Cleaning Dad’s Apartment

Dad died of a stroke on December 5^th 2001. I was nineteen. Three days later Ryan and I cleaned his apartment. Ryan is a heavy set man standing five nine with a chin strap beard the color of dark earth. In his teens he looked a lot like Dad, slender with a sharp jaw, but by age twenty-two he began to resemble our mothers’ side of the family. Stout legs and shoulders with a heavy chest.

Inside Dad’s apartment, the kitchen sink was baby blue and the stove was light purple. A leather footstool sat next to a bright green flower print glider. Nothing matched. There were no photos or paintings. The walls of his apartment were as white as the day he moved in. It smelled like sweat and wood smoke, and the sunlight was murky from dirty windows. We didn’t find Dad’s DeWalt Drill, Cobalt wrenches, free standing sheet metal press, or any of the other tools he used as an air conditioning contractor. His toolbox was empty but for a few screwdrivers and a crescent wrench. We didn’t find the gold watch and gold tie clips Grandma gave him after Grandpa’s death. And we didn’t find any rings from his previous marriages. Dad had been unemployed for six months. He sold everything for rent, fines, Jack Daniels, and painkillers. Half empty whisky bottles were stashed behind the sofa, beneath cabinets, and wedged behind the frozen green beans. The bottles clanked as we loaded them into garbage sacks and then hauled them to the dumpster. Half consumed bottles of Vicodin, Lortab, and Xanax were in the kitchen and bathroom, enough to fill a white garbage bag.

 In the bedroom was a bare mattress resting on the floor. Ryan told me he had to throw the bedding in the dumpster. “He died on that mattress,” Ryan said, “It was a mess.” This was the start of many clues mapping out Dad’s final hours. Resting on a folded chair was a polyester shirt and a pair Wrangler jeans. Across the hall, on the bathroom tile, was a dry, putrid, and yellow mess that I could only assume was a mix of vomit and shit, probably something similar to what Ryan found in Dad’s bedding. And as I stepped between the hall and the bedroom, examining the trail of Dad’s demise, I was granted a short narrative. I could see images of his last moments as though they were memories; Dad struggling from the bed to the bathroom, and back again, his face, body, hands and feet heavy with anguish. It felt like Dad had not been alone when he died, but I had been with him.

During this time, I didn’t have photos of Dad because I hated looking at his stark cheekbones and the extra notches in his belt, the way his lean legs trembled when he stood in one place too long. I hated being reminded of his missing teeth and the way he hunched over slightly and placed his boney hands in his jean pockets. I hated thinking about Dad’s suffering, but most of all, I hated what was not in the picture. Photos of Dad made me wonder what he could have been. They made me think about the loving and dependable father I’d been searching for since the age of nine, the one I knew I’d recognize even though I’d never seen him. Pictures of Dad filled me with a weighty longing that took my breath and made my knees tremble.

What few photos I ever owned of Dad had been misplaced or thrown out. Sometimes it was deliberate. I would see a photo of Dad’s thin drug-addicted frame and feel anger or sorrow, and throw it away. Other times, I think it was subconscious. I can remember leaving photos of Dad behind during moves, and then choosing to never to go back and retrieve them.

Dad kept his boots, jeans, shirts, belt buckles, pots and pans, avocado green highball glasses, ledgers from his bankrupt heating and air-conditioning business, and anything else he owned in cardboard boxes. He was evicted every six months for not paying rent. Keeping things boxed up made it easer. Ryan and I divided his things. I got a belt buckle, a jacket, a box of cologne, and his revoked driver’s license. Ryan took the few tools we could find and Dad’s old pickup. Dad didn’t have any photos of himself, his family, or me. I wonder why. He couldn’t sell them; their only value was emotional. Perhaps he lost them during his many moves across Utah County, or maybe he threw them away in some fit to destroy the past. I don’t know, but sometimes I wonder if he didn’t have any photos for the same reasons I didn’t, because he found images from the past troubling. Perhaps Dad threw out his photos because they reminded him of what he’d become.

Even though they reminded me of his warm body, I didn’t cry as I stuffed Dad’s cold polyester shirts in a garbage sack. And I didn’t cry when Ryan and I climbed inside Dad’s gray F-150. Nearly everything he owned fit in the truck bed. We sat on the bench seat, Ryan behind the wheel. We didn’t talk about Dad driving drunk, or search behind the seat to find the empty cans of Budweiser I could hear rattle as we loaded the pickup. We didn’t look in the rear view mirror and wonder if our faces resembled the sober father we’d always longed for. We just sat there, Ryan with his hands at ten and two, his round bearded face expressionless. I slouched a bit, my right arm resting on the door, left palm flush against the bench. Both of us sat church quiet, relishing in the death of our father, our quiet breath visible in the cold. The key to the pickup sat in the ignition connected to a small Ford Mustang bottle opener. Ryan reached forward and turned the key. The pickup cranked over with a heavy thud and we drove to the Mormon thrift store. 

I didn’t cry four days later at Dad’s funeral. I stood in the mortuary wearing the brass belt buckle he wore every day of his life, listing to the sentiments, “I’m sorry your dad turned out this way”, and “He used to be a good man.” Dad never lived up to my expectations. And when he died, I was struck by the tragedy that he would never turn his life around and become the dad I longed for. I didn’t feel sorrow or anger, but rather resentment. I felt let down, like I’d been cheated out of something I was obligated to have… a dependable father.

Poop Story: Take Two

The first essay I ever wrote was about me crapping my pants in high school. This story was a bit of a hit around my undergrad English department. Posted is my attempt at revising this old favorite.




I moved in with Grandma during the winter of ’94. She gave me the bedroom uncle Jack and Dad once shared. It was a small room with a twin bed that consumed most of the floor space. A painting of a young boy in coveralls standing beside a spotted dog hung next to the alder dresser. The carpet was an off white, and a gold colored Queen Anne style chair sat next to the closet.

