Designated Driver
Page Two
Page Two
So after she went to work, I stuck around. Maybe I could talk to somebody else’s kid better than
my own. I’d read every inch of the newspaper when Ben finally staggered in about eleven.
“Morning,” I said to his back as he stuck his head inside the fridge.
Nothing. His butt stuck out, his sweatpants sagging to show me red boxers. Finally he turned
around, lifted the orange juice bottle and gulped. If I smacked his Adam’s apple, he’d never know
what hit him. He collapsed into a chair across from me.
“How’s it going?” I asked, smiling, my face feeling painted.
“It’s fucked up, man.”
He cursed plenty in front of his mother, but he’d never cursed at her or I would’ve stepped in.
Their deal was that as long as he worked (even if it was running sound for a band) and paid her
something, he could live here without going to school “until he decided what he really wanted to do”
(her words). The deal did not include him acting civil. “He never had a man in his life, not really,”
she’d say. Of course she considered it her fault.
“How is it fucked up, Ben?” I laid the paper down.
“She doesn’t cook when she’s on days.”
I folded the paper, keeping the folds sharply together.
“Your ma works hard.”
He stuck his index finger in his mouth, chewing on a fingernail, looking retarded.
“How much do you make with the band, Ben?”
“None o’ your business.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not enough to pay your share of the bills.”
“She ain’t told me that.”
“Why do you think she’s taken on home health care patients, too?”
“She loves sick people?”
“She needs to see you trying harder, Ben.”
His face went back to being a blank screen. Finally he stood up and scratched his crotch. “Fucking
my mother doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do.”
Heat shot through the top of my head. One punch to the balls, and he’d be howling on the floor.
But Dwayne wouldn’t like it.
“No,” I said, “but it means I’m committed to her.”
“You and every other dick she’s had sniffing around her since . . . forever.”
He turned his head away. Since Dad hit the road seven years ago, he didn’t say.
“Look, I’m not those dicks. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I were.”
When he turned back, his eyes were bright. “All the others said the same thing.” He smirked.
“Some of ‘em even gave me money.” He put both palms on the table and leaned toward me. “How
‘bout it, Glenn. You pay me, I pay her more, everybody’s happy.”
“I’ve got a better idea. I ask your mother to marry me, she agrees, we sell this house and she
moves in with me—on one condition: that she comes alone.”
He stood, a bit wobbly. “You’d do that to screw me, even though you don’t love her.”
“I do love your mother.”
His upper lip curled. “Prove it.”
I stood up, spread my feet, lowered my center of gravity, distributing my weight. Closing my eyes
for an instant, I saw my hand as a searing sword, then struck the table. It collapsed in two halves.
Ben fell back against the fridge.
“Coulda been you,” I said before leaving by the kitchen door.
I decided to search Tori’s room—maybe it’d give me some clue who she was. Maybe it was just my
way of showing her I was Big Daddy. Maybe I was desperate.
I’d totally abandoned the upstairs since Lois split a couple of months before she died. I hadn’t even
walked up the stairs more than a couple times. And my cracked patella from the tree-fall didn’t want
to let me do it that day, but I made it somehow, one step at a time (just like Dwayne said).
Her room looked like an inmate’s cell, bed crisply made, carpet so recently vacuumed the tracks were
still visible. No Backstreet Boys. No women’s Olympic soccer team. No stuffed animals. No photos.
Her room screamed Tori Whittaker doesn’t really live here. Suddenly I felt a million years old and sat
down on the bed. I resisted the urge to smoke, though I really needed a butt just then. But she’d
smell it and know I’d been here.
I thought of Dwayne and his damned list. What was I feeling now? Guilt, of course. Was that all?
Closing my eyes, I tried to coordinate my body with my emotions. In group, I almost always felt
anger or some variation: irritated, wrathful, sulky, belligerent. Dwayne once said, “Behind anger,
there’s always fear.” It stuck with me. Like yellow and green became blue, what did anger mixed
with fear become?
I was beginning to boil. Lois had opted out and left me a single parent with my own load of
problems, like how you make a landscaping business work after getting so drunk you fell out of
trees, like how you parent your own kid, much less somebody else’s.
I started to stand up when I saw the music box her mom gave her. A blue heron flew above some
kinda swamp. I remembered it played a song I hated. Still, I opened it, and as “You Are the Wind
Beneath My Wing” started, I noticed a balled-up piece of blue paper. It took me a second to
unroll. Trojans. Lightly lubricated with spermicide. One of mine. Anger rose up like heat from a
floor register. By the time the thing lay unwrapped in my palm, I’d broken a sweat. I lay back on
the bed, closed my eyes and waited to stop shaking.
Fury, blind rage, anger, fear, then jealousy.
Jealousy?
I hated that some guy was getting something from my little girl that I had never gotten. Not sex.
Some jerk’s getting love from her and I’m getting squat; I’m getting you ain’t my dad. I stood,
squeezed the wrapper back into a ball and slam-dunked it into the empty trash can. But within a
second, I was down on my bad knee retrieving it. I went ahead and said the serenity prayer while I
was down there, though God surely doesn’t hear the prayers of the wrathful. Fake it till you make
it, Dwayne said.
next page
my own. I’d read every inch of the newspaper when Ben finally staggered in about eleven.
