Since he quit drinking, Dad arrives early to pick me up. He parks at the Petro Canada down the bend, waits for my call, then drives the five-or-so minutes of bumper to bumper, holding me on the phone until one of us spots the other. I wait under the glare of the YVR arrivals terminal for his Dodge Ram to appear, greeted by the cool, clean smell of dew, so foreign to me now.
A silver Dodge creeps into view several cars down. I make out the edges of Dad’s face though the windshield, barely visible behind the glare of oncoming headlights stopping and weaving, doors opening with expectant families. He pulls over next to them, blocking traffic as I shove my suitcase into the backseat, scraping it over some tools and an old McDonald’s bag. I hoist myself up into the dense cigarette haze next to him.
“Heyyyy, Daughter,” he smiles a soft half smile at me. His face has thinned some since last year I notice as he flicks his cigarette out the window.
On the drive we smoke some weed. A doobie, as Dad calls it. He smokes it because he wants to, I smoke it so I won’t worry about him smoking. I look at him, a familiar image: his silhouette, barely visible against the heavy darkness of a late pickup, a red ember hanging an inch or two off his fingers.
“Roy’s on his way out,” he tells me, eyes on the road.
“What do you mean?”
“Little Roy? You remember him. He’s living next door with Brandi now. Poor fucker’s lost his marbles. He’s all fucking emaciated and shit, refuses to eat. Hasn’t paid rent either.”
“Sounds like he needs to see a doctor.”
“Nope, won’t see a doctor. He gets all aggravated and won’t talk to anyone.”
“That’s awful,” I say, semi-stoned, unable to think up much more. The construction lights in the distance swirl and overwhelm me to the point where I can’t tell what is what or how far away. Dad is unfazed; he drives high all the time. I try to think back on Roy. My last memory of him is from when I was three and that wall of boards that had been leaned up against his and Dad’s shed toppled down over my head. They’d been roommates back then. Dad tended the abrasions on my head while Roy made me Mr. Noodles, the chicken flavor, all crushed up the way I liked it.
“I didn’t know you guys were still in touch,” I say aloud—much less that he was living with my stepsister Brandi.
“Not really. He and Brandi are friends though.”
Dad’s house is on a farm on the outskirts of the city—or what used to be a farm before they moved in several years ago. There are no animals now, or tilled land. Just Dad and Tanya in one house, Brandi, Justin, and their kids in the other. And Roy too, I guess. Maybe to help with rent.
“That’s the veggie garden I was telling you about on the phone,” Dad motions as we pull up towards a little greenhouse-looking shed not too far from the house.
“In the shed?” I ask.
“Nope, that’s where I’ve got my weed plants. Four’s legal baby!” He says, a notable air of glee in his voice. “No, right in front of it.” He wags his finger around the area. I squint. “I’ll show you better in the morning.”
The rest of the yard is scattered with vehicles—four trucks in various stages of life, a couple cars, and four RV trailers. It seems someone, or a group of someones, is living in the big one furthest from the house, near the old wooden round pen I imagine past residents would have used to train horses. A spray of orange light escapes as the door opens, a collection of laughter and raised voices tumbling out with a man headed towards the bushes.
“Stacy’s living over there,” Dad says, walking me over to the smaller RV next to his house. “You remember your cousin Stacy?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Buncha partiers,” he says, opening the screen door and fiddling with a light switch overhead. Dad sent me some pictures from inside a couple days ago, showing me how Tanya and him fixed it up so I’d have somewhere nice to sleep. The pictures made it look cheerful enough: a tiny kitchen with wood countertops and a diner-style booth; a bedroom with a full, freshly-made bed framed by a mirror radiating a gold, July sun. Cute and cozy in its own 1970s way. Standing here now, something about the smallness just feels lonely.
“Here’s the Keurig,” Dad shows me. “Tanya stocked it up so you won’t have to come in for coffee in the morning.”