Grandpa had been dead for two years. His awards for land management hung next to the kitchen door. The silver toaster he bought in ’77 sat next to the refrigerator. And the red awning he constructed was draped over the patio. The farm equipment and the land he tilled it with surrounded Grandma’s red brick home. Sometimes Grandma sat in a white vinyl rocking chair and looked out the patio windows like she could still see Grandpa working in the alfalfa field. 

 Grandma’s home was quite. Each morning she got up at 6AM and listened to the local news on KSL-AM while making toast, a hot cup of Pero (a coffee substitute), and Wheat Hearts. Tuesdays she went to Ream’s grocery store and Sundays she went to church. She wore sweatpants and white shoes and in the winter she wore a faded yellow coat. When she hugged me, her arms trembled, and so did her lips when she kissed my cheek. Her home had the same flower print carpet and brown and white tile it did in ’82, the year I was born. She was dependable, unwavering…the rock of my young life. Moving in with grandma granted me the calm consistency I needed. And I think it gave her something to live for. Six months before her death she said, “I didn’t care much about anything after Phil died. You gave me a reason to keep trying.”

After Dad left I felt like a fist was pressed tight against my stomach and rarely did I sleep more than two hours without waking. I quickly became used to Grandma’s quiet home. And so did my body. I was less anxious and I often slept through the night without waking. But when Dad called and rattled on with a drunken slur, or when someone asked how Dad was doing, or at night, when my mind slipped into troubled memories of Dad’s lazy blank stare, I felt that fist in my stomach again. I couldn’t sleep. And within a few minutes to a few hours, I’d have a heavy fit of diarrhea. It always started with a cold sweat and cramping that was followed by an immediate trip to a restroom.

The diarrhea was triggered by thoughts of my father, so I tried not to think about him. Around West Provo, I avoided people he knew. Two photos of Dad sat on Grandma’s mantel. In one, he was a young boy sitting on Grandpa’s lap. In another, Dad was in a cap and gown standing on Grandma’s front lawn. I hid the photos in the hall closet beneath the guest bed sheets. If songs by Jonny Cash or Hank Williams Jr., Dad’s favorite singers, played on the radio, I changed the station. And I changed the channel when M*A*S*H or Lonesome Dove came on the TV. The transition from Dixon Middle School to Provo High created a large pool of kids that were not from my neighborhood. It was my sophomore year and I was relived by how many students never mentioned my father. Dad had been in and out of my life for nearly five years and it only seemed fitting that my body would reflect the turmoil that surrounded me.

I can recall several instances where if the toilet had been two-steps farther I’d have shit myself. It was not uncommon for me to quickly trot from the restroom door to the toilet with my right hand holding my cheeks together. I often left class at a dead run. When teachers asked why, I said, “God told me to leave” or “I saw Trent Reznor in the hall” or “I’m expecting a pizza.” I told them anything but the simple fact that I suddenly had to shit. I didn’t want anyone to ask me questions about my diarrhea because it might lead to a conversation about my father, which might lead to more diarrhea. It was a twisted circle. There were enough things wrong with my family, that I didn’t want something to be wrong with me. So I lied.

Lying about my diarrhea lead to me lying about other things. I told stories of kick flips and half pipes, gunfights and stolen cars, dirty women and orgies. I told friends the first time I smoked pot was with Tom Petty, a 44-year-old aging rock star. I’d never tried pot, and the only Tom Petty song I knew was “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”, a song I didn’t know was about pot. I was full of shit, a fact that was confirmed regularly as I crouched over the toilet.  Before my trouble with diarrhea, I held pride in my honesty. And perhaps the reason I told outlandish lies was because I’d never acquired a talent for deceit. Or maybe I was just mimicking my father—a man known for his dishonesty.

What I am the most ashamed of is that I also lied to my grandmother. I lied to her about cutting school, where I went in the evenings, what movies I watched, the music I listened too, how often I said my nightly prayers, grades, and who my friends were. The lies were outlandish. I told her the school gave me a scholarship for a two day trip to Space Camp, when really, I just wanted to spend the weekend at a friends house. I wrecked my bike and came home with a black eye and scuffed knees. I told her a bear along the Provo River Trail attacked me. I often spent long moments in the restroom, crouching over grandma’s toilet, grunting and sweating. I always turned on the tub faucet to hide the sound. When Grandma knocked on the door and asked what I was doing, I told her I was taking a bath. She would make an accusing grunt and then walk away.

“Why do you take so many baths?” she once asked.
“I don’t know.” I said. “I just like to be clean.”

She probably assumed I was masturbating. Sadly, my problems went beyond personal gratification. I doubt Grandma would have fully understood what was going on in my body. And I doubt she would have made the correlation between my family stress and my diarrhea. But I know she would have tried to help. Was it the thrill of lying that I enjoyed? Does every adolescent go through a dishonesty phase? Grandma’s jaw always went slack with an annoyed grunt when I lied. I don’t know if her reaction was a result of irritation, or if it was because I reminded her of my father.

Fall of ’97 Dad was arrested for driving under the influence. This was the first of many arrests that would eventually lead to him spending 18 months in Jail. The morning after Grandma didn’t eat breakfast or listen to the radio. She made me toast, a hard-boiled egg, and hot chocolate. Here eyes were heavy from not sleeping. I ate at the bar, as she stood across from me, right hand leaning against the sink, her face somewhere between anger and remorse. “I bailed your Dad out of jail last night,” she said. Then she paused for a moment, shifted her weight to the other hip, and said, “I don’t know what he was thinking.”

