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Show In alarm, they pulled to the side of the road, dust settling behind them and mosquitoes quickly descending. They had forgotten their only child' Cranking on the wheel, my father turned the boat of a car around and hurried home, mortified by the lapse. I could read this story two ways. A second abandonment perhaps, both parents involved in the leaving, but that is not how it feels inside my body. For years I have carried it as a testament to how easily their past could be snatched, like a pair of pants, slipped into, enjoyed. Stories like these make me almost believe my father when he says that he and my mother never argued, never shared a harsh word, never even disagreed. But I have pieced things together, found the holes in the narrative, the stories my father doesn't tell. The pie, whole or otherwise, cannot do the amount of work my father requires of it. [y father became an alcoholic in tairmont, though he would say he was on his way but hadn't actually arrived. A junior partner, he partied as hard as he worked, no longer matching shots of Canadian Club with the engineer but highballs with the senior partners. As drinking always does, his turned ugly. His father had showed him that road. Around this same time, my mother's mother slipped ever closer to the alcoholism that would eventually claim her life at the age of sixty-eight. To understand her alcoholism, though, means understanding how poorly her actual life measured up to the one she had imagined for herself, the one in which she danced the principal in an international ballet company. No one is born seeking self-destruction; rather life's 37 |