HOME | DD

Description
The night my father died, my mother cried only until the ambulances were out of sight. When we could no longer hear the sirens, she hugged me with dry eyes and set about cleaning up the mess that the paramedics had made. I stayed motionless, crouched on the sofa like a tiny animal, staring at the spot on the carpet where he had fallen. His sudden absence in the house was palpable in the same way that another person’s presence might be. It would take me years to understand that he really wasn’t coming back, and that this sense of silence was something that everyone else had always lived with.

My parents had met in high school, although they couldn’t have been called sweethearts. My mother liked to say that she had never noticed him until she had to walk behind him at graduation. She saw him again later that night at a graduation party, and seven months later they were married. Their wedding photo sat on the shelf above our television my whole life, even for years after my father died four feet away from it. I liked to hold it in my lap and study it as a small child, looking for secrets from their life before me. Revisiting it now, I think I can see some; my father’s teeming rabbit brood of a family red-faced and freshly scrubbed, looking with suspicion at my mother’s olive skin against her white dress. My mother’s side of the church is almost empty, with just her mother, sister, and two cousins whose names I don’t know. They look forlorn as they huddle together in their dark wool dresses, but then they always look that way. Sometimes I would squint my eyes until they watered and stare at my mother’s belly under her wedding gown, trying to discern some clue that would reveal the beginning stages of my existence. Of course I never found one, but I would imagine that there was something significant in the way that he squeezed her hand as they left the reception, or that she took the stairs from the church door extra carefully in her pretty white shoes, for my sake. Through its repeated evocation, my fantasy of my family’s beginning became idyllic, mythical.

As a result, this is the part of my family’s history that I remember best, even though I wasn’t there for it. I know what happened afterward from the times that it was recounted to me later in life; my father’s plans to rise to a management position at the local furniture emporium didn’t work out when it became clear that he lacked a certain talent for customer service, and he took a job with the police department. I was born five months after the wedding, on the hottest day of the summer. Afterwards, my mother used the sewing machine she received from her in-laws at the reception to earn a little money each month making children’s clothes. I don’t remember any of it. My memories begin, for the most part, when I was eight or so, and my parents had been moving through this routine of reheated meals and late night shifts for a little too long.
I don’t remember any dinner conversation, or what shows my dad liked to watch when he got home in his heavy boots, but I remember the feeling of that time. My father’s presence at the end of the day was like a persistent headache, a pressure that you couldn’t relieve. He was impossible to ignore. I swear I could hear his heart beating when he opened the door to come in, like its throbbing was the rhythm by which our days were ordered. I imagined his heart as mammoth, the size of my head; sometimes I stared at the ropy veins that bulged from his arm and watched them pulse with a mixture of admiration and revulsion. I understand now that it was natural, with its centrality in my life, for me to have imagined my father’s pulse and mine to be one and the same.

I don’t even know what most of the problems were; maybe my mother serving chicken too many times for dinner, or me forgetting to tie my shoes again, or the neighbors turning their radio on too loud. That was all it took, and suddenly his face would seem to inflate with blood beneath the skin, and my mother and I would sit silent and shaking on the couch while he raged and hissed at us. He was working for our living, he spent the day with the worst scum of the city, and we couldn’t even make a decent house for him to come home to. My mother’s face would drain until it was the pale counterpart to his florid one, white with pinched lips and stony eyes. Eventually he would carry his tantrum to somewhere else in the house, leaving a vacuum of emotion in his wake. My mother would take extra time putting me to bed on nights like this, lying beside me and smoothing her cool hands over my forehead, whispering lullabies into my hair like I was a toddler. I never complained.

And so it was on the last day of my father’s life, when I was ten years old. That is one memory that I can recall clearly. He had come home late, after dinnertime, having covered someone else’s shift. He shuffled off his boots at the door, grumbling to himself, and continued into the kitchen. I watched his progress from across the room, perched on my favorite sofa cushion. He paid me no attention. I heard my mother’s warm exclamation of welcome from the next room, and the sigh of the refrigerator as my father opened it and removed a beer. The cabinet above the stove clicked open; I listened with the sharpened awareness and quickened pulse that traditionally accompanied my father’s homecoming. Everything about this evening was routine; my father’s appetizer before dinner was always a can of generic beer and a small handful of aspirin to combat what he called “a terrible migraine.”

Except that this time there was a problem - he had finished the bottle of pills last night, and my mother had forgotten to pick up more during the day. Or so I gathered from the argument in the next room; my mother’s replies were muffled and impossible to decipher. “Jesus, I ask for one simple thing!” my father cried, anguished. I heard the beer slammed down onto the countertop. “You know what, forget the fucking dinner. I don’t want it; my head is killing me. I’m going to get some fucking aspirin.” I could barely hear my mother’s response; he probably couldn’t understand it either. A delicate tinkling sound accompanied his exit from the room; I knew he had probably knocked a glass or plate off the table as he walked by it. Now he was grabbing his coat, shoving his feet into his boots with a grunt to indicate the sort of pleasure that one takes in hurting oneself and blaming it on someone else.

