“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick…”
-W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”
The doorbell rang, and I hesitated. Ian had been gone for nearly a month. The memory of his packed suitcases lined up in the hallway. The slamming of dresser drawers, the stuffing of clothes and books in a duffle bag, my shrill pleas for him to stay and just that breath, that lingering pause before he walked out into the fading evening sun—all this was very much present. I was still sleeping on my side of the bed, his cushions and pillows untouched.
Has he decided to take me back?
Instead of Ian, through the peephole, I saw a man with a mat of gray hair and a creased expression who looked to be in his early to mid sixties, perhaps older. Despite the cold rain, he wore only a raggedy T-shirt half-tucked into a pair of faded blue jeans. From his shoulder hung a threadbare black backpack that was probably once made of leather but was now so faded and nicked that parts were peeling off. The man sighed and pulled a thin slip of paper from his back pocket. He glanced up and then back down at the note before ringing the doorbell again.
Wrong address, I figured. Or perhaps a homeless person who had straggled their way onto the property.
“I think you’ve got the wrong house, sir,” I said loudly.
The man took a step closer. He rang again.
“I don’t have any money,” I said. “Please leave.”
I started to head back to the bedroom.
“Isaac? Isaac, is that you?” the man said. He pronounced my name correctly, unlike Ian and most everyone I’d met since college, who pronounced it like the famous English mathematician and not the way it sounded in Spanish, with the A drawn out.
“Do I know you?” I asked in Spanish. I stared at the man through the peephole, eyeing the bearded curve of his jaw, the receding limits of his hairline, the moles on his forehead, searching for a feature I might recognize. And then, a familiar though distant specter materialized.
“Isaac,” he said again, “do you really not recognize me? Do you really not recognize your own father?”
“Dad,” I said, the word sticky and unnatural on my tongue. I opened the door. “Come in.”
My father sat across from me in the living room, sipping on the bottle of water I’d offered him. He cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on the sofa, never maintaining eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time. The more I stared at him, the more I saw that we had some qualities in common. We had the same proud, well-defined jaw, small nose, dark brown eyes, and the same curly hair that, when wet, took on the same consistency of steel wool. And, of course, we shared the same first name. Yet, he seemed much older. My parents were twenty when I was born, which made him about sixty when he showed up that night, but he easily looked to be in his mid-seventies. The alcohol had taken its toll, it seemed.
The last time I’d seen him was at my mother’s funeral when I was eighteen. She had left him when I was still in elementary school, tired of his womanizing and alcohol-induced rage.
Memories of our life together as a family were scarce and tinged with grief—our front door splintered by his raging foot, the lonely wail of a police siren, the soft heat of my mother’s face as she wept into my shoulder.
Two weeks after I’d moved into my college dorm room, she was killed by a drunk driver on her way back from her lunch break. My father had shown up piss-drunk at her funeral, wailing incoherently the moment he saw her lying in the casket, angry that the white roses I’d placed in her hands were imperfect and starting to yellow at the edges. He thrashed violently at my uncles as they dragged him out of the church, tearing his own shirt and hurling a half-empty bottle at the altar in the process. Whenever friends or classmates asked about my family, my answer was always the same: my mom was dead, and my father was, too.
He finished the water in one long gulp and set the empty bottle on the floor. He reached into his pockets and pulled out a pair of heavy-looking crimson eyeglasses. They were scratched deeply on the surface, crisscrossed with long, white scrapes. The dilapidated clothes and oversized glasses gave him a more senior look, reminding me momentarily of my frail, long-dead grandfather who used to doze in the sun on long, endless Sunday afternoons.
“Are you warm enough?” I asked.
He nodded and cleared his throat again.
“Nice house,” he said. I followed his gaze as he took in the Picasso prints, rows of mismatched books, and medical encyclopedias.
After medical school and perfectly timed success, Ian and I opened a small practice downtown, which gave us just enough money to buy a home in the West Adams district. And then, a month before my father showed up, Ian caught me on one of those hookup apps, planning a sex romp with some college student. And not just one, but several. I tried, haltingly, to explain, to blame it on my own selfishness, on my time-swollen body that craved youthful admiration. He didn’t say a word as he walked out the door, leaving me alone with my regret and newfound, uncomfortable solitude.
He stopped at a picture of Ian and me posing atop the Duomo in Florence. In the picture, I’m tucked into his chest, his arms wrapped around me, my scarf fluttering in the winter wind. The red-tiled roofs of the city stretched out in every direction. We smiled at the camera even though we’d struggled to catch our breath after climbing the four hundred or more steps to the top. I felt myself blush.
