The Language of Men (31 page)

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who hears her off-camera comments. Under-her-breath, out-of-earshot. It's possible, with my father's hearing getting worse each year, evident by the television's volume creeping louder and louder each time I visit. But my father can also name the brand of exhaust system on a '68 Camaro cruising up the block or tell you who originally wrote George Thorogood's "Move It On Over," even though the song played at a barely audible volume on the garage radio and all of Thorogood's songs sound the same. Selective hearing.

Perhaps he chooses not to hear my mother's side comment, opts instead to watch De Niro bash his head into a wall. After the scene is over, he chuckles, walks past my mother in the dining room, through the kitchen, grabs a bag of peanuts and returns to the living room. As he crashes down beside me and my brother, he mutters, "I don't need to know shit."

"I guess I'll show
you,"
my mother says to me later that evening. My father and brother are still in the living room, flipping through channels.

She pulls out her address book, the one covered with baby-blue perennials, from beneath the phone. "They're all in here," she says.

Flipping each page with a licked index finger, she passes by the numbers and addresses of relatives,
K
is a long section, her maiden name
Kail,
or
Call
as the telemarketers sometimes say.

"I can't blame him," she says to herself. "I can't. I never let him do anything on his own."

She passes Vanessa and my address in Boston, my brother's in Brooklyn. Any changes have been updated in pencil.

"Here," she says, pointing to a list of usernames and passwords.

"What's all this?" I ask. "Do you want tea?"

"Yes, milk, no—"

"No sugar."

They drew first blood. Not me.

"What are they watching?" my mother asks.

"Rambo."

She shakes her head. "Haven't seen that one enough."

I don't say anything because I am completing the dialogue in my head. I love this part, when Stallone unsheathes his giant knife and presses the blade against his cheek. My father and brother laugh and I can see their expressions; their faces paused in my mind.

"These are all the passwords to the online accounts. They're all here. Chase. The mortgage, the oil company, my 401K, which I believe is this one here. Yes. Fidelity."

She stirs her tea.

"Because someday somebody's gonna need to know all this stuff!"

I nod and sip even though I know I'll burn my tongue.

"Ow," I say, breathing in sharply.

"Oh, honey. Careful. You have to let it cool first."

The doctors told my father to refrain from physical activity. A few weeks later, I come home and see him mowing the lawn, a cigar cupped behind his back.

That night, I set my digital recorder on the table beside him.

"Would you mind reading the letter?"

He nods and grabs the crinkled yellow paper from my hand. Before he begins, he stuffs three small chocolate chip cookies in his mouth.

"Dear Kathy,"
he mumbles.

"Wait. Hold on." I reposition the recorder. "Okay, go."

"Dear Kathy,"

"Hey, baby, how's my little girl? I got two letters from you recently and figured it was about time I got my backfield in motion and wrote you one. So...
the hell that say? I'm big daddy over here?"

We start laughing.

"Well, I guess that makes you my little momma. Gotta work out that way. It sounds like Ernie and Patty really got their shit together. I hope he just stays stateside long enough for Patty to have the baby. I had a buddy over here who had kids while they were...
wait a minute...
I had two buddies…
Jesus Christ, I can't read my own fuckin' writin'...
who had kids while they were away. They really happy but not the same if they were there wit' the old lady. Can you dig that?"

We laugh.

"Wow, mommy, you comin' on pretty heavy with the mush-mush rap.
Man, are you taping this?"

"Aw, yeah, brotha."

"Jesus. All right.
Let's not get rational now and go spoiling it by telling Maddy. You gonna have to control yo' emotions 'til I get home. I got a hundred twenty five days to go. I hope you can't wait, but try. If my mustache tickles, I'll shave it off.

I'm laughing, but he doesn't stop reading.

"I think I'll keep it though, as I'm so used to it. I heard it through the vine that The Carrot got his walkin' papers."
"Wait, who's The Carrot?"

"Oh, that must be Red."

"Who's Red?"

"Yeah, that's right. Kevin joined the Air Force and got thrown out."

I stop asking who he's talking about, though I'm insatiably curious about these mysterious people. Maddy and The Carrot—they sounded like characters in a comic strip.

