rousseau,” Sue said, which did not impress Hank one bit, let me tell you, but he jumped at the chance to advertise his useless encyclopedic knowledge of dead non-American artists.
“He was a self-taught French painter,” Hank said with unearned schoolboy pride, happy to supply all the art facts that our guest didn’t already possess between her ears. It was like he was trying to win a prize. “Late nineteenth, early twentieth century. We have a really good Rousseau in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Carnival Evening.”
“Hank’s mother was a painter. And a damn good one,” I said, trying to knock my son off his professor podium before he launched into an art history lecture.
“Not that I’d know,” Hank said, “because I never saw a single one of her paintings.”
“Why’s that?” Sue said.
Hank and I looked at our feet here, each of us daring the other to speak. It was just like Hank to bring up an uncomfortable topic when he should have been making our guest feel at home. Our answers to Sue’s question would have been very different. Regarding Hank’s mother, I’ll tell you my version—aka the truth—before we finish here, but neither my son nor I wanted to talk about Jessica right then in front of Sue, and I don’t feel like talking about my dead wife’s notorious suicide just yet either.
Our guest broke the awkward silence. “Well, I’m Sue, and I’ve heard a lot about you, Henri.”
“I’m sure you have,” Hank said as he took the flowers, shook Sue’s hand, and gave her body a quick once-over that neither Sue nor I missed.
Thanks to Gay Timmy, Sue had one of the top female bodies in all of Philadelphia. It helps that she was also Vietnamese, as those women are much less likely to become fat, even when they put down the fucking chopsticks and start eating real American food. Anyway, I could tell that my son had felt a little twinge in his pants, which meant the night had started out perfectly.
“Do you want to see my room?” Ella said and then dragged Sue up the stairs by the hand. Ella loves showing people her room. I have no idea why, as it looks like a regular pink-and-purple little-girl room, which is painfully uninteresting to anyone who is not a little girl. Sue was too polite to say as much, so up the stairs she went.