My Father’s Keeper. Julie Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ lights of the rink just so she wouldn’t have to couple skate alone. She was upping her chances to catch a wink from the married owner by getting out on the floor when it was least populated.

      I held her sweaty hand and we coasted with locked knees around pitted wooden corners, while dancing polka dot lights spun me dizzy on the dark floor.

       Reunited And It Feeels So Goood.

      Trust me. No kid wants their 40-year-old mother asking them if her butt looks okay in the skating rink bathroom.

      I was desperate. Desperate to get out of the hollow where I lived with the big trucks with gun racks in the back and bumper stickers that read “Boobs, Booze, and Country Music”, where at least one hand-lettered yard sign on the way to town scolded with a twang:

       This is God’s CountryDon’ drive through it like Hell

      I wanted far away from the kids my dad cornered at the football game’s concession stand, demanding they tell him how cool he was—the same ones that went on to pelt the back of my head with crabapples the rest of the year on the school bus. Like it or not, by the very virtue of association, I was a loser too; as long as I was under my father’s roof, every fledgling step in the teenage social hierarchy was eclipsed by a trademark faux pas of my father—a public squelch, raucous belch or exaggerated, lingering crotch adjustment.

      The fall of eighth grade saw me herded into choir with the rest of the class, and despite complaining along with the other kids over the injustice and uncoolness of it all, I was secretly thrilled to be looped into the pomp and circumstance of school performance, a world I’d never have gained entry to if it was not mandatory for the class. My parents, in all their trailer-minded glory, placed zero importance on the intellectual advancement of anything as meaningless as music or art. School was seen as a sort of extended daycare to keep me out of the house until I got off the bus and could be handed a list of chores that wouldn’t cease until bedtime. To say that school—and all the bells and whistles of extracurricular activities—meant nothing to them was an understatement.

      Choir was the first indulgence of any kind I’d had, the music room a luxurious epicentre of civilized culture that offset the glare of my trailer tarnish.

      Our first performance of the year was marked by flat grey skies pregnant with the fall of winter’s virgin snow. The sky hung small and low over the miles of brittle brown corn fields that surrounded Mcdowell middle school but it wasn’t the gloom of winter that knitted my forehead as my father drove us there.

      “Dad?”

      “Yeah, honey?”

      “Promise you won’t embarrass me?”

      “Embarrass you?” he snorted. “What, you don’t think your old man’s cool? I know what cool is. I’m so cool I had tattoos on my diapers.”

      “Just promise,” I pleaded as I stared out of the window, watching the bitter wind kick corn husks up into swirling funnel clouds.

      We stood at the mouth of the auditorium, my father and I, his sideburns thick as mutton chops and with that trademark chipmunk smile, the top teeth forced over the bottom giving his grin, however manly he may be, a forever permanence of being twelve. He wore polyester and I wore corduroy and puttycoloured panty hose, a fresh snag running up my leg. In our first formal event together, my father pretended to wait for someone, craning his neck up and over the families that bustled around us and took their seats in the auditorium once they embraced each other. So confident of his cool in the car, he had started to sweat. A few beads of perspiration popped up on his forehead; one let loose and trickled down into his sideburn like a checker dropped from his hairline.

      I knew I would have to stay. Who knows what might happen if I left his side?

      The wind instruments began their warm up. My choir teacher swept past on her way to the stage and stopped to collect me, placing her delicate conductor’s hand softly on my back. I can still feel the exact outline of it singed on my back.

      My father thrust his arm out to her, erupting in a boyish grin and my choir teacher, never the wiser, stretched her long tapered fingers to his, slipping a dainty palm into his calloused one.

      I caught the twinkle in his eye but it was too late.

      In the split second it takes for the little squeeze that accompanies a handshake, my father cocked his left leg and farted in the empty hall.

      Dad roared maniacally. My choir teacher recoiled her hand in horror as my father held it steadfast. And I, the delicate child, stood alone between them. This was life with my dad.

      As humiliating as it was to be out in public with my father, I needed him too. He pointed out kids who made fun of me and without him, I felt exposed and uncertain of how to interpret the world around me. Luckily, our public outings were rare. My father wanted little more than to be parked in his La-Z-Boy recliner in the small cavern of our trailer’s living room, cocooned by the soft glow of six to eight hours of television a night. Dad was perfectly content to recline in a flat, predictable world, experienced in manageable half-hour increments, with nothing more complex than a riveting episode of Sanford and Son.

      There was me, Danny, my little brother, Mom and Dad, all living in a mobile home that started out no bigger than the trailer of a semi truck. But each of us was living in our own fantasy.

      At night I lay in bed burning; burning in a vision of running away. I would get on The Price Is Right, “Julie Gregory, C’mon down! You’re the next contestant on the Price Is Right,” I would spring five perfect back flips down the aisle—boom—straight onto contestant’s row. I’d lean into the mike and know the actual retail price of the His-n-Hers matching hi-ball glasses, the numbers rolling out my mouth like Pentecostal tongue. I’d play the Mountain Climber game with the grace and ease of a cut-throat watcher. And the way I span the wheel, you’d think I had one set up at home in the wood-panelled basement.

      After winning both prizes in the Showcase Showdown, my carefully studied bid falling within buckshot of a hundred dollars of my own well-chosen showcase, I’d step out from behind my podium; pry the mike from Bob’s cold, tan fingers and croon, “This is Julie Gregory for Bob Barker, reminding you to help control the pet population! Have your pet spayed or neutered!”

      Bob would fall silent, pursing that thin smile as he clamoured for control. But I could tell he was impressed.

      Showgirls would fan out around me to fill in for the lack of family rushing the stage and I’d whisper that I’d be donating at least one of the cars to the Humane Society. One showgirl would cup her hand to Bob’s ear and he, in turn, would tell the audience. The crowd went wild.

      “Who is this amazing teenage girl?” hissed down the aisles like brushfire.

      I lay in bed at night, the vision searing behind my eyes; my fingers clasped upon my soft-breathing belly, eyes wide open, boring into the dark.

      And while I was running away to Burbank, California, Mom was living in a closet of gold lamé tracksuits, each holding in its folds the golden promise of an imaginary cruise drifting on the horizon of a fading sunset. The ensembles jammed to swelling on her closet rod, each with its respective price tag dangling anxiously in case the cheque bounced.

      And while Mom spent her nights trying on outfits for the ritzy vacation that never came, my little brother Danny lived in a fortress constructed of hundreds and hundreds of Matchbox СКАЧАТЬ