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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 3 Dad said, "Go to your room," and I almost lost it, so perfect and useless seemed the wisdom of it. Brandon looked surprised. His brow furrowed like it used to when we were kids and Dad would threaten to take off his belt, and he left the room. Mom put her hand over her mouth, started to cry, and ran out. It's a heartless thing to say but true enough, if Dad weren't my father I really wouldn't have anything to do with him. I guess it's one of the twisted tragedies that make life so damn funny. Randal Brackett, my dad, used to be a slight, well proportioned man, much like his sons. But somewhere between twenty-five years of fighting tyranny and twenty years of exemplifying tyranny, and twenty-two years of the industrial park, and twenty years of the same woman, all of his experience had welled up inside him and bloated fetus like. Like a fetus, but it wasn't; it was beer and meatloaf. He was a very quiet man, kept his opinions to himself except those concerning his sons which were generally cynical. "What do you think of this?" Dad asked me; then he bellowed down the hall after Brandon, "Your whole goddamn life!" I was overwhelmed. I only sat in the living room listening to Dad mumble for a quarter of an hour, until I noticed the time and jumped up to get my car keys. On my way out the door he said, "Where're you going?" "Michaela." Dad sighed. "Does your brother know?" "I don't know," I said. "He didn't ask, so I didn't tell him but that doesn't mean anything. He probably doesn't care." "He'll care." |
