November 25th, 2015
7:13 p.m.
Try as I might to let it go, that white flag I had hoisted kept fluttering in my mind, reminding me of all the things I could have said. Generally speaking, I’m morally opposed to agreeing to disagree. The way I see it, if something’s worth arguing about, it’s worth resolving, and I categorically deny the notion that some disputes have no solution. I freely admit that some solutions escape even the calmest introspection and deliberation, but, like knowledge, just because they may be unattainable, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’ll also acknowledge a point of diminishing returns, but even then I try to make it apparent that I intend to pick it up at some later date. To throw in the towel so completely, and worse, to lose my composure and let that poacher look like a saint by comparison, had left my blood boiling for the rest of the meal. Only after twenty minutes of clearing the table and dividing up leftovers had the red begun to subside from my field of vision.
My self imposed exile was part anger management, part penance. There was something soothing about the running water cascading over the dishes and the rhythmic circles of the scrub brush across the partially stiffened remnants of gravy and candied yams that helped to lower my blood pressure. Each plate I sat to dry in the rack next to the sink was a clean slate, an opportunity to allow not only my own temper to settle, but hopefully by way of my servitude to express my regret at sending the evening’s festivities off the rails. My overture had not gone unnoticed, as everyone has dutifully proceeded at my behest into the living room without so much as a, “let me help you with that.”
A sudden eruption of cheers jarred me out of contemplation long enough to remember my latest drink–my third, or was it my fifth?–a safe distance away from the occasional spray of suds. I shook the droplets from my hand and took a sip, trying to suppress the cynicism that flared with the thought that football players half a continent away couldn’t hear their whoops of approval. No sooner had the commotion died down with the announcer’s send off to commercials than my attention was drawn again to the sounds emanating from the den.
“New tonight at eleven: fresh off last night’s debate the candidates take their campaigns on the road,” came the familiar, practiced baritone of the local news anchor. Against my better judgment I peeked into the room to catch a glimpse at the tease for that evening’s broadcast. Though the distaste with the whole process that I’d expressed to Dan earlier was genuine, I must admit my disinterest was feigned. My lack of cable was a convenient excuse for not tuning in initially, and I’d managed to distract myself from checking in all day, but when the circus was calling from the other room, I couldn’t help but duck in. I cleared the doorway just in time to see on the TV a bus broadside a man in muted orange, pinning him momentarily against a building, only to be torn apart a second later as the intended victim shot vertically through its roof as if it were made of tissue paper. He hovered in the air dramatically for a second, cape wafting upward with his suddenly halted momentum–no doubt as his campaign manager and hundreds of onlookers tried to snap the iconic shot–before hurtling headlong, fists extended, at the man who had thrown it.
“It may be a year until the 2016 Approbation, but Optimates trying to capture their party’s advocation were eager to show what kind of fight they can bring next year against the Populares and their bench of Centinel hopefuls” The screen cut to a pair of muscle bound capes grappling in the air before pitching apart to hurl energy projectiles at each other, shattering the windows around them as their blasts met midway between them. “Highlights coming up after tonight’s game.”
I ducked back into the kitchen as an ad for laundry detergent overtook the screen, hoping that I hadn’t been spied. My heart sank a little when I returned to the sink, realizing that only a few dishes remained and I had stalled all I could. I was one ladle, a casserole dish, and a gravy boat away from coming face to face with the disappointed faces of my family and the disapproving glare of some asshole my dad used to know.
“Running out of dishes there,” mom gave voice to my thoughts as she walked in with an empty glass.
Seeing her knowing smile, I joked, “I’ll take that one then,” motioning to her bourbonless snifter. That the ironically named Distiller’s Pride offered a distinctly antiseptic bouquet had been less a concern of hers than the vessel’s copious volume. She clutched it closer as she shuffled towards the lazy Susan. I smiled, retrieved my own glass from the counter and followed her.
“You know, I don’t need you to protect me,” she said, suddenly serious and surprisingly articulate as she spun the cap off the plastic bottle.
Caught off guard, I just muttered, “I know, Mom.”
“I’ve been doing just fine all this time without a savior and I don’t need one now.”
“Then why…” I trailed off, the next thought lost to my childlike deference to my mother’s stealthily authoritative sturdiness.
“Why is he here?” she found my words, lifting the bottle to offer me a pour.
I nodded, offering my highball for her to fill.
“He’s not here to replace Daddy, if that’s what you’re afraid of.” My eyes dropped a little in shame. Hearing her say it out loud made clear how ridiculous the thought had been. I’d just turned thirty-two and she still, almost always, referred to him as Daddy. He was so much a part of her, of all of us, even after all this time, that there was no room for any replacement.
“Does he know that?” I asked, less out of concern for Lamont’s feelings than out of sheer confusion about his presence.
