Dark Waltz (A Praestani Novel), page 35
“Hale,” my dad says, nearly poking out his friend’s eye with the indicating jab of his finger, “this here’s Otto. From the old neighborhood! We were...”
“At the bar. We were just at the bar.” Otto dips his chin like he’s correcting a toddler, instead of my full-grown, totally blasted father.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. The bar on Fifth, not Main.”
I take a good look at my dad as he staggers toward me. He’s got a dark spot around his eye that doesn’t disappear when he moves out of the shadows.
“Did you get into a fight?”
Otto shushes my father under his breath. My dad swishes away the admonishment with a flutter of his fingers.
“We got enough, right?” my father asks again, instead of answering my question.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, the smile fading. Otto waves his nose over the small saucepan of chunky beef stew that I’ve got bubbling on the stove.
“Smells absolutely delicious,” he says to me. His way of talking sounds kind of fancy, even though he’s plastered. Then, to my father, “Your daughter’s an incredible cook.”
“It’s from a can,” I say.
“She just turned eighteen. She knows her way around a kitchen,” my dad says, and then he breaks into a guffaw, like he’s the funniest thing in the world. Otto thinks so too, and the two of them collapse against the fridge, rattling the cookie jar on top. They both look up like it will drop on their heads and start laughing even harder. I scoop the stew into two plastic bowls.
“Watch out,” I say, trying to maneuver around them. They manage not to barrel into me, but they’re doubled over on each other, still laughing. I dump the bowls on the table and grab a bag of chips off the counter. At least I’ll have something to eat when I barricade myself in my room for the night. But, as I walk down the hall, away from the kitchen, Otto says something to my father that turns my face red and freezes me in my tracks.
“So, let’s get this settled,” Otto says. “She’s a good girl, isn’t she? You know what I mean.”
“Of course she is! What the fuck do you think?” My dad laughs his reply, but there is still enough growl in it that I think I know what kind of ‘goodness’ they’re referring to. What the hell? But then my dad says, “What about Oscar? Good kid? Clean?”
“Hell yes,” Otto says. I scoot into the shadows around the corner, as the two men stumble to the dining room table. “He’s a man! The girls adore him. He knows what he’s doing. That’s why I want him to settle down. It’s time he starts a family and takes over the business. Especially now.”
“Well, if we do this,” my father slurps his soup. “Damn it! This shit is hot! Watch it!”
Otto’s voice streams from the kitchen, deadly sober all of a sudden. “Jerry, this isn’t an ‘if’ anymore. We left ‘if’ at the bar a few hours ago.”
“I know, I know.” My father’s hushed voice almost makes it sound as if he’s whining. “Loyalty. I got it.”
“With our children together, it’s like we both have insurance—that you trust me,” Otto’s voice drops, “and that I can trust you.”
The sinister tint in his tone almost erases the words. Their children together? Why are they talking like mobsters? My dad’s only got me, so Otto’s got to be talking about his own kids, but none of this makes any sense.
“We grew up together, for Christ’s sake,” my father says. “You know you can trust me, Otto. After everything that happened tonight, you gotta know by now, right? Right?”
There is no answer. I hold my breath in the shadows until my father resumes, feeling only a little better that his voice raises this time, as if he’s sliding a bargaining chip across the dining room table.
“But if we do this, Otto, your boy—I don’t care what he does with other women, but he better never hit my girl. You hear me, Otto? She comes back to me with scratches even, and I’ll cut his balls off!”
“His balls?” Otto laughs. “You’re a tough bastard, you know that, Jerry? You don’t have to worry. Oscar’s not a maniac. He’s a soft touch with the girls.”
“Not too much of a castlenova,” my father laughs, chokes. “I want grandkids, you know!”
“Castlenova?” Otto sputters.
“Yeah, you know! A ladies man, dumbass!”
“Casanova? Is that what you mean?”
