Keeping it cool, Dad’s like, “It’s always a mystery to men what women think.”
Then, out of nowhere, these words blurt out of my mouth: “Mom told us you cheated.” The words feel weird on my tongue, but I’m in it now and have to go on. “She always tried to blame everything on you. I never really believed her, though. I figured she was just using it to get us on her side.”
For a moment, Dad rubs his finger along the top of his beer mug, contemplating.
“Well?” says Mrs. Gates. “Did you cheat?”
Without looking up, Dad’s like, “Maybe. A little.”
I guess it’s just one of those things that—when it comes right down to it—he can’t lie about. Sure, it sounds ugly, but I’m still trying to tell myself that, with the way Mom treated him, he had to go looking for comfort somewhere.
“Hot damn!” exclaims Mrs. Gates. “Isn’t that just like a man to come off with an answer like that? How can you cheat just a little?”
He puts the smile back on but it’s not so authentic now. “You know how it is,” he explains. “You go out drinking and having a good time and one thing leads to another. The girls don’t mean anything. Some of them you don’t even remember their faces.”
I’m like, “Some of them? How many were there?”
Dad looks like he’s actually getting ready to count them, but gives up. “It’s not like I kept a running tally,” he says.
“That’s it. I’ve heard enough.” Mrs. Gates slams her palm onto the table. “I didn’t know I was getting involved with a serial ra**st!”
“Oh shit.” Dad looks at me apologetically. “Here she goes, exaggerating again. I was hoping we could get through tonight without this kind of thing.”
Mrs. Gates leans forward. “I am not a thing.”
“That’s not what I said. It’s just that you can be like—let’s say—way overdramatic?”
“I am not overdram…overdram…overdramical. How do you expect me to react when I find out you go around having sex a mile a minute with women you don’t even love?”
“Hey, I never said I didn’t love them. I’m sure I loved them all, even if it was just for forty-five minutes.”
“Oh-ho! Forty-five minutes, is it? Tell me this, then—when are my forty-five minutes going to be up?”
Dad cocks his head to the side. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t even wear a watch.”
Even I can tell that’s the wrong thing to say.
Mrs. Gates’s painted-on eyebrows launch upward so fast you’d think they were getting ready to fly off her head. “Well, now I’ve heard everything! You cheating dog. Making me think you wanted me to leave my husband and two poor kids for you.”
“Your kids? Your kids are twenty-something years old. Besides, I never said I wanted you to leave anybody.”
Her face is completely red, right to the roots of her dyed hair. “So now you think you can just throw me away like some old, gnawed-on bone? Well, I’ll show you what I think of that.” She picks up a plateful of picked-over barbecue rib bones and hurls them straight into Dad’s tumbling-dice shirt.
“What the hell?” he says, looking down at the dark sauce stains.
This would be a stellar time for a grand exit, but Mrs. Gates isn’t finished. “Let’s see how much the ladies like you looking like that.” She waves her arm and knocks her full beer mug onto the floor, where it shatters on the brick-colored tiles.
Dad’s like, “Jesus Christ, cool it, will you,” and a second later, the owner of the place charges over and says, “Dammit, Tommy”—Tommy’s my dad’s first name—“I’ve told you not to have this crazy woman in here when she’s so drunk. Now get her out before she breaks anything else.”
“But my boy’s down to see me,” Dad says.
“I don’t care. People don’t come in here for this kind of crapola.”
“You couldn’t pay me to stay in here,” declares Mrs. Gates. She stands up and staggers into the table, sending my dad’s mug down to shatter among the ruins of her own.
“Hold on,” Dad tells her. He gets up and throws a twenty onto the table and goes, “Sutter, will you settle up the bill? I better help her out.”
I’m like, “Sure,” but of course, the twenty isn’t enough to pay for all the ribs and beer we’ve had, so Aimee and I have to chip in to round it out. By the time we get done with that, Dad and Mrs. Gates are already outside.
It’s sprinkling now, and under the streetlight at the far side of the parking lot, she’s yelling, “Get away from me, you sheep in wolf’s clothing.”
“Come on, man,” he says. “Settle down. You’re taking this all the wrong way.”
But obviously Mrs. Gates is in the wrong stage of the life of the buzz. Instead of settling down, she slings her bowling-ball-size purse around by the strap and pops Dad right in the face.
“Don’t you tell me what to do,” she hollers and slings the purse again.
Dad’s hunkered over now, holding up his arms in self-defense, but she’s a medieval warrior with that purse, slamming him again and again.
“And don’t you ever dare ask me for any more loans,” she says, and whap—the purse zings into Dad’s shoulder. “You’re gonna pay me back every last cent of what you already owe me. Don’t you think you aren’t. You’re not gonna use me up and then skip out with my money.” Whap, whap, whap.