Music crackles
through my crappy car speakers while rainwater pelts my windshield like a pack
of petty prizefighters, slapping and spitting at the station wagon's wide see-through
face where my wipers frantically fail to dry the glass. When the rain
stops, I'll drive fast enough to make up time, I tell myself, but slow enough
to not be pulled over by idled patrol cars.
“Are you free next
Wednesday night?“ I asked my father. "I want to take you out for
Father's Day. See the Joe Purdy concert in Fall River. Just you and me."
(Here is where I
insert an explanation for the love I have for my father. Like all love, it is
difficult to put into plain analogy-free phrases so I'll unabashedly define it
by saying that whenever I am near him I have trouble not wrapping my arms
around his middle like a bulky high waste belt. Sometimes I worry that he
hates me, his profoundly profane daughter, though I know he never could. A tall
conservative man with a wayward disposition, he sits at his place at the end of
the dinner table, quietly listening while I work to make my mother laugh with
stories of pooping in poison ivy on the banks of a river or humping my dog,
Penny, to achieve dominance. With the front legs of his chair suspended, he
shakes his head, the start of a smile poised at the crooks of his
mustached mouth like a stilled rocking chair. He speaks when spoken to or when
any mention of Jesus Christ, Mary the Mother of God, Catholic priests, the
church choir director or God Himself graces the table. "Alright.
Alright. That's enough." He'll say.)
This is why I like
to have him alone, for he will talk for hours on any number of subjects when
prompted with mindful ears.
Tonight, on my
drive to our date, the rain never stops rushing from the crowded clouds and I
never get above 55 miles an hour. "I don't think I'm going to get
home by six like I planned." I tell him over the phone.
When I am an exit
from my father's house, I turn off the highway and creep down the curved
exit ramp, gripping my convulsing steering wheel with both hands. Please be
engine trouble. I beg
inside my brain. I can ignore engine trouble. I cannot ignore a flat
tire. I turn left and pull
off the road. As I open my door, a pickup truck stops beside me. "You've
got a flat in the back," a beefy white guy with tattoos stretched around
his biceps, tells me. "Do you need any help?"
"No thank
you. My father lives down the road."
I call my father.
Then I call for a
tow truck. "Yes, I have a spare." I tell the ditsy dispatcher who
stumbles through our dialogue like a drunk. "I got off 495 South at Exit
4, turned left and parked on the right side of the road." I say
explicitly.
When my father
arrives, I retrieve the spare tire from beneath my hatchback's floor flaps, but
it's just a tire. There is no middle, no rim. I don't know why this is so, I
tell my father, but I blame my frustratingly frequent flats.
A man arrives in a
small yellow tow truck. My father explains that we don't have a rim on the
spare. Tow truck man shakes his head. His left ear is pierced with a gold
PlayBoy bunny earring. He calls for a flatbed tow truck and offers to stay so
that we can get to our concert on time. We thank him.
There isn't time
to go to the Olive Garden at the mall.
"Want to get
a sandwich at McDonald's?" Dad asks, driving from my sunken car.
"How 'bout
Subway?" I ask.
At the nearby
shopping plaza with the grocery store and clustered row of small shops, we see
that the sandwich chain is no longer there. It's been replaced by a hotdog
stand in a storefront. Coney Island Hotdogs, it's called. Dad assumes I don't
want a Brooklyn wiener and offers to drive us somewhere else, but we're nearly
out of time. "I eat hotdogs!" I cry out.
He stops the car
in the fire lane. I unbuckle my seatbelt and get out. Inside, there are no
photographs of ferris wheels, red roller coasters, creepy city clowns or even a
New York City skyline. This place is nearly bare. A standing cooler of soda
cans, a rack of chips and on the wall behind the counter there are glossy
photographs of hotdogs topped with chunky red chili, grilled onions, and zig
zagging condiments. "Hi, can I get three hotdogs with sauerkraut and
mustard?" I ask the girl behind the counter. She nods and grabs at the
greasy links rotating on the grill behind her.
"EXACTLY
$11!" A fat thirty-something homeboy exclaims at the register. I hand over
a $20 bill.
Dad balances his
dinner of dogs on his lap, while he pulls out of the parking lot.
“What a disaster!”
I say.
My dad disagrees.
We find the music
hall, an old converted mill on the waterfront in Fall River, Massachusetts. We
climb a couple flights of dark wooden stairs and make our way to the ticket
table. I give my name to a short middle-aged man who stamps the tops of our
hands with a big black music note. We find a wobbly table beside the stage and
I walk across the room to another table named "Cafe" and buy two cups
of decaf coffee and a brownie with walnuts.
When the opening
act, The Milk Carton Kids are introduced, I realize we're too far over to see
the fast moving fingers of guitarist, Kenneth Pattengale. And worst yet,
the band's banter, which I had howled at two nights before when I saw the show
in Northampton now seems forced in the presence of this inattentive crowd of
BYO Boozers.
This must be my
fault, somehow. Like I brought these unsuspecting musicians my evening's
godawful luck.
Later on, when the
main act, Joe Purdy takes the stage in his dark suede hat, fitted white tee
shirt, gray tweed pants and cowboy boots, a car alarm begins to wail in the
parking lot two flights below. Purdy starts the first solo song of his set, but
pauses after a few bars to smirk and say, "Someone's really gotta check
their car alarm."
"Could that
be you Dad?" I whisper.
"No."
After a few solo
songs, the alarm is silenced and the Milk Carton Kids join Purdy back onstage.
Dad looks over to me with gleeful surprise, his legs and feet jumping. They are
playing "Pioneer," a song he and I learned on the guitar together a few
weeks before. Unabashed, my father sings along. At the table beside ours,
slumped beside a small cooler of beer, a stranger sits alone. Afraid this man
might say something mean to my father, I put my hand on the back of my daddy's
neck then slyly move it over his mouth to shush him. I know I will regret it,
but I do it anyway. Luckily, he disregards my awkward gesture and sings on.
In the lobby after
the show, we stop at the merchandise table. I tell my father that I'm going to
buy him two CDs. "That'll be $20." I'm told. Inside my wallet there
is $18. $18? I look over to Dad, my defeatist heart burning through the sleeve
of my v-neck tee shirt. His money is already out of his pocket and between his
short brown fingers.
"How much do
you need?" He asks me.
When we leave the
hall, it's raining again, but it's gentle and I linger in the parking lot,
looking over to the Braga Bridge, waiting for the water to cover and cool my
cheeks, to wash away my blued expectations.
The next morning,
I drive Dad's truck from the east side of the state to the western side. No
cruise control. No radio. I put put along, but before I leave my father's
house, he gives me a folded up wad of singles. "Toll money." He says.
I can't refuse. My wallet is empty still and again, I am nearly late.
