I digress... as good as Friday was... Saturday was equally if not more so, worse. Who knew one could pull a muscle on the top of their thigh.. and not have anything momentous to remember it by. Who knew that sliding while bowling could cause a knee to hurt a week later. Who knew that I could go from happy to pissy and bitchy in 6.3 seconds.
But as bad as it was... I did have some moments that weren't all that. Taking P to see her Grandma always warms my heart. When you set aside the idea that maybe I don't burp her enough, I'm evil enough to allow her to suck her thumb and think it's cute, I did infact purchase a pacifier for her (I refuse to call it a binky) and... she just might... horror of all horrors.. be a lefty, my mother in law is only trying to be helpful and she loves her granddaugher almost as much as I love her son. My heart is even thawing a little towards the dogs. Baby, who is anthing but, is cute and sweet and friendly. The other one is afraid of everything and keeps her distance. I'm all good with that.
What I cannot handle and we've deftly avoided lately... until last night is the step-father. I took a good hard look at him last night for the first time in perhaps a year or more. He is dying. He is not aware. Sitting at the table hunched over he appears 85 rather than 65. Still working, going through the motions on broken sleep, confused thoughts, wildly imagined stories and the haze of alcohol. My mother in law says to me that milk puts him out like a light... so he drinks milk before bed. Milk and the three shots of cheap vodka that not so discretely went into the generic glass tumbler along with the ice when he assumed no one was looking. I outted him just to see if she knew. She does and is powerless to put a stop to it. Or she does not want to, I don't know. Four hours until he is supposed to leave for work and he's downing enough to get my whole household feeling pretty damn fine. I'd be out like a light for the entire night. He only makes it an hour, before he's back up and at it again.
A single this time... again with the milk. I have to ask about the grapefruit juice in the fridge before I have any... to make sure no one tampered with it. No, I'm assured he did not. He tired of juice weeks ago and has moved onto the milk. There's a cycle here... V8, grapefruit, milk. All things that go well with the booze. Nice. He sits at the table, randomly changing the channel on the tv and messing with the volume at whim. Then he asks what we're watching and who turned off his favorite show. I busy myself with the baby and dinner.
He is a small man, made smaller by his broken-down appearance. Dressed in dark boxers and a tattered wife-beater, I can't remember the last time I saw him fully or appropriately dressed. Barefoot too, not that it matters much. His skin is still dark, not from time in the sun, but from his herritage - whatever that is. He has taken on a sallow and chalky appearance. His feet and ankles are swollen terrible, not that he seems to care. He has a bruise the size of a footlong overstuff sub sandwich on the back of one leg. It's been there a long time and it's black, not that he seems to notice. He is dying and he does not feel it.
His arms that once were intimidating and powerful are now shrunken and battle scarred. The tatoos that once proclaimed his love for parrots and for Joyce, in that order, are as faded and blurred as the memories they embraced. His children want nothing to do with him. They are embarassed by him and probably a little saddened to see how far he has sunk. The mind that was once agile and strong is gone. He wouldn't remember if they came to visit and while they were in attendance he would do everything in his power to humiliate and alienate them.
His face is concave, sallow, wrinkled and weary. He cannot form a sentence of coherant thought to save his soul. Does he even still have a soul? His hair stands up from his head like troll doll who met a blonde bottle and lost the good fight. His hair would surly be grey if only he would let it. It's his one last stand at vanity. That along with the dentures he rarely wears and nightly dousing with cheap cologne before work. He sits now at the kitchen table demanding whatever his foggy mind decides he must have next and usually it's nonsensical. He mutters whatever is on his mind without regard to the setting or the appropriateness of his verbage. He is like a dog with a bone when he gets going. Spewing forth filth, ugliness, hate, racism, whatever crosses his mind. It's like a giant word association riddle that's unsolvable to the rest of us.
His mind plays tricks on him, his imagination conjuring up wild stories that on their face are impossible. Two guys tried to carjack him in downtown and he had to shoot them both. Yet here he is... no police intervention, nothing on the news... didn't hear about it at the time it supposedly happened. Hmm... me thinks not. He supposedly fell off machinery at work, 50 feet and nearly died. Was unconscious for 45 minutes... they all thought he was dead. Yet there was no trip to the hospital, no workman's comp claim, no osha investigation, he simply up and drove him. Likely not.
It dawns on me as I watch him attempt with shaking hands to down the hot wings that came with the pizza, that in 12 years I have never seen him sober. I honestly think it's too late for that. He is dying and it's only a matter of time.
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