When Dad Came Back

T
he August sun weighed heavily on the backs of gardeners. A dog's shadow crawled away, whimpering. Snow cones leaked like faucets. The color green deserted lawns, and roses shed withered petals to reveal their thorns. No breeze stirred the stiff laundry on clotheslines.

On that afternoon, the street was deserted, except for Gabe Mendoza as he trudged toward the downtown library. He spied the temperature on the bank building: 104. Gabe loved the air conditioning at the library and the rack of magazines he could read for free. As the library came into view, he stopped and ran a hand across his sweaty brow. Through the wavering heat, he saw a figure in a 49ers sweatshirt approaching.
Dang,
Gabe thought. What's wrong with this guy? Why is he wearing a sweatshirt?

“Son,” the figure beckoned to him.

Son?
Gabe wondered. Was this homeless man about to ask for a handout? There were countless times when Gabe had reached into his pocket and brought out what was there, but usually all he had were nickels and dimes.

“It's me, your dad.” The figure in dirty clothes was pulling a large suitcase, which bumped along on wheels. The man did his best to hoist a smile and appear happy at this reunion. He combed his hair with his fingers.

My dad? Gabe thought. He remembered his dad as a sharp dresser, nothing like this guy. Sometimes Gabe spotted a man in a flashy shirt and wondered if it was him. He looked more closely and saw that the figure before him resembled his dad, whom he hadn't seen in four years. His dad had driven away in the family's best car, his clothes and a television in the back seat. He had taken the computer, and he had loaded the car with cases of soda and bottled water, as if he were thirsty for a life other than the one he had lived with them.

In truth, Gabe had been relieved when he disappeared. His parents had begun to argue a lot, their heated voices vibrating through the bedroom walls. He was nine at the time, and nervous that his dad might hit his mother. How he had feared those evenings when his dad sat in his recliner, drinking and muttering to the nightly news on television, and later staggered to the bedroom. Behind the closed door, his dad would start in, and the pitch of their arguments would rise, fall, and rise again. He would yell that she was a bad mother, a bad cook, a bad wife, a bad human being.

“Son,” the man repeated, with a smile that exuded no mirth, only darkness from the missing teeth. “It's me, your father!”

Gabe widened his stance stubbornly. He saw no reason to acknowledge this man who had made his mother cry many times and sent her down to whatever building people go to when fathers abandon their families. Social Services, he heard later: a tall building overrun with mothers and children sitting in orange chairs, waiting, forever waiting. When it was their turn, his mother filled out welfare forms and spoke in hushed tones with a woman at the counter. Gabe remembered the shame.

When he was little, he had believed that fathers were dependable. He had watched them on TV shows. They were supposed to bring home a paycheck, wash the car, cut the lawn, and unclog the kitchen sink. They guided you safely on your bicycle, and then you rode to the end of the block all by yourself. They were with you in all seasons, but especially summer. They were supposed to lift you onto their shoulders and let you pick the biggest plum from the tree.

“I'm back in town, Gabe,” the man in front of him said.

“I don't know you,” Gabe said flatly, though he had to swallow a lump in his throat when he realized the man had called him by his name. He was disgusted by the man's dirty neck. And that worn and faded sweatshirt? It looked like the kind of thing a dog would sleep on next to the washing machine in the garage.

Gabe's dad shook his head. His forehead was carved with lines from a hard life. “So … that's how your mother is raising you?”

“It's none of your business how she's raising me. I don't know you, mister.” Gabe ignored his dad's plea of “Aw, come on, son,” and hurried toward the entrance of the library with his head down. The figure followed like a shadow.

Gabe was confused. Why was he
here?
Gabe then realized that the Fresno Rescue Mission was only three blocks away, and men ghosted nearby until the doors opened for prayer and dinner. His dad was one of them now, a dirty ghost from his childhood.

“I'm your old man,” the figure said again. “Show me some respect.”

Gabe struggled to keep from turning and shouting that he was nothing but a lazy bum. He gripped the heavy glass door, greased by hundreds of sweaty palms, and entered the library. He shivered as he was engulfed by the cold air.