He shows me the rest. The dusty Pepto-pink carpet floors and undersized RV toilet with its yellowing bowl creep me out. In the bedroom, Dad catches my eyes on a black splotch of the upholstered ceiling.
“It’s not mold, don’t worry,” he says. I shake my head and offer a reassuring smile.
“This is for the flies,” he says, picking up a plastic fly swatter. “Damn buggers are everywhere.” He punctuates the last word with a swat towards one of the buzzing bodies. I hear a tiny thunk as the plastic hand knocks it out of the air.
“Nice,” I say.
“I’ve gotten pretty good at that, eh?” I give him a good-humored chuckle. “Alright sweetheart. I’ll leave you to it.”
“I thought maybe I’d come in for a bit?”
“Let’s catch up tomorrow,” Dad says. “Tanya’s probably asleep.”
“Ah, got you.” I nod. “Ok well, goodnight.”
“Night, sweetheart.”
I change into my pajamas, standing on my shoes as I step into each leg, careful not to let my bare feet touch the suspicious marbling of the carpet. With Dad gone, the quiet of the room draws on me like a leech, familiar to my visits as a kid. I pull out my phone to check the time: 12:02am. I stare at the screen and sigh, wondering why I booked so many days here. You never fucking learn, Hannah.
The morning sun seeps through the room’s cream curtains a diffuse warm glow—gently waking me up. This kind of sunlight seems to elude the concrete summers back in Toronto. A soft, refracted yellow bouncing off the tall grasses around me—unique to farmland, maybe. This isn’t so bad. A slight twinge of guilt nags at me for being so critical the night before. I close my eyes once again, savoring the sublime feeling of being half awake.
My phone buzzes next to me: my dad. “Morning Papa,” I yawn.
“Goood morning, daughter.” He says the first word like an engine revving, gathering momentum. I feel a sort of intimacy talking to him on the phone so close by, as if we were speaking through cans in our hands joined by a string dangling between his window and mine. In the many years since I moved to Toronto, most of our relationship happens over the phone. I suspect it’s better this way. He has speculated the same to me. Less time to get fed up with me, he said.
“How’d you sleep?” He asks.
“Great,” I say, truthfully.
“Bed nice and cozy?”
“Yeah, the mattress is great.”
“We lucked out with that one. Goes for something like two grand brand new. Tanya and I picked it up on a Canadian Mattress Recycling job last—” I wait as he coughs through one of his familiar chest-racking spells. “Mmm, sorry. Last month.”
“All good?”
“Yeah.” He takes a moment to clear his throat and spit. “Man am I getting tired of smoking.” Cigarettes, he means. I doubt he’ll ever tire of weed.
“Oh?”
“I don’t even enjoy it anymore.” “Yeah, it doesn’t seem enjoyable.”
“It’s not,” he confirms. “It really isn’t.”
A couple voices rise up from outside my window. I lean over, moving the curtains to the side, only half listening to Dad as he picks up the mattress topic once more. Two guys are out there—a short scrawny one wreaking havoc in the now-visible vegetable garden, the other about fifty feet off towards one of the trailers.
“It’s barely worth our time, but they’re a good source of—”
“Hey Dad,” I interrupt. “Something’s going on outside.” The second man raises his hands in a supplicating shrug and turns to leave. “Looks like someone messing around in the garden. Is that—?”
“Fuck’s sake. It must be Roy again.” I hear Dad get up and walk into another room, pull some curtains back. “Yep, that’s him.” The scrape of a window opening screeches over the line. “Roy! Fuck’re you doing, man?”
I hear Roy shout something back at him, incoherent.
“Get the fuck outta there!” Dad yells, pauses. “I need to deal with this,” he says to me, hanging up.
Dad appears striding out from the kitchen door in some slides and a green and blue robe barely long enough to cover his knees. I slip out to stand in the door frame of my RV, worried.
