Father
has entered my room and he is crying thought because Jen is giving six-year old
Jena Brenner a violin lesson in the other room he snorts up his tears. Father’s
glasses are removed and he is pressing his fingers into his brow like he has a
migrane. I have been in my room all Saturday morning and I have been listening
to Morrissey. It is a minus twenty outside and wind chill advisories have been
listened all throughout Central Illinois on the television. Pictures illustrated
clouds with facial features and winter head garments blowing thick rugs of air
onto various counties. It is cold. The radiator yawns. I have been listening to
Morrissey. Listening to how such a little thing makes such a big difference.
Listening to Hair Dresser on Fire, all around Salone Square. Listening to
Morrissey talk about he’s just another person in the world, he’s just another
prude with a radical view. Listening to Morrissey comment about how most people
keep their brains between their legs. I am listening to all of these morose,
icicle sentences on a winter’s morning when it is twenty degrees banked with a
negative hyphen in front of it. The dresser pastor Schudde gave us is thwarting
the dual glass French doors which once opened to the grand piano. I have
pictures of Eric Johnson and Carl Lewis and David Copperfield on my door. This
is the room I moved into last year, before any of my sojourns to Europe. During
my freshman year of High school. No, father is standing before me, his brow is
the ruffled, the color of bacon. He is scooping up tears from the bottom of his
eyes.
He comes in and gives me a hug.
Tells me that he has something to tell me. Something that he doesn’t want the
girls to know about yet.
“Dad?” I inquire. In the background
I adjust the circular valve on the speakers to tweak Morrissey’s melancholy
drone into a hum. Mother is talking very loud outside and Jennifer is
instructing Jena Bremer how to squeak out Go tell Aunt Roady. The two violins
are bridging into a cacophony of squeals and Dad is still snorting, trying to
warble something.
“Amelia,” He says. “Eric…” At first
I think maybe there has been a car crash. Amelia tipped over her father’s
vehicle a week before Christmas while driving on the shoulder in an intersect
exit. Father continues to shuffle of snorts and crusty sentences.
“Amelia is…” He says, looking at me
with his glasses removed. One of the few times I can ever remember my father
looking at me with his glasses removed and pocketed.
“Amelia is…is….pregnant.” There is
another snort and another tear. Later I will find out that the mere shock of my
cousin’s pregnancy was enough to siphon my Uncle into a nervous breakdown. He
will break out in Hives. He will have to go to the emergency room and be
injected with some sort of steroids to subdue his aggression. He will have lost
control.
“Wielding a bicycle chain. Why don’t you change? I
will not change and I will not be nice.”
My whole body becomes a question mark. I say the
word what, very loudly.
“Yes,” Dad nods his bruised head, tears splashing
down both sides of his cheeks in little creeks. It is the same room, eight
years earlier, where I lay humping the rumpled countenance of the carpet in my
KEDS looking at the photo Album from my seventh Birthday, thinking about the
last time Amelia innocuously exposed herself to me in the back yard, during a
demented rendition of Simon says. Thinking about Amelia, pressing my body into
the carpet, with the phone clearing its throat in the background and mother
hugging dad afterwards, dad, explaining to me, that Nana Grace had died, saying
the words okay afterwards like he was upset at himself for not having
thoroughly prepared for this eulogy. It was in this same very room, more than
half a lifetime ago.
Dad’s face has a slight golden flavor seeped into
it even though he is upset and tears swell in little collective pools down both
cheeks. My shoulders begin to shake. I have no clue how I am expected to
respond. I pick up the bottle of English Leather that coated my cheeks in
Europe, again, less than a year ago. Without thinking of the ribbon of
fledgling violin squeals in the background, I alight the glass vial and hurtle
it, compellingly, in the direction of the mirror, the reflective glossed
Goliath, unveiling all of our erred human foibles.
“FUCK!!!!!” I scream, out. Not paying attention
to the chip the vial dents in the frame border. The carousel anthem of
Morrissey in the background continues to chime.
“Most people keep their brains between their legs.”
Dad hushes. He seems not to mind that I am
cursing. He makes a finger, pointing to the next room over, indicating that I
can’t drain all of my emotion as expressively as I would like. There are more
painful screeches emanating from the living room. I give my father a hug. Step
back and punch my hand in the air, as hard as I can. The pinwheel anthem
continues to slip out of the speakers.
“Most people keep their brain’s between their legs.”
*
“In
case you haven’t noticed, Laurie’s a mess, by the way.” Dave says.
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