WESTON CUTTER

Bowling league was Mondays, softball Wednesdays, so usually it was Thursday nights Dad’d take us three to the garage for shoe polishing. Probably only happened a dozen times, but I’ve asked Audra, and she remembers it being monolithic, something we Had To Do, like church or being extra nice to Mrs. Fisher. Bethany remembers the shoe polishing—she would’ve been 5, I was 10, Audra 8—but not as much Like A Thing, but she’s the youngest and has lived in pained certainty she’s always missed the juiciest part. Mom was around: I can’t remember her but she had to have been there, infinite and ceaseless, otherwise we’d’ve been unwashed and frantic, the house lurching like broken polka toward disaster, and Dad would’ve screamed—about something stupid we’d done, about the lack of rain or too much rain ruining the grass, or the shitty drivers on his commute, or the Bjorklunds and their goddamn addition—till the shingles sloughed off and the siding fell away and the Capecchis across the street called the cops.

The shoe polishing was one of few doors Dad left open for us. We couldn’t talk about monthly reports or efficiency tables, and when we dressed up he’d scoff at the ties I’d fasten to my neck, snort when the girls’d don dresses and clutch clipboards, pretending to be receptionists. We couldn’t grow mustaches, didn’t know how to bowl or play softball or why anyone would like Michelob; we were, we knew, insufficient to the task of adult attention. But when he’d polish shoes he’d soften; his voice even changed. See that? he’d ask after he’d done a particularly good job, See how nice that looks? and we’d congratulate him, or praise him, and he’d shrug and say, Hey, even a blind squirrel.

One year he had a truck. Why did a plant manager for a corrugated facility need a truck? Things happen to you as kids; you don’t get to wave your arms and complain it doesn’t make sense. It was the truck we all remember—I asked Bethany two nights ago, up with baby Jenny, fussy and refusing to latch. Yeah, we’d sit on the tailgate, right? He’d set our feet right on his thigh? I remember the tailgate but not where he’d set our feet. There’d be a Twins game on the AM/FM hung by its handle on a nail in the garage, because he’d grown up with a father who’d hung an AM/FM by its handle on a nail in the garage. Because of them, the same hangs in my garage, too.

Half a mile from our house, the Highway 62 bridge spanned the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers—our town’s name derived from the Dakota word for meeting of the waters. That summer, the bridge closed for repairs. Mom and Dad must’ve told us it was going to happen, but all I recall is the sudden shocking silence. This was the suburbs; it wasn’t city loud, not bad by any stretch, but the constant low-grade thrum of the highway that led to the bridge was noticeable for its absence when it ceased. It felt miraculous.

What Dad liked was caring for things—the garden, Mom (as much as he could), maintenance. You wanted to see a happy guy? See him on Thanksgiving, switching out the 9-volts on all the smoke detectors, or how every three years he’d re-wax the wood floors, how equinox days, March and September, were when he’d switch the furnace filters. There was a whole system for making blueberry muffins, and, when we got older, he refused to allow any of us to leave the house without a few peanut butter and honey sandwiches packed for any drive or flight. We were terrified of him our first dozen years because it felt like living with a guard inside a museum in which enchanting displays loomed, or strange, small nooks of fascination beckoned, and each time we’d try to engage with any of it the guard’d rush over and scream that we were fucking everything up, that we should stop touching, would blow his top then walk away muttering, It’s not like what I care about’s important! Who gives a shit what Dad wants! Now we have kids and can sense how small he must’ve felt, unseen and desperate to roll some strikes, smash a ball, haul ass around the bases, slip through a few Michelob till things felt easier.

Audra remembers he did the shoes on rotation; Bethany can’t remember one way or another, and I thought he just did the same shoes, week after week. What felt essential was the inclusion—it wasn’t grudging, wasn’t cross. It also wasn’t empathetic: he needed to polish his shoes, and the system he had in mind required us. “Hey kids, it’s…shoetime,” he’d say, flashing his hands—Jim Carrey’s The Mask must’ve come out, and I sensed he was performing Being a Dad. It’d be after dinner, Thursdays, and I can’t remember any weather one way or another from that year. Maybe the bridge closing and the road quieting made everything feel calmer and more enjoyable; maybe it was one of those magic Minnesota summers that rewards the suffering of its winters. We’d file out to the garage and he’d drop the gate of the truck and hoist Bethany up (but not me or Audra, which I’d find later broke her heart—Audra was only a pound heavier and 2 inches taller than Bethany, but she wasn’t The Baby). We’d jostle for space and he’d come down the line, grabbing our feet, looking furious and exacting. Hmmmmm, he’d growl, and then he’d shove his size 12 Jos. A. Banks and Cole Haans and Florsheims onto our feet. The girls would squeal laughter and I’d smile and he’d crack the tiniest grin, like a felon getting away with it. He’d go quiet and drop to the task and sometimes we’d ask, and he’d tell us, again, how he built the shoeshine kit in his high school industrial arts class, and then he’d resume his quiet and listen to Herb Carneal’s play-by-play and polish his shoes while we wore them.

We’d never wear them otherwise, and I don’t remember the act feeling special, trying on Dad’s stuff or anything. Mostly we were glad to be with Dad in a scenario that found him unlikely to get pissed.