“Roy, what the fuck man?” Dad hollers at him. Roy is yanking vegetables out of the dirt by the stem and throwing them left and right. “Stop that shit!” Roy throws furtive looks behind him as Dad approaches, grumbling loudly some words I can’t make out. Dad puts a hand on his shoulder. Roy shakes him off.
“Roy, what’re you doing to my garden?” Dad asks, grabbing both his shoulders this time to pull him away from the plants.
“Get off of me!” Roy yells back at him, whirling around, pushing, elbowing, throwing fists. He must be a foot shorter than my dad, no more than 5’1 and thin as a rail. Dad backs up, keeping Roy’s fists from landing on him, but Roy moves towards him, flinging and flailing his limbs like a tornado. Dad grabs one arm, then the other with apparent difficulty. Roy keeps struggling, squirming and banging his head back into my dad’s chest. Given how sickly he looks, I’m surprised he has so much energy.
“Chill the fuck out man!” Dad says. Roy twists and buckles his torso forward, trying to loosen himself. “HEY!” Dad yells, more forceful than before. “Do I need to punch you out, man?”
Roy finally seems to give in, his squirms and bucks becoming less violent. Dad shoves him away from the garden and towards Brandi’s house.
“Go chill out, man. Take a shower or something.” Roy storms away back towards Brandi’s carport, casting frenzied looks back at him.
“Fuck you Silas!” He shouts.
We watch him go.
“Sorry about that,” Dad says, approaching my RV.
“What’s wrong with him? Is he using drugs?”
“No…” Dad says unconvincingly.
“He used to?”
“Only occasionally.”
“What’s occasionally?” Dad just shrugs.
“Shouldn’t you guys call someone or something?”
“Not much we can do,” he says, looking back towards Brandi’s. “He doesn’t want to see a doctor.”
I frown, not sure how much to push on this. Back in Toronto, this is the sort of thing you’d call a social worker for.
“I’m going to head in,” Dad says. “Fix up some more coffee.”
Up in Dad’s office, I pour a cup of French press and root around the mini fridge for the cream. Red fly paper hangs in spiral strips from the ceiling, several juicy creatures stuck to each one. The ashtray next to his mousepad is full. The smell of stale cigarettes mixing with the live one perched between his fingers comes close to masking the smell of cat pee that permeates most of the house.
Dad fixes me up a bowl of blueberries from the ten-pound box he bought off one of the farms down the street. A couple strays bounce around the counter as he pours them straight from the box, funneling them with the base of his palms. He grabs a big handful for himself. I sample a couple from my bowl. They are perfect, taste like home and summertime.
“How come you moved your office up here?” I ask. “What happened to the space downstairs?”
“Ah, I let that place go to shit,” he sighs. “Too much crap in it now.”
“Oh, no. It seemed like such a good setup with the monitor and couch and everything.”
“Yeah,” he says, pausing to take a drag off his cigarette. “The fucking cats went ahead and pissed all over the leather. We should really get them fixed.”
“Damn, cat pee is the worst,” I sympathize, wondering if he’s not aware the whole house smells like it.
“Yeah, we’ve been having problems with them. I just feel bad, poor things, taking them to get their nuts chopped off. They shouldn’t call it fixed, they should call it broken.” He chuckles at his joke. “Anyway, figured I may as well move up here and give Sherri a little extra privacy down there.”
“Who’s Sherri?” I ask.
“You’ve met Sherri.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, rubbing my temple, a headache already coming on from the smoke.
“Really? She moved in a while ago downstairs. We set her up in the living room.”
“Ah, that’s why there’s those dividers now.” I’ve never understood Dad’s willingness—eargerness, even—to have so many adult roommates. Most of them are crazy or at least a little sketchy.
We sit, sipping our coffee, some quantum physics video on YouTube playing in the background.
“This guy’s really great,” he tells me. “Like a more advanced Neil deGrasse Tyson.” We’re both physics fans, though Dad more-so than me. We talk about his theories sometimes over the phone. He doesn’t have many people to discuss that kind of stuff with around here.
