Category: stories

We almost lost the house in that flood. During the night storm, water surged through the streets, broke our cellar windows, burst the downstairs door, churned through our basement as the water rose and rose and pulled down the drop ceiling.

In the basement I waded in waist-high water and watched the dryer and washer bob and jerk against their corded leashes, still plugged into the wall and still running. The tide followed me up the staircase and I screamed at God to stop the damn water and the water abated at the top stair and rippled. Then we evacuated.

After a day, the sump pump emptied the underground pool of water and then the sump pump died.

I emailed all my friends for help in the middle of a work day and all my friends came to our house. We tore down the drywall, tore down the paneling, tore up the soggy carpets and rugs. We wore mask bandanas and hauled out the furniture, threw away books and toys and desks and clothes from the laundry room. Sewage and paint and neighborhood filth slid down our walls and puddled on the bare, tile floor.

Dwight found a dead cat. “That’s not my cat,” I said.

My wife ran the projects upstairs and outside: Getting a new electrical board, calling the county, finding a dumpster company. She chased an electrician out of the house because he doubled his quote.

“Hey,” my wife called downstairs, “County says we can’t throw out any asbestos.” Rick told me, “We just filled the dumpster with asbestos and drop ceiling. We should empty that dumpster right now.”

And we did.

The dumpster company took it away and brought it back empty at dawn. We filled and emptied three dumpsters that week.

By the third day, we were down to cinder blocks and columns and no one got hurt. We concocted a mixture of poison and bleach and clorox and started scrubbing the walls and floors. We wore goggles and old shirts and hats and tried to be careful. When we were done, the room was soaking wet and a toxic dump no more and no spores were living or growing, not even mold. So turned on each other and had a bleach spray gun fight, laughing like idiots.

All the women at the top of the stairs looked down and shouted, “Idiots.”

Rom flung his shirt atop the trash pile. “I’m never wearing that again,” he said. I picked it up. This was now the only shirt I owned. Peter said, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” I was drinking bourbon from his bottle. “Yes, you can,” I said.

After everyone left I sat on the basement floor crisscross applesauce. The basement was empty, desolate, cold, and dark, with three bare hanging light bulbs and one bare toilet and no basement walls. My kids were wearing other kids’ clothes. My wife was feeding the family out of cardboard boxes. I had failed as a husband, father, landowner. We had saved the house but I did not hold back the tide.

Dad arrived the next day. He parked his LeSabre in front of our house and we reviewed the damage. Front lawn, washed away. Trailer tracks gouged into the lawn by dumpsters. Three days of torrential rain turned the property into a soggy sponge.

At a fire, Pop would run a command center in the middle of everything. He could lead, he could act, he could solve. But now he had nothing to do.

So Dad gave me his car keys. “Take my car. I’ll buy another one in New York,” he said. “You give me a ride to the train station when I leave.” Because that’s what dads do. And just like that, I had some hope.

We wouldn’t have cash for many paychecks, but at least I wasn’t getting a car loan at Carmax. Winning.

Dad bought some good pizza, and we all sat in the front yard on benches and beach chairs, our feet sinking into the lawn, folding the slices like you should. Dad said to the kids, “Let’s go bike riding.” I picked up Keith’s tricycle and Pop picked up Grace’s tricycle and we all went into the basement.

Dad saw the dark and dank floor and a stink only your eyes can smell and said, “We now have the best indoor racetrack on the block.” And we did. The kids were 3 and 2 years old and they saw the Daytona Raceway at night under three bare light bulbs.

After four laps, Dad pulled over Grace. She was a sweatball. He pulled out his little notebook, and with his foot on her front tire, started writing.

“Wot’s that,” asked Grace. At 2 years old, she was nearly deaf and she spoke words the way she heard them. “It’s a speeding ticket,” Dad said and handed her the paper. “Slow down.”

This was Grace’s first speeding ticket and she frowned, confused. She looked at Dad and Dad put on his sunglasses, his foot on her handlebars, and leaned down at her. She wriggled, then she grinned, threw the ticket in the air, laughed at Dad, and peeled away.

Keith was already laughing when Dad pulled him over. His knees were above the handlebars. It wasn’t his bike. “These fines are going to just keep going up,” Dad said. Keith tore up the ticket, let his head fall back, tossed the shreds over his page boy haircut, and laughed and laughed. And he was gone again.

And the women at the top of the stairs shouted down, “Don’t hurt the kids.”

And for the next hour, my kids were besotted horsesweat in musty cotton clothes. The kids fell sometimes and sometimes they rode in the wrong directions. And Dad kept writing tickets.