This seemed like information she would’ve kept from me. Grandma was a reserved and soft-spoken. Few visitors stopped by the house, and rarely did she chat on the phone. A week might go by and I was the only person she talked to. I think she liked it that way. She used to talk about walking for hours along dirt roads without seeing another soul. “I miss that,” she said. “Now a days, there’re too many people around.”

When she did speak, she was always honest and sometimes tactless. At 16, when I grew my hair out, she said I looked like, “a damn hippy.” And later that year, when I brought home my first girl friend, she said, “that girl is trash.” Both assessments were accurate.

We’d lived together for three years and rarely did we talk about Dad. When he was brought up, Grandma became quiet. Then she looked down, one hand nervously cupping the other and said, “I don’t know what he does with his time.” Perhaps the reason she never mentioned Dad was because she was keeping information from me, protecting me from the hard fact I already knew, that Dad was an addict. Maybe she knew that saying something about Dad would mean saying too much, so the best option was to not speak at all.

She told me Dad was arrested on I-15, somewhere between Salt Lake City and Draper. He’d just left a bar and was driving with an open beer. He called her around 1AM from the Salt Lake Jail.

“He said it was a misunderstanding,” she said. He told her the open beer in his truck wasn’t his and the liquor on his breath was mouthwash. She rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes and mumbled something. The only words I could make out were “bull shit.”

The details were stated matter-of-factly, and I wonder if she wanted me to know that he lied. Like it was best for me to know. We looked at each other for a moment, and it seemed we both knew that he called Grandma rather then his wife because he didn’t want her to know. I know Grandma didn’t tell her. This was his fourth marriage. The last think Grandma wanted was for her son to get divorced again.

Grandma told me to finish my breakfast and get ready for school.  Then she left the room. It was the most we’d talked about Dad since I moved in.
I didn’t finish my egg. I got dressed and sat on the lip of my bed and waited for my stomach to turn. But it didn’t. I didn’t feel anxiety or cramps. I didn’t buckle over and run to the rest room. I just sat, palms flush against the bedspread, and gazed at the painting of the little boy and the dog. I wondered how often Dad looked at that same painting. The sun was shining on the boy’s right side, shadows to the left. He didn’t appear happy, sad, fearful, or excited. He didn’t appear to be thinking at all, his face soft and emotionless, his mind as clear as bathwater. And for a moment I imagined myself in that painting and wondered what it would feel like to not think about Dad.

Later that morning I was playing softball at Fox Field. It was located across the football field, the tennis courts, and North Freedom Boulevard. I was as far away from the school buildings as possible without actually leaving campus.

I caught a soft ball, and it hit the glove hard, the pressure vibrating along my elbow and into my bowls. It knocked something lose. My stomach turned, and instantly, I needed a restroom. In that moment, I don’t remember thinking about Dad’s lean frame hunched over a police car, his calloused hands is cuffs. But I do recall thinking about it most of the morning.

I didn’t ask the coach if I could leave, I didn’t explain to the team why they would no longer have a first baseman, and I didn’t throw the ball to the pitcher so it could remain in play. I dropped the glove and ball and ran.

I reached the cross walk of North Freedom Boulevard. As I waited for the light, my legs marched in place, hips swinging up and down as though my cheeks were hands struggling to hold hot caramel.

It was 10 AM. North was a business district, west a hospital, and east Brigham Young University. There was heavy traffic. I had to wait for the light to change. Minutes felt like hours as by bowls turned. I said a little prayer in my head. It was filled with urgency and remorse for past wrongs. I offered to trade previous transgressions for a red light. Just before the traffic stopped, I thought, “Please don’t let this happen. I don’t want to talk to Dad.”

Although I lived with Grandma, Provo High listed Dad as my guardian. Freshman year I got in a fight, and they called Dad. Same thing happened when I was caught skipping class. I feared that if I shit my pants, they would call Dad. Just the thought of hearing his voice made my stomach turn a little more.

The light changed and I sprinted. This seemed like a good idea. But it was not the best idea. It takes a surprising amount of effort to keep from shitting your pants. So I ran in short burst, slowing every dozen strides to flex my cheeks and regain the ground I lost. I can only imagine an outsider’s perception of me. One moment my hands were waving franticly. My legs were in a dead sprint. The next I stopped and walked while clinching my butt. I must’ve looked like a madman. 

There were two restrooms on the west side of Provo High. One was in the new building. It was clean and had an air freshener. The other smelled of grease, saw dust, and urine because it was next to the wood shop. Several of the toilet seats were missing and the sinks were coated in black grime. Naturally, the latter was the closest.

I walked through the building doors and instinctively, like a bear knows when her cubs are in danger, my right hand grabbed my butt cheeks and pinched them together in a primal move. It worked. I was going to make it. Just before the restroom doors, my stomach calmed. I felt fine. And then I made a bad decision. I got greedy. I headed to the cleaner restrooms.

Two steps later it happened. Just as fast as soft-serve chocolate-flavored ice cream comes out when you pull the lever, my gym shorts overflowed. But what came out was not cold. It had the consistency and temperature of beef gravy. Gym shorts were no match for this torrent. I lost it in my gym shorts, and found it in my socks. I tried to stop my onslaught of rectal rebellion, but it was no use. So I just stood there, hands on hips, and let it happen.

I went to the restroom, took a deep breath, and cleaned myself with toilet paper. The bulk of the damage was in the back. My green shorts had taken on an army camouflage look and the back half of my socks where a brownish black. From the front, I looked normal. I thought about my options. I couldn’t tell teachers because they would call Dad. And I couldn’t tell another student for obvious reasons. I decided to call Grandma. My plan was to walk to the pay phone, keeping my back to the wall. If someone confronted me… I’d lie. Classes were still in session so the hall was clear.

