My father

For all of my childhood my father was a functioning alcoholic. I didn’t learn what that phrase meant until I was older but that is what he was. He was a salesman and he was gone a lot. My mother said he could charm the money off of anyone. I think she liked that he made a lot of money. She probably liked that he was charming too. He was very charming, and generous, and playful, and funny. When he was in a good mood he was everything you wanted a father to be. You just couldn’t depend on his being in a good mood. It wasn’t that he was ever mean or irritable when he was in a bad mood. He was never mean or irritable, ever. When he wasn’t in a good mood he would simply be gone. It wouldn’t matter if you needed him or if he had promised you something, he wouldn’t be there. By the time I was ten I didn’t trust him anymore. Kevin was six so he still believed all the excuses when Dad’s promises were broken. Mom seemed to be okay with it too. In fact Mom was the one who made the excuses for him. When I’d watch Kevin wait at the window for his father to show up I’d tell him that “If Dad’s late it means he forgot.” She’d tell me not to be so “sour” and then she’d make up some story about Dad working so hard or having such a hard job. And maybe she was right, maybe I was sour, but I couldn’t help seeing what I saw, knowing what I knew. I know he knew that I had turned sour towards him and sometimes I wonder if that made it worse when things got really bad.
Everything changed the day he killed that little girl with his car. He was in Philadelphia and he was supposed to be picking someone up in front his hotel. Dad didn’t know the man he was picking up but he had a description so he was driving slowly and looking out the drivers’ window. No one had an explanation for why that little girl was just standing in the street but the witnesses said she froze. She was eight. Her name was Martha. My father never saw her. He didn’t know that he had hit her until it was over. I can’t imagine what that memory feels like to him. Mom and I went to the hearing but Kevin stayed in Johnson City with our grandparents. Dad's lawyer thought it would look better for him if his family were there. So I got to hear it all. I heard about his blood alcohol level, which was just barely legal but close enough to be mentioned. They asked about his drinking and I got to hear him lie. Martha's mother was at the hearing and I got to hear her sobbing. And then when it was all over I got to hear what she called him, what she screamed at him as we left the courthouse. I don’t know what that memory feels like to him either, but I know what it feels like to me. After that he stopped being a functioning alcoholic. He was just an alcoholic. Six months later he was unemployed. And six months after that he and mom got divorced. She was no longer making excuses for him.