“If we’re going to ingest the calories, we’re going to make them count,” Timmy said. That got a good laugh, but I knew from experience that he wouldn’t take more than three sips of his wine all night, which is another reason his abs are like six little stones arranged two-by-two on a slab of marble.
Johnny and Timmy insisted on helping Hank in the kitchen, and I sat back and watched as they made everything a little bit better, reorganizing the flowers on the table, spacing the silverware out a bit more, and doing something to Hank’s hair at one point, which made me smile for Hank, because a bleeding-heart liberal having a legitimate gay man mess with his hair is like a Catholic being blessed by the pope. Everything falls into a nice rhythm whenever Johnny and Timmy are around. The key is, you just have to let them be in control of most things, and so I always do.
Hank asked them a million questions about how they knew me, and his jaw fell lower and lower with each one of their responses. “I had no idea that you have a subscription to the Forrest Theatre, Dad,” Hank said at one point. I asked him why he didn’t ever believe me when I said he didn’t know shit about his father.
Sue and Ella came down the stairs, both dressed as princesses. Sue was wearing a tiara and holding a magic wand, whereas Ella had on her princess dress. Her hair was in the French braid she had asked for earlier, but I decided to let that slide too, because it looked pretty good, and Sue had undoubtedly worked really hard to get my granddaughter’s hair the way she originally wanted it. The French make everything too complicated, little girls’ hairstyles were no exception.
Timmy and Johnny made a big deal about everything related to Ella. A lot of dumb morons think we should keep homosexuals away from our children, but that’s only because they have never seen the gays in action around kids. Johnny and Timmy have unlimited amounts of energy when it comes to talking about princesses and hairstyles and dresses and all of the other shit that Ella likes.
While my friends were talking to my princess granddaughter, I snuck outside for a cigarette, and Hank followed me. I lit up, and he didn’t say anything at first. Then he said, “Dad, I feel like I don’t even know you.”
“Get to know me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Hank gave me a confused look. I was worried that he was going to turn on the waterworks again, but instead he put his arm around me.
“Why didn’t you ever mention Timmy and Johnny before?” he asked.
“You never asked,” I said.
Hank pointed to my cigarette and asked for a drag.
“You don’t smoke,” I said.
“I used to. Before Femke,” he said.
I gave him a drag, even though I didn’t want him to start smoking again. Cigarette smoke is not good for Ella. I never smoke around her, but I have excellent self-control, and Hank doesn’t. My son blew the smoke through the air, and then he took another drag before he gave me back my Marlboro Light.
“You can talk to me about anything. I won’t judge you. I’ll just listen. I’m here for you, Dad.” Hank said this in a way that made me believe he was actually sincere, but I didn’t want to get into all that horrible shit while our perfectly nice dinner party was taking place, so I just puffed on my smoke and said nothing.
He kept his arm around me for another ten seconds or so before he gave me a squeeze and then went back inside.
Across the street an old lady was watching me through her bay window. I waved at her, but she didn’t wave back. Instead, she pulled the curtain. Then I remembered I was in full camouflage, which sometimes makes nonmilitary types nervous.
As I finished my cigarette, I thought about the dinner party I had cobbled together. Hank’s house had become a true melting pot. It was nice to have such a fantastic collection of friends inside, getting along with the only family I had left. I should have known better when it came to thinking everything was going good for me, because that’s always when something shitty happens, and that night was no exception.
A cab pulled up right on cue, and that Dutch cunt Femke popped out, wearing a bright yellow coat and black leggings so that it looked like she might be naked otherwise underneath. My daughter-in-law dyes her hair vinyl-record black and keeps her bangs razorblade straight, so that they cover her eyebrows, which prevents you from knowing what mood she’s in. Her skin is completely drained of color, like all the evil witches in Ella’s cartoons.
I immediately pointed to the cabdriver—who was wearing a little Muslim knitted cap, by the way—and told him not to leave.
Femke asked what I was doing there, and I told her that I had moved in because Hank needed help raising Ella, now that she had abandoned her family.
Then she called me “Aap” again and tried to push her way around me, but I held my ground and told her that Hank didn’t want to see her anymore, and neither did Ella.
She started crying at this point, trying to trick me, but I didn’t fall for it.
I told her that we were having a dinner party and she was cordially not invited. “Americans only,” I said.
She pointed to my scar and asked me what happened to my head, I guess because Hank hadn’t told her, and so I filled her in on what the US government had done to me. She got tired of that story quickly, because she doesn’t give two rat shits about the USA, let alone its combat veterans. I know because in the middle of my story, she interrupted, saying she was staying at the Four Seasons, and to please have Hank contact her as soon as possible. Her fickle ass suddenly wanted to be part of my family again.
I asked her if sex with a global warming theorist had cooled down, which I thought was a pretty good joke, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She just got in the cab, and it drove away.
I went back inside and tried to enjoy the dinner party, but I kept feeling as though I had done something wrong, even though I knew letting Femke into Hank’s home would have absolutely destroyed our melting-pot dinner. My mind was certain that Hank would be better off with Sue, but my heart kept asking questions, especially since I knew Ella had been doing a lot of crying about missing her mother. Her sobbing had woken me up in the middle of the night a few times, and that was awful. It sounded like someone was trying to kill her in her bed, and it reminded me of the many times Jessica’s crying woke me up.
Hank always beat me to Ella’s room, and he was pretty good at calming her and getting her back to sleep, but I knew it was wearing my son down, being both father and mother, especially since he had to take care of his mentally fucked-up father too, who was always having seizures and ending up in the hospital talking to crooks and skiers.