 I kept my back to the wall and made my way to the west entrance of the school. Ahead of me, there was an open classroom door. If crossed, all the people in the room would see my shitty pants. I imagined how it would play out. One kid would notice first and scream, Hey, that kid shit his pants! And then the laughter would come with periodic damning statements mingled in such as: He smells like a nursing home, He’ll never get laid now, and the worst one of all coming from the attractive brunette in the front row, And I used to like you. I quickly crossed the hall. I was forced to do this half a dozen times before making it to the pay phone.

Once outside, I called Grandma collect. I leaned my back against the brick wall, and kept my voice down. The operator asked if Grandma would accept the charges and she replied with, “I suppose,” her voice weighted with irritation.
 “Grandma,” I said, “I need you to pick me up. Right now.”
When she asked why, I told her some ridiculous story about a bomb threat at the high school. She paused for a moment. Drew in a deep breath and said, “Horse shit. Are you in trouble?”
I didn’t respond. Was this how things played out with Dad? He must have called collect the night before, when he asked for bail money. At the time, I didn’t understand why she sounded so irritated. Now I wonder if she expected the call to be more bad news, the sound of an operator asking if she will accept the charges must have felt like a fist in her gut. My lie probably sounded like Dad’s.
“Damn it,” she said. “You’re just like your father. Whenever he gets in trouble, he tells some jackass story and I come running like the cavalry. I’m through.”
 She was breathing hard and I could hear the click of her dentures coming lose and then snapping back into place, something she often did while anxious.
“Is that what you want,” she said, “to get locked up like your father? Cuz that’s where you’re headed?”
“I crapped my pant’s,” I said, with sincerity, and honesty, and fear.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.

She told me I was a grown boy and they don’t have those kinds of problems. We went back and fourth for a while, her attempting to uncover the truth, and me repeating it in a forceful whisper, hopeful that it would eventually sink in. This went on for sometime. Eventually, I started to cry.
“Please, please, come and get me.” I said, “And bring a towel.” It must have been the sorrow in my voice because she finally agreed.

Entering the school once again, I made my way to the front doors.  Luckily, I ran into no one. Once outside, I sat with my back against a brick wall and waited. I smelled terrible.
Time passed. I told a math instructor I was ill and waiting for a ride; I told the parent of another student that my house was on fire and I was waiting for a firefighter to come pick me up; I told the truancy officer my brother had an accident on a roller coaster. “A bolt came loose and busted him in the head,” I said. He wished me luck.

I was scanning the road for Grandma’s gray Buick when I saw Samantha Jones. I was in love with her, and had been since 7th grade. She was short and skinny and enjoyed Megadeth and Metallica. Her glasses were thick with heavy brown frames that matched her hair. She was dangerous and achievable, just the right mix of nerd and rebel. Sometimes she hugged me. At night, my imagination projected flickering films of Samantha onto the ceiling: Samantha ascending stairs, gracefully, naked, always naked, but the stairs changed to marble or oak. Beautiful stairs that I certainly didn’t own. I liked to think of her hair and how it would feel between my fingers.

Samantha crossed University Avenue holding a sack of donuts. She must have been cutting class. I tried not to make eye contact, but it was hard not to look at her. While yelling my name, she waived her free hand and jumped up and down. She ran to me and put her arms around my neck.

At fifteen, a hug from Samantha Jones was everything. I wanted to get excited by her soft body pressed against mine. I wanted to smell her hair and perfume. But all I could smell was shit.  We separated and exchanged a glance.  She knew.  Her nose scrunched as she swatted it with her shirtsleeve.
“What smells?” She said.
“I don’t smell anything.”
She leaned in and took a sniff. I waved my hand in front of her nose. 
“You smell terrible. Did you do shit yourself?”
“No!”
A bead of sweat slid down my face and rolled between my lips. The salt made them stick together. My hands shook. I was a mix of anxiety and cold sweat, love and lust. For months after this moment, I felt like a mumbling anchorman or a stumped presidential candidate. I felt like there must have been something I could have said that would have shifted the situation into my favor. But even now, as I write, I don’t know what that lie would be.

With a large smile on her face she grabbed me by the left shoulder and attempted to turn me around.  “Let me see your butt.”
Samantha tried to peek over one shoulder and than the other as I swiftly moved my hips from side to side. She asked what was on my socks, and I told her it was mud.
“If you didn’t shit yourself than what smells like a turd?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You?”
It was a childish refute. So pathetic. Samantha’s mouth opened. She took two steps back and clinched her fists.  Her narrow eyes and rigid shoulders, the way her jaw moved from side seemed to say, You did shit yourself. And as she walked away, right hand clinching the bag of doughnuts, I knew she was going to tell everyone.

Years later, as I was writing the first draft of this essay, I ran into Samantha and let her read what I’d wrote. Shitting my pants was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, and she claimed not to recall any of it.

Grandma honked, her gray Buck was parked before the curb. She leaned across the seat, opened the passenger door, and said, “Get in.”
I stretched the towel across the seat and sat down. As we drove away, Grandma rolled down the windows and told me I smelled rotten. The wind roared in on her tired face, the heaviness of her eyes showed how little sleep she’d gotten the night before.

We stopped at a red light along University Avenue and she started telling about a time when Dad was 15. He called home and told her some cock and bull story that she couldn’t recall. He said he needed a ride home. When she picked him up from the High School, he had a black eye. “He’d been in a fight next to the river” she said, “and he didn’t want anyone to know he’d lost. I didn’t want anyone to know he’d been in a fight. So I took him home, and put makeup on his eye. I did it each morning until it healed.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. Once we turned from Center Street to 3110 West, she said, “I’ve been covering up his mistakes for some time. Trying to believe his lies. Suppose I did it again last night. Maybe that’s why he thinks everyone around him is a fool.” We parked in the driveway and Grandma said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you…” She paused for a moment, her hands at ten and two, palms kneading the steering wheel. “You reminded me so much of your father,” she said.

