The Truth About Cats and Dogs

At approximately eleven o'clock the night before I was to pack all my belongings into a silver Chevy Silverado and drive to college, my father called our house, and let out a relieved sigh when I answered the phone.

"Whew. I thought for sure your mother would answer."

Hmmm. Well, I thought, she's still at work. Even more sarcastically, in my head, I was pondering the ridiculousness of him not knowing her schedule. I actually rolled my eyes and answered, "Nope. She's still at work. So is my sister."

"Great. I had a little too much to drink and I need to you pick me up at the D&W parking lot in Startown."

So I hauled my ass into clothes, got into that silver Chevy truck, and went down to Startown, a half hour away, to pick up my drunk father. I'd seen him drunk only a handful of times. He was a hilarious drunk, so different from the angry man I knew as a teenager. In retrospect, it was probably one of the only times he wasn't in agonizing pain so he could be himself for a brief period, but at the time, it was embarrassing/entertaining/compelling to hang out with my inebriated father.

The most direct route between Startown and my hometown had been, for the vast majority of that summer, that last summer before I left town never to return to reside there again, closed due to some construction. On the way to pick up my father, I realized, with no small amount of glee, that it had been reopened again, saving me a ten minute detour each way.

He was passed out in the his own pickup truck, a black Ford Ranger. His head was lolling against the window when I pulled up next to it. I started knocking on the window, trying to get him to wake up. He just kept sleeping. A Startown police car came creeping up. "You need some help?"

I didn't want him to get in trouble. I mean, he had been drinking and driving. I just shrugged and kept pounding on the window. Eventually he woke up and rolled down the window. The cops drove off, much to my relief.

On the way home, light summer sprinkles were falling down and my wipers were on the very lowest setting. His head would bob back and forth each time they moved. He seemed mesmerized by the movement. Eventually the rain picked up and so did the movements of the wipers. In a moment I can picture just like yesterday, he almost threw his back out trying to keep up with the motion of those blades.

He repeatedly told me that the road was closed. I kept reassuring him that it was open on my drive down and it must have just opened in the last day or two. He'd drowse for a second and then wake up with a jerk and tell me that the road was closed.

When we got home, he told me to set my alarm really early so we could drive back to Startown and get his truck before we had to leave, before my mother could realize that his truck was missing, before the cops started to notice the car was in the parking lot way longer than it should have been.

Sometimes, when I forget to be angry with my father for the mess he has wrought, I think of that night. His head bobbing back and forth, his insistence that I not drive through the construction zone, his general mirth that he was getting away with something my mother would never find out about. I think of that night and I laugh. He was funny at times. He was an asshole, a mean old goat, but he was also my father, capable of great silliness and joviality, the man who painstakingly taught me how to tie my shoes, the man who has had the greatest impact on my relationships with people.

Today I heard a story on the radio about how some scholar thinks Emily Dickinson had epilepsy and I picked up the phone to call me father and ask him if he'd heard it. I wanted to know his opinion on the whole thing. I wanted to hear his voice telling me I am stupid for believing everything I hear. I desperately wanted to hear him berate me. I really did.

I want to talk to him one last time. I really do. I want to tell him how angry I am, how disappointed I am, but I really want to tell him how much I loved him. He did the best he could with me. I was not an easy child, an easy teenager - fuck it, I am not an easy adult - but he did what he could with his limited education, finances, and social skills.

This isn't a love letter. It's too complicated for that. But it is a good-bye in the only way I can say good-bye since that fucker up and died before his time. See ya, Pops. I love you.