Lily King - Father of the Rain

No, but you did interrupt my third orgasm. “I was just cleaning.”

I let her in, and fortunately the kitchen is spotless from all my rearranging.

She swoops her laserlike gaze over everything and then puts a stack of Tupperware on the counter. “I made three meals for your father, but maybe he doesn’t need them now. Is he out?”

“He’s gone into Boston.”

“By himself?”

“Yes.”

She pinches her lips together. She wants to know why he’s gone to Boston. She looks unhappily at her meals on our counter. “I thought it was Sunday you’d be leaving.”

“I did too. But I’m going to stay longer.”

“Can you?”

“I can.”

“Maybe I should just take all that food home then. I’ve got both Scott and Carly coming this week.”

“By all means. We’ve got plenty. In fact, I’m trying to encourage Dad to learn to cook.” I sense her objection and hurry on. “But thank you. He is so grateful for everything you’ve done for him.”

“Well, he’s an old dear friend.”

Once the Tupperware is back in her arms she doesn’t look so pleased about it. I wonder if I should have just accepted it graciously.

“Well, you’re a good daughter,” she says, as if to convince us both. “Your dad needs his family right now, and at least he has you. I’m sorry Garvey wasn’t able to do the same. If ever a father loved his son.” She puts the Tupperware back on the counter and shakes her head. “If ever a father was proud of his son. You know they won the father-son tournament six years in a row. I’ll never understand what happened to that boy. And he had the lead in the eighth-grade play. What was it that year?”

“ Bye Bye Birdie .”

“That’s right. You probably don’t remember it.”

Of course I do, and I remember my father prancing around afterward, singing “Put on a Happy Face “effeminately, making a mockery of the whole play in a few minutes.

“And he was always on the honor roll, which is more than I can say for two out of three of mine, though most of those smart kids turned into druggies and are a misery to their parents, so you never know. That Lukie Whitbeck, you remember him, with all the hair? I think he got every award in Scott’s class. Everyone thought he was so wonderful, but he had a mean streak; I had to talk to his parents more than once about it. He was in jail last year, not for long, but still. Well, I’m so pleased you’re here, Daley.” She smiles broadly. She seems to have perked herself up by that dip and spit into the past. “You’re a good daughter.” And she kisses me on the cheek, takes her food, and leaves.

My father comes home at three and falls asleep on the couch. When his snoring reaches full volume, I bend over him and smell his breath. Hamburger, fries, and ketchup is all I get. At six-thirty I wake him for his meeting.

“Losers of the world unite,” he says as he hobbles upstairs to shower.

I cleaned out the Datsun that afternoon, brought a few bags to my room, and put the rest in the shed. He groans when he gets in and exaggerates the lack of head and legroom by scrunching up into a little egg. The smell of his Old Spice fills the small space.

“You don’t have to keep driving me,” he says.

“I like to.” I want to get to the point where I trust him to get to the church every night at seven, but that will take time. Sometimes he is so sad and quiet on the way I feel certain that if I weren’t there he’d pull into Shea’s, the liquor store, and down a quart of vodka in the car, or head to the Utleys or the Bridgetons, who were sure to be having cocktails on their patios.

After I let him out at the church, I walk to the carnival. The fried dough is calling me. I have nothing due, nothing to research, no deadline. My mind keeps moving to that list and finding it empty. Over and over. Each time my body grows a little lighter.

It’s hard to recognize the park when the carnival is planted in it. All the structures — the swing set and slide, the baseball diamond, the gazebo — are swallowed by it. As a kid I had a hard time holding the two concepts in my head at once, and if on occasion I did notice that it was the baseball bleachers people were sitting on to eat red foot-long hot dogs before going on the roller coaster beside them, it was like discovering an artifact from another lifetime, the way they discover the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes .

I pay the six-dollar entry fee and go in. They’ve put down hay to protect the grass. It used to be free to wander around the carnival, and no one ever cared about the grass. It always grew back. Ashing is starting to be self-conscious that way, with its new matching awnings above the storefronts and the renaming of certain streets I read about in the paper. Snelling Street is now Coral Avenue. And Pope’s Road has become Bayview Lane. But the music at the carnival is the same as always, “Sweet Caroline” and “Mandy” and “My Eyes Adored You.” I can see Jonathan rolling his eyes, but he’d be singing along with me anyway. He’d know all the words. It’s packed, full of kids and teenagers and brand-new families, the parents my age, the children in little pouches and strollers. Again I feel like an interloper, a spy on my own past.

I go directly to the fried dough window. The woman hands me an enormous slab with pools of oil on top, and I shake the plastic tub of cinnamon sugar over it until it’s a deep, dark brown. I mean to find a bench and eat it slowly, but it’s so good I polish it off right there next to the condiments. After I buy a small book of tickets I go in search of the Tilt-a-Whirl. It’s right where it always was, to the left of the Ferris wheel, its hooded blue and white cars just coming to a slow undulating stop on their circular tracks. Mallory, Patrick, and I probably took this ride together over a hundred times. I always sat in the middle because Mallory and Patrick were heavier and could make the car spin faster by leaning to each side. Mallory screamed shrilly in my ear and Patrick kept his mouth shut, making little ghostlike moans every now and then. Just the sound of my feet on the thin metal steps after I give over my tickets brings whole summers back to me. The seats are still smooth red leather, the bar that comes down over your knees the same scallop shape. I have the same rush of anticipation as the man pulls the lever, and the belt that all the cars are on begins to move. I sit on one side of the car to make it spin more. Soon I’m being flung in circles so fast my brain gives up trying to ground itself, and I am left with that rush of abandon that is one small part fear and the rest sheer ecstasy. I hear myself shrieking along with other shriekers. There are moments on the Tilt-a-Whirl when you can raise your head and look briefly around before you are sent into another vortex. At one point I look up and see Neal Caffrey on a bench watching me. The next time he is gone. When the ride ends I stumble along its edge to give the operator more tickets and go back to my red seat. While I am spinning it’s impossible to think about Jonathan or Oliver Raskin or the cottage with the yellow door.

When I get off, I only have twenty minutes left. I want to ride the Scrambler, the Salt ‘n’ Pepper Shaker, and the Ferris wheel. I can’t decide which, so first I get some more fried dough. This time I shake out the cinnamon sugar and the powdered sugar until it is tick-gray. Delicious. Then I get in line for the Ferris wheel, which is on a long ramp leading up to its base. Two little girls and their mother are ahead of me. The girls are trying to decide which color compartment they hope to get. The compartments are round, with a column in the middle that holds up a matching metal umbrella. The girls are hopping with the same mix of sugar and excitement that I feel. I wish I could ride with them, and am almost on the brink of asking when Neal taps my foot.