The two of them break into peals of laughter, while I stay pressed to the wall, sweating. I have no idea why they’re having this conversation, but it totally concerns me, and it sounds like they’re planning things they have no right to plan. I just don’t get how it fits together, and why they’re talking about my goodness, and Oscar’s fists, and his Casanova-ness. My father must be even more drunk than he seems. Grandkids! I don’t like them talking like any of this is going to happen, and I especially don’t like them talking about my baby-making features. It freaks me out in about ten different directions.
“What are you going to do if she doesn’t care for him?” Otto says.
“She’ll care. I know my kid.” My dad’s laugh starts to sound like a braying donkey. I’m sick from my stomach up to my jaw, and he keeps hee-hawing. “So, we’re business partners now, right?”
“Right,” Otto says. They clunk something. I think it’s their soup bowls. They’ve got to be off-the-scales-drunk if either of them thinks that my dad has a business, or is in business, or can run a business. He’s been laid off, and collecting state aid, for the last three years.
“We buy the tractor tomorrow,” my father says.
“With my money,” Otto adds with a slurp.
“And I cut the lawns, with my back.”
“Until you build up the business,” Otto says. “Then you retire.”
“Can’t thank you enough,” my father slurs.
“We’re family, Jerry. Loyal and trusting family, correct?”
“Of course, correct!”
There’s a pause, and then, a wet clap of their hands, in what I assume is a handshake on the deal.
“Ok, so let’s drink on it,” Otto mumbles. “We need to make a toast!”
“There’s no toast here,” my father says. “There’s nothing here but my daughter.”
I suck in a breath at the implication, but the two just laugh together.
“You have a beautiful daughter, Jerry!” Otto says. “My son will be very happy to have her as his wife!”
“Of course he will!” my father shouts and laughs as I escape down the hall in absolute panic.
********
Sher picks up my call on the first ring.
“Hey,” she says. “What up, my sista?”
“My dad’s drunk,” I begin, and she yawns.
“So, what’s new?” she says. “He didn’t bring home another weirdo, did he? You want to come over? I can come get you.”
Sher would, too. She wouldn’t come over and knock on the door though. Sher and I devised an emergency plan years ago. She comes over, stands under my bedroom window, catches my gym bag, and holds the end of the knotted sheet ladder that I use to escape. We finally figured out, the second time we did it, that we had to weight the end of the sheet with rocks and toss it back through my window, so Mrs. Coley, from downstairs, didn’t call the cops about it. One time she did, the cops got my dad for drunk and disorderly, because, when the cops showed up, my dad got even more disorderly about Mrs. Coley calling the cops on him.
“No, listen!” I hiss into the phone. Instead of being mad or hanging up, Sher goes quiet on her end. No one in the whole world knows me like Sher does, and she knows that this is serious if I’m hissing. “He brought home some guy named Otto and, dude...they started talking about my virginity. I’m totally skeeved out.”
“Holy crap,” Sher says. “Ok, I’m coming to get you. You got the chair under your door knob already, right?”
“Yeah, but wait. It’s not like that. My dad and this guy were talking about going into business together, I think they’re...I don’t know for sure, but it sounded like they’re going to be cutting lawns. They’re buying a tractor tomorrow. And then they started talking about me marrying somebody named Oscar. I guess it’s the guy’s son.”
“What the fuck?” Sher says. “An arranged marriage? What are they, from the old country now?” She puts on a foreign accent and continues, “I swap you two turkey for my daughter’s pussy. Yeah? Yeah? You like? You want?”
I’d answer her, but I was finally getting brain-whomped by what had just happened. Sher keeps going in my absence.
“And what kind of name is Oscar anyway?” she squawks. “That’s the ugliest name I’ve ever heard. Oscar the Grouch, Oscar from the Old Couple...”
“Odd Couple,” I correct her distractedly.
“Oscar Meyer Weiner!” I hear Sher slap her own head on the other end of the phone line. “You’re not marrying any old Weiner your dad drags home, Hale. I won’t let you. You know this kid’s got to be a hot mess with a name like...”
“My dad can’t do this, can he?” I ask.