Tanya comes in, dressed in black cargo pants and a purple top bedazzled in the shape of a gothic butterfly. Her hair is in her signature teased messy bun, this year undyed to reveal a golden-silver mix not far off from blond.
“Morning!” She says.
“Morning!” I say.
“Got your coffee?” She asks me, refilling her own cup.
“Yes, thank you!”
“The machine I set up in the RV not working?” She asks, adding the cream.
“Oh, no, it is. I just figured I’d come in and chat with Dad.” I sip my coffee, wondering, as I often do with her, if I am projecting or if she would have preferred I made my own.
“I’ll make some more,” she says, flinging the grounds out the window and starting fresh. “So, how’s Toronto?” She asks. “You must be so busy over there, so much to do!”
“Yeah, it’s nice!”
“Your Dad says you just started a fancy new publishing job.”
“Oh, it’s not fancy. Just copy editing, mostly.” She doesn’t ask for details. “How’s work been here?”
“Not bad. Same old.”
“How’re Brandi and the kids?”
“Good!”
“Kyson must be getting big now.”
“Yeah, he just turned three.”
“Lola’s a full-grown teenager now,” Dad says proudly.
“Well, barely,” Tanya says. “She just turned thirteen.”
“Got a boyfriend and everything,” Dad says, as if that confirms her teenage status in some way. I suppose it does. “He comes to work for us occasionally.”
“Cute. That’s nice,” I say. Lola irritates me. Everyone around here babies her, including my dad.
“Hey, you wanna tag along today?” Dad asks. “We’ve got a demo job down in Vancouver.”
“I was thinking I might just hang around here. Maybe go for a walk.”
“Alrighty. Well, we’re going to take off in a minute here” Dad says.
“Okay, I’ll leave you guys to it, then.”
“See ya sweetheart.”
“Bye Hannah,” Tanya says as I turn to leave.
On my way out I stop by next door to say hi to Brandi—get the usual awkwardness out of the way. It’s not that I don’t like her, we’ve just never had anything to talk about. I always thought it was the age gap, but now that we’re all adults it seems it’s just the way things are. I draw up a few paces from where she stands in her carport and wave.
“Hey Brandi!”
I catch the side of her eye before she turns away, back hunched and angular. She’s on the phone, I realize—sobbing, distressed. I assume she’s been arguing with Justin. From what Dad has told me he’s been slacking off—doing more coke, pulling away from her and the kids since Kyson was born. Kyson runs out to me. He doesn’t say anything. I assume he doesn’t recognize me, but he looks up at me with eyes wide, arms stretched up.
“Hi Kyson,” I say, stalling to avoid bending down. Kids freak me out—never had to deal with them as the youngest. I want to urge him back into the carport and escape on my walk, extract myself from the awkwardness of the situation. I look around for one of the many people who live here, hoping to see Lola or one of Brandi’s friends. No one is here. I’m trapped. Don’t be a piece of shit, I tell myself. Pick up the kid.
I watch Kyson for a couple hours, struggling to keep him entertained. I know nothing of toddlers or how to amuse them. You don’t really get kids in Toronto. Everyone’s chasing their own thing, nothing like here. He tires of Legos; he wants to find Amma.
“Amma’s not here, she went to work with Ampa. It’s just you ‘n’ me.” He looks around, dissatisfied with this—with me, this partial stranger. He wants to touch things he shouldn’t touch, he wants to go home to his mom’s. I look out the living room window to find a cop car settled onto the dead grasses of the driveway. I orient us away, towards my RV.
“Let’s go see where I live! Do you want to see where I live?”
He toddles around my pink carpet babbling and playing at swatting flies, but I can’t understand most of what he says. Much of it is contradictory.
“What’s that little man?”
He repeats himself, getting frustrated, but it’s still lost on me.
The police are here, I text Dad. I’m watching Ky.
Okay. Do you need me to do anything or are you just letting me know? I realize I don’t know. I’m not sure why I assumed he’d just rush home.