“Honey, he misses Daddy too. He doesn’t have anyone to spend the holidays with. You were so young you probably don’t remember, but we were the closest thing to family he had.” She smiled at the recollection. “You and Amelia used to call him Uncle Monty”
“No we didn’t,” I disavowed. She nodded silently through a swig as she passed my refreshed tumbler back.
“He taught you how to ride a bike.”
“Now I know you’re making shit up.”
Her poker face cracked into a smile. “Seriously though, he was practically part of the family for a while, until he and Daddy had their disagreement.”
I’d never really cared to know before, so I’d never asked, but it occurred to me then that I knew less about it than I probably should have. “What was their disagreement, anyway?”
Mom glanced back at the doorway to the den, hesitated a moment as if weighing the merits of holding her tongue versus divulging some controversial tidbit, then leaned in and lowered her voice, “You know Daddy had his demons, even before he…” The thought’s completion caught in her throat, trusting to both of our momentarily displaced eye lines to convey its meaning. “We were going through a rough patch. He was drinking more than usual. He hid it well, but he’d have bruises from falls.”
I realized Mom’s hushed tones were for Amelia’s benefit, not Lamont’s. We had given her the G-rated version of Dad’s shortcomings throughout the years on account of her age, and the whitewashing had become pathological. To that day, she didn’t even know how he had actually died.
“One time he fell down the stairs and broke his arm,” she continued. I nodded my recollection, the memory lingering more as a function of the running catalog of half truths we peddled to Amelia than the actual incident. I believe the story that time had been the cat running under foot costing him his balance. “That was enough for Lamont. Daddy had everything Lamont wanted: a wife, a family. He was tired of seeing Daddy take it all for granted, failing to look after us by failing to look after himself.”
“No wonder he didn’t show up at the funeral. He saw what was coming before we did,” I said looking back toward the den. “He hated that he’d been right.”
“I think,” Mom said with downcast eyes, “he felt like he might have been responsible somehow. Like if they’d still been friends maybe he wouldn’t have done it.”
We’d all (well, all except Amelia and, I guess Dan) thought some permutation of that thought: the old, “if only I’d done more,” cross we all carried. We stood in silence for a moment or two, the swell of commotion from the den cluing us in to the obliviousness of the house’s other occupants.
“So you’re a little more cynical than usual,” Mom said at last. “What’s got your knickers in a twist this time.”
“You mean besides the plus one?”
She just glared over the top of her wide frames.
“And the ticket?”
She shrugged her assent to the frustration on that count, but her eyes still prodded for a deeper explanation.
“I just…” I started before realizing that it would take the rest of the night to unpack the reasons I rolled my eyes at everything these days. Where to start? I was well into my thirties and working as a glorified bagger at a regional grocery store. I couldn’t finish my degree and get a big boy job, not because I couldn’t hack it, but because the more I learned about history the less I wanted to know. I couldn’t change my major because I didn’t want to start from scratch and couldn’t muster the requisite enthusiasm for any practical pursuit. My disdain for mankind’s track record afforded me little hope for his future, and thus my own.
“You’re father used to get that look,” Mom said. It was the first time I think I’d ever heard her refer to him as anything other than Daddy or his Christian name, Edwin.
A smile crept to my lips. Though my soaring opinion of him had been firmly grounded by the nature of his passing and the humanizing details that trickled out afterwards, it was always somehow flattering to draw comparisons to him. No sooner had my lips turned up than Mom’s expression sent them the other direction. Hers wasn’t the wistful gaze I’d expected, but the furrowed brows of concern.
“Honey, you remind me of him…” she said after a beat, seeming momentarily at a loss for words. I could see through the worry to the calm determination that had carried us all through Dad’s passing. Beneath that, though, I saw a vulnerability she had never let us see then. It was the look of someone who’d carried a question all these years, who had wrestled with what could have been done. What could have been said, and just how to say it if she ever got the chance again. “…of how he acted just before. Are you…is everything ok?”
I snapped into reassurance mode the moment I realized what she was getting at. “Of course, Mom,” I comforted her, putting my free arm around her shoulder and kissing the top of her hair. “It’s nothing like that,” I lied. “I just wish things weren’t so far gone, you know? I wish the deck wasn’t so stacked.”
Mom chuckled through the hint of tears that had begun to well at the thought. “That’s more like it! Daddy would never say something like that!” She stared for a moment into her bourbon. “As much trouble as he seemed to have sometimes with adulthood, that’s something he always did have right. Your life is what you make it.”
“No one can keep you down but yourself,” we both said in unison, reciting Dad’s unofficial catchphrase. It wasn’t exactly catchy. Or original. But it sure as hell was true.
I lifted my glass in a silent toast, which mom mirrored. After healthy swigs for both of us, we turned our attention back to the family room.
“Ready to make the most of tonight?” Mom quipped.
“I don’t know,” I jabbed back in jest, “deck seems pretty stacked in there.”
Mom rolled her eyes, snapping back to her tipsy, carefree snark. “Suck it up. The world isn’t out to get you or anyone else. There’s no grand, shadowy conspiracy.”