Chris Conroy

Jack Helbig

Antifreeze

My husband calls and tells me he's leaving for three weeks, heading somewhere south, somewhere warmer than Maine where the snow's been here, dirty and solid, since I'm guessing Halloween, and then he tells me the pipes in the guest house need to be drained and to call "my little boyfriend" 'cause he's done fixing everything that I break and that, get this, that someone left the top off the snake's cage and that he's missing again, hiding somewhere in the house, and that I better find him before night falls and the cold gets him. So long, adios, he says and hangs up before I ask him how to drain the pipes.

My son Joel walks in, stoned I'm guessing, with his girlfriend who looks old enough to be my best friend—only 16 but tall as me and nicely developed up top. I watch them undress each other in the foyer: He pulls off her hat and unzips her puffy coat, she spins him out of his scarf and pulls off his soggy gloves. They both bend down and struggle with their own boots, kicking and pulling at their wet heels. When they finally get their boots off, they stand up and smile at me. Joel rubs his red hands together and she tells me, while patting her matted blonde hair, "boy, is it cold out there." She doesn't look right standing next to my son. He's small for his age, still checks the hairs under his arms in the bathroom mirror at night. I think about how far he might have gone with her and start feeling sick, picture them together, naked, eating lollipops and watching cartoons and then my father walks in and takes the glass of wine out of my hand and says I've had enough and that he wants to re-organize the photo-album and asks if he can stay another week.

"Dad your plane leaves in two hours," I say grabbing my glass back from him. "Besides, Marina will be here tomorrow morning." I finish my wine and he shakes his head. "Where would I put you?" I ask him.

He steps close to me, whispers so my son won't hear. "I don't like what you're up to," he tells me.

"You smell like garlic," I tell him holding my nose.

"Not one bit," he says, "don't like it."

My son tells me he's making hot chocolate and disappears into the kitchen. "What don't you like, Pop?" I ask him.

"I'm sitting down," he says and drops on the couch, picks the funnies up off the coffee table. Pretends to read, even throws in a fake chuckle.

"I'm a big girl, Dad." I take a seat on the couch across from him. "Married, sixteen year-old son, can even buy my own liquor."

"Marina's a stripper for God's sake," he says still staring at the colored paper.

"Dad, she's a good person." I hear my son and his girlfriend giggling in the kitchen. "And she pays me good money to stay here."

He closes the paper, neatly folds it and places it back on the table. "Joel should not be exposed to such things," he says looking at me. "Not at his age."

"Dad, that's silly . . . he'll be driving in less than two months." The kettle starts whistling. "And Joel really likes Marina. They get along just fine." Still whistling, now screaming. Why? She must be seducing him on the floor. "Joel!" I yell.

"Are you going to shut that or should I?" Dad asks me.

"Joel!" I shout louder and the whistle fades to a cry and then quiet.

"No!" I yell back. "Dad, you want some hot chocolate or coffee?"

"Tea," he says, "with lemon."

"What, Mom?" He yells. "You want a cup?"

"Make Bop-Bop tea with lemon," I yell. "Dad, really . . . he's fine with it."

"What, Mom?" His voice is muffled.

I know her tongue is in his mouth. "Tea with lemon . . . and bring my bottle of wine too." My father picks the paper back up and I swipe it from his hands and smile at him. "What?"

"And your drinking, that's another story." He starts rubbing his bony knuckles over the coffee table. "This is good wood—cherry wood," he says, then: "You know, he sees how much you drink?"

"Joel, my wine!" I yell.

"That’s nice, Hope."

I toss the paper back to him. "Lighten up, dad." It lands on his lap and then flutters to the rug. "Read the funnies," I tell him.

He picks the paper up and places it back on the table. "Hope, I have to look out for you," he tells me. "And where has Douglass been? I've seen him maybe twice this whole week."

Joel comes in wearing a weird smile and pours me another glass of wine. "The tea is on its way," he says and goes back to the kitchen.

"See what I mean," Dad says.

"What?" I laugh and sip my red.

