r.kv.r.y. fall 2006 fiction
Designated Driver
by Ed Davis
by Ed Davis
“She’s starved, Glenn.”
Kat glared at me. Though I’d known her only two months—met her at an AA meeting—I was
pretty sure that I loved her, or at least liked her well enough to find out if I loved her. And here
we were arguing at the same old cigarette-burnt butcher’s block kitchen table where my ex and I
had fought.
“Just because I haven’t paid very close attention since Lois left doesn’t make me a bad dad. I
give my daughter plenty.”
“I didn’t say you don’t do things for Tori.” Her voice softened when she argued, unlike Lois’s
that used to whine like a chain-saw when I contradicted her. “But she’s still starved for love since
her mama abandoned her.”
“Died, you mean.”
“Long before that.”
“If I didn’t love the girl, would I have adopted her? Would I have taken some other guy’s kid to
raise?”
She hugged herself, looked away, as if I’d won. I didn’t want to win. I just wanted nobody to
lose.
“Okay, I adopted Tori to impress Lois. Adopting a cute, cuddly one-and-half-year-old was the
easiest thing in the world to do.”
“Then the doll-baby grew up.”
Her smile made it bearable. “So what do you think I should do?”
She blew curly blond hair out of her face like smoke. “Communicate.”
“Yeh, right.”
She rose, kissed my forehead just like Lois used to before the junk had totally taken her soul,
and left. As her Blazer pulled away from the curb, I really wanted to go to work, too. Recovery is
your job right now, Dwayne, my counselor at the treatment center chanted to us over and over.
And it’s full-time. Shit. What I’d give to be up a tree again sawing branches with my Stihl. But
when I stood up and took a step toward the coffeepot, my knee screamed, reminding me that’s
exactly what had gotten me into treatment to begin with. I was lucky, Dwayne said. It only took
you one little fall to hit bottom.
I left St. Christopher’s in plenty of time to beat her home. In group, I’d said “mixed-up” during
feelings inventory. When Dwayne pressed me—you were supposed to say at least three—I
scanned the list and added paralyzed, and though he raised his eyebrows, he went on to Jake
Scanlon who, thank God, had a ton of shit to unload. He’d never gotten back to me. Good
thing. If I wasn’t careful, I’d let it slip that I was in a serious relationship. When Tori banged in
from school at 3:30, I was ready to begin feeding her after all these years of low-cal love.
“Hi, honey. Have a good day?” It was exactly the way Lois used to greet me.
“Fabulous.” She opened the fridge door, leaned inside. “No milk, no juice, no pop,” she listed.
“Honey, could you sit down. I’d like to talk to you.”
She slammed the door and looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Would you please sit down?”
She sat, arms clutching her thin chest. I saw her through Kat’s eyes: backwards baseball cap,
dirty tee-shirt, baggy-ass jeans, not a hint of makeup. She looked like some punk skate-
boarder, not female at all, certainly not a fifteen-year-old female. Did she smoke dope or drink
beer? I didn’t think so.
“What’s up, Pops?”
I had actually liked her calling me that a year or so ago.
“I want to get to know you.”
She clamped her mouth closed, and her eyes got slitty as a snake’s. “Yeh? Like how?”
Her haircut was about as butch as you could get. She’d never had a boyfriend that I knew of.
Her life was soccer soccer soccer. And chess club and fantasy novels. But none of that told me
who she really was.
I spread my hands. “It’s time we got beyond sharing pizzas in front of the tube. We need to
talk to each other. You’re my daughter, for God’s sake.”
She lowered her head and her shoulders slumped. She might as well have sucker- punched me.
“What, you’re not my daughter?”
She studied her shoes: unlaced big red-and-white basketball Nikes she’d picked up for nearly
nothing on sale at Leather for Less. She never asked me for anything beyond the bare
minimum. She’d babysat everybody’s kids in the whole neighborhood since she was twelve to
buy her soccer stuff. All her clothes came from thrift stores, and chess club didn’t cost a dime. I
didn’t exactly keep the larder well-stocked. Maybe Kat had a point, but starved?
“Then . . . what? We’ve lived under the same roof for thirteen and a half of your fifteen years,
the last two just you and me, since . . . ” Since your Ma the junkie abandoned you, I didn’t say.
