Blue Genes by Christopher Lukas

Author:Christopher Lukas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385528436
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

ON THE CUSP BETWEEN PRETEEN AND ADOLESCENT, Tony and I yearned to be free from Missy, but Dad—still eking out a living with the Society—said he could not afford to have us live with him. But could Dad not have lived a more frugal life, or gotten a higher-paying job, and had us move in with him? The question has been painful for me; for many years I have seen him as putting his own comfort and living style ahead of our needs. Clearly, he was uncomfortable with his parenting skills, but he did not need to abandon us. Tony felt otherwise. He thought that Dad had done his best.

Since we lived apart from Dad, our most intense relationship with him became, by default, the meals we took together.

The beginning of every meal for our father was a dry martini or two. He held his liquor well in those days, but the alcohol lubricated his emotions so that even the most enjoyable dinner ended in some criticism of our behavior, as he complained about our grades or our manner or the dry-cleaning bill. Sad to say, we rose to the bait in predictable fashion: Tony with carefully crafted counterarguments, I with sullen, down-turned face.

Dad would turn to me with one consistently uttered complaint: he said I had a catastrophic outlook, that I always perceived the world as a dangerous and threatening place. It meant that when someone got a cold, I might describe it as pneumonia. If someone said the sky was falling, I might believe it.

For me, that was not so bizarre. I had seen what the world could do to me, and I tried to predict the truth, even if it was a sour truth. I extrapolated from the past. To Dad, however, it was a constant reminder that I was not a happy child and that he had participated in that unhappiness. He would have preferred to see me as an optimist.

I once figured out that by the time I was fifteen, Tony and I had eaten meals at the same table twelve thousand times, many—unlike “normal” families—at restaurants, where we listened to Dad’s criticisms, the rest with Missy, with whom we dined well but felt cramped. Despite—or rather because of—the fights with Dad, the meals we had together combined to form an even greater alliance between Tony and me. It wasn’t just that we stood together against Dad’s criticisms. Our sense of fulfillment from the food was a further connection between us. What we ate, and how much we ate, served as a sign of love—perhaps a substitute for the love that others had, in families that actually lived together.

We both reveled in the experience of eating, and whatever bad hands might have been dealt us in other regards, food—and the pleasures of cooking, eating, and sharing in its consumption—almost always brought joy to our souls. It was a critical source of the attachment we had for each other, and would be so for years and years to come.

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