He looks at his hands. "He's in on it," he says looking at me. "He's feeding you that poison."

I hold the glass out to him. "Here, take a sip . . . bring back the demons," I say.

"Hope, that's not funny." He looks scared. “It's been over twenty . . .”

"How come you always get like this right before you leave?" I set the wine down on the coffee table and cross my legs. "You were fine all week. Why is that?"

"I've been thinking, Hope . . . I've been thinking of maybe moving back." He looks down for a few seconds. "Back here," he says looking up at me again, "to Maine."

Joel comes back in and hands Dad his tea. "Thanks, Joel," Dad says to him holding the cup by its tiny handle. "Hey, Joel," he says.

"Yeah?"

"How are you?" The cup of tea is shaking in his hand, the hot liquid rippling, teasing a spill.

Joel looks at me confused.

"Dad, put the tea down. You’re going to spill it."

He takes a slow sip and winces. "Really, Joel, how are you?" He sets the tea down.

Joel looks at me again.

"Tell Bop-Bop how you're doing." I smile at him.

"In?" He asks.

"Dad, he's fine," I say reaching for my wine glass.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," he says now reading me. "Totally, Bop-Bop. Fine and dandy." I sneak a "hit the road" hand gesture. "Okay, see you," he says and starts walking away.

"Wait, Joel." My father says.

Joel turns around.

"Your father said the snake got out of his cage again."

"Yeah."

"Well, keep an open eye," Dad tells him.

"Will do," he says and starts backing up, turns for the kitchen.

Dad raises his voice, "Hey, Joel."

Joel stops and turns around and looks at me and then at Dad. “Yeah?”

"I'm going to move back here . . . to Maine," Dad says to him. "I'm going to live with you and . . ." he points at me, "you and your mother here."

"Oh," Joel says scratching his head and looking at me. "Cool." He says "cool" like a question.

"Dad," I say feeling like tossing my wine in his face. "We have to discuss . . . ."

"Of course," he says interrupting me, "the boss here will have to okay it."

"That's cool," Joel says again shuffling backward. "My hot chocolate's, um . . . getting cold . . . I'll be in the kitchen."

"What the hell was that, Dad?"

"His little friend in there smokes. I saw cigarettes—Marlboro Lights—in her jacket."

"Dad, why did you say . . . tell him that?"

"Oh, Hope," he says smiling. "I just wanted to put it out there. Relax." His smile fades. "Besides, he needs a figure around here to show him how to be a man."

"Dad, I wish you hadn't said that to him."

He looks down at the paper again, moves it back and forth with his right hand. "Marlboro Lights," He says tearing off a small piece of paper. "She smokes Marlboro Lights." He puts the paper in his palm and blows it at me. It wafts to the carpet, lands near my feet.

"She has boobies, too." I'm starting to really feel the wine and I don't feel like arguing with him so I let the subject change. "How do I drain the pipes in the guest house?" He just wants to rile me up, I think. I won't let him ruin my buzz.

"What?" He grabs his cup of tea and blows on it. I smell garlic again. He sips.

"I have to drain the pipes for Marina." I hear more giggling and I start thinking about the first time I lost it. "She needs to use the water." Walter Dorgan. I was sixteen. He was seventeen. At his parents condo on St. Patty's day. We drank green beer and smoked weed out of an apple. There was a little love and a lot of blood.

"Thought Douglass took care of that stuff?"

"He's away for awhile." I pour myself another glass of wine and Dad shakes his head at me again. "I think he's dating someone," I say.

"That boy misses his father, you know?" He sets his tea back down and picks up the bottle of wine, tries to read the back. "That's your last glass," he tells me.

"That boy is fine," I say. "Listen to him in there. He has lots of friends. Gets okay grades. Has a girlfriend." He's still intensely staring at the wine label. "Dad you can't even read that," I say, "put it down."

"I just worry," he says and sets the bottle down. "He needs a man around here. I can be that figure in his life."

We're in my car heading to the airport in the snow and my dad tells me he's sorry for not being there when I was growing up.