I try to keep Ky distracted. We play backgammon, moving the pieces around aimlessly. I follow him as he hides things—highlighters, bike lights, soap, trinkets. I make a mental note of where he puts everything so I won’t have to answer to Tanya. We look for “keys!” which I learn means kitties. We look for “Ampa!” though I know he’s not here. I make him toast and am pleased when he eats it. He sits there on the grown-up chair, kicking his legs, placing the toast on the glass table as far away as he can, then reaching for it again to put back in his mouth.
“I’m bored!” He tells me, loud and clear.
Tanya gets home, her teased hair a little more ruffled since she left, and I unload him on her, trying not to seem overeager.
“Thanks for watching him,” she says. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course!” I say, as if it's my pleasure. We both smile, pretending to buy it.
Tanya brings me up to speed: Roy has died.
Dad tells me they won’t move the body until the police have finished their investigation.
“Apparently they treat all deaths as a potential homicide, no matter the circumstances” he explains, seeing my alarm.
Everyone is gathered in Brandi’s carport: Dad, Tanya, Brandi, Justin, their daughter Lola, Lola’s boyfriend, Ky, me. Roy’s foster sister is here too, a woman no one has met before. Tanya made sandwiches, which somehow makes the whole thing feel like a wake. The Sister is telling us about all the traumas she and Roy endured growing up in their foster home. She asks for pictures of Roy and no one has any.
“Oh. None?” She asks, probing with glossy eyes.
“You don't have any pictures of him from childhood?” Tanya asks her in turn.
“No… Well, I have one.” She doesn’t say more.
“Here’s his driver’s license,” someone says, removing it from his wallet.
“Oh, thank you.” She looks down at the photo, turning it around in her fingers. Finally, Brandi confirms some photos from someone over the phone.
The sister recounts a story of being choked out by an older foster brother.
“He would hold me up by the throat,” she says, miming the scene with her hands. “With my legs kicking under me for minutes at a time.”
“But didn’t your foster parents do anything?” Tanya asks.
“Oh, well, they could tell something was wrong when they got home cause I kept on coughing, but I never told them.”
Dad tries to relate to her, offering some not-so-traumatic childhood story of how my aunt used to stuff socks in his mouth. I turn away, squirming under the discomfort of it all. I wish he knew sometimes people don’t want you to relate to their pain. I look at The Sister, wondering what she thinks of his story. Having gained little reaction, Dad redirects his attention to Lola’s boyfriend who is next to Lola, playing with a pet bird. The Boyfriend strikes me as fairly useless and lacking some vital brain cells. He and Dad take turns letting the bird crawl over the backs of their necks. I’ve always gotten the sense Dad would’ve preferred a boy, but maybe that’s unfair. I try to control the outward look of disapproval I can feel pulling at my upper lip. I wonder why the bird doesn’t just fly away.
Tanya, for her part, is being a good listener and perhaps the only one treating the situation with the appropriate reverence. She asks follow-up questions and offers sympathetic smiles at the right moments. I try to go unnoticed, wishing I could extract myself from the situation and go hide in my RV. I look over to find Justin and The Boyfriend playing monkey in the middle with Kyson as the monkey running with his arms stretched up, squealing loudly as The Sister recounts another time she was beaten in the foster home.
“Roy seemed quite well adjusted considering this kind of childhood,” Dad says. She pauses, then continues to another story.
Brandi runs off to the yard where Justin’s new dog, a gigantic pitbull mix probably twice her weight, has escaped. Justin yells something I don’t quite catch, laughing after her.
“Shouldn’t someone help Brandi?” I whisper to my dad. He cranes his neck around in his chair looking for her but she has turned the corner beyond the house.