“How did you find me?” I asked, breaking the silence. “It’s a huge city.”
“Medical directory,” he said. “I’d heard you’d become a doctor, so when I got out, I went to one of those places where you rent a computer and asked the guy to help me look you up online.” He glanced back at the picture of Ian and me in Italy. “You aren’t listed alone.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. And then, quickly, almost muttering.“My husband and I have a small practice.”
“Husband?” my father asked. He glanced back at the picture. I held my breath, unsure of what he would say. My mom died before I could come out to her, and I’d grown distant from my relatives. Besides a few friends, no one really knew I was gay. It felt strange revealing this part of myself.
“Where is he now?” he asked.
“Not here,” I answered. I took a sip of the tea I’d been nursing. “Business.” Outside, the wind shook the trees. The storm was passing.
“Why are you here?” I asked after a pause. “After all these years.”
“Release because overcrowding,” my father responded. He struggled to pronounce the unfamiliar English words before switching back to Spanish. “I got released last night. I’m catching a bus to Tijuana on Sunday and will eventually find a way back to San Salvador.”
He shifted closer to the edge of the couch.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. So I looked you up. I just need a place to sleep until my bus leaves. I don’t mean to bother you, Isaac.” He looked back at the photograph of us in Florence. “Or your . . . husband.”
I swallowed hard. Was he hoping for a reunion? To bury the past, to mend our relationship before he left for El Salvador? I could hear what Ian would say after my father showed up so unexpectedly. Is he beyond shame? Abuses your mother, disrupts her funeral, gets locked up, and now wants a place to crash? Let him rot out on the streets. Ian had never met the man but hated him after hearing all the stories I shared. I thought of him only rarely after my mother’s funeral, and even then, with each ensuing year, his memory and influence on my life became more and more distant. Ian was right. The man deserved no pity from me after what he put us through. But then again, I reasoned, Ian wasn’t here now. I was alone. We were both alone, exiled to wander unaccompanied through life.
“I don’t know if that would be a good idea,” I began. “The last time I saw you. . . .” My voice broke.
“I was a drunk fool,” my father said. “That was so long ago. I quit drinking a long time ago.” He paused. “I know I haven’t been a good man. Or a good father.”
I sighed and looked down at the carpet, seeing the ridges and torn imperfections. “What time does your bus leave?”
“At dawn. Five fifteen. Sharp. Gringos are always on time.” He pulled off a shoe, then another. One of his black socks had a hole that exposed his big toe; the nail looked jaundiced. The stench of sweaty feet made its way to me. He stood and started unzipping his backpack. Two nights, two nights to see what he wanted.
“You can sleep on the couch,” I said, trying to make my voice cold and even. “Ian gets back on Sunday night.” I looked at his feet again. “I’ll get you a towel for the shower.”
He smiled: two rows of uneven teeth, three were silver. An image floated up to me of that same, almost too-easy grin, a memory that took me a moment to place: an old photograph of me, seven or eight years old, posing on top of a pony at Griffith Park. My father holds me on either shoulder, positioning me for the camera. I remembered my mother asking us to move this way and that before she finally took the picture. We then went to the zoo as a family, my mother buying me a stuffed alligator in a bow tie from the gift shop, my father guiding my hand in the aquarium so I could pet the slick, rubbery back of a manta ray.
I handed him the towel and gave him a clean shirt and clean underwear Ian had left behind.
“It might be a little big,” I said. “But you can keep them.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking the bundle from me. “Thank you, son.”
I managed a stiff smile. “You’re welcome,” I said. “Goodnight.” I made my way to the bedroom and stretched out on the bed. Minutes later, I heard the water running and the distant sound of my father humming one of the Pink Floyd songs he used to blast on weekend mornings when I was a child. Haunting and comforting at the same time, the wisps of his voice floated in the flat’s empty air. I let it lull me into a dreamless slumber.
The next morning, Saturday, the sunlight latticing the carpet through the miniblinds, I woke to the sound of my father rummaging through the kitchen drawers. I stared up at the ceiling for a few moments, still drowsy, listening to the rattle of cutlery. I sat bolt upright at the thought of him, just released from prison and who I had not seen in many years, rummaging through my knives. I took a deep breath and stretched back on the bed, laughing at the thought. The echo of a weekend memory floated to me: my mother cooking while the rest of the house slept, the boil of beans filling the house with the pungent aroma of garlic and onions. I hugged one of Ian’s pillows and lay there for a few minutes longer, considering what had happened the night before.
