taken in as a brother, no matter what color or language or creed, we are all compadres here. He could be a Hatfield and the McCoys would sell him their sisters and offer him grits. Mi casa es tu casa. Mi bar es tu bar. Drinks are on me, amigos.
Then, around drink number five, everything is gonna get real quiet. I call this the calm before the storm. That is, when I call it anything, which is never, since the whole thing is so shamey, why talk about it in the first place? Why even mention it at all? Maybe let’s just talk about the weather or the new mall down on Route 5.
Okay, now, here comes drink number six, that’s a doozey. that’s really the party crasher, that one. He comes in and you know there’s gonna be trouble. You can hear the record scratch right when he walks through the door. Drink number six. Hold on to your hats.
Get out now, before drink number seven or eight come waltzing through the door, cause you can slice up the air with a butter knife. You can almost see the surliness rising up through the smoke, coming off the pool table. You could just tell drink number seven and eight to stay home, but they got invited with drink number one and they RSVP’d around drink number four. There is no way they are not coming to this party. They’ve been gussyed-up since happy hour.
So, here they are, drink number seven and eight, and here’s Tammy, starting the show off with a bang.
“Luli, you’re doomed, you know that. You are just fuckin doomed.”
She’s leaning in, serious, trying to get it through my head that this is the most important thing I ever heard ever. The words are dragging the side of her lip down, clumsy and falling slurred. She leers tipsy at my dad. If she could find a way to take back time by slicing up pieces off her husband, if she could turn his skin inside out and get a rebate, then she would cut and cut and not stop cutting until she’s deep into the bone and even then. She would slice and dice with pleasure.
“I mean . . . look at this drunk you got for a dad, Luli. Lookit him. Just lookit him.”
My mama likes to call my dad a drunk but she’s giving him a run for his money. He’s gonna sit in silence for a little while. He’s gonna sit there and clink the ice in his whiskey and nod and drain his glass and drain another. it’s gonna be a one-sided argument until he gets to drink number nine. that’s when the fireworks start.
Here’s what the argument is tonight. Tammy wants to go home. She doesn’t want to be with a drunk like my dad no more, just lookit him. He doesn’t want to leave. He’s perfectly content with drink number nine and is starting to get a crush on drink number ten. Drink number ten has been batting her eyes at him for the last five minutes and my dad just can’t resist. He’s no match for that drink number ten. Her demure charms and mysterious ways are like a tonic. Like a gin and tonic.
“I am not gonna jus sit here night after night,” Tammy says, “watchin my life pass me by, watchin you, lookin at you, thinkin that looky here what I got. This is the horse I bet on. Ha ha. that’s a good one. That is precious.”
None of this is new. This is like a script you’d follow if you were a vacuum-cleaner salesman. it’s automatic. Instant. Standard practice.
My dad slams down drink number ten. I guess number ten was just a fling, cause he’s out the door before the glass hits the bar. He’s out the door now, storming through the gravel towards the sky-blue Nova parked always, forever, in the corner of the dirt lot. He’s in that car and starting it up before you can say DUI.
I’m rushing along, trying to catch up, hoping this won’t be the night, please God, not this night, not this one, when my dad finally acts out his final, inevitable, scene. it’s the scene he’s been writing for himself for years. I can practically hear the music swell up from the car wrapped around that old oak on Highway 34. The sound of the horn, drone drone, as the headlights cut into the pitch-black nothing and my dad’s head turns the windshield into a glass spider web.
Not tonight. Please God, not tonight.
I’m almost to him by the time Tammy comes barreling past me on the left. He’s trying to back up, but before he can she grabs the driver’s side handle and wrenches the door open. She lurches in and throws herself over him, trying to grab the keys.
“You ain’t driving nowhere like that, you sonuvabitch.”
Oh, Lord, here we go.
“Tammy. You just shut the door, now. Just shut the door.”
You’d never know he’s on drink number ten now, cause that’s how he gets. Calm. Quiet. Collected. My mama is maybe not so collected.
“You sonuvabitch, you ain’t leavin me to raise Luli by myself, you selfish bastard.”
This is when my dad remembers that he has a daughter and that, guess what, there I am. Just right there, smack-dab in the middle of the parking lot, standing dumb.
“Luli, get in the car. Get in the car now and we’ll just leave your mama here. she’s hysterical.”
Now, that does it. Tammy throws hers arms around me like a spider devouring a fly and next thing you know she’s protecting me like my life depended on it. This is her showstopper, ladies and gentlemen. This is where she brings down the house.
“Noooo. No. Nooo. You are not killing my daughter tonight. No sir. You are not takin my daughter with you. she’s the only thing I have. My pride and joy.”
She starts sobbing now. Make no mistake, this here is her show.
“Oh, Luli, Luli, I jus wanna do right by you. I do. I know your dad just, just can’t hold down a job, just never could do nothin. I never shoulda married him, Luli. it’s my fault. it’s my fault. Blame me.”
Now she is sobbing to beat the band. She did plays in high school and this is what it comes down to, drunken confessions in a square dirt lot.
“Luli, get in the car.”
The song and dance tonight is called, “Who gets Luli?”, followed by a little ditty of tears, followed by a fine little number about apologies, complete with sparkly smiles and a flourish of “I’ll-never-do-it-again-I-promise.”
Until the next show.
Now my dad is out the car and it’s an all-out brawl. There might as well be banjo music. she’s got my body, hunched over me like an old-fashioned vampire, nails digging little C’s into my back. He’s got my arm, pulling the both of us millimeter by millimeter to the car. This show’s a comedy and we’ll all be back next week.
We stay in this little clumsy tug-of-war for half a century, him pulling her, her clutching me, me trying to wriggle out, until all the sudden I feel two hands whisk me out and place me square four feet away.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?”
It’s Ray. He must’ve been waiting in the wings. He’s got me beside him, holding his arm in front, protective. I wish he wouldn’t wait so long to make his entrance. He almost missed his cue. The light from the bar cuts a rectangle into the gravel as the dust settles. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing now.
“Look at yourselves. Jesus.”
Tammy and Dad stand there like two kids caught smoking. They stand there, side by side, waiting for the next line, cooling down. But somehow the shame thrown down missed
