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 them and hit me direct. They’re just trying to straighten their shirts. They’re just trying to figure out the most perfect closing line to get them the fuck offstage.
“C’mon, Luli,” Ray says. “I’ll give you a ride home. I’m sorry. I am truly sorry.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder and takes me with him while he tells the bar-back to cover, quick. He doesn’t want nothing to do with this show no more. He’s had it. There’s nothing grand or loud or pretty about the way he steers me across the gravel. There’s nothing flashy about the way he hoists me up into the truck, deep red, with giant wheels for winter. He just sets me up top the seat, simple, before strutting around and getting in the driver’s side. He starts the engine and pulls out the lot, with not even a wink back to remind us he’s the hero.
When we’re pulling out onto Highway 34, I look back and see my dad leaning on the hood of the Nova. You could practice for years and never lean with that picture perfect cowboy slunk.
And you would think that would be it and call it a night, I bet. But just wait cause two fence-posts past our drive Ray stops the truck and next thing you know I’m staring into the big black night with just two headlights, that’s it for miles. He starts mumbling something about there’s a funny noise he’s gotta check up on and there I am, feet up on the dash, thumb-twiddling.
If you’re wondering what I look like, just throw two giant eyes and one big mouth at a face too small to hold them. There must’ve been a mix-up that day on the assembly line, cause they got the proportions all wrong. I got made fun of for my big mouth before I even made it to day-care. Fish-face. Quacky-duck. Put