Blood Relations (16 page)

He nodded at me, nodded, nodded, looked over my table setup. “Mick, you can’t serve soup on flat plates. It’ll run over the sides. Then it’ll roll off the table, through the floor, onto my father’s dome, and he’ll come up here, see you have alcohol, a hot plate, a babe
and
that you’re doing witchcraft, and he’ll shoot you down dead like a dog. So flat plates won’t do.”

“Shut up, I know that. They didn’t have any down at the thrifty. I’ll get some.”

Sully put up his hands. “Okay, I didn’t mean to insult your stuff. Really, Mick, I think this is real nice. Come Saturday, I think she’s yours.”

“Don’t be smutty,” I said. “But really, you think so?” I practically jumped, as if
Sully
had promised me something.

“I don’t see how she can resist.”

Sully slipped away down the stairs, and in a minute he was back. Or at least his hand was. He reached up through the bannister and slipped two soup bowls sideways between the rails. “We never have soup downstairs. But don’t break them just the same.”

“Thanks,” I said and got no reply.

I found my father sleeping on the floor behind the O’Asis bar.

“Dad, you make it kind of hard for me to do my job, with you lying there in the gunk I have to scrape up.”

He groaned, pushed himself up, and started explaining as if it was no big deal. He seemed to believe it too.

“I slept there before, y’know, it’s no big deal.”

I dropped to my knees to start scrubbing. His big head fell into his small hands. Then he popped up again.

“Hey, get me something, Mick.”

He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t think about it much before spinning around and pouring a double Wild Turkey. I did it all in one motion, slick as any full-time bartender. I brought it out to him, then listened to the rest of the story from scrubbing position on the floor behind the bar.

“Well no, I take that back,” he said, as he slammed the heavy glass down on the tabletop. “I never slept
there
before. I slept
there
, and I slept over
there
.” I figured he was pointing around the room, but it didn’t matter enough to either of us for me to stand up and look. “But I never slept there, behind the bar before.” There was a certain amount of pride in his words. “You know why, Mick? Because it wasn’t
mine
before. Now, when I want to, I get to sleep behind
my
bar.” He thumped himself twenty times hard on the sternum as he said it.

“And at least now,” he said, “when I wake up, I’m already to work.” He laughed robustly at his own joke before adding, “And your mother will get over it. She always comes around.”

“That’s great, Dad,” I said.

He practically climbed the bar over me to reach the bottle. He grabbed it and disappeared again.

Since it was a Saturday, the place was extra messy, and it took longer to clean. I had to work fast. My father was gracious enough to stay clear as he watched me work. When I came from behind the bar to start the floor, he moved to the opposite side of the room. When I reached that side, he moved to a stool at the bar. Wherever he went he took his bottle and glass with him. It wasn’t real drinking, though, not nighttime-style drinking. It was recovery, hair-of-the-dog drinking, which he believed in wholeheartedly. This type of drinking he’d stop by opening time, and not have another until dinner usually. And except for the smell of his breath and pores, and the cheeriness, the average person could not tell that he’d had a drop.

Just before I got to the bathroom swab, Dad went in. A little while later he came out, and I went in.

I came staggering back out and collapsed at a table. He brought me a Coke there, served it at my table like I’d done for him. “Sorry about that.” He shrugged.

“Not a problem,” I said, downing the Coke and finishing my filthy disgusting job.

I put everything away in the closet, approached the bar. “Gotta get paid, Dad,” I said, very businesslike.

“Course ya do, course ya do,” he said, fumbling at the cash register. He was still at that bottle, longer than I figured he would be. He pressed buttons all over the register, swore at it, slapped it, and it opened. Stuck his hand in like a bear snagging a fish out of a stream, whirled, and pushed the money on me. It was forty dollars.

“I never seen ya work before, Mick. Ya do good. Fast and thorough. You’re good.”

I took it and nodded. I just wanted to go. Somehow I was always extra humiliated when he tried to be nice to me.

“Can I have some wine?” I blurted.

“Indeed?” he said, joking like to scold me. But really he seemed pleased. He started drawing a glass from an already tapped bottle.

“No, Dad, no. I don’t mean I want some now. I mean, can I have a bottle? For later.”