I'm safe, Gabe thought. I'm inside. He momentarily held his mother in his heart—she was the true one. She worked as a cashier at Kmart, where all day her fingers touched money, checks, and credit cards, none of which belonged to her, to them. She worked hard, and at the end of every day her ankles hurt. How long could a person stand in one spot without falling over?

“Money smells,” he recalled her complaining once. Money was dirty—the bills and coins handled by thousands—but so little of it had passed through his fingers that Gabe wasn't sure if she was exaggerating. But Mom's right, he figured. Money stinks and the people with the most of it really stink.

“He's homeless,” Gabe whispered to himself—all that he owned was stuffed in that suitcase on wheels, which he hauled like a donkey.

Gabe wasn't sure if he should tell his mom about the encounter. If he did, he was certain that she would hurl cusswords like daggers. “How dare he come back!” she would yell. It would ruin her evening, so he decided he would keep quiet.

In the magazine alcove, Gabe discovered that all four chairs were occupied by old men. Two were asleep, one was working a matchstick between the teeth of a comb, and another had his face pushed close to the pages of a small paperback. At their sides lay bulging plastic bags and backpacks, a sign that they were transients. Gabe could smell them. He wondered if they were all deadbeat fathers, too.

Gabe drifted to the children's section, where he eased himself down on a beanbag chair, picked up a picture book from a table, and fanned it open to the first picture. The story was about a father hippopotamus introducing his son and daughter to different animals—the giraffe, the tiger, the zebra.

“How do you do, Mr. Tiger?” Mr. Hippo said. “How do you do, Mrs. Giraffe?”

The story was simple and friendly. The father hippo was so nice, and his large tusks were shiny white. The jungle was clean and green with lush plants. But Gabe released a small moan when he turned a page and discovered a cussword scrawled on the back of a smiling turtle.

He laid the book down. The last time he had cried was a year ago, when he had dropped a can of chicken noodle soup on his little toe. He felt he was on the verge of crying now, but about what? His dad's return? His mother's long work days at Kmart?

He made up his mind not to pout or feel sorry for himself. He rubbed the cussword on the turtle's back with a little spit until it was illegible.

He got to his feet and placed the picture book on a table. He decided to leave. He hurried out the library door and was greeted by the late afternoon sun. The sprinklers were showering the lawn, which gave the impression that the day had finally cooled off. But Gabe knew better. He winced as he stepped from the shadow of the library, until the wince became a scowl when he spotted another homeless man squatting before a sprinkler, washing his socks with a bar of soap. The bundle of his life's treasures lay at his side, getting wet.

Why? Gabe asked himself. Why can't they be like regular dads?

Everything was a lie. Families didn't stay together. Mothers stood on their feet all day, and children didn't smile like the hippos in the picture book. Fathers were pushing shopping carts and suitcases, but none of them was headed home.

Where had his dad gone after he left home? Gabe heard that he had moved to Stockton, and then that he was living in Los Angeles. He learned from his uncle that his dad had gotten a job as a mail carrier—although Gabe couldn't picture him with a satchel over his shoulder. Then he found out that, no, he had been working for UPS but had lost that job because working people had to stay sober.

Gabe knew that his dad had no one but himself to blame for how things had turned out. His dad's only insights came through the brown lenses of beer bottles as he drained their contents. He pictured him squatting before a small fire by a dry creek. He pictured him with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, the red tip glowing in the night.

At home, he discovered his mother prone on the couch. A washcloth filled with ice cubes lay on her round stomach. Her furry pink slippers, which resembled cotton candy, had slipped off her feet.

“Hi, Mom,” Gabe said. He pulled at the front of his shirt, which was plastered to his chest. His cheeks were nearly as pink as his mother's slippers.

She turned her red face to him, smiled weakly, and rose to a sitting position. “Is this global warming?” she asked.

Gabe had to smile, too. In fifth grade, he had done a book report—mostly copied from the Internet—on global warming and had argued that the phenomenon of an overheated world was the result of people mowing their lawns. He had suggested that if people replaced lawns with trees, the polar ice caps would once again expand and the world would return to being nice and cool—plus, kids like him wouldn't have to push lawn mowers and steam up the world with their sweat.