“No! Hell no! You’re eighteen!” Sher says, but then there’s a long pause. “It’s gotta be against the constitution or something.”
“Even if he’s my dad and I’m living in his house?”
“It’d be like sex slavery.”
“I don’t think it’s sex slavery if I’m married.” My hands are shaking. I rub my damp palms against my knees. “I don’t have to agree to getting married though.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Sher says, but her voice is so tiny and scared that a new coat of sweat breaks out on my palms. “You wanna run away and live at my house? I’ll come hold the sheet for you.”
“Nah,” I try to laugh. I can’t go live at Sher’s. Her family is even more broke than we are. Her mom’s trying to raise five kids on her own. When I go there to spend the night, we have to squeeze into bed with Sher’s younger sister, who wets the bed when she sleeps too deeply. Sher’s mom is nice, but always worn out from work, and too exhausted to sit there and listen to problems that belong to other kids, let alone her own. Even when my dad was thrown in the slammer for his last disorderly, she listened warily for a minute, and then patted my knee mid-sentence and told me I could stay, but, I’d eventually have to bring my own food.
“Maybe they’re just talking smack because they’re super drunk,” Sher says. I can hear the frightened pity in her voice. It makes me cringe. She adds, “Dude, they totally have to be. I mean, who has arranged marriages in the United States? I mean, we are in the new millennium and shit, right?”
********
I un-prop my chair from the doorknob in the morning, but I feel kind of sick. It’s that icky feeling of waking up, thinking everything is okay, and then realizing it’s probably not. I scope out the hall, listening for foreign snoring or signs of wreckage, but the apartment seems in order and I hear the coffee pot burbling. Someone is around.
I creep down the hall and catch sight of my dad at the table, his head cradled in one hand as he looks over the paper. I let out a relived sigh. If he’s looking through the want ads, it’s got to mean that all the business talk and backroom-vagina-deals are off. He scours the Help Wanted ads every morning, over his cup of sobering coffee, but gives up by the afternoon and heads off to the bar. It’s a familiar rinse-and-repeat cycle.
“Hey, Dad,” I say, after I check for visitors and find none. “How are you feeling?”
He looks up from his paper with his sad hound dog eyes, and the father that I love, the one who I stick around for, is here, his coffee mug at his elbow. He never waits for the pot to finish before stealing a cup.
“Hey, honey,” he says, motioning to the seat across the table from his, “come talk to me.”
“Sure,” I say, dropping into the opposite chair. Dad folds the paper and pushes it to the side of the table, takes a deep breath, and lets it out. I hold my own breath, so whatever’s left of last night’s keg, still on his tongue, doesn’t pummel me.
“I got good news,” he begins. I lift my eyebrows encouragingly. Sometimes good news means he’s found under-the-table work and, sometimes, it means the lights won’t be turned off, but the heat will. I wait to hear if there is a bad news chaser, before I commit to any excitement.
“Me and Otto Maree were out talking last night,” he says.
“I know. You were here. Eating soup. Remember?”
“Oh yeah.” My father smiles and, for a second, his eyes meet mine, before diving back down the length of the table. “Well, we got to talking and we came up with a plan.”
“A lawn cutting business, right?” I say, but my gut is doing sick little somersaults. I know they talked about cutting grass, but it didn’t seem like that was what they were really talking about.
“Right. Lawn cutting. I guess you heard most of it, eh?”
“Not everything.”
“Mmm,” he grunts. “Okay, well, I made a decision. Otto’s got a good bit of money and...”
“How do you even know him?” My dad always thinks everyone else has a ton of money. I assume it’s because, in comparison to us, they do, but even a guy with twenty bucks in a savings account is rich in my dad’s eyes.
“We grew up together. Our parents were neighbors, good friends. We were buddies back in the day, but when I left high school to bust my ass in the factories, Maree went off and got his degree. He’s done really good for himself. He’s got some money, and he’s decided he wants to help me out, since we’re old friends. He wants to make an investment.”