“She’ll be alright,” he says. I feel unsure what to do. It is clear to me, but somehow does not seem clear to anyone else, that Brandi is on the brink of collapse. I offer her a sandwich, my chair when she gets back, but she can’t eat, can’t sit. Her eyes are sunken with excess water lining the corners and bottoms. Her breaths are loud and shaky. No one is helping—The Sister trauma dumping, Kyson squealing, The Boyfriend pestering. I can tell Brandi finds him insufferable. I see her bristling at him as he asks for something: a snack, water, maybe. He offers her some weed and she takes it.
“Hey Ky!” Dad calls out, striding over to him, still running between Justin and The Boyfriend. “Can I play?”
“Ya! Ampa!” Ky shouts. Dad picks him up and starts ferrying him back and forth as the ball continues flying from hand to hand.
“You gotta catch it, Ky!”
Ky laughs and laughs, little giggles and shrieks piercing the air over The Sister’s trauma as his arms flail for the ball.
Dad slows down for a moment, a series of coughs building in his chest. “Ball, Ampa!” Ky whines.
“One sec, Ky,” Dad says, setting him down. The Boyfriend gives him a slap on the back but Dad only coughs louder and deeper. By now everyone is looking at him, including The Sister.
“Jesusss!” Justin calls at him. “You gotta lay off the smokes, man.” His tone carries less concern than delight in pointing out the obvious.
“Bro, you sound like a broken lawn mower getting ripped,” The Boyfriend says, cackling at his own joke. Dad acknowledges him with a quick raise of his eyebrows as he keeps coughing.
“Mmm!” He finally clears his throat. “That’s nothing. Back when I was drinking, my hemoglobin was so low I used to pass out in the middle of it.”
“Woah!” The Boyfriend is clearly impressed. “How long you been smoking?”
“I had my first cigarette when I was ten,” Dad says.
“Wo-hoah!” The Boyfriend says.
“Stole it from my pops. Didn’t really get going till I was about thirteen though.”
“You ever try to quit?” Justin asks.
“No,” says Dad. “I figure I will when I’m ready. I don’t like failing at things,” he says plainly. “Failing sucks.”
“Hey, true that,” Brandi says.
Dad starts to chuckle. “I remember when Hannah was a kid, we were driving back from a camping trip—you must’ve been about seven or eight at this point, Hannah. And I’d crack just the window next to me whenever we were driving so the vacuum’d suck the smoke out away from her.”
“The hell kind of tactic is that?” Justin laughs.
“Yeah, it didn’t really work, it would still get all smoky and shit. Hannah was always trying to get me to quit, but she was too polite to ever complain—”
“Aw,” Brandi laughs.
“So anyway, one day we’re driving back from this camping trip and she’s in the back cause she’s still too young to be sitting up in the front, and I look in the rearview mirror and there she is, sitting in the back with the goggles and snorkel mask on, and she’s got the breathing nozzle sticking out the window.” Dad melts into his usual gentle laughter, tears gathering in the creases of his eyes. “Didn’t say anything, just sat there breathing out the snorkel for fresh air.”
Everyone laughs.
“That’s fucking hilarious, man,” Justin says.
“That was inventive,” Dad takes his glasses off to wipe his eyes, still chuckling. “That finally got me to quit smoking in the car.”
I pretend to laugh along with them, but I don’t find it funny. I used to try my hardest as a kid every chance I had to get Dad to quit smoking, not just because it gave me a headache to be near him but because I was convinced the smoking meant he was going to die. I couldn’t understand why no one around him cared that he chain smoked nonstop. I took it as proof that they didn’t care about him as much as I did. Getting him to quit doing it with me in the car, at least until I got older, was my only victory.
I gather up the empty plates from the sandwiches and excuse myself back to Dad’s to make more. I set the plates on the counter and look around for the sandwich fixings. A couple horseflies whizz around the room, unperturbed by their friends stuck to the red strips hanging from the ceiling like forgotten party streamers. What could they have done anyway? Probably just have gotten stuck themselves. A clear, faintly pink liquid sits about an inch deep in one of the crispers in the fridge, recalling thawed turkey juice. I try to convince myself it's not. It would have to be from Easter, and that’s a scary thought.