Right then, Gabe decided to be direct and to tell her about his father.

“I saw him,” he began. He walked toward the centerpiece of the living room, the recliner. He moved a pile of newspapers out of the way before he sat down.

“Who?” she asked.

“Dad.”

“Your father?” Seconds ago, she wore a drugged expression, but now she was wide awake.

Gabe nodded.

His mother sighed, reflected on this unwanted information, and pressed the washcloth against her forehead, as if she had a headache. If she didn't have one before, she would now.

She sat up straighter on the couch and asked, “Where?”

“The library,” Gabe answered. He gazed briefly at the muted television—a soap opera. The actors were throwing their hands up in the air and shouting at each other.

“How did he look?” she inquired.

“He's, like, homeless.” He provided details. He told her about the suitcase on rollers, but he skipped describing his filthy hands and neck.

“I bet you it's the one he took when he left.”

Over a two-month period before he vanished, he had stolen things from their house to keep himself in whiskey and beer, and possibly another woman, if the lipstick on the sagging neck of a T-shirt was any indication. His dad had blamed gangs for the breakins, but neither Gabe nor his mother was fooled. What gangs stole electric toothbrushes? Or the food processor? Or the rocking chair that had once belonged to his mother's grandfather?

Then he was gone, and the house grew silent. But Gabe remembered the emptiness and even the echo of his voice when he returned home from school or from playing with friends and would call out, “Mom, I'm home.” He found himself nervously listening whenever the front door opened. He would think,
Is it Dad?
A mower would start, and he would get up from the couch and look out the front window. But it was never his father. It would be his uncle, or maybe a hired neighbor, or even his mother in a sweatshirt that hung down to her knees like a dress.

Now his dad had returned to Fresno with only a suitcase on rollers, ready to resume his dirty tricks, he thought. Would he steal again? Try to lie his way into their hearts? Gabe wouldn't let it happen. He would lock the doors and windows first, no matter how hot the house got. His dad could knock, but he wasn't coming in.

“I'm going to call the cops,” his mother threatened, as she pushed her weight from the couch. She kicked her slippers out of the way and headed for the telephone in the hallway. “No, I'm going to call Jerry.”

Jerry was one of her two brothers—the other was Mathew, who lived alone on a ranch. Uncle Jerry was big. He had been a cop who patrolled rural roads in Tulare County, but his career had ended when he injured his back—not from breaking up a street fight in a parking lot, but from moving a refrigerator for his ex-girlfriend. Now Uncle Jerry delivered breads and cakes, but he was no squeezable loaf of softness. He was still hard as iron, no one to fool with.

“Don't, Mom,” Gabe pleaded. “Don't call Uncle.” He was scared that his uncle would come by and get his dad into a headlock and walk him into a wall. Gabe figured that his dad was already hurting. He didn't need further punishment.

His mother was deaf to his pleas. She picked up the telephone and made the call.

She doesn't listen, Gabe told himself. He released a heavy sigh and disappeared into the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of Kool-Aid. He drank, poured himself a second glass, and exited the house by way of the kitchen door.

In the backyard, the afternoon sun sparkled off the aluminum pie tins they had strung up over their tomato plants to alert them whenever intruders scaled their fence, which ran along the alley. In the past weeks, he and his mother had discovered that homeless people were coming into their garden to pluck tomatoes and snag loquats. When he heard the pie tins rattling like wind chimes, Gabe would hurry to the backyard, clap his hands, and yell, “Get out! This is our place, not yours.” Embarrassed, most would drop what was in their hands and, sad as dogs, leave without a whimper. Sometimes, touched by their poverty, Gabe would say, “Take a few. It's OK.”

Gabe shook the ice cubes in his tall, frosty glass. He sized up his yard. The flowerbed that ran along the garage was scraggly with weeds, and the dazed zinnias needed water to spring back to life. Piles of newspapers and dark plastic bags of aluminum cans waited to be recycled. The wooden lattice over the patio held a complex set of spider webs and—was it possible?—a hornet's nest. His face flushed at the thought of tackling these chores, but he was unwilling to expose himself to this summer heat.