The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [13]
Vindicated, my brother would laugh mockingly, calling them both fuckups, horrible parents, the reason for his drinking. And then there would be more screaming, more breaking, and more hitting, followed by a call to the cops, not to make an arrest, but to scare away the drunk. He’d leave, wreck his car, stumble back, and pass out on the floor in his own vomit. Come morning, when he was hung over, the fight would continue.
My dad sighed at the sound, lifted his head from his hands, and snuffed his cigarette into the ashtray. He was both as sad and angry as a person could be; you could see it when you looked at him, the way his body worked as if under some heavy, invisible weight.
Acting on the urge to leave, he reached down to put his shoes on. His crippled hands grabbed at them with all the finesse of a rusty wrench. Next, he reached for a wooden spoon, his makeshift shoehorn. He attempted shoeing his feet into his Velcro shoes, but the simple motion was too complex and he dropped the spoon. He tried to pick it up, but his fingers would not grab as instructed. Extreme frustration trumped the sadness that kept him in check and he exploded.
“Goddamn worthless fucking hands!” he screamed. Then he began clubbing his hands into the table with the same force someone would smash dry tree limbs. He couldn’t feel the blows, the same reason he couldn’t feel the shoes or the spoon. Repeatedly, he beat his hands until the frustration gave way to sadness again; then he began to sob. He slumped back into his chair defeated, head in broken hands, heaving.
At one time he built million-dollar machines. Perfect lines of metal intersecting in perfect mathematical harmony. He drafted things, complex mechanical things that would themselves build more complex mechanical things. All of it, pristine, flawless, designed never to break. Now the man behind all that perfection was broken. He couldn’t even tie his shoes, Velcro shoes.
I said nothing. I hadn’t spoken the entire time I was there—not even hello. I was a spectator in my own home. I was slowly remembering what drove me out in the first place to fight my way toward the big leagues into a better life.
The battle above us stopped. My mother must have detected my father’s outburst. She made her way downstairs, rounded the corner into the kitchen, and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at him, a puzzled look on her face. I could see the remnants of compassion in her eyes, deeply buried beneath a layer of resentment, as if her emotions moved away years ago, leaving the place to deteriorate.
She surveyed the two of us. Then, looking to me, she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”
I shrugged.
“Sam,” she said, turning to my father, “what’s the matter?”
No answer.
“Sam, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing, just leave me alone.”
“Tell me what’s the matter. What happened? What was all the banging?” At one time, she asked the question in a sweet and caring way. Now, after years of no change, she was tired of being Mary Poppins about it. She asked in a sterile, near annoyed way.
“Nothing, goddamn it, just leave me alone!” my father roared.
My mother sighed. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked, looking at me.
“He couldn’t get his shoes on,” I said, but that wasn’t what she was really asking.
“All this screaming and banging because you couldn’t get your shoes on? Jesus, Sam.”
Anger began to win over my father again. He was so volatile—explosive one moment, despairing a second