Didn’t have to. Lois was as present as the smell of Tori’s sweat in the room. “And now, all I’m
asking is for you and me to . . .” To what? “Listen, champ, I’m sorry to bring all this up. I only
wanted . . .”
But she was gone. One second she was sitting there; the next she’d evaporated. And, thanks
to Kat, I’d learned I was not my daughter’s father after all
“So how’d it go?”
We were lying in Kat’s bed, afterward.
“It was good for me. Was it also good for you?”
She punched my arm hard, and even in the room’s semidarkness, I thought I could make out her
scowl.
“She doesn’t consider me her father.”
Silence for several long seconds. Then her soft bed-time voice, a child’s, really.
“Well, she knows she was adopted. She knows why, too.”
Anger shot through me like a tequila slammer. For three seconds I saw the blurry red of
barstools and mirrored whiskey bottles and blood as I took somebody down, somebody’d who’d
said the wrong thing to Glenn Whittaker. Breathe, breathe, I could hear Dwayne say. He knew
we career drunks were emotional retards, and he was trying to teach us, step by step, how to
feel. So first thing every day, we chose words from his stupid list to describe how we felt:
elated, melancholy, defeated, buoyant. My favorite was “beautiful sadness.” We’d crack up when
somebody used it. I sure as hell didn’t know what it meant, and none of those other guys did,
either. Dwayne would just shake his head at us like kids making fart sounds. Eventually we just
abbreviated it: B.S.
I lit a cigarette, took a long hit, passed it to Kat, even though I knew she was trying to quit. She
inhaled deeply, then let it out for a long time. “I want you to talk to Ben.”
I sat up on my elbows. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“It’s not the same with somebody else’s kid. Plus, you’re a man. You can tell him certain things
and he’ll hear you.”
It was a damn good thing I loved this woman. I would’ve been so out of there, otherwise. I saw
Dwayne, his mustache twitching, saying for the thousandth time, Come on guys. Don’t you know
anything about feelings? (Sure we do. Not to have any.) Some genius would chant back, “We
ain’t saints at Christopher’s.”
Amen, brother.
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Kat glared at me. Though I’d known her only two months—met her at an AA meeting—I was
pretty sure that I loved her, or at least liked her well enough to find out if I loved her. And here
we were arguing at the same old cigarette-burnt butcher’s block kitchen table where my ex and I
had fought.
“Just because I haven’t paid very close attention since Lois left doesn’t make me a bad dad. I
give my daughter plenty.”
“I didn’t say you don’t do things for Tori.” Her voice softened when she argued, unlike Lois’s
that used to whine like a chain-saw when I contradicted her. “But she’s still starved for love since
her mama abandoned her.”
“Died, you mean.”
“Long before that.”
“If I didn’t love the girl, would I have adopted her? Would I have taken some other guy’s kid to
raise?”
She hugged herself, looked away, as if I’d won. I didn’t want to win. I just wanted nobody to
lose.
“Okay, I adopted Tori to impress Lois. Adopting a cute, cuddly one-and-half-year-old was the
easiest thing in the world to do.”
“Then the doll-baby grew up.”
Her smile made it bearable. “So what do you think I should do?”
She blew curly blond hair out of her face like smoke. “Communicate.”
“Yeh, right.”
She rose, kissed my forehead just like Lois used to before the junk had totally taken her soul,
and left. As her Blazer pulled away from the curb, I really wanted to go to work, too. Recovery is
your job right now, Dwayne, my counselor at the treatment center chanted to us over and over.
And it’s full-time. Shit. What I’d give to be up a tree again sawing branches with my Stihl. But
when I stood up and took a step toward the coffeepot, my knee screamed, reminding me that’s
exactly what had gotten me into treatment to begin with. I was lucky, Dwayne said. It only took
you one little fall to hit bottom.
I left St. Christopher’s in plenty of time to beat her home. In group, I’d said “mixed-up” during
feelings inventory. When Dwayne pressed me—you were supposed to say at least three—I
scanned the list and added paralyzed, and though he raised his eyebrows, he went on to Jake
Scanlon who, thank God, had a ton of shit to unload. He’d never gotten back to me. Good
thing. If I wasn’t careful, I’d let it slip that I was in a serious relationship. When Tori banged in
from school at 3:30, I was ready to begin feeding her after all these years of low-cal love.