“Morning,” I said to his back as he stuck his head inside the fridge.
Nothing. His butt stuck out, his sweatpants sagging to show me red boxers. Finally he turned
around, lifted the orange juice bottle and gulped. If I smacked his Adam’s apple, he’d never know
what hit him. He collapsed into a chair across from me.
“How’s it going?” I asked, smiling, my face feeling painted.
“It’s fucked up, man.”
He cursed plenty in front of his mother, but he’d never cursed at her or I would’ve stepped in.
Their deal was that as long as he worked (even if it was running sound for a band) and paid her
something, he could live here without going to school “until he decided what he really wanted to do”
(her words). The deal did not include him acting civil. “He never had a man in his life, not really,”
she’d say. Of course she considered it her fault.
“How is it fucked up, Ben?” I laid the paper down.
“She doesn’t cook when she’s on days.”
I folded the paper, keeping the folds sharply together.
“Your ma works hard.”
He stuck his index finger in his mouth, chewing on a fingernail, looking retarded.
“How much do you make with the band, Ben?”
“None o’ your business.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not enough to pay your share of the bills.”
“She ain’t told me that.”
“Why do you think she’s taken on home health care patients, too?”
“She loves sick people?”
“She needs to see you trying harder, Ben.”
His face went back to being a blank screen. Finally he stood up and scratched his crotch. “Fucking
my mother doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do.”
Heat shot through the top of my head. One punch to the balls, and he’d be howling on the floor.
But Dwayne wouldn’t like it.
“No,” I said, “but it means I’m committed to her.”
“You and every other dick she’s had sniffing around her since . . . forever.”
He turned his head away. Since Dad hit the road seven years ago, he didn’t say.
“Look, I’m not those dicks. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I were.”
When he turned back, his eyes were bright. “All the others said the same thing.” He smirked.
“Some of ‘em even gave me money.” He put both palms on the table and leaned toward me. “How
‘bout it, Glenn. You pay me, I pay her more, everybody’s happy.”
“I’ve got a better idea. I ask your mother to marry me, she agrees, we sell this house and she
moves in with me—on one condition: that she comes alone.”
He stood, a bit wobbly. “You’d do that to screw me, even though you don’t love her.”
“I do love your mother.”
His upper lip curled. “Prove it.”
I stood up, spread my feet, lowered my center of gravity, distributing my weight. Closing my eyes
for an instant, I saw my hand as a searing sword, then struck the table. It collapsed in two halves.
Ben fell back against the fridge.
“Coulda been you,” I said before leaving by the kitchen door.
I decided to search Tori’s room—maybe it’d give me some clue who she was. Maybe it was just my
way of showing her I was Big Daddy. Maybe I was desperate.
I’d totally abandoned the upstairs since Lois split a couple of months before she died. I hadn’t even
walked up the stairs more than a couple times. And my cracked patella from the tree-fall didn’t want
to let me do it that day, but I made it somehow, one step at a time (just like Dwayne said).
Her room looked like an inmate’s cell, bed crisply made, carpet so recently vacuumed the tracks were
still visible. No Backstreet Boys. No women’s Olympic soccer team. No stuffed animals. No photos.
Her room screamed Tori Whittaker doesn’t really live here. Suddenly I felt a million years old and sat
down on the bed. I resisted the urge to smoke, though I really needed a butt just then. But she’d
smell it and know I’d been here.
I thought of Dwayne and his damned list. What was I feeling now? Guilt, of course. Was that all?
Closing my eyes, I tried to coordinate my body with my emotions. In group, I almost always felt
anger or some variation: irritated, wrathful, sulky, belligerent. Dwayne once said, “Behind anger,
there’s always fear.” It stuck with me. Like yellow and green became blue, what did anger mixed
with fear become?
I was beginning to boil. Lois had opted out and left me a single parent with my own load of
problems, like how you make a landscaping business work after getting so drunk you fell out of
trees, like how you parent your own kid, much less somebody else’s.
I started to stand up when I saw the music box her mom gave her. A blue heron flew above some
kinda swamp. I remembered it played a song I hated. Still, I opened it, and as “You Are the Wind
Beneath My Wing” started, I noticed a balled-up piece of blue paper. It took me a second to
unroll. Trojans. Lightly lubricated with spermicide. One of mine. Anger rose up like heat from a
floor register. By the time the thing lay unwrapped in my palm, I’d broken a sweat. I lay back on
the bed, closed my eyes and waited to stop shaking.
Fury, blind rage, anger, fear, then jealousy.
Jealousy?
I hated that some guy was getting something from my little girl that I had never gotten. Not sex.
Some jerk’s getting love from her and I’m getting squat; I’m getting you ain’t my dad. I stood,
squeezed the wrapper back into a ball and slam-dunked it into the empty trash can. But within a
second, I was down on my bad knee retrieving it. I went ahead and said the serenity prayer while I
was down there, though God surely doesn’t hear the prayers of the wrathful. Fake it till you make
it, Dwayne said.
next page
r.kv.r.y fall 2006
shorts on
substances
shorts on
substances
