Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [52]
As I headed in I saw Eleanor and Mom at a table in the bar with some strangers, Katharine and Dad were standing just to the right of the table with beers in their hands, talking. Julia was sitting at the bar, talking to the bartender. I went over and gave Dad a kiss hello and leaned over the table and kissed Mom on the cheek.
“Here she is, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the turncoat of Fourteenth Street. Don’t think for one second, my dear, that I’ve forgotten the absolute treachery that took place at St. Vincent’s.” He laughed and patted me on the back.
“Dad, that nurse specifically told me not to give you a pen.”
“Because they sure as hell knew I was going to take down their whole basement operation with it. What’ll you have? Beer?”
I nodded.
“Steve,” Mom chimed in, “you were like a wild beast in there. I don’t think you get it.”
“You could have killed someone with that chair, Dad,” Eleanor said.
“Killed someone? Eleanor, I would have enjoyed it. Oh, I was really out of it.”
Julia came over to the table and said in my ear, “That bartender is a total asshole.”
I looked over. I couldn’t tell if he was an asshole, but he was oldish and had a big butt.
“Why is he an asshole?”
“Because we’re talking and laughing and having a great time and I ask if he wants my number and he says, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got myself a girlfriend, love.’”
“And?”
“You don’t say that to a woman, Jeanne.”
“Why not?”
Dad came over and handed me my beer. I wondered if he had poisoned it, considering how mad he was about the fuckin’ pen.
“Because it’s rude.”
“It’s the truth.”
Julia laughed. “Okay, true. Let’s move on, shall we?”
Sipping my beer, I thought about a cigarette, but the place was so fucking smoky already it was killing my potential smoke. It was like trying to be a writer with Dad around, trying to booze it up with Mom around. I wanted to live the poor artist’s life in the West Village, I wanted to drink like a maniac, but Mom and Dad had “smoked up the room” already, they were hogging all the death and destruction for themselves, making it hard for me to enjoy destroying myself.
Dad was less than a week out of the St. Vincent’s abortion mill, the proverbial hospital “woods,” and now I could barely make out his features a mere two feet away from me because of the cigarette haze. I could hear him through it, though, and he was having a grand time, smoke or no smoke.
AFTER MORE BEERS and some burgers, Dad suggested we all move on to his place and have some birthday cake. We made our way down the block to his building and headed up the narrow staircase to his apartment. Dad’s apartment, which was never locked, was on the second floor of a charming nineteenth-century red-brick three-story building. There was the owner’s apartment on the first floor, two apartments on the second floor and one on the top floor. Dad’s upstairs neighbors, a pretty Asian woman and her photographer boyfriend, passed us on the stairs.
“Mei Ling, Richard, these are my daughters: Julia, Jeanne, Katharine and Eleanor, who’s twenty-six today. Will you join us for a glass of wine and a piece of birthday cake?”
Julia glared at me. “Jesus Christ, does he have to?”
I left Dad, Mei Ling and Richard in the hall and went inside. Dad simply had no concept that his apartment might not be the Hyannis Port of the West Village; he would invite way more people over to this place than could possibly fit or than he could properly entertain. You entered Dad’s and were in the kitchen. The kitchen was a very narrow counter that began at the front door and ran about three feet into the apartment. There were a couple cheapo cabinets above the counter. There was a tiny sink and a half-fridge under the counter. A toaster and a dish rack and the old pasta maker from our house in Bronxville took up all the counter space. This part of the apartment felt like Gregor Samsa’s Winnebago. When Dad cooked (opening jars of olives, frying chicken eyeballs), there was a leaf