When I walked into the kitchen, my father was standing barefoot in front of the refrigerator. He’d pulled out a loaf of bread, a half-empty gallon of almond milk, a carton of mango juice, a Styrofoam container with leftover pad thai.
“You don’t have any tortillas?” my father asked. “Or beans? They won’t be as good as your mother’s, but I’ll try.”
“No, I don’t think so,” I responded. Truth was, I hadn’t cooked at all since Ian had left as cooking had been one of the things we’d enjoyed. Meals now felt like a simple biological necessity as opposed to anything mildly pleasurable. I’d been surviving on takeout and frozen dinners.
I walked over to the espresso machine—a gift from Ian’s mother, who gave it to us after our trip to Italy—and took some coffee out of one of the jars.
“I think I might have a can of beans somewhere up there,” I said, motioning to the cabinet above the stove. I pressed coffee into the portafilter, screwed it into the machine.
My father eventually found the can. After heating it in the microwave, we sat together at the kitchen table. It was a glorious morning: The storm had passed, and the sun was streaming in through the open window, illuminating the entire room in its golden glow. My father ate his beans, occasionally spreading some on toast. He chewed with his mouth open, surveying the kitchen between bites, catching my gaze and smiling as I sipped my coffee. In the clarity of the morning light, I could see our resemblances even more clearly, as well as our differences. He had a few long, curly black hairs poking out of his ears, whereas I dutifully removed any unwanted hairs as soon as they appeared.
“Did you sleep well?” I asked. “That couch isn’t super comfortable, I know—”
“Better than what I was used to,” my father answered. “I folded the blankets for you.” He motioned with his chin at the living room, and I couldn’t help but smile.
I imitated my father, pointing at my coffee cup with my chin. “Ian always laughs at me when I do that.”
“My grandpa and grandma always did that,” my father said. He spooned the last of his beans into his mouth. “Your mother also had the same habit.”
I thought of my mother’s easy laughter when she watched those cheesy court dramas with ridiculous plotlines. Of her dozing off on the couch next to a bowl of mango peels and pits. Of her standing in the hallway, broom in hand, the morning I left for university, pretending to sweep as I finished packing my bags.
“I still miss her,” I said. “So much.”
I was hardly in contact with the little family I had left, having drifted apart after my mother’s death. Most of my relatives were in El Salvador or other parts of California; I had grieved alone once the first few months had passed. Invoking her memory from the shadows was thus a solitary affair. There was no one with whom I could reminisce, no one who could call up her image as quickly as I could without context or explanation.
“I do, too,” he said. “I think of her every day.”
My father straightened up and went into the living room for a moment before reappearing with a polaroid picture. He placed the photograph in front of me.
My parents stood in front of a row of wooden desks, my mother in a white lace dress, my father in a black T-shirt and jeans. In the corner of the photograph was the bottom half of an American flag and several dark bookshelves set against the background. I recognized my father’s essence, with some differences—hair the color of charcoal, skin taut—but the same smile and uneven teeth. In the photo, he was slipping a ring onto my mother’s waiting finger. She looked shyly at the camera, the hint of a smile beginning to appear. They looked more joyful than I’d ever seen them in the few years that my father was present during my childhood.
“She was pregnant with you then, you know,” he said, readjusting his glasses. “So we went to the courthouse with a neighbor we were close to and made it official.” He turned the polaroid over. I recognized my mother’s handwriting. She’d scrawled the date: six months before I was born. She often joked that my father wouldn’t have married her had she not been pregnant with me. I smiled at my mother’s long, loopy numbers in purple ink.
My father sat next to me and turned the picture back over, staring thoughtfully at his youthful image. “Back before I ruined it all,” he said, running his fingers over the picture.
The weight of his words hit me. Was he actually recognizing the gravity of his errors? For a moment, I thought of asking him to stay with me a bit longer, to live here under my roof instead of rushing back to San Salvador. A friend from medical school had taken over our patient load while I took some time away from the practice, and I had enough savings to support us for a few months at least. But before I could fully form the fantasy, my father spoke up again.
“I don’t want to sit here and feel sorry for myself,” he said, standing up. The chair scraped against the tile floor. I followed him into the living room. He pulled back the curtain and squinted at the glint of my sedan in the sunlight. “Let’s go for a drive. I want to see the city one last time.”