He deflated. “Why should I?
Boy
.”

“I got a date tonight. A nice date. A dinner thing.”

He smiled. He leered, actually, but I ignored that because I wanted something from him.

“What’s your best wine, Dad? Something classy, ’cause this is a really classy girl.”

“André. Cold duck. Pink.” He gave me a knowing wink. “Trust me on this. I am a saloon keeper, you know.” He said the phrase
saloon keeper
like it meant Sun God or something.

He was so full of pride, finally with his chance to share his brand of fatherly wisdom. He stuck an arm deep into the beer chest and pulled out a bottle. “Girls love the shit out of it,” he said. He pulled out a second bottle and stood it next to the first. “Take two. That’s twice as classy.”

I thanked him and held out some money as he fumbled around back there for a big enough bag.

“Get that out of here,” he said, pushing my hand away. I nodded, took my bag, and headed for the door.

“Where ya goin?” he said sadly. “Opening ain’t for twenty minutes yet, can’t ya stay, just with me? The whole damn joint all ours, for a while?”

It almost sounded nice, the way he said it. I wished it was for real. But then I remembered the drinking he’d already done. The niceness was an accident. And any minute, it would be gone.

“Sorry, Dad, I can’t. Have to get back and fix up my place for tonight.”

“Your place,”
he mimicked me, nasty, because he had to pull me back down below him before I got away. That was just his way, that swing from sappy and nice to small and mean. It didn’t bother me much anymore though. “Go on then, go to
your place
, your little place. I’ll stay here, ’cause this here is
My Place
.”

As I quickly locked the door from the outside, three people crowded me, already lined up for opening time at His Place. Two skinny guys with sunglasses sandwiching an older lady in black eye makeup, like an outfielder in a day game.

I went to the store. I bought a little sample bottle of aspirin because I was getting a headache already. A Cornish game hen because I couldn’t find a real chicken small enough. Carrots, celery, green beans. I brought my stuff up to the girl at the register and mentioned what I was making. She sent me back for a can of chicken broth, a tiny box of Bell’s seasoning, pasta elbows, and chickpeas.

Back at home, I went to work. Plunked the bird into the broth mixed with water and set it on the hot plate. The pot I had was big for the plate, kind of like one of the fat Cormac brothers sitting on a bar stool. But I figured the heat would get up there eventually. After the chicken cooked for about an hour I added the chopped-up vegetables and the spice. I could smell it now, and it smelled warm and clingy, like stuff I’d sometimes whiff from downstairs in the Sullivans’ kitchen. I opened the two windows to let it out.

It made me sleepy, that homey smell, but I was jumpy. I lay down on the bed. My eyes kept springing open. I stared at the ceiling. I closed my eyes but only got more nervous. I got up and stirred the pot.

I fell asleep finally after walking from the bed to the pot and back for the third time. I had a short dream, like a quick-cut music video flashing black-and-white images of my father sleeping on the floor. I woke up disgusted, disappointed, tired, and shaking with nerves.

I went downstairs and took a shower, came back up, paced, stirred the pot, dumped in a half pound of pasta, sweated like an animal, took another shower.

I felt as if so much of my life, my new life, had come to depend on this date, and the pressure was withering me. I dressed in a gathering cloud of gloom, certain that I was going to speak nothing but babbles to Evelyn. I had to calm down or explode.

Slowly, yet desperately, I started the walk. Across the room, a mile or so. I pulled the chilled cold duck from the refrigerator.

No corkscrew, damn. No corkscrew, damn. I got a steak knife, stabbed the bottle in the head, twisted the knife, rocked it, churned it, until the cork was sliced and ground up, some pieces pulling up when I extracted the knife, more of them floating in the wine.

Just a glass.

Just a glass.

I should not be worried. This is better. This is fine.

I stirred the soup.

And I’m a good cook.

I have a job. I am a man. I don’t need anything, and that is a good thing.

When I checked again, the pasta elbows were swelled to the size of copper plumbing joints. I turned the hot plate down to low. It smelled wonderful.

Good thing there was a second bottle of duck.

I stood weaving on Evelyn’s porch. Three pokes of my finger, and I hit the doorbell. I giggled. That was when the door opened.

