Not to dwell on this, but I will.

Just an absolutely levelling blow.

In the course of nine months, losing the two people likely most responsible for whatever it is I've become.

The good thing is at least I knew they were both proud of me.

Or maybe that was just them claiming responsibility.

And then in that case, I hope they know I'm proud of them.

Wherever they are.

CATHY’S ROOM ISN’T SO GREAT EITHER 

One day my father showed up, went into a room at the end of the hall and stayed there. Now he lived with my grandparents too.  

Sometimes he'd wander down to my room out of habit, sit on the end of my bed and look around at how nothing was his anymore. 

“This used to be mine”, he told me as he looked at all of my stuff, then pointed towards the other side of the room “I kept my bed over there though, near the window. So, I could smoke all day and not raise suspicion”  

He had come back in November and all of the stuff from his old apartment, the one he’d barely escaped with his life, was now pushed into his sister’s old room. Cathy no longer there to stop him from entering. 

“Did you know that phony bitch wouldn't even let me in here when she was still living at home”, my father would boast as he lay on his bed with his pink-bellied cat, smoking cigarette after cigarette and watching television. “Pretending hers was the best room in the whole house and too good for the rest of us. But who’s laughing now?” 

I spent a lot of time in this room with my father looking at all his lousy stuff, noticing how everything he had was gummy and yellow and smelled like cigarettes. Especially the picture of Jane he’d made sure was already propped next to his bed, looking old and from another time. Turned brittle from all the cigarettes he’d smoked while staring at it. Sometimes he would even tap the glass in the frame with his yellow fingers and remind me how Nan used to tell him a girl like that would never marry a bum like him. 

“But she did, didn’t she?” 

I nodded, even though I didn’t really know anything about Jane at all. Just asked him if he ever noticed how she kind of smelled like boiled eggs. How that was all I really remembered about her.  

And that’s when he’d tell me to get out. That this was his room now, not fucking Cathy’s, and he was sick of me hanging around all the time. Began pushing me off the corner of the mattress I was sitting on with his barefoot. This bed he had made sure was pushed beneath the window so he could smoke as much as he wanted. Eager to let fresh air in. Hopefully not let how he remembered things out.  

But I wasn’t worried either way, as I returned to my room. His old room. I knew I’d be seeing him again soon anyways. Probably in a couple of hours. We were neighbours now. This was going to be fun. 

BOATS FOR BRUCE 

All he wanted was a window to watch the boats go by. This is what my father would say when we told him he’d drank enough already. Just a little window. Big enough to see all the little boats. It was all so simple, yet he felt he would need to say it many times as if we didn’t understand. The only possible answer left for him when asked what he was planning to do with his life. My grandfather sitting at the end of the couch with his crossword pen, wanting to know what it would cost him to get this to finally stop. 

“You can’t continue like this, Bruce. I know it. Your mother knows it. Your son knows it. You know it. By now, I’m sure even all the goddamned neighbors know it” 

All of us had been called to the living room by my grandfather who sat with a pad of looseleaf paper he’d normally be using to handicap his horses laid across his lap, waiting to learn what the terms of the agreement were going to be. A legally binding contract we were all here to sign, if only my father would say something he could understand well enough to write down into words, but my father not giving him anything. Just kept going back to talk of his window, and telling us as long as the little boats kept drifting by, no one would have to bother with him ever again. 

“I could sit looking out at them for a long time. Longer than any of you could ever believe” 

Then lighting a cigarette, he told us we could even forget all about him if we wanted to. He’d be fine. Would even buy his own groceries. Food he actually liked to eat. Then he grew quiet, as if he could already hear the sounds coming up from the water. Waves underneath a dock. A distant outboard motor. I would try to listen too but then there would be the crack of another can opening. And I’d be back in this living room. My father the only one to have briefly escaped it. The rest of us stuck facing each other on these couches, waiting to sign our names to whatever future was being imagined in those soft and sunken-in eyes of his.   

ROBINSON CRUSOE AGAIN 

That was the summer that my father fell between the two rocks and almost drowned. He’d gone down to the beach by himself to fish in the rain. Who knows where John was.  Then soon came running back up to the cottage twenty minutes later, the legs of his jeans torn to shreds. His knees bleeding. Soaking wet and gasping and looking like Robinson Crusoe.  

