More Than Enough (18 page)

The cab had pulled up behind us, and my father stepped out. He was dressed in jeans and a Utah Jazz T-shirt, and his hair was soaked for some reason so that he looked half-drowned, as if he had survived a shipwreck, had just crawled out of the waves. “We need to talk, Mary,” he said, standing in front of her door. She stepped out, and so did I. Jenny stayed in the backseat with her hands over her ears and her eyes closed. You could no longer see the light drizzle in the air, but it was coming down as we stood there. A drop or two of water fell from my father's soaked hair. One of his tennis shoes was untied, and the fat black lace was waterlogged and made me think of the bum we had seen earlier that day—the one with the plastic bags on his feet who'd worked us for three dollars with his girlfriend. I wish my father hadn't made me think of those bums, but he had.

“Hi, Billy,” my mother said. She looked over at me. “Wouldn't you rather stay in the car, Steven?”

“I don't think so,” I said.

“I'd rather you get back in the car.”

“He can stay if he wants to stay,” my father said.

“Get back in the car, Steven.”

I didn't move. “I'm his father,” he said. “I say that he can stay if he wants to stay.”

“I guess you are that,” my mother said, looking at him. “You've been a very good father, too, haven't you?” I wanted him to say something back. But he didn't. He was shivering and hugged himself with both arms and looked at her and couldn't seem to meet her gaze for very long. I didn't know where she had found a cigarette, but she had, and she lit it now in the rain, very calmly going through all the steps—putting it in her mouth, lighting the match, and bringing the weak flame to her cigarette, inhaling until it had lit, then putting the matches in her bag, snapping the clasp, and finally looking up at him as she smoked. He couldn't seem to speak until she was done with this, and I saw how already she was more powerful than he was because of the time and silence she had demanded for herself and had gotten.

“He's a good father,” I said finally.

He looked over at me. “How's your arm, Steven?” he asked. I heard something in his voice that I didn't like the sound of—vulnerability or fear or something. “What did the doctor say?”

“Where's your coat? You should be wearing a coat.” I shouldn't have said that because he looked down at himself then and squeezed his arms tightly and seemed colder now. “Your shoe is untied.” That was another thing I shouldn't have mentioned. But I wanted him to tie it so that I wouldn't have to look at him and remember the guy with the plastic sacks and his girlfriend and how they had just walked out of that restaurant with our few dollars and into the rainstorm the way someone else might walk into their living room, just walked right out into it and kept on walking. My father bent down and actually began tying his shoe. And while he was bent down working on it, the driver stood out of the cab and said, “I have a theory about him. You want to know what my theory is?” He was skinny and wore a KISS T-shirt beneath a leather jacket, the worn shoulders of which his long, straggly black hair touched. I could tell he was a terrific asshole. My mother didn't say anything and neither did my father, who had stood up again. “My theory is that he doesn't have any money to pay me with.”

“The doctor says that my arm is going to take a little longer to heal,” I said.

“But it's healing?” my father asked.

“Yes. I guess it is.”

“That's my theory, miss, in case you're interested.”

My mother opened her purse, took out a fifty-dollar bill, and offered it to my father. “Hell, no,” he said. “Hell, no. No way.” We could guess where the money had come from since my parents never carried that much cash, and I was glad he'd refused it.

“Can you pay him, Billy?” she asked.

“I think you should take it,” the driver said. He had lit a cigarette for himself. “Otherwise, I'm just going to have to drive off and find someone else.”

My mother took a step forward and urged the bill into his hand, and my father took it and shoved it into his pocket. “Whatever,” he said. “Why are you dressed like that?” he asked, looking at me.

I looked down at myself and realized how terrible and out of place I must have looked in those pajamas. “It's not important,” I said.

“Aren't you cold?” he asked, even though he was the one shivering.

“I'm fine,” I said.

