Dad 2: The Twilight Time

My father is…for all intents and purposes, dead.

He has Alzheimer’s and remembers nothing of his life or his children.

But that’s okay. He spent thirty years telling the neighborhood what shit his kids were for leaving him, and my sister, my mother, and I got a nice, fat earful yesterday. Of course, this didn’t last long, for my sister has a propensity to blurt our past sufferings to any poor sucker who will listen, and she wound up talking to the woman for an hour. This woman was my father’s…something…for the past 25 years. She wasn’t candid, but since he left her his house) or perhaps houses--my grandmother’s is also in question at the moment, and according to the Winnebago County records, he has two assets we can’t see that will be going to this woman.

They ought to go to my sister and her children. That’s our position. What gives us the right? “But you didn’t see the man for thirty years!” You may say. The man was a monstrosity. Have I gone into detail at any time, or have I always been reticent? —he would bang his head on the wall, sometimes mine, fists to the top of my head. Imagine lying on the floor with your father over you, slapping, rolling you over so he could hit you in the back and the ass, sometimes with a belt, other times with just a fist because who really needs a belt for a fifty-pound child—asking, why are you making me do this to you?

Why are you, a pre-teen with no wherewithal who doesn’t know shit from goddamned Shinola…why are you, child, making me, a grown fucking man who should love you and know better, the grown man who looks like a giant to you and is your God—why are you making me beat the fuck out of you? HM?

OR! Maybe it’s common. I can already hear some comedian talking about it—like is that stellar parenting? Is that, like, The Way? I’ve heard people be like oh, oh, get over it, oh, my dad literally ripped my skin off, and I still take him to the ballgame, who cares if he touched my sister, yeah, they still rock out—

So maybe I am a twat, I don’t know.

My sister feels like she should get the house.

I told John Bruni how I felt in conversation.

ME: “Pretty sure my Dad is dead.”

JB: “Oh? What happened?”

ME: “He fell. No one will tell us what hospital he’s at. There’s a lady named Vicky who has power of attorney (over him), and no one wants to tell (us) anything. I said I’d go there with April and try to find out what’s what, but that’s it, I guess.”

JB: “He’s not still in Rockford, is he?”

ME: “Yep. Sling Blade Dad. That’s pretty much his fate. Everyone wants to be sad. I’m not. (I feel like) Karl Childers (a bit right now).”

I did. And I explained that the old man was not dead yet. He’s in a home. But like I said, dementia, he wouldn’t know me if he saw me.

JB: “I do know the complicated feelings one gets when an asshole relation is dead or dying.” And he goes on to explain a thing or two about his own less-than-kind stepfather.

ME: “That prick (my father) knew what he did, and instead of admitting it and trying to repair anything, he lives a lie in the neighborhood and becomes a hoarder of toasters, cinderblocks, and the like. House in utter disrepair. (This can only mean) the good part of him, what small shred there was, ate at him…and the wicked part held it down. He wound up sad and angry and abused his caregivers (for years) by all accounts.”

I suspect I’ll be dealing with his ghost before long. I don’t care how that sounds. I have reason to believe it is true.

Sure, he could be good. He let me have sleepovers full of horror movies and pizza. No one, not even Dahmer (well, maybe him), is 100% cunt. He also liked to say they could and a few hours later, arbitrarily decide that they could not. No reason. “You’re grounded. I don’t like your face today.” I’m not even fucking bullshitting…I’m over here laughing as I write this because it’s just so preposterous how often he did things like that…it didn’t bug me too much when it was friends…but this did. Mom lived in Chicago. Dad hated her, so it seemed. Really, he hated himself and loved her, that’s what we’re finding now, but…she’d drive that hour and a half—if the weather happened to be shitty, snowy, too rainy maybe, he’d wait until she was just about here, my sister and I at the window waiting for her little Toyota to pull up—

“I don’t know why you’re at that window. I called her and told her she couldn’t come.”

But she’d show up, and he’d laugh. “I’m just kidding.”

We’d get outside, happy, not really worried, we know Dad’s a dick.

“Oh, Dianne, you can’t take them today.” Only this time, it wasn’t a joke. His face said so.

They would argue. He would threaten, and that would be it. And this shit happened regularly. Holidays, or just whenever. When he was feeling like it. She got to the point where she didn’t know if he’d let us go with her despite the drive, etc. The idea behind this narcissistic pathology was that she’d give up, but she didn’t.

My sister is going to talk to a lawyer today. I don’t know if she’ll get a result. It is possible, but we’ll see. I have no desire for that man’s things. Part of me says I’d rather go back to the street than take anything from him that I could get, however, pride goeth and such. I’d probably do the smart thing. I doubt I’ll be faced with it.

Why don’t I talk to a lawyer?

Well, anyone who’s been keeping up knows how easy I’d be to defame.

I will go there in person to face it with her if everyone is down for a trip. That I’ll do. That’s easier anyway—it’s hard to tell how full of shit someone is over the phone. I much prefer face-to-face in all cases of conflict. But I doubt we’ll go.

And I’ll finish this with my final note on the subject from the same JB conversation—

ME: “I prefer indifference over satisfaction in my old age, I find, I always thought I’d be satisfied. I’m more pissed off. What a foolish cunt. Mule! (He) could’ve repaired things. If it was fucking him up like that, why not? Oh, I know. MULE. That’s why. Might’ve helped me, in fact, that’s probably what would have (helped). But nah. NAH! Live the bullshit.”

I’m not going to wonder why. I’m overcome with cold. I guess that’s what happened to him when he thought about his children. I already said we’re not far removed. I know why he did it. When I decide I’m done with someone, man. DONE! Just in the snap of a finger, poof! Never happened. And now I know where I got it from. There are things I’m not going to divulge that show me his karma paralleled mine. The small reasons behind it are all different, but the big reason—the sins of the father, for lack of a better term, and its ouroboros. Maybe one saving grace I have is that there are a million arguments running through my brain as to why I am the asshole, this isn’t lost on me, and I guess that’s something. I guess his head did the same thing to him.