“The rocks are really slippery”, he said, “I kept sliding down into that horrible mud. I couldn’t get up. I lost my shoe in there” 

My grandmother got him a towel and everyone laughed, especially Uncle John who had just appeared out of nowhere to tell him he told him not to try that when he wasn’t around. Then all the adults drank and played poker and I walked around in the woods looking for blueberries in the rain.

It had been a good summer and I remember it well. Unless, of course, I’m remembering wrong and it was that other summer. The one when my father did exactly the same thing, still not listening to John and nearly drowning in the same mud. Blaming those slippery rocks like last time. Ripping his jeans and busting up his knee and making him look like someone who’d just swum to us from a deserted island all over again. 

“It took my shoe”, he said to no one’s surprise. “I couldn't get out of there. I kept sliding back in” 

Exactly the same story but two different summers. One better than the other, even though it was hard to tell which one I was thinking of now. All these years later. But still laughing, either way. Just like I did back then. Funny both times.  

My father. Very, very funny. Always. 

Complete re-write

THE COMEUPPANCE OF FART-FACE 

My father is on the front lawn in boxing gloves. Staggering side to side as the sunlight tries to press him down. Wobbling. Or maybe dancing. Connecting with a stupid face no one likes. A boy down the street who just moved here and thinks I should be friends with him. A boy who keeps showing up at my door and who I keep telling to leave me alone and now my father knocking his head backwards over and over. A rhythmic thump all of us watching could nearly dance to as we watch my father burping and smiling and punching. The sun making his shadow long and mean on the grass. The boy nearly about to fall over and my father just hitting faster and harder. 

The kids name is Derek and the blood has rushed up into his head, risen into his blonde nearly white hair making it seem pink. Can see the bright scarlet of his scalp shining through it. He’s exhausted. Breathless. His arms slowly being weighed down by the heaviness of the boxing gloves he is wearing. That he borrowed from me. No longer looking so eager to fight my father. No longer calling him a chicken. Looking around to see if his mother is running down the road to rescue him as sweat runs into his eyes. As sweat is punched off his face by my father.  

Not that I needed anyone to beat the kid up for me. I had already done a good job of that myself that winter. On this very same lawn, throwing him down into the snow and kicking him in the stomach. Kicking him over and over again because he had snuck up on me and smashed a block of ice over my head. Kicking him as I watched the shape of a woman rushing down the street towards us. What would turn into his mother coming to save him. Yanking me by the ears before I could explain myself. Ripping my winter jacket open as she shook me for what I’d been doing to her son. 

Ever since my father keeps warning me not to hang out with this kid any longer. Says he doesn’t like his face. That droopy-lipped expression of his. How he’s always squinting as if concentrating on some horrible thing churning inside of him. Calls him Fart-Face since he seems forever in the middle of pushing one out. 

The very same face my father is now pounding on.  

“How’d you like that one? Huh, Fart-Face? Or how about that?” 

He had only come outside to tell the boy to get off our property, not to fight. Had been watching us box through the window all afternoon, sometimes yelling out tips of how to stop hitting eachother like girls through the screen, but never asking to join. Only took objection once he saw Derek had suddenly become a part of our group. Could see him standing there in his jogging pants, demanding someone fight him, and it was as he began strapping on a pair of old, decomposing boxing gloves that I had handed to him, my father rushed out to stop anyone from taking the boy up on his offer. 

“Not him. Nope. No one is laying a finger on that soft little shit” 

My father was clear. This kid was trouble. His parents were nuts. No one was to touch him.  

At least not until Derek started calling him a chicken.  

“Buk-buk, Buk-buk".

Immediately knew what had to be done. 

“Give me your gloves, kid”, he asked Critty, who had been the next one of us scheduled to fight. Who also would have made mincemeat of Derek, but quickly did as my father asked. “Just watch me knock the shit out of this kid” 

Less than five minutes later, my father was victorious. Raising his hands above his head as Derek called out for his mother. Calling for this woman who was soon rushing down the street, coming to see what horrible things had happened to her son now. Coming into view just as me and my friends raised my father up onto our shoulders in celebration.  

“Bruce! Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!”  

And for a moment, as Fart-Face struggled to get back to his feet, and my father spilled beer over all over our heads, the summer was beautiful again.