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By Root 966 0

husband not deserve a little more dignity, a little less filth? The more I ruminated on it, the more I realized how typical this was of my mother. She, as mentioned, was always the hard-hearted one, and even when my father left us for those three years, she didn't shed a tear. My mother wasn't exactly the welcome wagon when my father came back, either, and my old man really wore himself out trying to get back in her good graces. Thinking about it now, I decided there was a direct connection between his stroke and that difficult time, too. And then there were those Emily Dickinson House stories she used to tell me, the ones that ruined so many lives, and I was really getting worked up about her, my callous mother, who had now apparently abandoned my father in his time of need. Where did she get off? I might have said this out loud, because my father nearly raised his eyebrows at me and for a second I thought he was going to chastise me for being rude to my mother, but instead he said, "Man."

"Man what?" I said.

"Grown," my father said, or that's what I thought he said, and then he raised his finger as if to point at me. Or that's what I thought he was doing. The finger made it only about an inch off his lap and then fell back again. Of course, this could all have been a big misunderstanding. But then again, maybe misunderstanding is what makes it possible to be in a family in the first place. After all, when I was eight I understood my father all too clearly: he was scared, and so he left us. My mother was lonely and angry at his leaving, and so she told me those stories about the Emily Dickinson House. I understood that, too. Maybe we had understood too much about one another; maybe if we'd misunderstood one another, then we'd have been more of a family. Maybe if we'd been more of a family, I would have seen my father in the last ten years and he wouldn't have to marvel at how much I'd grown. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"I am a grown man," I said to my father. And then, remembering Terrell in prison, I clarified: "I'm a grown-ass man."

My father stared at me for a good half minute until his blanket slipped from his lap again. He leaned over slightly in his chair to catch the blanket before it hit the floor, and that movement, that one little thing, caused me to remember what for so many years I'd been trying not to: that moment when my father had bent over, opened the end table drawer next to him, pulled out a Converse shoe box, and shown me those letters asking me to burn down those writers' houses. There was the end table, still in the same place; there was the drawer, inside the end table. Was the shoe box still in the drawer? Were the letters still in the shoe box? I hadn't thought of those letters for years, but now they were in my head again and they were alive, making noise, joining the chorus of my neighbors' lawn mowers, the Emily Dickinson House fire, and other sounds of the past. And among those sounds was my father's voice, telling me those many years earlier, "Sam, you are an arsonist," which was why I blurted out now, so many years later and out of the blue, "You're wrong."

"Wrong," my father repeated, doing his best to keep up.

"Yes, wrong," I said. "I work at Pioneer Packaging. I make containers, good ones."

My father pursed his lips and made a derisive raspberry sound; a glob of spittle landed on his chin and I tried very hard not to wipe it off for him.

"I know it doesn't sound like much," I said. And it didn't, not even when I told my father, in some detail, about the tennis ball can I'd just designed, a can that was vacuum sealed by soft plastic and not by the sharp metal top that you always sliced your finger on. He made another raspberry sound and there was more spit on his chin.

"No ... greatness ... in ... tennis ... ball ... cans," he said over the course of what might have been half an hour. Greatness! Me! What son doesn't want to hear his father say he could be great, if that's what he was saying? What son doesn't dream of such a thing? What wouldn't a son do or give to hear these words come