Her statement hit hard and I wondered if I was going to have another attack of diarrhea. She confirmed what I already suspected. What I already feared. I thought about the lie I told her, and then the lies I told others. She didn’t tell me I was at a crossroads. Or remind me, once again, that if I keep lying, I’d share a future like Dad’s. I felt scared, but my stomach didn’t turn. It was a good scared, a hopeful scared. The kind of fear that brings awaking and change and hope.

Grandma looked in my eyes. And then she looked at my waist. “People are smarter than you think,” she said, “telling lies will catch up with you.” We sat in the car for moment, both of us thinking about Dad. “Go in and take a bath,” Grandma said. “I’ll wash your shorts.”

Post Road

Post Road, the literary journal of Boston College, was kind enough to put my essay in print and online. Below is a link


http://www.postroadmag.com/22/nonfiction/edwards.phtml

At Nine-Years-Old I Replaced My Father With Tim Taylor.

Home Improvement first aired on September 17, 1991, the year Dad left. The last episode aired on May 25, 1999, two years before Dad’s stroke. I watched Home Improvement after Kim Deabler broke my heart and after Jon Peterson bloodied my nose. I watched it when my bike tires were flat and on Friday evenings when the phone sat silently waiting for Dad’s call. Home Improvement eased the pain of Dad showing up to graduation high on Jack Daniels and Vicodin. And it gave me comfort each time Dad forgot Christmas, Easter, or my birthday. During the months, and sometimes years, I went without Dad, I looked to Tim Taylor and imagined my father as him.

Why Tim Taylor?
There was a roomer in West Provo that Tim Allen, the actor who played Tim Taylor, was raised Mormon. I heard similar rumors about Alice Cooper, Elvis Presley, and Roseanne, which I later discovered were loosely true. Alice Cooper’s father belonged to an offshoot of the Mormon faith, Elvis Presley met with Mormon missionaries during the filming of Blue Hawaii, and Roseanne once attended a Mormon church. The rumor of Tim Allen, I later discovered, was unfounded.

As a youth, though, I wondered if Tim Allen was Mormon. Perhaps Mormonism was part of his method acting. Perhaps he was a closet Mormon, if such a thing existed. I didn’t know. Perhaps he left Mormonism later in life, like Dad did. It caused me to look at Home Improvement differently. I blended Tim Taylor (the character) with Tim Allen (the actor). Tim Taylor seemed closer because we shared the same beliefs. I wondered where the line was drawn between the real and the contrived, until eventually, I viewed Tim Taylor as a Mormon father, same as others in my congregation.

This was easy. Tim Taylor dressed like a Mormon, mostly wearing slacks and a tie. He didn’t use foul language. He was clean-cut and clean-shaven. Inline with Mormon doctrine, he cared for Jill and the boys financially and emotionally. He was home on evenings and weekends building projects with his three sons. Tim’s ultimate end was to make his house and family stronger with “more power” grunt, grunt, grunt. He was such an active father that Mark, Randy, and Brad found Tim’s attention irritating. Sometimes I imagined how wonderful it would feel to be smothered by Dad’s love, and I got frustrated while trying to understand why the Taylor boys were not grateful for it.

The Nuclear Father and Mormonism
One of the biggest misconceptions about Mormonism is that we practice polygamy. We don't. We abandoned it over 100 years ago. It's through and in, by and with the nuclear household that Mormons are saved. It is how we think primarily of our relationships, both in the afterlife and the church as a whole. As a young boy, I knew this. The nuclear father, with his strong jaw and calloused bread winning hands, was bolstered in paintings along chapel walls and on the cover of church publications. He looked a lot like Tim Taylor.

The nuclear father was broadcast by the prophet and discussed in Sunday school. We define a father as “ever willing to sacrifice his own comfort for that of his children. Daily he toils to provide the necessities of life, never complaining, ever concerned for the well-being of his family.” I felt entitled to a working father and a stay at home mother. And yet my family didn’t fit the nuclear mold. Dad abandoned his obligations on a cold February night. Mom worked long hours at several different jobs to make ends meet.

Being near the nuclear father made me feel like an insider. I sought him out at friends’ dinner tables, squatting at homes and admiring the pervasive fatherly presence.

Like Mormonism, Home improvement celebrated the nuclear household. It didn’t harbor to the ‘counter programming’ trends of the early 90s. No spouse died resulting in a cast of loosely associated men living under one roof equally caring for three girls, like in Full House. And there was no streetwise nephew from Philly living with an aunt and uncle, like in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. A common phrase between Mormon’s is, “a mother's place is in the home.” In Home Improvement’s first season, Jill Taylor was a full-time wife and mother, who was most often seen working in the kitchen or looking after her three sons. Pamela Richardson, who played Jill Taylor, was applauded in women's magazines for being "the most true-to-life mom on TV." Like 1950s mothers Donna Reed, June Cleaver, and Harriet Nelson, Jill was contained in the kitchen and living room. Home Improvement reinforced my faith and brought me comfort while illuminating what my family was not.

Tim Taylor: the nuclear father
Tim Taylor was the only man qualified to raise his three boys into classic car loving, football playing, power tool wielding… men. Tim Allen (the actor) mastered the nuclear head of household right up to the precipice of parody. Tim Taylor was a stereotypical American father fantasy: slender but tough; wise but not “word smart”; more manly than the other male characters; willing to look foolish in his search for “More Power!”; and occasionally prone to reflection and sensitivity. Tim Taylor exhibited a coarse breed of valor. His weaknesses for power tools, football, and old cars were downright charming, especially when he pained over them. He also sympathized with the plight of his sons and honored their adolescent discovery. Tim was an American father, from the same stalk as Ward Cleaver or Charles Ingalls, the fathers my Dad must have idealized.