"What a bummer. He'll regret it later. 'Specially that GI loan. I'm takin' every penny I can squeeze outta Uncle Sam's asshole. I'd like to get a promotion, for the bread, not the rank. I might go before the Spec Board this month. I was scratched off last month 'cause I didn't have enough time in grade as Spec 4. A General? You gotta be kiddin' me. I'm only gonna be in the Army for 19 months not 19 years"

The letter rustles in his fingertips as he flips it over.

"I asked my buddies about the class that Bob runs his 'Vette in and they never heard of it. Guess it's a new class. Can you get me a little more info on it? Is it the same as B-gas or B-modified or what? We're really in—"

"Yeah, what's that all about?"

"Well, your Uncle Bob, you never met him, but he used to race his Corvette at the race track. So, uh, let's see. Where was I?"

"Oh, so you were asking what class he was racing in?"

"Right."

"You're right, I didn't know who you meant when you said 'sexy handsome guys in the pictures.' I. ..
ah, I can't read that shit.
The closing of your letter cracked me up. It said, and I quote 'well, I guess I'll be going now before I fall asleep on you.' I dig that! If youse was ever that close you wouldn't be sleepin', I guarantee it! I better cut that out. I'm gettin' outta control"

"Rainy season is startin' now. Everyday at 3:25 it starts to rain. Rains so heavy you couldn't see from your front window to the fence around your house. I'm gonna try to get a few pictures of it and send 'em to ya.

"Well, babe, I'm just about outta shit to talk, about. Nothing much happenin'. Same old shit day after day. Take good care and I'll see you real soon. Bye for now. Love, Donny."

The letter crinkles in his hands as he passes it back to me.

"Well, that's that."

"Nah, that was good."

"Old letter, boy," he says, still working a cookie out from his back teeth.

Later that evening, I play the recording for my mother and Don. I mute the television and place the recorder on the coffee table. Even at maximum volume, the recording is faint. We lean in close to listen. Don laughs at the part about Dad's mustache. My mother blushes. As I watch her turn her head and listen, I wonder what happened to her letter. Perhaps it was lost when my father returned from Vietnam, or maybe the monsoon soaked the pages, turning her words to water.

"I can't believe he read that to you," Don says.

"I can't believe he wrote that," my mother says. "I had forgotten all about it."

THE YEAR AFTER his heart attack, a couple of weeks before Halloween, I get a call from my father. There's a noise in the background, as if while he is mowing the lawn or cleaning the pool filter, the telephone suddenly appears in his free hand and I'm on the other end.

"Yo, boy. What's shakin'?"

"Not much. What are you doing?"

"Just putzin' around the garage. Didn't wake ya, did I?"

I laugh. "Nah, dude. I get up early now."

"That so?"

"I'm almost thirty, man. A real, live adult."

"'Scuse me."

"What's up?"

"The Moving Wall's coming to Northport. To the VA." A pause.

"Ain't you supposed to be readin' up on this shit?" he asks. "The Moving Wall, boy. You know the one in DC, right?"

Sure.

"Same thing. Just smaller."

"And moving."

"Yeah. Moving. Anyways, it's comin' to Northport for the first time. Big shindig. They're gonna get this Billy Joel cover band to do "Goodnight Saigon." Me and a buddy are gonna work the grounds."

I wonder if he's talking about Haggemeyer. But he would have said "Hag," not "buddy." Did my father make a new friend?

"So, I was thinkin' youse could come down."

This is the first time my father has ever invited me to anything. We did plenty of stuff together, but I can't remember him asking me flat out to spend time with him. Sometimes my brother would ask me how Dad and I hung out so much—at car shows or camping trips or fishing on Hag's boat. "He never asked me," Don would say. I'd shrug. He didn't ask me either. I just went.

"Bring Van Halen, too," my father said. "She'll like it. Donny's bringing L-O-L-A."

Vanessa lies next to me in bed. I point at the phone and mouth the word "Dad." She nods and smiles. "Sure," I say. "I'll tell her."

When I get home, my father's in the garage blasting "Roll Me Away" by Bob Seger and sewing brand-new patches onto his Army jacket. On the back of the jacket is a giant peace sign. Within the sign are the dates of his tour. I stand in the doorway, staring at his gleaming Chevy. He taps his foot to the music. I watch him work a needle and thread through the camouflage material. After a few stitches, he stops and holds the jacket up to the light.