He shook some water out of his head and tried to stop his upper body from trembling, though he couldn't. “Jesus. I don't have a good feeling about this. Some guy at that home dies and you decide to leave me.”

“It's a little more complicated than that, Billy,” she said.

“What does your mother mean?” He was looking at me and not at her. “Complicated how?” The cab driver wasn't going to sit back down in his cab and leave us to ourselves. He was smoking his cigarette and listening to the whole thing. He wasn't smiling or anything. But I knew that he was getting a kick out of it. I knew he was going to stay for the show.

“Let's keep the kids out of this, Billy.”

“Keep them out of it. I don't think that's going to be possible,” he said. “I think they're about as much in this as they can be. Look at Jen-Jen, for Christ's sake.” He pointed to her in the backseat with her hands over her ears. She was looking out at us now and must not have heard what was being said. She sort of waved at my father with her index finger because she needed the other ones to keep herself from hearing anything.

“Steven,” my mother said, “you get in that car now.”

“She means,” I said, “that you need to do something with yourself and then maybe she'll come back to you.”

“That's not what I mean, Steven.”

“People die all the time,” my father said.

“It's not about that,” my mother said. “I can't live with you anymore, Billy. That's what it's about.”

“You need to start studying,” I said to him. I had begun shivering myself now, even though I wasn't cold. “You need to pass your classes and get your degree. You need to stop spending money all the time. You need—”

“You,” my father said in an angry whisper. “You need to shut up.” He pointed a finger at me and stepped forward and I stepped back. He had never spoken to me like that before.

“I—”

“Not another goddamn word, kid.”

“Billy,” my mother said.

I don't know what I did next. I guess I just stood there looking into the air and feeling my mouth seize up for good, feeling the impossibility of ever again speaking to that sloppy bastard who could barely keep his shoes tied. His eyes were still locked onto me, though I wasn't meeting his gaze. I was looking at the space to the side of his head. “You got me?” he said. I nodded, and he looked back over at my mother.

“People die every day, for Christ's sake,” my father said. “You can quit at Oak Groves. You can work another job where people don't die.”

“You're not listening to me,” my mother said.

“You can work a job where no one has to ever die. Ever!” He was in his I-can't-shut-up mode, speaking out of panic and anger. He turned around and slapped his hands down against the cab roof and gave the car a push that made it wobble a little. He looked over his shoulder at my mother. “Jesus. What about an office job? People don't die there? They don't die and they don't get sick behind typewriters. They don't have heart attacks or strokes or seizures. They don't need to be fed. They just sit at desks and write letters. They don't die at desks, do they? Do they?” He wanted an answer, but she wasn't going to give him one. “They don't die in post offices or supermarkets or retail stores or restaurants or libraries or bars or cafés.”

When he finally shut up, my mother looked over at me and said, “Please, Steven. Please let me talk to your father alone.”

“He's not leaving, Mary. He wants to stay here. He wants to know what's happening here just as much as I do. He has a right to know. We all do.”

“All right,” she said. “You win.” She looked down at her purse and then at my father. “I don't love you, Billy,” she said.

“That's a lie,” my father said. But he wasn't yelling now or even looking at her. He was speaking softly in the opposite direction as he leaned over the cab. He wasn't able to turn around and face us for what seemed like a long time. A few cars drove by, and one kid on a bicycle cranked up the hill and turned the corner. Otherwise, the simple houses with porches and gray windows reflecting the yellow grass of their own front yards sat quietly facing the road. No one came out of them. No one walked by. It continued to rain, and in that silence I could hear the tiny sounds of it falling.

The cab driver had gotten bored and was looking off at something else. He put his cigarette out and said, “The meter is running, just to let you know.”

When my father finally turned around, he couldn't look at either one of us. “Who's the man?” he asked. My mother told him more or less what she had told us in the restaurant in an equally calm voice.

“He's rich,” my father said.

“He's financially secure,” she said.