Tim Taylor hosted a Detroit-based cable TV show called Tool Time, a take-off of the public television series This Old House. The macho statement "More Power!" was his solution to every problem (mechanical or otherwise), but instead of demonstrating competency and control, his actions typically lead to comic mishaps and catastrophes. Tool Time was a forum that bridged Tim’s work and home. There Tim Taylor dispensed handyman advice, insulted his assistant Al Borland, made wisecracks about his mother-in-law, and pondered paternal issues to a mostly male studio audience. Tool Time premise was that Tim’s accidents were staged. They were to teach the consequences of job safety, a way of learning though practice rather than theory. As a viewer I knew what the studio audience didn’t, that Tim was, in fact, bumbling and accident-prone. It was a postmodern take on the home improvement series.

Similar to Tool Time’s safety lessons, Tim always stumbled into the right comment to smooth things over with Jill, or the best advice to help Mark, Randy, or Brad see the errors of their adolescent ways. Great fathering tugged at him like an industrial magnet.

Complications and entanglements of love, marriage, and raising children proliferated Home Improvement. In most episodes, Tim engaged in some kind of relational "home repair" to restore marital and family equilibrium. Tim was loyal, a “Chevy guy” who would never park in “someone else's garage.” He was thoughtful enough to make Jill a video highlighted the unforgettable moments of her life, and willing to ask paternal questions of his neighbor Wilson. Everything my faith told me a father should be was represented by Tim Taylor. He once said to his studio audience, “Tool Time is more than home improvement. It's male improvement. An improved male is more sensitive to his wife. How do we get sensitive? By digging down in our emotions and sharing your feelings with others. You guys up to it?” Although his passion for cars and tools was overt, this statement read like a faithful testimony exposing that his heart truly rested with his wife and children.

Tim Taylor = Dad
I often compared Tim with Dad, hopeful to find similarities. There were many. Both were born in ’53. Both had a fondness for tools and old cars; Tim with his ‘33 blue Ford roadster convertible and Dad with his ’35 Ford pickup. They enjoyed working with their hands, blue-collar men at heart, only Tim had a TV show and Dad never left the working class. Both found themselves to funnier than they really were, laughing at their own jokes. Both had rich dark hair and were clean-shaven. Tim stood 5’ 10”. Dad stood 5’ 9”. Tim had a sharp jaw with a heavy brow. So did Dad. I always assumed Tim smelled like grease, metal shavings, and Stetson for men because Dad did. Dad rarely wore slacks and a tie, but like Tim he was kind enough to hike up his tool belt to keep his crack from showing, and he had a fondness for leather and rawhide and the weight of tools around his waist. But unlike Tim, Dad didn’t romanticize blue-collar work. And I don’t think he longed to find his way out from it. It was in his calloused hands, thick jeans, and scars along his elbows. It was in the weary leather boots he wore every day and the diamond plated toolbox that rattled in his truck bed.

Both Dad and Tim fell from ladders, through roofs, and into wet cement. I thought about Tim when Dad ran a fine threaded sheet metal screw through his index finger. This was the only time I can recall him helping with a school project. His breath was whisky sweet. His eyes were moist. His stride was sloppy. We were connecting a light bulb to a thermostat when it happened. Once the room’s temperature dipped, the light would turn on. Dad inhaled and clinched his jaw. He didn’t cut to “A word from Binford Tools”. And I didn’t laugh. I held his wrist against the workbench and Dad reversed the drill. Dad’s wrapped his right hand in a greasy shop rag, head cocked back, eyes searching for relief.

Tim’s overconfidence contrasted his buffoonery granting him depth. It added to the myth of the impenetrable nuclear father he represented. In contrast, Dad’s damaged body, sloppy drug addicted stride, and lazy grin, always provided me with notions of reality. His presence said I am real. I am your father. This is what I have become.

Tim Taylor read like my father’s foil. They shared important passions, age, and upbringing. They looked similarly, and had similar frailties. In my mind, they shared the same faith. But Dad’s addictions and abandonment were emphasized by Tim’s supreme fathering. It brought Dad’s flaws into sharper contrast.

I longed to be a Taylor
At nine-years-old, I thought Pamela Anderson (the Tool Time girl) was the hottest woman I’d ever seen, and later at age 11, I felt similarly about Debbe Dunning, Pamela’s replacement. I thought Brad Taylor was a cocky prick and Randy Taylor was the cool friend I never had. I was particularly drawn to Mark Taylor. At a year younger than me, Mark’s quick smile reminded me of myself. We were both the youngest. Like me, Mark was not good at sports or with tools, and he was no one’s single favorite. One of the first things Mark ever said to Tim was, “I want to be with you.” Mark and I had the same desires. We wanted to live and learn next to our fathers.

I watched the first episode of Home Improvement in my living room, sitting on a pillow, while eating from a bag of candy corn. It was just before my tenth birthday. Dad had been gone a year, and although I didn’t realize it, I was searching for a father figure. Someone to help me gain confidence, masculinity, and represented my Mormon values.

In the first episode Tim and Mark attempted to give the dishwasher “More Power!” Tim was dissatisfied with rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, so he decided to install a commercial pressure washer into a Kenmore.

Mark and Tim performed “Bear Chested Men’s Work” and grunted like apes while flexing their biceps. Later Tim opened the access panel below the dishwasher and was perplexed by the many wires. Mark watched from the side, a child sized tool belt around his waist weighted with a plastic hammer and pliers.

Tim didn’t know which breaker to flip when cutting the power, nor did he know what wire to cut below the dishwasher, yet Mark never caught on. And when Tim was shocked after cutting a live wire, he rushed to the garage while asking, “Is that car running?” He was clearly covering up that he’d hurt himself, showing that he valued Marks patriarchal perception.

