A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father (6 page)

But my father said, “Not just now, son. I’m very busy.”

He was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the small color television on the counter across from him. The TV was off. That didn’t seem very busy to me. So I just stood right there and waited.

On the wall beside him were bookshelves he had installed himself. I had helped by handing him the screws. That was a long time ago and I almost couldn’t remember the day we put the shelves up, except that he’d told me never to climb on them and so that’s why I wanted to climb on them. The whole house was new back then. It was clean. It didn’t have skin inside, just the bones. It was like a cake in the oven that you couldn’t eat yet because it wasn’t ready. It had to be ready so you could eat it but it was hot at first so my mother would put it on the stove and say, “Be very careful, don’t you touch this pan. It will burn your precious fingers.”

If you ate potatoes before they were ready you could get a stomachache. But you 
could
 eat cake before it was ready because I had licked the spoon.

I had precious fingers.

I had balloons in my fingers.

My father still wouldn’t look at me because he was busy.

I wanted to make a balloon dog to go with the real dogs we had. I liked to pet their heads smooth. Their ears would go flat and their eyes would close and they were like seals.

They would eat a macaroni noodle from your lips if you put it there. And they wouldn’t touch your lips at all, not even a little. They were very careful and polite, people-dogs.

I tapped my father on the elbow again. “But, if you could show me how to make them? Then I could make them,” I said. “And? I would make one for you, too. The best one, you could have it. To keep.”

My father did not look away from the television and carefully enunciated his words. “As I told you not three minutes ago, I am very busy and do not have time right now. I would like you to please respect that, son. Now, run along.”

My father was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and drinking his drink and looking at the off TV and I couldn’t see how he was busy because there was nothing to be busy 
with
.

I missed my mother. She was at the store where you could buy paint brushes and paint in every color that existed in the whole world, even colors between the colors.

“When will my mother be home?” I asked again. I had asked him the same question all afternoon.

“I don’t 
know
, son. Now 
please
,” he answered.

I knew that if my mother were there, she would show me how to make a balloon dog and also tell me stories. Unless she was sad and then she wouldn’t. But when she wasn’t sad, she told me all the stories. Like about her sister who was born with problems and who had arms that were bent and then she died when she was nine. And the undertaker had to break her arms to fit them in the coffin. That was a good story but it was sad because Harriet would have been my aunt and would have sent me presents. And she told me about her big brother who used all his money in the whole world to buy the wedding ring that she gave to my father when they were married. I told my brother and said that he should buy me a ring, too. And he gave me a ring but it was only a trick ring made out of copper wire and it wouldn’t even fit on my finger, that’s how mean he was. Sometimes, he was too mean to even live.

And she told me there were rattlesnakes in the bamboo patches behind the house where she grew up.

And she told me about aunts and uncles and cousins I didn’t even know were all mine. I came from people and there were a lot of them and they lived in Georgia and they were my relations. And my mother and father moved to the north and that was why I liked the snow.

I pressed my lips together and then I asked my father, “What are you busy with?”

And my father slammed his glass down on the kitchen table so hard the table knocked against the wall and liquid splashed out of his glass and landed on my forehead. “Damn it, son. I have told you again and again that I need to be left alone. Now, why is it that you insist on asking me all these questions? I am tired, I don’t feel good. I have work to do for school.”

I went away. Clutching my small bag of balloons, I padded down the hallway into my room.

My father was busy because he worked at the university. He was a teacher, just like Mr. Nester at school, except my father taught big people, grown-ups.

In my bedroom, I stripped the covers from the bed. I took the blue blanket and placed it over my desk chair. Then I dragged my bedside table across the floor and I placed this near the chair. I draped the remainder of the blanket over this table. Then I crawled inside. I had made a Goonie House.

Best of all was when I made a Goonie House in the living room and my mother got down on her hands and knees and poked her head inside. “I see you,” she would say. And I would kiss her nose.

