His pop looks out through the windshield of Sanderson’s Subaru, saying nothing. What is he thinking? Or has thought flattened to nothing but a carrier wave? Sanderson sometimes imagines the sound that flatline might make: mmmmmmmm. Like the old testpattern hum on TV, back before cable and satellite.
Sanderson puts his hand on one thin topcoated arm and gives it a friendly squeeze. ‘You were drunk on your ass and Mom was mad, but I had fun. That was my best Halloween.’
‘I never drank around my wife,’ Pop says.
No, Sanderson thinks as the light turns green. Not once she trained you out of it.
‘Want help with the menu, Pop?’
‘I can read,’ his father says. He no longer can, but it’s bright in their corner and he can look at the pictures even with his Uncle Junior gangsta sunglasses on. Besides, Sanderson knows what he will order.
When the waiter comes with their iced teas, Pop says he’ll have the chopped steak, medium rare. ‘I want it pink but not red,’ he says. ‘If it’s red, I’ll send it back.’
The waiter nods. ‘Your usual.’
Pop looks at him suspiciously.
‘Green beans or coleslaw?’
Pop snorts. ‘You kidding? All those beans were dead. You couldn’t sell costume jewelry that year, let alone the real stuff.’
‘He’ll have the slaw,’ Sanderson says. ‘And I’ll have—’
‘All those beans were dead!’ Pop says emphatically, and gives the waiter an imperious look that says, Do you dare challenge me?
The waiter, who has served them many times before, merely nods and says, ‘They were dead,’ before turning to Sanderson. ‘For you, sir?’
They eat. Pop refuses to take off his topcoat, so Sanderson asks for one of the plastic bibs and ties it around his father’s neck. Pop makes no objection to this, may not register it at all. Some of his slaw ends up on his pants, but the bib catches most of the mushroom gravy drips. As they are finishing, Pop informs the mostly empty room that he has to piss so bad he can taste it.
Sanderson accompanies him to the men’s room, and his father allows him to unzip his fly, but when Sanderson attempts to pull down the elasticized front of the continence pants, Pop slaps his hand away. ‘Never handle another man’s meat, Sunny Jim,’ he says, annoyed. ‘Don’t you know that?’
This prompts an ancient memory: Dougie Sanderson standing in front of the toilet with his shorts puddled around his feet and his father kneeling beside him, giving instruction. How old was he then? Three? Only two? Yes, maybe only two, but he doesn’t doubt the recollection; it’s like a fleck of bright glass seen at the side of the road, one so perfectly positioned it leaves an afterimage. ‘Unlimber, assume the position, fire when ready,’ he says.
Pop gives him a suspicious look, then breaks Sanderson’s heart with a grin. ‘I used to tell my boys that when I was getting them housebroke,’ he says. ‘Dory told me it was my job, and I did it, by God.’
He unleashes a torrent, and most of it actually goes into the urinal. The smell is sour and sugary. Diabetes. But what does that matter? Sometimes Sanderson thinks the sooner the better.
Back at their table, still wearing the bib, Pop renders his verdict. ‘This place isn’t so bad. We ought to come here again.’
‘How about some dessert, Pop?’
Pop considers the idea, gazing out the window, mouth hanging open. Or is it only the carrier wave? No, not this time. ‘Why not? I have room.’
They both order the apple cobbler. Pop regards the scoop of vanilla on top with his eyebrows pulled together into a thicket. ‘My wife used to serve this with heavy cream. Her name was Dory. Short for Doreen. Like on The Mickey Mouse Club. Hi-there, ho-there, hey-there, you’re as welcome as can be.’
‘I know, Pop. Eat up.’
‘Are you Dougie?’
‘Yup.’
‘Really? Not pulling my leg?’
‘No, Pop, I’m Dougie.’
His father holds up a dripping spoonful of ice cream and apples. ‘We did, didn’t we?’
‘Did what?’