All I had were singles and I gave my dad a dollar each time he wrote a ticket, and he’d put them in his shirt pocket. I would not see that money again, but Dad had given me purpose. That’s what dads do; pay the bills and help when they can.

After school the next day, six kids were at our front door with their tricycles. “That’s OK,” Dad said, “I have another notebook.”

I went to find my wallet.

In the last years of his life, my Dad and I had a tradition. I’d call his house most nights while driving home from work. The phone would ring: Three, four, five, six times. He wouldn’t answer.

The machine would kick in and I’d hear my sister’s voice on the recording. He liked her voice on the machine.

I would talk at Pop while the message chirred. That machine was right next to his couch in front of his TV. I knew he was sitting there, 85 years old, under his New York Football Giants blanket. Since the fourth cancer diagnosis, he didn’t like to answer the phone.

“Pop! Pop, pick up! It’s Tommy! It’s your son.”

After a time, I’d stop and tell him about my day, my kids, what was new, and that I was still pulling a paycheck.

Very occasionally, he’d pick up the phone. About once every two weeks. And we’d talk.

I’d ask, How are you feeling (“What do you want me to say”). He’d ask about the job (“Good enough, Pop, but I don’t trust anyone”), the kids (“Grace gets As on her report card and all these little plusses”), the dogs (“They miss you”), and Keith’s therapy.

My son Keith is a trans teenager. He has anxieties and hates himself. He’s sullen, silent, or suicidal. Pick the day. Other times he might smile during dinner.

Pop understood Keith’s moods better than I did. I think Pop had seen more in New York City. He managed lots of different kinds in the fire department and growing up with the corner boys in the neighborhoods. Some desperate, some down. Not everyone gets out of the fire okay.

So he’d ask, “How’s Keith doing?”

Pop didn’t understand ADHD and therapists and kids cutting themselves. He didn’t understand gender fluidity and transsexuality. Homosexuality was a sin against God because The Church told him so.

But Pop saw nothing wrong with my son: “He’s still the same kid, right?”

Same kid, Pop, just a new wrapper. Pop believed God was lucky to have Keith.

“Just tell him it’s going to be all right. Tell him I said that.”

And that was it.

He’d beg off the phone to do something else, anything else. Eat dinner, watch the Yankees. Our calls were maybe 5 minutes.

Dad’s been dead now nearly a year. I’m still here. On my drive to work each morning, I’d check one box off my executor list – handwritten on a legal pad on the navigator seat. Call an insurance company. Get someone paid. Sell the place in Florida. I had time for one box each morning.

Nearly every night on my drive home, I think about calling him. It’s a phantasy. He’s not there to pick up the phone. Hell, I cut off his phone service and sold the house 6 months ago.

So.

I imagine — sometimes — he’s in my passenger seat, riding alongside me on the ride home. I put the legal pad in the back seat. He sits next to me. We cut off Lexuses on the toll road. We speed. And we talk.

But the version of Dad I conjure isn’t an old man. Oh no.

The Pop I create is about 47 years old. Staggered and miserable. He lost his wife to cancer a year ago, has two daughters at home, fights fires every day, and pays forever hospital bills. I’m away at college. He is alone.

His friends empathize but don’t understand. Mom was the first to leave. Dad was the first to lose someone.

Money isn’t much of a problem. A fire captain keeps working the overtime. Stay in The City, away from problems at home. Women come to him, with cake and attention. He doesn’t trust any of them.

He’s angry and he’s strong. He’s vulnerable and he’s quick to lash out. His steady life is just gone. He remembers better days barely five years earlier — days when the family was scrambling to get by. Mom’s chemo treatments and late nights with the TV. He thinks these were the good times.

This version of Pop is a guy I can talk with.

In The Subaru, we talk about traffic, and the Yankees, and the kids. Sometimes mine, sometimes his. He vents in four- or five-word sentences.

“Damn kid’s run off again. Never know where that boy is; what the hell is he thinking.”

“She has no common sense. She doesn’t think. She’s going to run that car dry and leave it on the side of the road. No gas. Christ.”

His jaw clenches. He grunts. He glares. I watch his face in the glow of the oncoming headlights. Sometimes, he wants to reach through the windshield and strangle that goddamn guy in the Volvo. I pull closer to the Volvo.

I cherish these moments.

At some point, Dad will say he’s got to go now. His dinner’s getting cold.

And I don’t have to turn my head to know he’s gone.

Switch lanes. Pay the toll. Get home. Good times.

By Tom Sakell