We were supposed to be nice to Mrs. Fisher because her husband was dying, though he still wore a bathrobe to go get the morning paper at the end of the street, he walked fine, still smoked his pipe, still told us—if we happened to be playing basketball—the same old story of how he once made 31 free throws in a row at the YMCA as a young man. Bullshit we never said—old people were notorious—but you couldn’t call old farts liars. So much of childhood is just fun things you’re forbidden from, exciting things you can’t say, and we weren’t bad kids, but we wanted to know the edges, out beyond what we’d been allowed. Our dads were tired, overworked and stressed; our moms were kind and hesitant. That summer Mrs. Fisher asked us to weed her garden—me and Dan and Bob and Brian—offered us $2 each to do it. We figured it was because Mr. Fisher was dying, and as we talked about how we’d spend our money we made up stories—maybe she was in there having as much sex with him as he could since he’d croak soon and all we knew about sex was it was A Great Want. It must’ve been July. We went and, without speaking a word, pulled each plant from the earth—her tomatoes and spiky cucumber vines, her delicate little pepper plants and strawberries, even the Jack-in-the-pulpit, tucked over in the shade with its odd sensuousness. When Mrs. Fisher returned after twenty minutes, saying, Let’s take a look at your progress, she clutched at her throat. All our parents gardened; we knew what weeds were. We knew what we were doing, and couldn’t look at her when she paid us. The Fishers were unfailingly kind. Maybe that’s all it was: we wanted someone to be reasonlessly cruel to. We spent the rest of the summer waiting for the punishment we knew would come when she told our moms.

Audra and I and occasionally Bethany would sneak out to Dad’s truck some nights, sitting in the cab, snooping: had that package of Stim-U-Dent toothpicks always been there? That book of matches? That emery board? Was he having an affair, or did he have a drug problem? Our fears were established by sitcoms, our understanding of adulthood’s challenges manufactured by TV. Aud and I agreed something was going on with Dad and we didn’t understand. Why’s he so calm? we’d whisper. It wasn’t like Dad was skipping and whistling on his way in each night, but the house felt steadier. I wondered if Mrs. Fisher had told my parents about us ruining her garden, and I speculated maybe that’s what he’d been waiting for—a little hellion rebel to relate to. I didn’t know. Audra would tell me later she prayed Our Fathers each night that summer, as many as the date told her—she’d recite 5 on the 5th, 12 on the 12th. Ends of the month must’ve been brutal, and she thought maybe that’s what’d caused the change.

Late that summer. I remember it was spaghetti night but perhaps that’s just distance, longing. Not back in school yet, but we’d bought pencils and folders, there were lists—that interstitial anticipation. The Twins were bad, but we still polished shoes some Thursdays and listened to the games, watching our father’s head bent to task. Maybe that’s all he ever was trying to show: that there were Things You Should Do no matter how you felt. You root root root for the home team even when they stank. You kiss your wife on returning from work even if you looked like you wanted to burn the world to ash, starting with your own life. You sigh like you’ve never been asked for such a great sacrifice each time one of your kids says, Dad, can I tell you something? but you say yes, and then stare at them, listening so intently they learn to keep it brief.

How’s the Bjorklunds’ new addition coming along? Mom asked, a soft arch to her voice. Audra and I stared at each other: that’s it. With the bridge closed Dad must have had to take a new route to work, so no more driving past people he knew and felt competitive with, the parents of our friends and enemies from school. No more complaining about the Bjorklunds’ gaudy addition (They need another, what, 600 square feet?! Already live in a goddamn mansion!), the Taurinskas’ convertible, Janelle Scwarnick’s new Mercedes now that she’d split from reliable Hank and had shacked up with that sleazeball surgeon Glen, the Garelicks’ getting their goddamn pool redone. I was still looking at Audra, but not really: I was looking through her, wondering over little factors I’d never thought to notice.

He stood, neither suddenly nor loudly. He moved gentle, graceful, like I imagined he looked when bowling: all fluid. He was a pretty good man whose life sucked the stuffing and grace from him. He walked to my mother’s chair, held out his hand, bowed just slightly and said, “Madam.” We watched, forks quiet in our hands; we’d never seen anything like this, wouldn’t ever again. For Dad’s company parties they’d get gussied up and Dad’d nuzzle behind Mom’s ear and she’d say, Joshua Francis, half scolding, half delighted as he asked one of us kids to take a picture of them, An’ try to get it in focus this time, wouldja, and we knew something happened out there, wherever they went, or later, after they paid Samantha and he drove her home to return to a quiet house, but we couldn’t see or understand it.

Mom tilted her head so minutely, like huh, look at that, then took his hand and stood beside him at the kitchen table and they danced slow together in a tight circle we weren’t included in but recognized as where and what we must have come from. That tiny impossible distance between them and how hard they tried to cross to the other. I’d think of that moment two years later when I called him a fucking idiot—I hadn’t really meant it, just wanted to see if I could get to him. He raised his arm and started to swing at me, and I thought finally, do it—maybe the whole time I just wanted to break him. He started fast—setting up for the kind of swat he took as a kid and told us about a few times—and slowed gradually and ended up gently setting the back of his hand soft against my cheek. That’ll teach ya, he grumbled, and we stared at each other for a moment, both of us unsure how we’d got there, then never said another word, neither of us apologizing. Cynthia believes none of this: Fuck you, she’ll say lovingly, teasingly, our daughters asleep upstairs, and I’ll say, No, it’s true, but I wouldn’t believe it either. How could she understand the loving, generous man she adores was once a shadowy, bitten, wracked man, knocked around by such currents? After they rebuilt the bridge—it took a year, during which Dan and Bob and Brian and the rest of us neighborhood boys would sometimes bike out at dusk to its edge, as far as we could go, daring ourselves to look out and over the 70-foot drop—I don’t remember Dad complaining anymore. I never thought to ask if he ever went back to his old route to work. I should ask. Maybe he still complained but finally learned to make it private, quieter. Maybe he simply needed a break—as we all must—from the slow steady accumulation of all he couldn’t help becoming.

WESTON CUTTER’s from Minnesota and is the author of several books, most recently Careful from Finishing Line Press.