Evelyn stood in the doorway in a long, electric blue sort of peasant dress, with ruffles on the shoulders and a whole village of people embroidered all the way around the hem. Her hair was pulled back in a long tight braid. She looked for the first time defenseless and soft and hopeful.

For about three seconds. The broad white smile she brought to the door fell away as she sized me up.

“You’re drunk?” she asked. “You come to me drunk?”

“Nah,” I said shaking my head desperately. “No, I’m not. I had... I had... I had a wine.” I shrugged.

“You had a
wine
,” she said, nodding slowly. “You had a wine, eh, Mick? Look at me, dammit.” She yanked at her skirt. “How often do you think I do this nonsense, huh?”

I started to answer.

“I had
hope
, here, Mick. I had hope for this, hope for you. I don’t
do
this, you understand?” She stepped out onto the porch, and ripped my face with a loud, ringing slap.

“You come to me drunk? What do you think, I’m some kind of
puta
here? That you can do this? Get out of here.”

By the time she hit me, I was glad she hit me.

“Go ahead,” I said quietly. “Hit me again if you want to.”

“No. You’ll probably like it.” She still seemed totally amazed at something that never amazed anyone before—me showing up gassed. “Who do you think you
are
?”

It was like she was a cop asking to see my driver’s license, when I knew I’d been driving without one. I scrambled, but I had nothing to show her.

“I don’t know. Evelyn. I don’t know who I am at all. I need to be told. Like, before, before, I had an identity. The identity sucked, but at least I had one. To not have one... it’s like a weird little hell thing. Now I’m up there in my place, you know, and, like, there’s nothing. I don’t hear nothing, don’t see nothing, don’t feel nothing that reminds me who I am. I don’t even have a mirror up there ’cause I’m half afraid I’ll look in it and not see anything. I need to be told.”

She stood with her hands on her hips. I saw, briefly, in her smart, gentle face, a softening. I knew she understood. Then she stiffened.

“You looking for sympathy here? There is
ninguno
. Go.”

She stomped inside and slammed the door.

The desperation in me was so real it felt like I’d swallowed something live and it was clawing around in my belly.

I knocked. The mail slot opened.

“Go home and sleep, Mick.” The mail slot closed.

I knocked again, my hand half open, the way drunks do. “I don’t want to go back there alone, Evelyn. I need help.”

She opened the door one more time, leaned on the door frame like she was suddenly very tired. “You certainly do,” she said. “But I’m sorry, Mick, I just can’t be taking care of you. We all have our own stuff, you know? You’re not a whole person. You’ve got to get right.”

“I’ll be better.” I sounded like such a simp, I even surprised myself. “This won’t happen again. It wasn’t my fault...”

She put up her hands. “Stop that now, I’m embarrassed just listening to you. You are responsible for yourself, that much I know. As long as you want to believe somebody else is responsible, you’re going to be useless. You really want my advice, I say go on back home. Not to Sully’s, but to your real home. You think you’re not them, and that’s your problem.”

She had me on the ropes now, and she just wouldn’t let me fall down. I was good and beaten.

“That’s bullshit,” I snapped, effectively ending the conversation.

“Good luck, Mick,” she said before closing the door for good. “I really mean that.” It hurt all the more because she really did mean it.

I stood in the dark outside my parents’ house, staring at it. The second bottle of cold duck filled my belly and my head and my bones. But it hadn’t put me down, put me away like it was supposed to. So I came back out and stood staring in the dark, rolling my tongue in and out and in and out, trying to shake the tiny flecks of cork off it.

All the lights were off. I shuffled up the front steps, stood for a while more in front of the door. Finally I stuck my key in. It jammed. The lock didn’t turn. I pulled the key out, turned it over, and tried again. Nothing. Then I noticed, the lock was new.

“I changed it,” Terry hissed,
right
in my ear.

My terror came out in tears rolling down the creases alongside my nose.

“Kill me, Terry. Go ahead. ’Cause if it was me, if I get the chance, I’m gonna kill you.”

He spun me around by the shoulders to face him.

“You’re drunker den me,” he said, beaming.

“Well, do something,” I said.

“Good to see ya back in the old form, Mickey.”