“Dad,” I sigh. These investments, no matter who they’re with, never work out well. My dad’s tried flipping houses that nearly trapped us beneath their epic financial failures. He’s sold ‘green planet’ soaps, magazines, and used computers from the back of his car. He’s tele-marketed, and he’s collected scrap metal. Nothing’s worked, and pretty much every time he’s tried, we’ve ended up a little worse off than we were before.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he says. “But don’t say it. Not this time, honey. This isn’t pie-in- the-sky kind of work. This is real, blue-collar stuff. We might not end up rich, but we’re definitely going to get ourselves out of the red for good this time.”
“Cutting lawns,” I repeat, hiking up a doubtful lip. He frowns.
“You got to have some faith in this one, Hale. This is an old friend. Our families go way back, and I know it’s going to work. Otto’s got money to invest and I’ve got nothing to do but work, so it’s a perfect arrangement. He’s gonna set me up with a van, and a trailer, and all the stuff I need to do lawns.”
“This doesn’t sound right,” I say. “What’s he getting out of it?”
“Money.” My dad shrugs, but he looks away as he sips his coffee. “He just wants to give a good ol’ friend a hand, and I’m taking it, Hale. Damn it, we’re taking it. And that’s another thing I have to talk to you about.”
My stomach does a back flip, the kind that fails mid-leap, and my guts fall straight into my feet. I think of the whole Hale’s-a-virgin-Oscar’s-not-a-beater-let’s-have-grandkids discussion from last night. My dad rubs his nose a couple times with his palm. He does that when he’s trying to think of how to explain something to me that I’m not going to like. I take a deep breath and start for him.
“I heard you talking to that guy,” I say.
“Honey, it ain’t what it seems like,” he says, rubbing his nose again. “Well, it is, but I made a deal and we’re going to do it. Aside from anything else, this is our last chance, Hale. For both of us. It’s not like I got a fancy degree. I don’t even got my high school diploma. But Otto Maree’s got a lot of money and I was in the wrong spot at the right time. This is gonna work out. It can get us both off the state aid, and it can get us on our feet for good. He’s got to know he can trust me, so we’re forming more than a partnership here, baby, we’re forming a family alliance.”
That’s what they’re calling this. A pretty face on an ugly deal.
“Why is it so important that he trusts you?” I ask. My father gets a really distant look in his eyes, like he’s looking through my head at the wall. When he doesn’t answer, I say, “Are you seriously thinking I’m going to just marry some guy I’ve never even met?”
My dad straightens up in his chair. His old, blue, terry cloth robe droops to one side. He flexes a fist on the table, and I see the muscles respond all the way up to his neck. My dad’s a powerful man, and even though he’s never once laid a hand on me, he’s put a fist through the wall before. Well, one time. But it’s stuck with me and makes me worry that he’ll do it again, or that at some point, he’ll make a mistake and put it through me.
“You’re gonna meet Oscar soon,” he says, with a strained, but gentle, tone. He flattens his palm on the table when he catches me staring at his hand. “But this is it, Hale. We’re beyond broke. There’s nothing. We’re going to end up homeless in another couple weeks, unless we figure something out. What’s happened with Otto, well, it’s awful to say, but it couldn’t have happened at a better time for us.”
“We can figure something else out,” I say, but he shakes his head, and I can tell he’s not going to give in. He’s glued this ridiculous idea to his brain, and there is no pulling it off.
“This is already figured out,” he says, his voice dropping to a growl. “It’s already happened, and it’s not so bad if you just think about it the right way. It’s our one chance, and you gotta see it for what it is. You play your cards right, and you won’t be eating out of soup cans all your life. You won’t have to worry about ever being homeless. You’ll have a house and a family and...”
“And a life I didn’t want!” I snap. My father rubs his chin.
“Hale,” he says softly. My dad, the guy he used to be before my mom couldn’t take it anymore and left us both, suddenly reaches over the table and puts his big, bear-paw of a hand on mine. “I’m pretty sure the one we’re living right now ain’t the one you want either, honey. But this is the best I can do for you.”
