“Well, hello there, my man,” he says, full of the old charisma. “What can I do for you?”
At first, I think he’s kidding, but he’s not. “It’s me,” I tell him. “Sutter.”
He looks like he’s waiting for me to finish.
“Your son?”
“Sutter! Of course. Man, it’s great to see you. I forgot you were coming this weekend. Well, what do you know?” He shakes my hand with a firm, warm grip. “And who is this striking young lady?” He offers his hand to Aimee.
I introduce her. She ducks her head shyly while he tells her he mistook her for a Hollywood starlet.
“You’re just like your old man,” he tells me. “You have an immaculate taste in the ladies.”
I wonder what ladies he’s had immaculate taste in. Surely he can’t mean Mom.
As it turns out, he’s already set up plans to meet his current lady friend at a place called Larry’s, says he thought I was supposed to come next weekend. Usually, I’d write off something like that as my mistake, but I’m sure we agreed on this date. No use arguing about it, though. We’re here now, and he’s as happy as can be to have us join him and his friend for some barbecue.
He figures it’ll be best if we take separate cars, so Aimee and I load up in the Mitsubishi and he gets into his beat-up old Wagoneer. Spirits are high. Except I can’t help wondering whether it might be a little difficult—with this girlfriend of his around—to bring up the topic of why he and Mom split up.
“Another shot of whisky, Doctor?” asks Aimee as we start down the street.
“Stat,” I say.
Chapter 59
Larry’s is a little smokehouse/bar only about ten minutes from the duplex, a dump from the looks of it, but they always say you get the best ribs in the dumpiest places. Dad’s obviously a real regular. There are probably fifteen people in there and they all seem to know him. They’re amazed and delighted to meet his boy too. Texas women sure do like to pinch you on the cheek.
His lady friend isn’t so happy, though. She comes out of the bathroom just as we get finished passing through the smorgasbord of well-wishers, and she launches into how she’s already been there for thirty minutes and is sick of how he treats her. This looks like it could turn grim, but I should know better. Dad just clicks on his broadband smile, and tells her he got held up a little by a visitor.
“I’d like you to meet my son, the amazing Sutter Keely.” He makes an exaggerated gesture in my direction. “And, Sutter, this is Mrs. Gates.”
As quick as that Mrs. Gates goes all radiant. “Your son? Why didn’t you tell me he was coming to town?”
She teeters forward, folds a sloppy hug around me, and kisses me on the cheek. Looks like she’s a little tanked already. I think I might like her.
She’s not the prettiest forty-five-year-old lady in the world by any means, but she is quite the fabulous specimen in her own way—magnificent fake eyelashes, a full kilo of eyeliner, and best of all, the oversize Texas hair, dyed black with a splotch of white in front where her bangs part. She’s statuesque in a way, not tall but like maybe at one time she had the body of a Miss Universe. Only now the statue is turning back into its original block of marble. I mean, she’s substantial. I’d hate to run into her with the Mitsubishi.
We gather at a round table near the back wall, and Dad orders up barbecue and a couple of pitchers of beer. The food’s delicious, big portions with plenty of sauce, hot and sweet like I like it. But best of all, no one seems to mind that Aimee and I are helping ourselves to the brew. It’s frosty cold as Christmas morning—beers with the old man at last!
He cocks back in his chair, lights a cigarette, and goes into his jokes and stories, igniting laughter from everybody, including the antique country-and-western hippies at the next table. The story I like most is about the time we went to some little lake back when things were still okay between him and Mom. It had this beach layout with a small pier and a waterslide, a couple of diving boards, and a lifeguard. After trying to teach me how to swim for a while, Dad decided to do a little showing off on the high dive, so he told me to sit right where I was and not to move. Well, of course, me being me, as soon as he turned his back, off I went running around trying to get into any kind of fun I could find.
So Dad did his dive and then came back to find me missing. Immediately, he panicked, thinking his fabulous boy had slid off the pier into the deep water. He rushed to the lifeguard, but all he did was wade around in the shallow water with his whistle poked in his mouth and his stupid-looking pith helmet glinting in the sun.
It’s hilarious the way Dad tells it. He does all the voices and faces, even gets up and imitates the faux heroics of the doofus lifeguard, and then me reappearing, tying up the drawstring on my bathing suit after a visit to the Porta Potti, looking all bug-eyed innocent. Everyone’s about to explode from laughter, except Mrs. Gates.
She’s all sentimental over the whole thing, sitting there with her eyes welling up and one of the fake eyelashes dangling crooked. She has a large blob of barbecue sauce on her chin that no one tells her to wipe off, and she’s muttering, “You got bootiful chidren. You sure do, just bootiful.” Apparently, she thinks Aimee’s my sister.
Me, I feel all glorious and beaming because I remember when the whole deal really happened. Dad doesn’t tell the best part, though—the part when he grabbed me and squeezed me and told me not to go running off like that ever again because what if I did drown? What would he do without his amazing, amazing boy? I’ve carried that memory with me like a lucky coin ever since.