As he zipped up his jacket for the February air outside, his eyes caught mine. “What?” he demanded. “What are you looking at? Go help your mother clean up in the kitchen.” Normally I would have done so without question; normally I would probably already be there, but something about the way he said it stopped me this time. He said something else when I didn’t move, but I could barely hear him. Suddenly it seemed that I could hear his heartbeat at the volume of a plane taking off, that it was all I could hear; it was as though I had my ear pressed up against his bare chest, even though I was across the room. His mouth kept moving as he saw my blank stare; he began to move towards me. I paid no attention; I was overwhelmed by the sound, the feeling like a massive stopwatch ticking inside my own chest. Now he was by the coffee table, a few feet away, his face mottled and purple. His heart was pumping so fast it was making me dizzy; and I thought now that I could detect an irregularity to it, a sort of hiccup. As he pinched my skinny shoulderblades between his fingers and began to shake me, that hiccup was what I was concentrating on. It was very evident now, like music being played out of time, as his mouth moved without sound like he had been put on mute. I listened harder, and then I could hear it clearly; a tiny empty space, a vacuum in the sense of sound washing over me. It was only a second, and then it was interrupted by another beat; but the rhythm sounded thin, now, and weak. I looked up, and saw that my father’s violet-red face had taken on a shade of gray. He let go of me and tottered backwards a few steps, falling onto his knees in front of me. His eyes were wild, full of fury and helplessness as they locked onto mine. I watched as he clawed at his own broken chest and my mother called 911. My father continued to stare at me until he collapsed onto the floor, as if he were seeing me for the first time.

- - -

Thirteen years later, I am recounting all of this for the first time, my voice muffled a little by the pillow and by lethargy. Patrick lies beside me, watching my lips move as I speak. “He was a monster,” he murmurs, and traces my vertebrae under the sheets, pulls me close against his chest. He is a promising law student; I am the girl that he bought cappuccinos from for his first semester, before I got a better job and he got the nerve to ask for my number. Now, he is the only person that I have ever told this whole story to, reassured by his earnestness and devotion. My mother loves him; she talks glowingly about his “sense of justice,” adding that that was what first drew her to my dad. She asks slyly when the wedding will be; I roll my eyes good-naturedly and change the subject.

It has been six months since we started dating, and Patrick has been hinting that it might be time for him to move into my apartment. I’ve never been with anyone for this long before; all it takes is one rude response to a waitress or instance of road rage, and suddenly all I can see is my father and they’re out the door. Patrick, though, has never done anything to jeopardize my goodwill, and so I’m considering his suggestion. As it stands, he has his own key, the only one besides mine. That is how I know it is him when I hear the door open from the kitchen. I smile to myself at the surprise, and walk in to greet him. I take in his shirt and tie; he examines my sweatpants and t-shirt. “…Julie?” he asks. “Are we still, uh, going to dinner?” I blush. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry, I forgot… I told Ellen I would meet her for coffee in an hour.” I watch for his eyes to roll, for him to sigh and remind me that if I actually used the datebook he got me for my birthday, then maybe… But instead, his mouth tightens unpleasantly to create an unfamiliar expression, and his tone is metallic when he says “You’re kidding me.”

I say nothing, surprised; he stares me down again in my disheveled clothes before continuing. “Christ, this is the second time this month. You’re impossible, you know that? I can’t keep scheduling around you if you’re not going to…” He begins to pace in my doorway, drawing a little closer with each step. I’ve never seen Patrick angry; as far as I know, he’s never raised his voice to anyone. Still shocked, I take a few steps back. His face is pale in a way I’ve never seen before, and my eyes move to his neck, where I can see the veins pulsating furiously. “I’m sick of being the responsible one in this relationship. Don’t you even have an excuse?” I’m silent. It’s hard to make out his question, actually; there’s a tremendous throbbing in my head, like what you hear when pressing a seashell to your ear. He steps closer still; his face is practically touching mine. The drumming sound is overwhelming; it makes me woozy, almost, as I watch his mouth move without sound. “Julie? Hey, what’s wrong?” Patrick starts to look worried now; I must look as lightheaded as I feel. The muscles around his eyes return to normal, and his voice softens. But I’m too distracted to answer; the pulse is off now, inconsistent. He reaches towards me, but I am suddenly incensed by his touch and slap away his hand. He wears a look of consternation now; he looks at me desperately, as if he wants to say something but can’t get the words out. As the beats get faster and more erratic, I watch the blood drain from even his lips, and Patrick stumbles forward. Trying not to spill the tea in my mug, I jump backwards just in time as he falls at my feet, and finally everything is silent again.