I remember when Dad and Tanya and all three stepsisters were living in their first house, almost two decades ago now. He and Tanya had always kept it clean and cozy. Beaded cushions, fluffy throws, scented candles. My mom and I couldn’t afford any of those things, so I found them all luxurious. I loved their house. I remember being in the kitchen as a youngster when Dad first taught me to clean up after myself.
“You always want to leave a place better than you found it,” he said, gathering up some crumbs.
I’d taken this to heart, especially on my visits with him. I always rinsed the toothpaste from the sink after brushing my teeth, was sure to fold up the blankets and pile them tidily on the couch as soon as I woke in the morning. I could tell he was proud of that—that he didn’t have to remind me, didn’t even have to ask. That his kid, barely five years old and so much younger than her stepsisters, was the tidiest one in the house. That made me proud too. Hard to believe now; it seems they’ve entirely given up—let the place go to shit, as he said.
I pull out the bread, cheese, ham, and mustard and set about prepping the sandwiches. I can’t find a cutting board, so I chop everything on one of the plates. I wonder if I should say anything to him—about the mess, the smoking, the person dead next door—but I can’t imagine how without being hurtful. It’s not that he’s incapable of change. It’s possible that, as he seems to think, one day he’ll wake up and be so fed up with this that he’ll change. I don’t know. It’s possible; he did it with the drinking. But it seems possibly more likely he’ll die the same in this mess of a house, having never felt it was the right time. I feel depressed at the idea—the possibility of him dying, of course, but also at the embarrassing failure of it all and the inescapable fact that I’ve given up doing anything about it.
I arrange the sandwiches on two plates and look outside. I can see Dad in the carport gesticulating wildly in front of everyone, telling some crazy story in his animated way that always manages to bewitch everyone. They love him, hang off his every word. I love him too, of course. A stab of panic slashes through me. It must be how mothers feel all the time.
I bring the sandwiches out and return to the kitchen unnoticed to wash up.
Dad comes in to start prepping dinner: barbecued hamburgers and pork chops with Greek salad. He makes the salad every time I visit—a tradition started I don’t remember when. He starts to tell me about his latest physics theory.
“Time isn’t the fourth dimension, it’s the first. Because in order to make a line, to get from one point to another, you need time.”
“That makes sense,” I nod.
“So, if you have time as the first dimension, not the fourth, the universe is essentially a tetrahedron with four sides that multiply indefinitely within themselves—that’s density—and then—”
“Wait, so are you saying the line dimension is actually just time, or a point plus time?”
“Well—” Dad pauses to think for a moment.
“It sounds like you think it’s the latter.”
“Well, the really cool thing about it all, Hannah, is it’s completely applicable to life. Everything in life is never one thing; it’s four, like the tetrahedron. It’s multidimensional. That’s the problem with Justin—hell, with everybody: they only think one dimensionally. He’s so damaged from his own bullshit and trauma that all he can think about is me, me, me. ‘I don’t deserve this,’ ‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’ He never stops to think about what other people deserve or all the ways that he’s wrong—because even if he’s right, nothing is ever one thing. Everything is both right and wrong. Hell, I do it too. We all have to be thinking four dimensional.”
“Yeah,” I agree with him. “I’m with you.”
“You’re pretty good at that. Like with your articles—you don’t stop at one point or a line. You’re constantly building tetrahedrons that other people can’t even conceive of.”
“Thanks,” I say, somewhat uncomfortable.
“You deal in units man, you don’t deal in particles.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Keep it up, kiddo,” he smiles. “This is about ready to go I think,” he says, referring to the food. “I’ll go heat up the grill. Could you grab me some lettuce for the burgers? There should be some growing next to the tomatoes in the garden.”
“Yep.”