The car sputtered for a moment, then started up with a roar. I turned on the wipers to scrape off the raindrops from the night before that hadn’t yet evaporated. I hadn’t really used the car since Ian left, but as we pulled out of the driveway and onto the freeway, seeing the city unfold around us, I felt my spirits begin to lift.
We headed west toward the ocean, past the new apartment blocks they were building in Cheviot Hills, past the IHOP and the Denny’s where the 10 meets the 405, kept going until we could no longer see the Hollywood sign crowning one of the distant hills. We were lucky and found a parking spot right near the Santa Monica statue, just a few minutes from the water’s edge. My father had been mostly quiet and seemed melancholy on the drive over, hardly saying anything, but suddenly he perked up at seeing the glimmering dance of the ocean and the seagulls flying low overhead. The moon, a porcelain plate, watched over everything serenely.
“I missed this,” he said. “You really don’t know what you have until it’s taken from you.”
We walked down the narrow staircase to the water and pulled off our shoes before stepping on the beach. It was late May, certainly not warm enough to swim; the sand, still damp from the previous night’s rain, felt cold on my feet. The edge of the water littered with dark green, bulbous seaweed the waves had washed ashore. It glistened in the late spring sunlight, its sharp scent drifting over to us in the cool air. My father bent down to touch the water with his hands and drew circles in the sand, watching in almost childlike wonder as the waves came and washed them away.
We continued for about half a mile along the edge of the Pacific before turning around and heading toward the pier. The bright colors of the Ferris wheel turned slowly in the distance. The aged rollercoaster climbed and climbed before swooping down and disappearing from view. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and my father said he was hungry.
Back at the pier, I bought us hot dogs and shared French fries while we sat on a bench that overlooked the ocean. The air creased the water into waves, the white froth gathering on the edges of the water’s wide expanses.
“Why were you in jail?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“The damn Chinese judge didn’t even hear my case properly,” my father began. “And the lawyer they assigned me didn’t do a good job.” He related a long, twisting story about being framed by his ex-coworker for stealing a car, which was his second offense, enough to sentence him to a couple of years in jail and to initiate deportation proceedings.
“I’m done with the US,” he said. “Forty years in LA and I still don’t have papers.”
He put his hand on my knee, gave it a paternal squeeze. “I’m really happy to be here with you, though, after all these years.”
Perhaps it was seeing the unfamiliar tenderness in his eyes, the way they seemed to sparkle like the million lights of the sea that afternoon. Maybe it was the memory of my mother that kept floating back to me, insistent. Whatever it was, something inside me shifted at his touch, and I knew something was amiss. The awkward silences, the seemingly overwrought effort of his paternal gestures—my father had materialized out of nowhere, expecting me to overlook his years of absence from my life as if I could simply forget everything my mother and I went through because of him.
I looked down at the pavement and shifted my weight slightly on the bench. My father took his hand off my knee, not taking his gaze off of me. After a moment, we each retreated into silence. He finished his soda and stood up. He leaned against the railing, stared at the churning water for a long time until I said we should head back home. We walked back to the car, the sun continuing its slow descent in the sky, the cresting waves ebbing away at the shore. We didn’t exchange a word.
I put the keys in the ignition. Nothing. I tried again, and when it failed a third time, I hit the dashboard with my fist. My father looked at me, perplexed. I got out and popped the hood, inspecting the labyrinth of cables and colors, trying to make sense of it.
My father got out and watched for a few moments while I pulled and poked at various wires and hoses before gently nudging me out of the way. I tried to push him away, insisting that I could handle it.
“My dad taught me about cars,” he said simply and leaned into the car’s open maw.
He inspected the vehicle’s insides with the same look of concern that a surgeon would give his patient. He smelled the carburetor, pulled out the dipsticks, removed and replaced caps screwed into other parts. Finally, he pulled out a greasy object shaped slightly like the bottom metallic half of a light bulb.
“Here’s your problem, Isaac,” he said, holding it up to the sunlight. “The sparkplug’s cracked. You can still drive it, but you’ll have to get it replaced soon.”
He placed it in my palm. It was warm and slippery, and when I pulled it close to my face, I could see a thin crack running down one of its stained edges. I handed it back to him. He delicately placed it where it belonged before closing the hood of the car.
“Ready,” he said, his words swept away by the wind. The statue of Santa Monica, her arms crossed beneath her neck, her stone veil unmoved, was angled against the darkening sky. For a moment, it seemed as if she was watching us climb back into the car and begin the long, slow drive back to my home.
