Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(58)

Doing what? says my father. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t shift his eyes from the game. The little men running.

The bad stuff, I say. Sleepy Boy stuff.

It’s OJ, says my father. Made of oranges, pulpy, sweet, full of vitamin C. He dips his fingers in his glass, flicks some of the juice in my face. See?

I know better. I know we won’t make it to the music store or share our chicken and rice. I know we will never walk along the shoreline; we won’t bring home shells.

My father screams at the television. Irene screams with him. Go, Go, Go, Baby, Go!

I take the half-drunk glass out of his hand and chug the bitter down. It stings my throat, makes my eyes well. I take it down like it’s medicine. I cough.

My father finally looks at me, forgets the screen. He stabs his Merit into the amber ashtray. He says, What’d you do that for?, shaking me by the shoulders.

Shirley Temple didn’t come, I say. I was thirsty.

We look directly into each other’s eyes, and I think, for the first time, we understand one another. My face is on fire, but I try to keep my mouth steady, stern.

Let’s go, he says, pulling me off the stool by my armpits.

At home, he locks himself in the bathroom. He doesn’t even watch the rest of the game. I tell my mother he got sick at the restaurant. I tell her it must have been something that we ate.

VIII.

We spend every Memorial Day weekend in the Florida Keys for my father’s birthday. I’m twenty-six, and this will be our last year here. Today, on his sixty-eighth birthday, my father is depressed. His emphysema is making his body work too hard to breathe, causing his muscles to shrivel. His body is fragile, all bulging bones, rust-colored scabs, bandages.

He doesn’t want to go fishing this year. He doesn’t want to go on his boat. He cannot eat seafood for fear of his feet ballooning in a deep-purple gout. He only talks about death and money. He sleeps in the shade all the time, skips meals. He’s barely my father anymore.

I’m not strong enough, he says, to reel in. I’m an old man but I’m no Santiago.

I take him to the swimming pool instead. The two of us dip our legs in the water, sit on the lip of the pool. When I think of my father, I think of my heart breaking in stages. A dull pain, then piercing. Electric. Still, somehow, gradual. The way his legs look in this swimming pool today—that’s the first stage of my grief. Even the blue bloat of water doesn’t make them look any stronger, or more capable, than a child’s.

One thing I’d change, he says, is that I never did teach my daughter to swim.

IX.

I am twenty-one, and David and I have broken up for good this time, for real, I promise, swear it, no take backs. In Vegas, I help my father work the shoe booth in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. This’ll take your mind off that asshole, he says, but I excuse myself to cry in the convention center bathroom at least once an hour.

On the final day of the show, when it closes at six P.M., my father hands me a wad of cash. Go out tonight, he says. Treat yourself to a date. Give yourself a time.

My cousin Tanya rides in the cab with me.

Why do you need a babysitter? she says.

I just don’t want to be alone.

Why has nobody gotten that yet?

I ask the cab driver to take us to the best of the best. The women. He knows what I mean. Tanya smokes a Marlboro out the window, says, You’re crazy, you know.

The doormen at the Spearmint Rhino are not used to women. They want to know where our men are, who’s paying. The bouncer scoots us into a small room near the entrance. You sisters? Cousins. Asian Act? Cousins. You coming to take our business? You women are always Take Take Take Take, and I shake my head, I say, No, I say, I am here for the women I am here for the show. We’re sending security near you, he says, to watch you because if you Solicit our fucking Men if you Take them if you are here for our Men there is going to be a Problem do you understand?

We are not here for your men.

We are here for the women.

A security guard leads us to two seats in the front row. We order vodka and orange juice, on the rocks. Clank our glasses. Green lights dart across the stage, the walls.

Is this what you want? asks Tanya, because you are so fucking funny you know you are so fucking weird how are we related you are so fucking funny this is so gay, you know that?

Pick one, says Tanya. Pick a girl. I know you want to.

I can’t choose. Instead, I pull my father’s wad from the pocket of my purse. I lean back in my chair, bend my pointer finger to say, Come here, Come. The women—they grind on my lap and say, You’re cute which man are you with, and I say, Tell me about you, what’s your real name, who are you? I want them to tell the truth, but I want to give them a story.

How much?

This much, I say, shaking my father’s cash. I make bills disappear in my left hand and reappear in my right. Oh you got tricks, they say, and I nod.

The next morning, my father asks me for change.

I gave you more than I’d meant to, he says. All that money.

I gave it to the women, I say.

Have I taught you nothing? he says. Women. Those kinds of women. Don’t ever look them in the eyes.

X.

I am twenty-six, visiting my father in Boca. Tonight, he wants us to join his childhood friends for dinner. We used to party together, he says. Me, your mom, and The Couple. They’re my wildest friends; the greatest.