‘Went out trick-and-treating as Batman and Robin.’
Sanderson laughs, surprised. ‘We sure did! Ma said I was born foolish but you had no excuse. And Reggie wouldn’t come near us. He was disgusted by the whole thing.’
‘I was drunk,’ Pop says, then begins eating his dessert. When he finishes, he belches, points out the window, and says, ‘Look at those birds. What are they again?’
Sanderson looks. The birds are clustered on a Dumpster in the parking lot. Several more are on the fence behind it. ‘Those’re crows, Pop.’
‘Christ, I know that,’ Pop says. ‘Crows never bothered us back then. We had a pellet gun. Now listen.’ He leans forward, all business. ‘Have we been here before?’
Sanderson briefly considers the metaphysical possibilities inherent in this question, then says, ‘Yes. We come here most Sundays.’
‘Well, it’s a good place. But I think we ought to go back. I’m tired. I want that other thing now.’
‘A nap.’
‘That other thing,’ Pop says, giving him that imperious look.
Sanderson motions for the check, and while he’s paying it at the register, Pop sails on with his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets. Sanderson grabs his change in a hurry and has to run to catch the door before Pop can wander out into the parking lot, or even into the busy four lanes of Commerce Way.
‘That was a good night,’ Pop says as Sanderson buckles his seatbelt.
‘What night was that?’
‘Halloween, you dummy. You were eight, so it was nineteen fifty-nine. You were born in ’fifty-one.’
Sanderson looks at his father, amazed, but the old man is staring straight ahead at the traffic. Sanderson closes the passenger door, goes around the hood of his Subaru, gets in behind the wheel. They say nothing for two or three blocks, and Sanderson assumes his father has forgotten the whole thing, but he hasn’t.
‘When we got to the Foresters’ house at the bottom of the hill – you remember the hill, don’t you?’
‘Church Street Hill, sure.’
‘Right! Norma Forester opened the door, and to you she says – before you could – she says, “Trick or treat?” Then she looks at me and says, “Trick or drink?”’ Pop makes a rusty-hinge sound that Sanderson hasn’t heard in a year or more. He even slaps his thigh. ‘Trick or drink! What a card! You remember that, don’t you?’
Sanderson tries, but comes up empty. All he remembers is how happy he was to have his dad with him, even though Dad’s Batman costume – put together on the fly – was pretty lame. Gray pajamas, the bat emblem drawn on the front with Magic Marker. The cape cut out of an old bedsheet. The Batman utility belt was a leather belt in which his father had stuck an assortment of screwdrivers and chisels – even an adjustable wrench – from the toolbox in the garage. The mask was a moth-eaten balaclava that Pop rolled up to the nose so his mouth showed. Standing in front of the hallway mirror before going out, he pulled the top of the mask up on the sides, plucking at it to make ears, but they wouldn’t stay.
‘She offered me a bottle of Shiner’s,’ Pop says. Now they’re nine blocks up Commerce Way and approaching the intersection at Airline Road.
‘Did you take it?’ Pop is on a roll. Sanderson would love for it to continue all the way back to Crackerjack Manor.
‘Sure did.’ He falls silent. As Commerce Way approaches the intersection, the two lanes become three. The one on the far left is a turn lane. The lights for straight-ahead traffic are red, but the one handling traffic in the left-turn lane is showing a green arrow. ‘That gal had tits like pillows. She was the best loving I ever had.’
Yes, they hurt you. Sanderson knows this not just from his own experience but from talking to others who have relatives in the Manor. Mostly they don’t mean to, but they do. What memories remain to them are all in a jumble – like the pilfered puzzle pieces José found in the cigar box under Pop’s bed – and there’s no governor on them, no way of separating stuff that’s okay to talk about from the stuff that isn’t. Sanderson has never had a reason to think his father was anything but faithful to his wife for the entire forty-some years of their marriage, but isn’t that an assumption all grown children make, if their parents’ marriage was serene and collegial?