the bar he peered out the windshield. ‘This is where you go?’
I said it was, a little defensively. He grunted. On the way across the lot it occurred to me that turning up with my dad was going to bring into focus any doubts Ed might be entertaining about my age, but it was too late to turn back. It wasn’t like we looked very similar. Maybe he’d think Dad was some older guy I knew. Like a senator, or something.
Inside was nearly empty. A couple old farts I didn’t know were hunkered down over a table in the corner. The place never really stuttered into life until late, and it was a precarious form of vitality, the kind that two consecutive bad choices on the jukebox could kill stone dead. As we stood at the counter waiting for Ed to make his own good time out of the back, Dad leaned back against the bar and looked around. There wasn’t a great deal to see. Battered stools, venerable dust, a pool table, interior twilight and neon. I didn’t want him to like it. Ed came out eventually, grinned when he saw me. Usually I’d drink my first beer sitting gassing with him, and probably he was anticipating this was going to happen tonight.
But then he caught sight of Dad, and stopped. Not like he’d run into a wall or anything, but he hesitated, and his smile faded, to be replaced by an expression I couldn’t interpret. Dad wasn’t the usual kind of guy who spent time in that bar, and I guess Ed was wondering what kind of bizarre map-reading error had brought him there. Dad turned to look at him, and nodded. Ed nodded back.
I really wanted this over with. ‘My dad,’ I said.
Ed nodded once more, and another great male social interaction ground to a close.
I asked for two beers. As I waited I watched my father as he walked over to the pool table. As a kid I’d got used to the fact that people would come up to him in stores and start talking to him, assuming he was the manager and the only person who could sort out whatever trivia they were spiralling up into psychodrama. Being able to look equally at home in a scummy bar was kind of a trick, and I felt a flicker of respect for him. It was a very specific and limited type of regard, the kind you allow someone who displays a quality you think you might one day aspire to, but it was there all the same.
I joined him at the table, and after that the bonding session went rapidly downhill. I won all three games. They were long, slow games. It wasn’t that he was so terrible, but every shot he played was five percent out, and I had the run of the table. We didn’t talk much. We just leant down, took our shots, endured the misses. After the second game slouched to a conclusion he went and bought himself another beer while I racked the balls up. I’d been kind of hoping he’d stick at one, so I still had most of mine left. Then we played the last game, which was a little better, but still basically excruciating. At the end of it he put his cue back in the rack.
‘That it?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. I was so relieved I took the risk of holding up another quarter.
He shook his head. ‘Not giving you much of a challenge.’
‘So – aren’t you going to say “Hey kid, you’re good,” or something like that?’
‘No,’ he said, mildly. ‘Because you’re not.’
I stared at him, stricken as a five-year-old. ‘Yeah, well,’ I eventually managed. ‘Thanks for the ego-boost.’
‘It’s a game.’ He shrugged. ‘What bothers me is not that you’re no good. It’s that it doesn’t bother you.’
‘What?’ I said, incredulous. ‘You read that in some motivational management textbook? Drop a zinger at the right moment and your kid ends up chairman of the board?’
Mildly: ‘Ward, don’t be an asshole.’
‘You’re the asshole,’ I snarled. ‘You assumed I’d be no good and you’d be able to come out here and beat me even though you can’t play at all.’
He stood for a moment, hands in the pockets of his chinos, and looked at me. It was a strange look, cool and appraising, but not empty of love. Then he smiled.
‘Whatever,’ he said. And he left, and I guess he walked home.
I turned back to the table, grabbed my beer and drank the rest of it in one swallow. Then I tried to smack one of his remaining balls down the end pocket and missed by a mile. At that moment I really, really hated him.
I stormed over to the bar to find Ed already had a beer waiting for me. I reached for money, but he shook his head. He’d never done that before. I sat down on a stool, didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
Gradually we started talking about other things: Ed’s views on local politics and feminism – he was somewhat critical of both – and a hide he was thinking of lashing together out in the woods. I didn’t see Ed ever having a huge impact on the first two subjects, or getting it together to build the hide, but I listened anyway. By the time Dave wandered in I could more or less pretend that it was just business as usual.
It was an okay night. We talked, we drank, we lied. We played pool not very well. At the end I walked out to the car, and stopped when I saw a note had been pushed under one of the wipers. It was in my father’s handwriting, but much smaller than usual.
‘If you can’t read this the first time,’ it said, ‘get a ride. I’ll drive you out here tomorrow to pick up the car.’
I screwed the note up and hurled it away, but I drove home carefully. When I got back Mom was in bed. There was a light in Dad’s study but the door was shut, so I just went upstairs.
I got up once, in the late morning, and made a cup of instant coffee. Apart from that I sat until mid-afternoon, until the sun moved across the sky and started to come directly through the window and into my eyes. This broke the spell I’d been in, and I got out of the chair knowing I’d never sit there again. It wasn’t comfortable, for a start. The cushion was threadbare and lumpy, and after a couple of straight hours on it, my ass hurt. I walked back to the kitchen, rinsed my cup out, left it upside down on the side to dry. Then I changed my mind, wiped it, and put it back in the cupboard. I folded the cloth and looped it over the handle on the oven.
I stood irresolute in the hallway, wondering what to do next. Part of me believed that the filial thing to do would be to check out of the hotel and come stay here for the night. The rest of me didn’t want to. Really did not want to. I wanted bright lights and a burger, a beer, someone who’d talk to me about something other than death.
Suddenly irritable and sad, I stalked back into the sitting room to retrieve my phone from the coffee table. My lower back ached, probably from sitting in that lousy chair.
The chair. Maybe it was because the light was different; the sun had moved around the yard since the morning, creating new shadows. More likely, a few hours of tears had simply cleared my head a little. Either way, now that I was looking at it, the seat cushion looked a little odd. Slowly slipping the Nokia into my pocket, I frowned at the chair. The cushion, which was an integral part of it, definitely bulged up in the centre. I reached out experimentally, prodded it. It felt a little hard.
Maybe he’d had it reupholstered, or refilled with something. Rocks, perhaps. I straightened up, ready to forget it and leave the house. My hangover was beginning to bloom. Then something else caught my attention.
There’s a proper way of placing objects in relation to each other, especially if those objects are large. Some people don’t see this. They’ll just throw the furniture down any old how, or all against the walls, or at right