I envied this relationship. I didn’t want Tim Taylor to be my dad. I wanted my dad to act like Tim Taylor. I wanted Dad to grunt, smile, and spend time with me. But he didn’t. He was gone, living in a new house with his new wife.

I imagined Dad grunting with approval, frustration, or confusion. I imagined that my brother was cast as Peter Pan, and Dad and I crafted a pulley system so Ryan could zip and zoom across the stage, frightening women and children. Once I removed the access panel below our dishwasher and gazed at the red, green, yellow, and black wires. I wondered where they went and imagined Dad and I installing a pressure washer.

At a neighboring farm was an abandoned car frame, rusted and red. I often sat between the steel and rotted tires and grunted like Tim did with Mark. With my foot to the dirt, I revved the motor that had long ago been stripped from the frame like the father I hardly knew.

As these narratives played out in my mind, it felt like anticipation— like the moment before opening a surprise package or a letter from an old friend—because I assumed Dad and I would eventually have a relationship like Tim had with his boys. It made me feel entitled to love from my father.

Home Improvement was not a Documentary.
In elementary school, I was asked to make a list of the good and bad things about my summer vacation. My first list had equally long pros and cons. At the end of the school year we were asked to make the same list again. I cannot recall why we did this, but I do recall that the good list grew longer and the bad shorter. In the end, I was not describing my actual summer vacation but an idealized image of “Vacation.” I assumed something similar would happen with my childhood. That eventually I would forget about my longing for Dad and cling to the rewarding moments I shared with him. But I have not.

Recently I watched a documentary where children of soldiers were interviewed about the deaths of their fathers. I recall wishing my dad died in a great war where great men were snatched up by God’s mighty hand. But the hand that took my father was his own, slowly with Vicodin and Jack Daniels. I find that tragic and calculated. Are these feelings a product of me idolizing Tim Taylor? Does he sit like a canyon, contrasting the landscape of my life? I feel discordance between myth and reality. I feel guilty because Dad was not a traditional Mormon father. I feel anger and betrayal because Dad didn’t live up to the myth. Home Improvement’s weekly narrative was a promise of the nuclear father, something as hard to accomplish as the American Dream and yet every bit as desirable. It was a fantasy. And yet I still hold Dad to its standard. Would removing it make him any better of a father? I don’t think so. But perhaps it would help me to accept and overcome the hurt I feel.

Now, at 28-years-old, I champion equality and understand that the nuclear father is not, and never has been, the norm. And yet I still hold myself to the standards established by Tim Taylor and Mormonism. My grandfather once said, “God needs good fathers. It’s what we believe in. I hope you know that.” Above my dresser is “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” This document defines the official position of the Mormon Church on family. It reads, "By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” I feel inadequate each time I read this. And when I cannot make it home for dinner, when I cannot help my children with a school project, and when my wife must return to work. I am a confused mess, a double standard, lost between a poor father and an idealized one. And perhaps that is what I have done in this essay. I have grown to accept my place as a father. To give up on perfection. And perhaps this is something Dad never did. Perhaps he found the dream of fatherhood unattainable, so he gave up.

What I want to understand is why Dad packed his bag and slogged into a cold February night? Why he always choose Vicodin and Jack Daniels over me? Is understanding my own perceptions of fatherhood the answer to these questions? I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if Dad held himself to a similar standard established through shows like Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons? Did he slouch beneath the weight of Mormonism, a religion that views family as a microcosm of God’s relationship with Mankind? What bigger shoes are there to fill? Did Dad attempt to meet expectations he could never manage, so he turned to Vicodin and Jack Daniels? A situation that must have been compounded due to the drug free demands of Mormonism and the Mormon community he was raised in. Was I one of a long line of family, friends, TV shows, and neighbors that held him to unrealistic standards? Is this why he left?

What I do know is that on October 2, 1978; Tim Allen was arrested in the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport for possession of over 650 grams (1.4 lb.) of cocaine. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, and provided names of dealers in exchange for three to seven years rather than life imprisonment. He was paroled on June 12, 1981 after serving two years and four months in a federal correctional institution. Although Tim Allen overcome his cocaine addiction before filming Home Improvement, I didn’t find out about it until 1998, the year my Dad was held in the Utah County Jail for drug and alcohol related charges. Once again, I had difficulty separating Tim Allen (the actor) from Tim Taylor (the character). And once again, I drew a comparison between Tim and my Dad.

The information sat hard in my gut. It felt like I was giving something up. Losing my idealized father. But unlike Dad, I have forgiven Tim Allen for his mistakes. It was easy to forgive Tim Taylor and enjoy another episode of Home Improvement. Perhaps its because he over came it. Maybe its because we shared so many rewarding TV moments. Or maybe it’s because I am not ready to give up the fantasy.

Clint Edwards Thesis Reading

Clint Edwards and Mat Oliver Thesis Q and A

The Pickup

The red pickup sloped forward, some modification Dad must have done. The rear fenders pushed out like muscular shoulders and the step plates rolled below the doors. Farm dust lined the hood, bed, cab, and windows. The gas pedal was a footprint from the moon landing, and the gear shifter was Betty Boop. It was a 35’ Ford, and to a twelve year old, it appeared like a great structure built by a great man. Sitting in the creaky bench seat, where Dad once sat, made me feel closer to him. Ryan must have felt the same.

Spring of ’93, Ryan and I worked on Dad’s pickup for two months. Ryan wanted it to race the streets again like in ’62, when Dad was 18. But I enjoyed being near something that was once Dad’s. Something he once cared for. And I liked the prospect of having a vehicle that could transport me across Provo to where Dad lived with his new wife. Because if I could go to him, I wouldn’t have to wait for him to come to me. Something that rarely happened.