But she wasn’t here now and so her head didn’t appear at the door of my Goonie House. I sat for a moment and shivered because I felt so cozy. But then I decided to visit my father again, because maybe he was no longer busy.

“Hi,” I said, walking back into the kitchen to stand beside him.

He stared straight ahead at the television. The muscles in his jaw tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed, as though he were chewing something very small, like a seed.

Because he didn’t answer me I said it again.

“
Hi
.”

My father moved so fast that I flinched. He leaped up out of the chair and lunged forward, gripping my shoulders within his massive hands. He squeezed hard, and I winced. His fingers pressed deep into the flesh beneath my shoulder blades and it hurt so much that I suddenly felt warm and nauseous.

He shook me back and forth. “Goddamn you,” he spit in my face. “Just this barrage of incessant talking, on and on and on.” He stopped shaking me and spun me around so that my left shoulder was pressed into his stomach. With his right hand he spanked me on the bottom, hard. So hard that my pelvic bone would ache for a week and the bruise would spread to my lower back.

“Now, you have to learn that you cannot simply dominate a room and the thoughts and attentions of every person in that room simply because 
you
 are in it. Goddamn it, Augusten.” He continued spanking me until my knees gave out and I folded onto the floor.

At last, he took his seat. “Now, you get up and you go on back to your room and you stay there until your mother gets home. Do you hear me?”

Without looking at him I nodded and tried to stand but I couldn’t. So I crawled out of the kitchen on all fours, like a dog. Like a balloon dog. I made it to my room, where I eased into my Goonie House.

He’d spanked my bottom but it was my head that hurt, a hammering sharp pain. I tried to sit, but the pain was worse so I curled up on my side. But that hurt, too. So I lay on my stomach. I closed my eyes and was soon asleep.

My father, seeing the package of balloons on the kitchen floor, picked them up and placed them in the trash can in the kitchen. I would find them there the next day but I would not remove them.

FIVE

ON SATURDAY MORNING my parents slept in very late, as though they’d been grave-digging all night. It might be noon, even two or three before I saw them. Awake, alone, I watched TV and ate vanilla cake frosting straight from the can with a spoon. The sugar and the cartoons, speedy and colorful, made me unbearably fidgety. During commercials, I sat on the bare wood floor, raised my knees to my chest, and spun myself around on my tailbone. I gained only enough momentum for a few quick rotations before tipping over on my side, but it was enough to make me dizzy and cause the room to sway and heave, as if it were a ship and not a house on solid ground.

I should have run as fast as I could down the street, all the way to the reservoir and back, exhausted myself, wore myself out. But instead, I stayed indoors, the volume on the TV all the way up, and spun in place. Or, wearing socks, I slid across the kitchen floor into the living room and around the central carpet beneath the dining room table. I slid until my sock bottoms attracted enough dirt and grit that they started to grip instead of slide.

When the cartoons began thinning out, replaced by dreary religious shows and worse, sports, and my sugar high had peaked and I found myself on the other side, spiraling down, tumbling, a sense of emptiness and loneliness overtook me. Sunlight drenched the house, streaming in through a series of wide, sliding glass doors and the large geometric windows above them. But when I peered downstairs the steps merged with darkness and I knew that within that darkness, warm and sleeping, I would find my parents.

Quietly, gently, I padded down the steps. At the bottom, I stood before their closed bedroom door. I pressed my ear to the wood, heard nothing.

I opened the door and entered the cool, dark room. The dehumidifier hummed; it was never turned off, yet the air had a lingering dampness that never went away. My father emptied the two-gallon reservoir daily, but somehow the air remained moist and swampy. I disliked this machine, which seemed to do nothing except pee all day and require constant attention. Secretly, I referred to it as “Harriet,” after my mother’s brain-damaged baby sister, long dead.

In the dark I crossed the room and found them in their bed, each lying on their side away from the other, creating a wide empty space in the center between them. For me. Suddenly, I was drowsy, so sleepy I could hardly stand on my feet one more instant. Quietly, I entered the bed and crawled over the covers, careful not to bump their sleeping forms.

