Take This Man: A Memoir by Brando Skyhorse

Author:Brando Skyhorse [Skyhorse, Brando]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoir, Retail
ISBN: 9781439170878
Amazon: 1439170878
Barnesnoble: 1439170878
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

7

“Don’t ever do this, Brando,” Frank gulped, holding in pot smoke. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Inside the duplex mountain “cabin” in Lake Arrowhead, California, Frank rolled joints and helped my naked, shivering mother operate the whirlpool tub. The weekend trip was meant to be a vacation from her own bedroom, but instead Frank ferried my mother chips, soda, and takeout all weekend because she didn’t want to leave the room. My mother indulged its middle-class amenities like wearing bathrobes baked on the heated towel racks and climbing up and down an indoor staircase just for fun.

“You’ve got stairs at home, babe,” Frank said.

“I know, but these stairs are cute, and they go to my room!” my mother said.

Watching Frank and my mother together more than ten years after they met was like watching a comedy team whose timing was just a little off, with older and somewhat gentler versions of their young, dream-weighted selves now capable of acknowledging how silly their roundabout arguments were—at least until their fighting flared up like a chronic, asymptomatic rash.

I had grown less forgiving of Frank’s visits with my mother, which included an afternoon tryst at a local motel, and less forgiving of him. It had been three years since we last saw each other, and that time had aged us both. He tired more easily, was grayer, and seemed fatter. I was older, crueler, and less satisfied with his episodic parental routine of swap meets and Sunday live-theater matinees; tired of waiting out in parking lots for concert tickets to bands I didn’t like; and wandering convention trade shows where he tracked down Olympic pins and Beatles memorabilia. His souvenir habit branched out into collecting autographs that would turn his childhood home into a hoarder’s fantasy. In his car trunk: a bag of fresh, white baseballs that he asked celebrities to sign, believing that a signed Tom Cruise baseball—which he has—will be more unique, more valuable, and harder to lose than a cocktail napkin. I despised his generic excuses for his long absences, his hypocritical pot smoking, and his cheapness. For my junior high graduation, he took me to Sizzler for a celebration lunch.

“Cheapest steakhouse in town,” my grandmother complained. She was right, I thought. Why wasn’t I worth more to him? I’d been taught daily that money equaled love. Sizzler wasn’t love. Sizzler wasn’t even friendship!

Over lunch, Frank asked me, “So, is that man that was living with you Paul Skyhorse?”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“One day I stopped by the house while you were at school. I was just in the neighborhood.” I thought, You were in the neighborhood only while I happened to be at school?

“Some man came to the door. I didn’t know Maria was living with someone. It was an older gentleman with a limp and a cane. I told him I was a census taker, then left. Was that Paul from the Skyhorse-Mohawk trial downtown? Was that man your father?”

“I guess,” I said.

I was a sardonic fifteen-year-old tired of humoring my .

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