My father shook his head and started to laugh until his laugh turned into a cough and he had to stop, though he was still shaking his head. He looked down at the ground and kicked at it with his wet tennis shoe. He was smiling this very painful smile. “Financially secure,” he said. Then he looked up at the bright, drizzling sky and shouted it. “Financially secure! Jesus!”

“Yes, Billy,” my mother said very calmly.

The cab driver sat back down in his car and turned on the radio or a tape that played that very sad song by Led Zeppelin—“Stairway to Heaven.” He was moving his head to the music and very precisely lip-synching every word. I wanted to kill him.

My father was looking at me now. “What do you think about what your mother is doing? Has she asked you what you think, Steven?”

“I thought I was supposed to shut up,” I said. He hardly knew what I was talking about. He seemed unable to remember ever having yelled at me.

“Don't you put him in the middle of this,” my mother said. “Don't you dare do that, Billy. This isn't about the kids.”

“What do you think, Steven?” he asked.

“You don't have to answer his question,” my mother said. “You don't have to say another word to him.”

I looked at my mother, who stood with her arms crossed, her upper body seeming to shake with anger. Then I looked back at him. “I don't know what I think yet.” I should have said something more decisive. I should have defended my father. I should have said that what she was doing was wrong and hurtful and inexcusable.

“We've got to go now,” my mother said.

“I'll be right behind you,” my father said. “Don't think I'm just going to let you drive away.”

“It would be better for all of us,” she said, “if we didn't draw this out.”

“I'll be right behind you,” my father said.

I was looking at the cab driver now, whose head was cocked back, his eyes closed as he mouthed the words
“buying a stairway to heaven,”
deep inside the ecstasy of that song. I couldn't move or speak or think, and as disgusting as that cab driver was with his leather coat and his KISS T-shirt, I would not have minded being him, being where he was in the words of that song. My mother took my hand in hers. “We're going now, Billy.” She walked me over to my side and locked me in. I thought I should try to resist her. I was fifteen, after all, and was not used to being walked by the hand. All the same, I let her lead me to the door and sit me down in the seat. “Don't you follow us, Billy.”

My father was knocking on my window. “Steven,” he was saying. “Look at me. Look at me, please.” I looked at him, but I didn't know what else to do.

“Don't either one of you dare step out of this car,” our mother said as she started the Buick up.

“Jen-Jen,” my father said. He was knocking on both our windows now.

“Hi,” she said, but she didn't move to open the door, and neither did I.

He was running alongside us now as we pulled out and I watched him looking in at us, his eyes locked onto ours the way men and women in old movies run after a train carrying a lover away from them. Only this was just our father, and what I saw in his face then as he looked in at me was not love or even desire, but fear and something else that he was seeing about himself and that I could not give a word to. “I'll be right behind you,” he shouted, pointing back at the cab. “I'll see you in a minute.” This was not a threat. He was reassuring us. He wanted us to know that he would be nearby.

“I'll see you soon,” I shouted through the glass. And then we pulled away.

*   *   *

My mother was driving too fast. “Maybe he won't follow us,” she said.

“He's going to follow us,” I said.

“You're not helping things, Steven,” she said.

“Am I supposed to help things?”

“I don't know what you're supposed to do.” Jenny and I kept turning around to look at the road. We couldn't see his cab yet, and for a frightening moment I wondered if he hadn't already given up and gone home. “Stop that,” my mother said. “I want both of you to sit forward and stay still.”

The next time we turned around, we saw the yellow car about two blocks behind us. It was very small and disappeared at intervals as the road rose and fell behind us. My mother looked in her mirror and saw it, too. “Okay,” she said, not speaking to us but to him, as if he could somehow hear her. “Fine. Fine.”

“Shouldn't we maybe stop and wait for him?” Jenny asked.

“We're not stopping,” my mother said. I saw her hands tighten around the steering wheel. “This time, we are not stopping.” Her eyes kept lifting to the rearview mirror and then falling back down to the road in front of her.