"Dad, you don't have to apologize every time you leave." The snow slows to flurries and I click the wipers from high to low. "You said you were sorry and I forgave you.” Sometimes I wonder why I have forgiven him for disappearing for months at a time, for leaving me and my brother and mother alone and broke eating sugar sandwiches and sleeping under five blankets because our heat was turned off? Can you tell someone you forgive them and then secretly hate them when you feel like it?

His blue duffel bag is in his lap and he's obsessively checking the contents, making sure nothing—toothbrush, pair of black socks, heart pills, deck of cards for solitaire—is left behind. "I know that, Hope . . . I just worry that you might remember something I did, or . . . didn't do, and . . . well, that you might start hating me again."

"It takes a lot of energy to hate someone, Dad." He zips up his duffel bag, sighs, and then unzips it and starts checking it again. "Dad, please . . . you're making me nervous. Have you got everything?"

He folds his bony hands over the bag and sits silent. I look over at him. The bright blue of the bag defines his wrinkled knuckles, makes me think of the new lines that are forming in my face when I look at myself in the mirror on the wrong night. "Dad, do you have everything?" I ask looking back at the shiny wet road in front of me.

"Hope," he says, "I don't want to go back to South Carolina. There's nothing there for me."

"Well, Dad . . . I didn't tell you to move there.” I don't mean to sound so cold but I do. "You're still adapting," I tell him. "Give it more time."

"I'll live with you and Joel," he says. "You won't even know I'm there. Except when I cook dinner. You know I'm a great cook." He rubs his hands together and blows on and in them. "I'll have to get used to this weather again, but . . ."

I stop at a red light. "Dad," I say, "I don't think it's a good idea.” A boy in a puffy red coat is on his front lawn beating a snowman with a shovel. Chunks of snow explode in all directions with each violent swing. The light turns green and I step on the gas before the little bastard decapitates the thing.

"I can help you with Joel," he says. "I can help with other things, too."

"Dad, I don't think it's a good idea," I tell him again.

"You haven't even tried . . . how would you know if. . . ."

"Dad, I love you, but . . . I have a hard enough time when you're here for a week. I can't even drink my wine without you making some comment and then you start in with Joel. Telling me what's wrong with how I raise him. You of all people."

With his finger he makes a circle on the foggy windshield. "I only say those things because I care so much. You don't have to listen to me." He presses his finger inside the circle; spots two eyes, a nose and then draws a frown to complete the sad face. "I'm very lonely there, Hope." He rubs his hand over the windshield clearing the face. "I don't want to go back. Please, Hope . . . let me stay with you."

I'm sitting in the airport bar drinking my cabernet when my father's plane pulls away from the gate and jockeys toward the runway. He was crying when we said goodbye, told me that he sometimes feels like he killed my mother, that his drinking and disappearing and gambling was too much for her and that his actions caused her great stress which caused the cancer that eventually took her life. I told him he was being silly and that you can't give someone cancer and then I told him that I would consider him moving back, that I had to discuss it with Joel, but that I would consider it. He hugged me and tried to smile, said he didn't want to be a burden and that maybe he deserved to be alone. His plane turns onto the runway and rumbles forward with increasing speed until it lifts off the ground and shoots into the clouds. I raise my hand for the bartender and wonder, while waiting for another glass of wine, if he'll forgive me.

Chris Conroy is a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. Excerpts from his novel Between the Lines have been published in Whetstone, Word Riot and Zingmagazine (21st issue). Between the Lines was awarded the Waitman Barbe Novel in Progress Award. Some of his short stories/articles have been published in Carsons, Kestrel, Hollyboo, and Grindhouse Press. His short story "Into Kentucky" was read on Black Box Radio (7/17/06 archive). Conroy is also the co-founder of the online creative writing school: http://www.mywritersroom.com. He is represented by The TriadaUS Literary Agency. Conroy lives in a cabin in the woods with two wild dogs and the beautiful and talented Kaydi Johnson. Visit his website at http://www.chrisjconroy.com.