"Lookin' sharp," I say.

He whips his head around, wide-eyed. "Damn, boy. Don't be sneakin' up on me."

"Sorry." I glance down at the patches. "Where'd you get all these?"

"Mom dug 'em up on the Web," he says, grinning and shaking his head. "Can't believe she found all this stuff!"

I don't know what all these symbols and insignias mean, but a couple of the patches are printed in the same thick, bold lettering used on the hats and pins Vietnamese children sold outside the bars in Saigon. My father's patches shout phrases like "VIETNAM VET AND DAMN PROUD OF IT!" and "ONCE STRANGERS, FOREVER BROTHERS."

"What time does this shindig start?" I ask.

"Well, you guys don't have to be there until later. I gotta boogie early and start settin' up."

I smile. It feels strange, but good, to hear my father talk about work that doesn't involve bologna or gasoline. He's on the verge of retiring, which for him means "career change." I've never seen him as excited as he is when he talks about trading in his bloody deli apron and becoming a school bus driver or working in the kitchen at the VA. It's as if something has held him back all these years, some invisible barrier between his life and his desire, something other than the deli or bills standing in his way.

Perhaps I am assuming too much, shoehorning my father's words into restrictive definitions. But lately, he uses the phrase
I've earned it.
I'm not sure what "it" is or what exactly he had to do to achieve "it," but wherever "it" is, he's glad to be there.

The Fox
switches from Seger to Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay."

"Yeah, boy," my father says. "You know they released this tune after Redding kicked the bucket?" He turns up the volume, whistling, and continues sewing his patches. I step out of the garage, and he doesn't look up when I leave.

"Fuck me. Pull over," Don says after I pick him up from the train station. He and Lola are in the back. Vanessa sits in the passenger seat. I pull into the parking lot of CVS.

"I told you to get them before we left," Don says to Lola.

She shrugs and uses her fingernail to dig the dead batteries out of her hearing aids.

"Every time," he says. "Seriously. Every time we're home."

I can't tell if he's still talking to Lola or if I should respond. Lola gets out ofthe car.

"So Dad's really into this, huh?" I say.

"Big time. Did he tell you what happened with the tattoo?"

"What?"

"He goes to the heart doctor and the nurse sees it. She says, 'Oh, you were in Vietnam?' and he says, 'Yeah.' So she tells him that the VA is doing a study on the link between Agent Orange and heart disease. All he's gotta do is sign up and he gets
beaucoup
bennies."

"Wow," I say. "That's amazing."

My brother nods. "Told ya the tattoo was a good idea."

While everyone else is getting ready to go to the VA, I snoop around the garage. Hammers and hacksaws hang perfectly straight. Screwdrivers holstered in my father's leather tool belt. I sit down on the stool, a scene of vintage cars at a hamburger stand printed on the black vinyl. The edge of the workbench is just below my knees. There are a few new tools on the wall in front of me that I've never seen before. They hang beside the old ones. The vice screwed into the workbench is the same one I used to crush the insides of the trash I took apart when I was little, the pieces that couldn't be broken down any further. My father had recently given the vice a fresh coat of paint. In its teeth, I see bits of rusty metal and old plastic.

I lean over and stare at the workbench. I see the faint outlines of
shit
and
kisser,
can almost make out the word
ass
or
mother.
I'm tempted to pick up the pen stuck into an old piston head at the back of the workbench and finish each word, but I don't. I suppose I had more guts when I was ten, when I didn't edit my language and wrote in plain sight.

The Fox
kicks on and the fluorescent light flickers above me. I turn around and Don is standing in the doorway, his hand still on the switch.

"Ready?"

We pull into the VA parking lot, next to a long row of Harleys decked out with frilled leather saddlebags and tall radio antennas. American flags and Vietnam Veteran stickers cover nearly every inch of metal. There are a few classic cars in the parking lot—a couple of Novas, a Chevelle—as well as aisle after aisle of beat-up Hondas and Toyotas from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, a few from Maine and DC. I see my father's Chevy, a brand-new American flag spread out on the dash.