Anxiously Ever After by Clint Edwards

Author:Clint Edwards [Edwards, Clint]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

“LET’S HOPE YOU DON’T BECOME HIM”

The last time I saw Dad was over breakfast on Thanksgiving Day 2001. I was nineteen. I arrived to find him urinating on a patch of scrub oak in an open lot between a gas station and the café we’d agreed to meet at. Night frost clung to the roofs of cars, and a blistery canyon wind whipped the steam coming out the stovepipes above the café. I sat in my small red S10 pickup, the same pickup my grandmother helped me buy when I was seventeen as a trade for my getting what she called “a decent haircut,” and waited for Dad to finish. I’d completed my winter contract at the toy store, and I’d since gotten a job working close to full-time at one of those big-box hardware stores. I was a student at a local open-enrollment state college, but I hadn’t attended class in weeks.

Dad jerked as he finished his business, then he zipped, strutted across the lot, and walked into the café.

By the time I entered, Dad was sitting at a booth, studying the menu. He’d made an effort to fix himself up, wearing a bulky green sweater with only a few grease stains, blue Wrangler jeans, and scuffed white sneakers. The café’s aroma of coffee and bacon was overshadowed by Dad’s Stetson cologne, and although his face was clean-shaven, his neck and jawline were sprinkled with black and gray whiskers.

Dad chose the café because it was within walking distance of his home. He’d recently gotten his driver’s license back after losing it again for driving while intoxicated. He claimed that was all a misunderstanding over his dog getting out, that he was just trying to find her. “Cops don’t give a crap about your dog,” he said. But even with his license back, he didn’t drive all that much, and I assumed it was because he didn’t have gas money and because his record of DUIs meant insuring his truck would cost a fortune. However, choosing not to drive was a very mature move for him.

We met for breakfast because no one wanted to have him over for Thanksgiving dinner. My aunt didn’t want him because he looked “like death,” which I felt was a fair assessment of his general appearance but not necessarily a good reason to exclude him from Thanksgiving dinner. Grandma and I were planning to eat at my aunt’s, so I couldn’t take him with me. But I didn’t want him to be alone on Thanksgiving, so I agreed to meet him for breakfast, and after calling around I eventually found a place for him at the Thanksgiving dinner table of his most recent ex-wife.

Dad smiled as I sat at the table, and I could see black pockmarks in his gums, cavities that used to hold teeth but now held particles of food and other grime. His skin held the moist, chalky tone of long-term drug addiction, his black hair was streaked with gray and matted with grease, his eyes were sunken deep into their sockets.

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