On The Rim of Your Whims
/How to Become a Pariah at Home
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It was an Irish funeral. We were Irish in the sense of I was the 5th generation removed from Ellis Island. I had always doubted that Great, Great Grandpa coming into America through the trials and tedium of Ellis Island. But when I was 14, I won a Boy Scout contest for my short story about immigration. I made the whole thing up, but I did win a trip to the big apple for the entire family for two days. We spent a good chunk of that time looking up Great, Great Grandpa in the book. We never found him. Dad shook the whole thing off and took us up the Statue of Liberty. Maybe we weren't so very Irish, my siblings and I thought. But Dad clung to the ancestry of Callahan, like a babe with a security blanket. I think he was unable to share the doubt nettled deep into his identity. St. Patrick's day continued to smell of corn beef and cabbage, and Dad and Mom continued to get sloppy drunk. Me and my sister, Irene, were the eldest of our brood of 5. She and I washed the dishes setting them into the broken dishwasher to dry.
Dad was proud of my Immigration story.
"It's a good lie, but don't let that go to your head. You know what, you should come down to the pub with me and read it to the boys."
I rode my bike down during sunset. Dad was already 3 sheets to the wind, so he didn't notice me for a good 20 minutes. When he did, he faced the Herculean feat of setting me up on the bar to the bartender's protest. He stumbled a bit in my resurrection. I landed on my right knee and had to raise myself in qualmish embarrassment to my feet. I stepped in someone's lamb stew, and it soaked through my sock to the ankle. I didn't want to be there. I was a loser, by all counts from my father.
"Boy, did you paint that fence like that?"
"You're some kind of slacker getting a D in geometry."
"Where's your sense of humor when I insult you?"
"Come here, try a shot of whiskey. Well, don't cough like a girl about it."
Now, I was expected to muster Irish courage. Only I was supposed to do it without Dad and his chums liquid courage. I needn't have worried about my performance. No one paid me any mind after the first paragraph as long as the lilt of my voice went on. To test my theory, I embarked on the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme to thunderous applause. I was tired and wanted to go home, but Dad insisted on closing the place down. When I finally saw my exit, the bartender and a couple of patrons insisted that Dad not drive home. I found myself on the wrong end of a swap. Dad was perched on my bike, riding away from me in herky-jerky movements. I had the keys to the car. I drove standing. It was the only way I could reach the petals. We made it home alive.
"Not a word to your mother. Do you understand that?"
He laughed in my ear. It was a rough, wet whisper of a laugh. It was just the beginning of a long set of lies I was to keep from my mother. Do you know what a history of lies does to a relationship? It bars any intimacy or friendship from developing. She didn't fully understand why, but she knew she could not trust me. You'd think I developed an estranged relationship with my parents. But I did not; I stay parked at 4252 Telegraph Road. I moved into the basement. My siblings moved out. I had my wings clipped by Dad, and his needy stretch into my life. Everything I did was detailed with our Irish sins.
I was drunk when I entered the funeral parlor. I could see his profile in the casket. I hugged my way to the front, and I tucked an open bottle of whiskey inside with Dad. I hadn't written a speech. What would it say?
"Dad, you were an alcoholic, not Irish. You stood in my way to life. All I ever wanted was to be important to you, but the only person that could ever shine in your eyes was yourself, all covered in your own bullshit." No one asked me to say anything. No one trusted me. No one deemed my memories important enough. When we backed out of the room. I was not a pallbearer. I was not steady enough on my feet. Shit, I carried him all my life, and now in death, I'm still not good enough for any of them. While Dad was buried in the lies and glories that come in part with a funeral, it was I who could give a bare-bones eulogy. Exactly why I wasn't chosen for an honored role of his interment. In the corner was a lone man familiar from the pub, and he played Danny, Boy, on the fiddle. It was my name, but he wasn't playing for me. He was just another whim of my Dad.
By Leah Holbrook Sackett
From: United States
Website: http://www.leahholbrooksackett.website
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