But my mother stirred, made a sound, not quite a mumble. In her sleep, she was aware of me. Her arm unconsciously lifted the covers beside her, welcoming me in, under.

I crawled beneath the thick soft comforter. My feet, stripped of the filthy socks, were icy against their warm bodies.

I snuggled against my mother, pressed my face into her neck, inhaled her most familiar smell. It was the aroma of my home, where I belonged, everything safe and wonderful.

But I was restless and just as soon as I settled in against her, I turned over onto my other side. I bumped my way over until I was pressed against my father.

He awoke, turned over on his back.

“Augusten, is that you? Oh, now, now, now,” he said, raising himself up on his elbows. “Son, no. You can’t come down here and mess up our sleep, go on. Go on now.” He lifted the covers and pulled them all the way down, exposing me entirely.

I clung to him, wrapping my left arm across his chest.

“Go now, go. You’re too old for this, you’re not a baby anymore. You have your own bed upstairs in your own room.”

When I didn’t move, he said angrily, “I mean it, now.” He stared at me, his dark eyes furious. “Go. Now.”

Stricken, too shocked by this expulsion, I didn’t complain. I climbed out of the bed leaving their warmth. I was ashamed. 
Too old for this
.

My mother had woken up as well. She looked at me with tenderness and something else, something that broke my heart a little bit. She mouthed the words, 
“I’m so sorry.”

Once I was out of the bed, my father lay back down and repositioned the covers beneath his chin. His head was on the pillow but his eyes were open to make sure I actually left.

“And close that door,” he said finally.

I closed the door.

•    •    •

MONTHS LATER, MY father was sitting in the living room in front of the television in his Shaker rocking chair, watching college football and sipping his drink. Dressed in his familiar khaki slacks and gray woolen shirt, his lap was too inviting, so I tried to climb up his legs.

I wanted to curl up there and sleep while he watched the game.

I was still small enough to fit.

But when I tried, he swatted me away. “Get down,” he said, eyes on the game. “Get down.”

I withdrew. I sat on the floor, mad, and looked at him. I at least wanted him to glance at me so that he could see my mad face and feel bad. I worked hard not to smile, maintaining my mad stare. But the concentration involved made me finally laugh out loud.

Without looking at me, he took a sip of his drink, eyes fixed on the screen.

And this surprised me. I’d done nothing to him, nothing bad and yet he wouldn’t even 
look
 at me. I thought about it some more and realized that he 
never
 allowed me in his lap. And that was not 
fair
.

I was very concerned with what was fair and what wasn’t. If my big brother got two scoops of vanilla ice cream, I wanted two scoops. Even if I could only eat the one. My mother said, “But he’s a teenager,” as if that should justify extra privileges. As far as I was concerned, the only thing teenagers deserved more of was punishment. After all, my big, stupid brother couldn’t even aim into the toilet; the rusty radiator beside it was all the proof you needed. Fair is fair and fair is equal.

I was now aware that my father pushed me away but I wanted to see how 
often
 he pushed me away. Surely, he couldn’t push me away forever. So I decided that I would attempt to snuggle with him and count the 
go aways
 and the 
come heres
. This would make me happy. Because sometimes, I had learned, things 
seem
 to be one way but 
are
 another. Like, it
seems
 that light is white but 
really
 it’s made up of all the colors. I learned that from my brother who was shocked that I didn’t already know it. All a rainbow is is light that walks behind a raindrop and its colors fall out.

I was a willful thing and now I had a plan through which to channel my ambition. For three days, I undertook my experiment, going so far as to actually borrow my mother’s clipboard so that I could feel terribly official. It required every fiber of restraint I possessed not to burst out laughing or giggle, 
I’ve got a secret, I’m a scientist!
 when my father glanced at me to make sure I wasn’t playing with his cigarette lighter. My plan was to confront him with the data and say, “See? It’s not fair. I should get to sit up on your lap much more than you let me.” I imagined him laughing and scooping me up. “You’re absolutely right!”