“You can talk to me about the war, Dad, if you need to. I’ll listen. Do you want to talk about it? Do you need to?”
That question caught me off guard. I had always wanted to protect Hank from the horrors of Vietnam, so instead of answering, I asked if he had at least kissed Sue good night.
Hank’s face dropped for a second. Then he laughed and said, “Nope.”
I shook my head. My son was never very good with women. “There aren’t exactly a lot of cars on your freeway, son. I really hope you didn’t blow it.”
“Blow what?”
So I told him that he needed a new woman ASAP. “You can’t afford to fuck around now.”
He said he was still married, and that Femke was still Ella’s mother.
“Being married didn’t stop Femke from screwing a weatherman,” I said.
Hank winced because the truth hurts. Then he said, “Can’t you understand that I’m grieving?”
“You don’t have time to grieve. You have a daughter to raise. She needs a mother here in America. One who will put Ella’s needs first.”
Hank started running his fingers through what little hair he has, like he always does when he’s stressed out. Then he said, “You’re right.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. It was the first time he had ever said that I was correct about anything since he was three feet tall.
“And I have a father to get healthy too,” Hank continued. “Sounds like Sue could be a fantastic ally.”
I asked if I was dreaming.
Hank smiled and offered to cook me a spinach and feta omelet, and when I asked if I could have toast and butter, that request was denied.
“Heart-healthy breakfast?” I said.
“Whole-being-healthy, Dad. Body, mind, and soul. What do you say? Both of us need to work on that.”
Then Hank hopped out of bed and put his arm around my shoulder. He smiled as he gave me a manly squeeze. If he had quoted the second amendment and told me I was allowed to carry a concealed weapon in his home, I wouldn’t have been more surprised.
It was hard to believe this sudden good turn in Granger father-son relations was legitimate. I felt like my son was trying to trick me, and I couldn’t find his angle. Hank has historically always been a complete bastard to me, I kept thinking as I watched him cook the heart-healthy omelets.
Finally, after looking at every possible angle, I concluded that there was only one logical explanation. Hank must have really fallen head-over-heels in love with Sue Wilkerson. And yours truly had brought that fantastic woman into his life. Finally, after forty-some years of bickering, Hank and I found something we could both respect: a gigantic love for a genetically Vietnamese registered Republican named Sue. Or so I thought at the time.
9.
I’ve heard that a man only really falls in love one time, and I believe that is true, which is why I never remarried after Jessica died. What was the point? I wasn’t going to do any better than I already had. Jessica was real mashed potatoes and butter. To me the rest of the women in the world would always be the equivalent of Hank’s mashed cauliflower, bland and unsatisfying. He might call it “heart healthy,” but the heart knows what it fucking wants, and it’s hardly ever cauliflower.
Most men, of course, never manage to marry their true loves. Some wait too long and miss the opportunity. Others think with their dicks and fuck it up by sleeping with any old floozy who will open her legs. And then there are those who miss out because they are too busy chasing other dreams at work, trying to add zeroes to their bank accounts, which is always a good idea, don’t get me wrong about that, definitely add a zero whenever you can, but you have to add metaphorical zeroes to your love life too, make it grow, keep it safe and true. Believe me, I know about these things because I used to be married to the best woman in the entire world.
Pretty much everything good after I returned from the land of little yellow bastards happened accidentally and because I had a Vietnam buddy named Roger. We used to call him Roger Dodger, because he used to drive a 1966 Dodge Charger. V8 engine. Badass. Roger Dodger was a good man who—like many of us—got really fucked up in Vietnam. Came home addicted to drugs and convinced that we were all part of some social experiment conducted by higher beings, which he liked to call Light People, at the time. Needless to say, he was pretty fucking crazy back then, always high. And when he was lifted, as the brothers say today, he’d spout his theories like he was a young Jim Jones with Kool-Aid plans for his future rainbow family in Guyana.
From his grandfather, Roger inherited some money and a little house in a run-down neighborhood. He turned said house into a drug bungalow where he did an after-school business. Basically, he allowed high school kids to party there, charging them a nominal fee to smoke weed with him, take acid, do heroin when he had it, and drink themselves silly. These were kids whose parents were both working to make ends meet, and so they were pretty much unsupervised. Roger Dodger took advantage of that.
He also had a bit of a thing for underage girls, although back in the late sixties having sex with a young woman in high school wasn’t the headline-grabbing crime that it is today. Roger had another Vietnam vet living with him for a time, who I didn’t like. One of the few vets that I didn’t get along with. His name was Brian, and he was a real fucking piece of shit, let me tell you.