When we got back, neither of us seemed to be in the mood to talk, so we sat in the living room, watching television. I was on the recliner, having another cup of coffee and munching on some leftover pretzels I’d found in the cupboard. My father was on the couch, wearing his tattered clothing, having changed out of Ian’s clothes and folded them neatly on the opposite edge of the couch.
We were watching some game show, a knockoff of Sábado Gigante, the variety show I used to watch with my mother growing up. A fat woman yelled the names of Latin American movie stars in response to a battery of trivia questions the host belted out at machine-gun velocity. The woman’s hair was tied into a loose bun that danced wildly every time she got a question correct and shrieked in joy. We watched silently, commenting now and then on the ridiculous outfits of the co-hosts or the corny jokes the host told the studio audience. Eventually, the woman won the show’s grand prize—a Ford Contour—and clapped and jumped in place, her enormous breasts bouncing beneath her orange blouse.
“I don’t know what she’s so excited about,” he said. “Not like it’s a Lamborghini.” My father’s battered eyeglasses reflected the television’s electric blue light as he laughed.
I smiled at him. We hadn’t talked much since we sat on the bench overlooking the ocean, having settled into a mutual awkwardness that it didn’t seem we could overcome. Still, I considered his situation; I wanted to help him in some small way. The canned applause of the studio audience filled the room as the woman squeezed behind the wheel of her new car. She waved at the camera, the credits began to roll, and the orchestra played a tune.
“What time should I drop you off tomorrow?” I asked. My father’s duffle bag and tattered backpack were stacked neatly by the living room door, next to his muddied shoes.
“I’ll walk,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. A shampoo commercial came on, the model’s chestnut hair cascading over her shoulders. “It’s not supposed to rain, and the bus station is close by.”
Forty-five minutes on foot, maybe more.
“Do you want a sandwich or something for the road?” I said. “I have some turkey slices and some mayonnaise, I think.”
“No, thanks. I don’t need anything.”
His flat tone cut me deeply. Here I was, trying to help him out in a moment of need, and he kept rejecting my kindness at every turn. I didn’t want to continue insisting just to get spurned again.
We watched television a little longer until I felt my eyes growing heavy. I looked over at the couch and saw my father’s chest rising and falling evenly. He was still wearing his glasses. He slept deeply, a snore or two escaping his nostrils, his hair metallic in the tinny blue glow of the television set. I got up and took off his glasses, placed them on the coffee table where he would see them. I fetched a blanket from the closet and draped it over him. He stirred for a moment and opened his eyes, momentarily registering me before turning onto his side, his back to me. I watched him sleep for a moment, his breathing heavy and rhythmic. I looked at his worn possessions and barely usable glasses and felt a swell of pity rise in my chest. I walked to my bedroom and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill from the reserve that Ian and I kept underneath the bed. I left it next to his glasses, knowing he would see it when he woke to catch his bus. I turned off the television and tiptoed back to my bedroom.
That night, I dreamed of the cold ocean lapping at my feet as I walked along the moonlit shore toward my father. He was a young man again, hair the color of ash, that easy smile broad on his face, his arms outstretched, expectant. I made my way slowly to him over the frigid sand, then faster as I felt my feet sink into the wetness until bit by bit it consumed me, and I sank deeper, and my father rushed toward me, hands reaching for mine, his fingers barely grazing my own before his were swallowed up forever.
I woke with a start and glanced at my phone. Four thirty a.m. I turned on the light and slowly made my way to the living room. Perhaps I’d catch him before he left to say goodbye. I felt a sudden, urgent need to see my father; my one and onlyfather.
The living room was as still and as clean as a tomb. The blanket I’d covered him with was folded neatly next to Ian’s shirt and sweatpants. Even the remote control was positioned exactly in the middle of the coffee table and the pretzel bag had been flattened and folded as well, next to the fifty-dollar bill.
I never saw him again. All I know is that he never made it back to El Salvador. I received a call a few years later from the Los Angeles County public mortuary services warning me that I had sixty days to pick up his ashes before they were scattered in the common courtyard with the unclaimed remains of other homeless people who had died on the streets.
After he left that night, I sat on the couch, smoothing out the wrinkles on Ian’s clothes, haunted by the newfound yet familiar emptiness. And much like when Ian left, I stared into the liquid darkness until the night—inevitably, inexorably—gave way to yet another morning.
***
Rumpus original artwork by Peter Witte and Dmitry Samarov
