Page 67 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

It’s Ray’s birthday. He’s thirty-one years old today. I write about some of the birthdays I remember and grieve all the birthdays he won’t have.

This is the day my dad decides to return home.

His face is blotchy and red. His work clothes are wrinkled and untucked like he’s been in them since yesterday. He smells like he’s been dowsed in alcohol. “Hey,” he says, keeping his balance with a hand on the wall as he takes his shoes off at the door. “Taking care of your mother?”

I grit my teeth. “Yes, I’m taking care of her.”

“Good. Very good.” He sinks down into his chair, eyes closed. This is my chance to get it all off my chest, tell him how he’s completely abandoned Mom and me since Ray died. I want to tell him that we deserve better. That I want us to be a family again. But all of my preplanned material leaves my brain.

All I can stutter out is, “H-how could you?”

He opens one eye. “How could I what?”

“You’re having an affair.”

He makes a face like I’m crazy.

“There was lipstick on one of your shirts.”

He picks up the remote to turn on the television.

“Dad.”

He ignores me.

“Dad,” I say, moving closer to him. “Why? After everything that’s happened, why would you cheat on Mom?”

He rubs his hand over his face but doesn’t answer.

“Dad!”

His eyes slant to me, sharp and alert. “Don’t shout at me.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. I’m not a child.”

“Then stop acting like one.”

I lose it. Absolutely lose it. “You can’t be gone for weeks at a time and then come back pretending to be my father! You have no right to do that! Not after how you’ve left us. And now you’re cheating on Mom. What’s wrong with you?”

He shoots up like a raging bull. “Your mother,” he sneers at me, “is a zombie, a shell of a person. Don’t talk to me about your mother.” He waves his arms back and forth in front of me. “You have no idea what it’s like for me. I have to work to keep this family afloat to come home to a wife who’s dead in the eyes and an ungrateful daughter.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think his words should hurt me, but they don’t. I’m numb to them, to him.

“You don’t know what it’s like when your child dies.” His voice quivers. “Your boy…you don’t know…”

He crumples in half, heaving giant breaths in and out, weeping. I’ve never seen him like this before. I don’t know how to comfort my father or if I even want to. I simply watch him melt into a puddle on the floor. “My baby boy,” he cries over and over.

I slump on the couch, dejected, apparently incapable of even leaving my asshole father alone while he’s like this, and I stay with him until he falls asleep, his shirt soaked with tears. I don’t realize what time it is until it’s too late and hurry to change for work. Gary didn’t send me any passive-aggressive texts or phone calls, so I hope he doesn’t notice I’m almost an hour late for my shift as I sneak in before the dinner rush. It’s raucous today with a huge bachelor party. They look like they’ve already tied one on during their golf outing with their polos, hats, and booming laughter. Plus, there’s a large table in the back for a 50th birthday party.

It’s another reminder of Ray.

Last year for his birthday, I’d begged him to go out and have a couple drinks with me, but he refused. He ended up taking the twins to a movie and then texting me a picture of his drink, a frozen blue Icee. I blink away the memory and the sting in my eyes.

The cloud of my brother and father looms large above me as I work, trying to ignore the stupid jokes from the bachelor party. They aren’t even my table and yet insist on being completely disgusting to every server who passes.

“Hey, girlie…”

I spin toward the guy with the backward Puma cap. “What?”

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