“Hi, honey. Have a good day?” It was exactly the way Lois used to greet me.
“Fabulous.” She opened the fridge door, leaned inside. “No milk, no juice, no pop,” she listed.
“Honey, could you sit down. I’d like to talk to you.”
She slammed the door and looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Would you please sit down?”
She sat, arms clutching her thin chest. I saw her through Kat’s eyes: backwards baseball cap,
dirty tee-shirt, baggy-ass jeans, not a hint of makeup. She looked like some punk skate-
boarder, not female at all, certainly not a fifteen-year-old female. Did she smoke dope or drink
beer? I didn’t think so.
“What’s up, Pops?”
I had actually liked her calling me that a year or so ago.
“I want to get to know you.”
She clamped her mouth closed, and her eyes got slitty as a snake’s. “Yeh? Like how?”
Her haircut was about as butch as you could get. She’d never had a boyfriend that I knew of.
Her life was soccer soccer soccer. And chess club and fantasy novels. But none of that told me
who she really was.
I spread my hands. “It’s time we got beyond sharing pizzas in front of the tube. We need to
talk to each other. You’re my daughter, for God’s sake.”
She lowered her head and her shoulders slumped. She might as well have sucker- punched me.
“What, you’re not my daughter?”
She studied her shoes: unlaced big red-and-white basketball Nikes she’d picked up for nearly
nothing on sale at Leather for Less. She never asked me for anything beyond the bare
minimum. She’d babysat everybody’s kids in the whole neighborhood since she was twelve to
buy her soccer stuff. All her clothes came from thrift stores, and chess club didn’t cost a dime. I
didn’t exactly keep the larder well-stocked. Maybe Kat had a point, but starved?
“Then . . . what? We’ve lived under the same roof for thirteen and a half of your fifteen years,
the last two just you and me, since . . . ” Since your Ma the junkie abandoned you, I didn’t say.
Didn’t have to. Lois was as present as the smell of Tori’s sweat in the room. “And now, all I’m
asking is for you and me to . . .” To what? “Listen, champ, I’m sorry to bring all this up. I only
wanted . . .”
But she was gone. One second she was sitting there; the next she’d evaporated. And, thanks
to Kat, I’d learned I was not my daughter’s father after all
“So how’d it go?”
We were lying in Kat’s bed, afterward.
“It was good for me. Was it also good for you?”
She punched my arm hard, and even in the room’s semidarkness, I thought I could make out her
scowl.
“She doesn’t consider me her father.”
Silence for several long seconds. Then her soft bed-time voice, a child’s, really.
“Well, she knows she was adopted. She knows why, too.”
Anger shot through me like a tequila slammer. For three seconds I saw the blurry red of
barstools and mirrored whiskey bottles and blood as I took somebody down, somebody’d who’d
said the wrong thing to Glenn Whittaker. Breathe, breathe, I could hear Dwayne say. He knew
we career drunks were emotional retards, and he was trying to teach us, step by step, how to
feel. So first thing every day, we chose words from his stupid list to describe how we felt:
elated, melancholy, defeated, buoyant. My favorite was “beautiful sadness.” We’d crack up when
somebody used it. I sure as hell didn’t know what it meant, and none of those other guys did,
either. Dwayne would just shake his head at us like kids making fart sounds. Eventually we just
abbreviated it: B.S.
I lit a cigarette, took a long hit, passed it to Kat, even though I knew she was trying to quit. She
inhaled deeply, then let it out for a long time. “I want you to talk to Ben.”
I sat up on my elbows. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“It’s not the same with somebody else’s kid. Plus, you’re a man. You can tell him certain things
and he’ll hear you.”
It was a damn good thing I loved this woman. I would’ve been so out of there, otherwise. I saw
Dwayne, his mustache twitching, saying for the thousandth time, Come on guys. Don’t you know
anything about feelings? (Sure we do. Not to have any.) Some genius would chant back, “We
ain’t saints at Christopher’s.”
Amen, brother.
next page
