Spring 2006, Bay Village, Ohio

By Margaret Hepp

“I’ve been writing you little notes, sweetheart,” he said to me when I called.

“That’s nice,” I said. “How’s Mom?”

“Good,” he said, his voice rising and falling. “Every time I finish a puzzle, I write you a little note.”

It had been four months since I’d been home, when I’d given Dad a Sudoku book for Christmas. We hadn’t talked much at all, and we rarely spoke about Mom. I sensed that little had changed.

I flew in late Thursday evening.

Not till Friday did I notice a marked change in the house: Mom’s dinner preparation routine. She poured Ketel One — produced from the freezer — into a silver shaker. Cosmo, light pink.

As usual, we called Dad to the table, set with three plates, three sets of silverware, an open wine bottle, and one lipstick-stained glass. As usual, we ate quickly (Dad and I too much and Mom too little). And as usual, Dad then stood up from the table, cleared the plates and silverware, and left the wine bottle, the glass, and me and Mom.

The next morning, Dad and I had a big argument while he was busy scribbling Sudokus. I don’t remember what we fought about, but I’d gone for a drive to clear my head.

When I returned, he was in the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinet over Mom’s coffeemaker. I could see that he was reaching for the top shelf.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He didn’t answer. He began standing bottles in a row.

“Dad,” I said, but I made no move to stop him. Instead, I sat down in the living room and watched.

As usual, he poured the red wine out first. Her staple. Then he poured the brandy, then the triple sec, into the sink.

“The freezer,” I wanted to offer. “Get the vodka from the freezer.” But I sat still and said nothing.

He went back to the cabinet and stood on his tiptoes, angrily swiping his hand at the back of the shelf. He came down with some vermouth my mother used for cooking, along with a bottle of Pimm’s I’d brought back from England. He turned them both upside-down at once, and, as he had with the other bottles, tossed them recklessly into the recycling bin.

It was a scene I’d witnessed before, but this time, I watched closely as he stood over the sink, rinsing his hands, breathing hard, his stomach constricting with each labored breath. Dad had always been heavy, but regarding him now – his dark hair matted to the back of his head, sticking out at the temples where he pulled at it from stress – he looked miserably fat.

“I would have kept that Pimm’s,” I said finally. Mom really hadn’t liked it at all. It was the only gift I’d brought back from England last year.

He said nothing at first, still turned with his back toward me. I could see his elbow working furiously and knew that he was cleaning the sink. He had taken to frenzied cleaning now when he was angry, but only in the kitchen — Mom’s territory.

Before she’d started drinking again, Mom had always kept the kitchen spotless. Unofficially, the kitchen had become my dad’s territory, but only provisionally.

Mom had lost interest in doing little else in the room but cooking and drinking. “Thank you,” she’d say, sarcastically, bitterly, if she found him cleaning. The tone had once been enough to restore her authority, but even she knew now that she was losing ground.

Dad stopped scrubbing and moved over to the dishwasher, ignoring the steam that billowed out as he rolled the bottom rack out. He’d only begun the wash cycle about an hour ago. He swore as he tried to touch a plate; it was still scalding hot.

At last, he half-turned, leaning on the counter. “Isn’t she worth what you paid for it?” He gestured toward the heap of empty bottles, today’s piled on yesterday’s, and yesterday’s, and yesterday’s.

I said nothing. He slammed the dishwasher shut, grabbed a dishtowel and wiped the counters down. When he finally hung the towel on its rack against the oven, he leaned heavily, deliberately, on the stovetop. He wheezed for a moment before he spoke.

“I’m just trying to protect my wife.”

Instantly, his head dropped to his chest. In that silent moment, Dad was defeated. Without another word, he walked down to his room and closed the door.

The television blared.

I stood up and looked down the hall toward the bedrooms, saw my mother’s door still shut, my father’s door – which had been my door, before Mom started drinking again – also shut.

I walked into the kitchen and peered into the recycling bin, thinking I might pull out the Pimm’s bottle, for nostalgia’s sake. I thought better of it but remembered that it had been in a decorative gift box.

I checked the top shelf, but it had been cleared out. I pulled off the sway-top lid of the trash can. Peering inside, I discovered the Pimm’s box, but not before I discovered the Sudoku book I’d given Dad for Christmas.

I reached in and pulled it out, brushing the coffee grounds from the side and thumbing through the pages to wick off some of the moisture. I opened to the first puzzle and saw my dad’s note, with a date, sometime in January: “Daughter, this was mighty tricky! But I did it! Love, Dad.” Each puzzle, as he’d promised, bore some inscription, each of them signed, “Love, Dad.”

He had been working on a puzzle just before we argued. I flipped through the book until I saw blank pages, and then I worked backward until I saw his hard-pressed numbers through the back of a blank page. I turned back one more page: an incomplete puzzle with today’s date.

He’d written in large angry letters, in brackets, NO MESSAGE.

Margaret Hepp is an editorial assistant at A.magazine: Nonfiction Narratives of Africa. Her personal blog, Sweet South Africa, divulges excerpts from her life as a volunteer in the South African bush.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 | Email This Post

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