I Asked Dad.

A boy and his father at the bar counter, the dad broken and sad.

I asked Dad. 

“Why do you let her do this to you?” I asked my Dad. For a moment, he paused; his hand holding his glass of whiskey, raised halfway to his shivering lips. He turned, just his head, his hand with the glass of whiskey remaining in position. I could sense that it was a question he never expected from a 15-year-old.  

I could sense him thinking it was a question whose answer I’d never understand, especially now. I sensed a lot of things about him—things I indeed never understood, things that never made sense. When he turned, I saw his eyes. They were sunken and still sinking in welling tears. They looked as if tiring from a dream that never stopped. I could tell of his hard labor to hold the tears from streaming in front of a boy. I’d never respect him for that. 

The whiskey reeked between us, heavy and sharp. That reeking, I was used to. That reeking was always about Dad despite the bar, every day, every hour, every minute. The barmaid's clinking glasses echoed, distant and hollow. It was quiet, too quiet, save for the soft jazz and his soft mumblings and the occasional sharp clinking of the ice every time the barmaid poured another and another in his glass as if it too was breaking inside. 

I could notice the trembling of his hands. He struggled to keep the glass from falling. I kept crossing and uncrossing my fingers every time he carried it to his lips. I thought it would fall anytime. I could see and sense his pain. He was breaking and shredding inside. In a space of a few years, the glass of whiskey had shrunk him, shrunk him, sucked him up to a mere frame of clattering wiry bones dressed in a somewhat pale skin. The mountain of a man I knew my dad to be had one morning walked out and there before me was his caricature that had walked in that morning. 

I had to ask the question. I couldn’t understand why—why he spent his days crying for a woman, my mom, who had made it clear she was no longer in love or for love. She no longer loved my dad. She had taken his life’s savings, their lives’ savings, just for herself. She had kicked him out of her house, their house. In that house, I had seen other men come and go and others were and would come and go. I had come to the conclusion that mom never really loved anyone. I’d feel sorry when I saw a man warm up to her. She had turned up just to live. 

Two years had passed ever since his being kicked out, yet my dad kept coming over with his bottle of whiskey in hand. To fix me breakfast. To mow the grass. To fix the screen. To wash the dishes. To take the dog for a walk. He did all that. He did it every day. He no longer worked anyway. He had been laid off a few days after my mum had kicked him out.  

Sometimes he found other men around and would mumble words to himself. Having done all the house chores, he’d beg, cry, and mourn to have whatever remained of him back in the house. At first, I thought it was just the house he wanted. I was wrong, it was more. He wanted her heart or whatever remained of it. 

It troubled me. Got me mad. The woman didn’t care about him. Why did he keep coming over? Why did he keep caring about the house? About the grass? About the dog? About the dishes? I wished I could shake him out of his insufferable misery, to yell that love could never reduce a man to this. He wasn't the father I grew up with, the man who could fix anything, the one who’d always known what to say. Now, all I saw was a horrifying pile of weakness and it disgusted me. Instead of pity, I felt disdain. I despised the man more than I cared to admit. So, I had to ask. 

After the brief, nagging pause, having looked at me and weighed my senses, he turned towards the counter, his hand, shivering with the glass of whiskey still tingling, paused halfway to his lips. He stared blankly at the counter and the barmaid conjuring tricks with whiskey bottles. He brought the glass of whiskey to his mouth. Sipped the sour content. He rested his hand on the table while holding the glass. He bent his head, quiet for a moment. I burned with impatience. 

When he raised his head and turned again, I saw the tears. He had given up fighting them. Tears were streaming from his eyes, running down his sunken, bony cheeks. He didn’t sob or mumble; it was a quiet stream of tears running down. His hands were quaking vigorously and his lips started to stammer, trying to make words a boy of fifteen could understand.  

I wanted to feel sorry for him, I think I felt sorry for him and I should have felt sorry, only that by then I no longer knew what it meant to feel sorry for the man. He was a loser. That’s what I thought of him, frankly. That’s what mum would say when she came home and she had been drinking—he was a loser and a fool for love, she would yell as she talked about him. Every time she drank, she talked about him, talked about him, the loser and fool of love. 

Finally, after much effort, his lips found the words, “It’s because I love her,” he said, his voice was coarse and quiet. “It’s because I love her,” he repeated. “You’re a boy of fifteen, you won’t understand. Perhaps one day you will.” He took a sip and suddenly he no longer cried anymore. He no longer quaked. Tears stopped. He continued sipping. His eyes glazed as if searching for some words, his lips quivering as if to say something, only to sip and sip and sip. He was lost in the haze of his own misery. 

“Love’s a stubborn thing,” my father used to say when I was younger, back when he still had the energy to laugh. But this? I don’t know if that is what he had meant. 

That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years since the death of my father. Fifteen years since I met the love of my life, the mother of my two kids. Five years since I was last allowed near my kids or the house or the dog. I wonder if the kids ask about me, if they have questions. I wonder if whiskey cures hearts; at least it gives me sleep. 

End.

EzroniX Short Stories.