When I gave him the plate of apples, he smiled. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were teary or if it was just the light. Sometimes the light is like that. He turned the game to half volume and said, “You doing okay?”
He was wearing his nightshirt, the one that May and I made him for Father’s Day one year. It says We love you, Dad in puff paint, with a small and an even smaller handprint, side by side, on the front of it.
“Yeah, Dad.”
Then he said, “Who is it that you’re always talking to on the phone? Is it a boy?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry. He’s nice.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Dad asked.
I shrugged. “Yeah,” I said. I would never have told Aunt Amy. But I figured there was no point in lying to Dad about it. Maybe he’d think it was a sign that I was well adjusted or something.
“What’s his name?” Dad asked.
“Sky.”
“What kind of a name is Sky? That’s like naming your kid Grass,” he teased.
“No it’s not. The sky is not at all like the grass!” I laughed.
Then Dad got more serious. “Well, the point is, you know what boys your age are after, don’t you? One thing. That’s all they think of, night and day.”
“Dad, it’s not like that.”
“It’s always like that,” he said, only half kidding.
I tried to tell him that he doesn’t know and that boys are different now, different from when he was a boy, but in my heart, I didn’t mind if Sky was thinking about having sex with me.
Finally Dad said, “Laurel, I understand why you haven’t brought your new friends over here. I know that it’s hard, and I know your old man isn’t much to brag about, either, these days. But if you are going to be hanging out with a boy, I’d like to meet him.”
I didn’t want to bring Sky to our house, but it made me sad to hear Dad say that he thought he wasn’t much to brag about, so I said, “All right.”
“And how about those girlfriends you’re always with? They’re not a bunch of rabble-rousers, are they?” He raised his eyebrows, trying to make a joke of it.
“No, Dad.” I tried to laugh. Then I took a deep breath and asked, “When do you think Mom is going to come back?”
He sighed and looked at me. “I don’t know, Laurel.”
“I wish she hadn’t left,” I blurted out.
“I know.” He frowned. “I know there are things you need a woman to talk about. But at least you have your aunt for now.”
“Aunt Amy doesn’t know those things, I don’t think. I think you should tell Mom she should come home.” I looked at him, waiting.
I wondered if he was mad at her still, for moving into that stupid apartment when she did, and then for leaving us again. I saw him start to tip over with pain, and I regretted saying anything. He sighed the kind of sigh that makes you wonder how he ever got that much air into his lungs to let out, and I understood that he couldn’t help Mom being gone any more than I could.
Where Dad grew up, life made sense. His parents still live on their same farm in Iowa where he used to wake up at the crack of dawn to do the chores. He always said he loved the smell of alfalfa in the morning. When he was twenty-one, he rode away on his motorcycle, stopping in different towns and picking up odd jobs, mostly in construction, then moving on when he was ready. He said that he thought that the world might have more in store, and he’d gone out to find it. But mostly he had loved to tell how it all changed the day he met Mom. How he’d met her and understood, suddenly, why loving somebody and building a family could be enough.
I think I might have been starting to show tears without meaning to, because Dad leaned over and gave me a knuckle-rub on the head, which meant the conversation was over. It’s more talking than we ever do these days, anyway.
I remembered then how Dad would sing me and May a lullaby at night, after he’d cleaned himself up from work, and I could smell the spicy cologne still on his cheeks. He’d sing:
“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”
When he’d sing that song, each place was like a mystery that I would one day discover. It made me feel the world was huge and sparkling and full of things to explore. And I belonged in it, with him and Mom and May. And now, Mom is actually all the way in California. And May is nowhere.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Jim Morrison,
At Fallfest, there is a band that plays your songs. Everyone crowds into a park near the foot of the mountains the weekend right after Thanksgiving. When May and I were kids, we would get excited for it every year. There are tents with crafts, and booths with Indian fry bread and roasted chiles, and booths with ladies selling dried red corn for decoration and pies. But once it gets dark and colder, all anyone wants is the music. Moms and dads and kids and teenagers, too, all head for the stage. Everyone puts on their jackets and dances.
Mom and Dad used to swing dance on the dirt dance floor. They were the best. Everyone would watch them, spinning and lifting. May and I would be on the side, with the Thanksgiving wreaths we made at the craft booth, licking the powdered sugar from the fry bread off our fingers. Mom laughed like a little girl as Dad threw her in the air. It was almost time for the winter to come, but we forgot about our cold toes and our frozen fingers, because we could see what it looked like when they looked like love. We could imagine the story of them, how it was when they met, how it had happened that they made our family. We were proud that they were our parents.
Last year May really wanted to go to Fallfest again, so just the two of us went together. It was the second fall after Mom and Dad had split up. We walked around and ate fry bread, and when the dancing time of night came, we went over to the stage. I stood on the side and watched as May danced with everything in her body, twirling alone in the middle of the floor. It reminded me of when we were kids and how if there was a fight, she’d dance around the living room, using all of the power she had in her to make things better.
But after the first song was over, she said, “Let’s get out of here.”
We were about to leave, and that’s when he walked up. He was wearing a heavy flannel shirt, and he had a cigarette in his mouth and dark hair that hung over his forehead. He looked old to me. May told me later that he was twenty-four.