Outside, Tanya is hacking the bushes behind my RV with some gardening shears. Kyson is waving at me through the window of my room. I am yards away, unsure how he got in and surprised he can see me. I strain my eyes and see the silhouette of an adult with him. He and Brandi come out to talk to Tanya.
“Up Amma!” She reaches down to pick him up and he squeals with joy, swiveling in her arms this way and that, determined, like all toddlers, to see everything, to miss nothing. It all looks so effortless to them. I suppose it must be—it’s their life. I turn to the lettuce, picking out the biggest leaves from the young green tufts sprouting out of the planter. I pick one of the tomatoes and rub my thumb over it, putting it to my nose to take in its green, earthy smell before popping it in my mouth. The last of the light has shifted hue, having receded over the tops of the mountains beyond our tree line, leaving the air a quiver of pink and purple. Dad comes out to start grilling and I walk over, putting the lettuce down next to the other hamburger fixings.
“That’s it?” He asks, chomping on a leaf.
“Yeah, not much,” I say. “They’re still pretty young it looks like.” I hand him a tomato.
“Thanks!” He chomps down on it, too.
One by one the family trickles out onto the concrete slab which makes up a sort of back patio. We bustle about, sourcing enough plates and forks for us all. Tanya has hidden many upstairs and she brings them down, warning us to give them back so they don’t “go missing.” Brandi, Lola, and The Boyfriend joke with my dad, teasing him about things like his barbecuing, laughing over inside jokes. I don’t catch the references, but I sense the closeness between them all and the moments they share here.
Sherri comes out as we’re all filling our plates.
“Hey Sy, you got any smokes?” She asks my dad. It’s the first time I’ve seen her. She appears to be fifty-something, though I can’t quite tell since the sag of her face appears premature. Drugs, I assume. Her long blond hair is frazzly and damaged from too many years of self-applied bleach, judging by the look of it.
“Hello,” I say, about to introduce myself.
“Hi,” she says, still looking to my dad. I wonder if she knows I’m his daughter or if she thinks I’m just another stranger, coming and going. “I just need a pack if you got it.” She strikes me as somewhat pathetic standing there waiting for my dad to remember where he put the carton he’s been selling by the pack. A young girl in an old hag’s body, hands out to a provider.
Brandi passes me the doobie and I take a puff, doing my best to avoid the teasing that will come if I cough. My Dad has a whole life here, one that my stepfamily and all these strangers are more familiar with and entwined in than I am. All these responsibilities he bears them as patriarch of the farm, both landlord and provider—ironic, since he was always one to balk at responsibility. And yet, he's always had a thirst for human connection, an openness and immediate closeness to strangers which I can’t relate to.
I pass the doobie over to The Boyfriend and wonder what to say to Brandi to avoid the topic of Roy. His body has finally been taken away along with The Sister and no one seems intent on discussing his absence further. I realize I never asked how he died.
“Can we go to the car show tonight?” Lola asks my dad.
“What car show?” He asks.
“There’s this fuckin’ bizarre-ass car show, man, every Friday down the street,” answers Brandi. She seems to have relaxed a little. “Just fuckin’ dudes circle jerking around their cars and revving the shit out of their engines.”
“That’s what that obnoxious motorcade I’ve been hearing every week is,” Dad says. “I was wondering what the hell that was.”
“Let’s go Ampa!” Lola whines. “It’s only going for another hour.”
My Dad makes a familiar face which I know means I’m not too sure about that.
“Maybe next week Lola,” he says.
I head inside to grab a Coke. My Dad catches my eye as I return to the patio. I sit next to him at the table now littered with half-eaten burgers and plastic kiddie cups. I load up a second helping of Greek salad. Next to me, Kyson grabs one of the kiddie cups with his tiny kiddie hand and spills some of the apple juice sloshing inside.
“Both hands Ky,” Brandi cautions.
I help him stabilize the cup. “Here you go little man.”
My Dad smiles at me, soft and lopsided. It’s grown dark and I can see the flaming wick of the candle reflected in his right eye. I smile back.