First, Ryan and I replaced the headlights. Then we put in a new battery. The driver’s side door was open. Ryan hunched beneath the steering wheel and pulled out slender wooden floorboards, flashlight in his mouth, small hand tools along the cement. He handed me the strips of lumber from the cab floor. Once they were removed, we could see the workings of the pickup. Next to the brake cylinder and the transmission, sat a small black battery resting in a steel cradle. Ryan unlatched the battery, corrosion frosting the connections, and then placed the new one inside, holding it with both hands as though it were a child on its back learning to float. The Book of Mormon and Star Trek were the two things Ryan believed in. He closed his eyes, and mumbled a prayer. All I could hear was, “let it work,” and “make it so.”

Ryan was slender, nerdy, with round glasses and broad shoulders, his movements awkward—a reflection of an overweight childhood. White sneakers complemented his modest bowl cut. He wore collared shirts, Levi 501’s, and smelled like Stetson—Dad’s old aftershave— and grease. At fifteen, he stood five seven with a heavy brow and a sharp chin, traits he received from our father. He was handy, a tinkerer, always taking apart drills or toasters and then putting them back together.

Three years Dad had been gone. During that time Ryan learned to clean a carburetor, swap a hard drive, repair a wall, hang a door, and change the headlights on a ‘35 Ford pickup. At thrift stores and yard sales he picked up record players and lawnmowers, took them home and dismantled them, his mind plotting out how they could be combined with other things. Ryan was a smart fifteen-year-old, patient enough to figure out how something works, while I accepted the fact that it did.

Before Dad left, I remember him letting Ryan and I hand him wrenches and hammers as he worked on the family Blazer. We were seven and ten. I was slow with the 7/16 socket. Ryan lost Dad’s pliers. Eventually Dad threw his tool belt across the driveway. “I don’t have time to fool around,” he said. His arms were frustrated, jaw tightly drawn. Behind the house, Ryan sulked where he could keep watching Dad, while I went angrily in the front door. I wanted Dad to take pride in me, to show me how, to smile when I grew frustrated. I wanted him to teach me. I longed to lean under a hood with my father. I wondered what I might learn about the man that he was. But Ryan’s goal was for Dad to view him as an equal. For him to say, “I’m proud of you." I think Ryan assumed that if he could fix a car, a sink, or a wall, the two would speak the same language of nuts and bolts.

Veins crisscrossed the roofs of Ryan’s hands as he attached connectors to the new battery. I sat in the passenger seat and imagined Dad sprawled beneath the pickup, his blue jeans and work boots exposed, hands tugging on some part between the front wheels. Dad spent hours working on the pickup, and I often wondered why he left it to sit and collect dust—its tires rotted and flat. Did he know it was still there, waiting for him? I felt a kinship with the pickup. Dad had abandoned both of us, and we longed for him to make us his own again.

At times Dad communicated with Ryan and I regularly, like the few months after grandpa died, or when he was impressing a new wife. But if I were to sum up the overall relationship I had with Dad in one word, it would be intermittent. When we did speak, he rarely talked about himself, and he almost never spoke of his past. I often wondered what he was like as a teen. Did he make jokes? Was he a hard worker? Was he comfortable talking to girls? Was he good in school? Was he a good Mormon? I looked at the pickup, and wondered what it knew about my fathers past.

Ryan pulled away from the frame, knuckles grease black, and said, “Turn on the lights.” He stepped back as I flipped the light switch. The headlights flared on. For the first time, this sleeping monster resembled a working machine. And in that moment, I didn’t discover anything new about Dad. I didn’t understand why he cheated on Mom, or why he left, or his addictions to alcohol and Vicodin. But there was a strange familiarity in retracing Dad’s accomplishments. Fixing those headlights felt like finding Dad's boot-print in the dirt or an outline of his hand in grease, some signifier that proved, without a doubt, that Dad had once been there.

I was twelve-years-old. Hair grew near my cheekbones and heavily along the chin and jaw line. I wanted to build a car, get a job, have sex, fall in love, and beat the hell out of Jason Taylor. Dad never told me how to talk to girls. He never showed me how to tie a tie, shave, or throw a punch. And he never taught me how to change oil or sparkplugs, or how to crank down a bolt so it wouldn’t budge. While thinking about the world, I got scared by how big it was, and wondered if Dad could somehow make it feel a little smaller. I often asked myself: how will I ever make it without Dad to teach me? I gazed at the amber light shining from the pickup, and longed for Dad to have taught me how to fix the headlights. Instead, I had Ryan’s simple, awkward, instructions.

Ryan’s eyes drifted along the hood. Then he looked at me, his face rich with desire for Dad to have seen his accomplishment and say, “nice work” or “great job” or something fatherly. Instead he had my smiling face sticking out the doorframe.

***
The shop was a small, 1200 square foot, wooden barn with a corrugated steel roof and a cement floor that sat on my grandmothers’ farm. In his late teens, Dad used the shop to work on the 35’ Ford. The pickup still sat in the shop, on a cement slab, surrounded by rolls of chicken wire and old lumber. An engine hoist hung from the rafters, and Dad’s red and black toolbox sat on coasters below the south window. From the shop’s bay doors, I could see Mom’s tan and yellow house at the end of Grandma’s north field. South was Grandma’s red brick house nestled in a crop of alfalfa.

Inside, the shop resembled a studio apartment, and smelled like grease and sawdust. There was sheet rock, a wood burning stove, a phone line, electricity, and a refrigerator, all remnants of Dad. Ryan and I added things we found at yard sales and thrift stores: a TV and VCR sat on cinderblocks and lumber. Orange banana chairs and a 7-foot yellow sofa rested a top a ten-by-ten patch of red carpet. After Dad left, Grandma told Ryan and I we could use the shop. “It’ll give you a place to be boys,” she said. What she really gave us was a middle ground. A place that was not home where Mom cried herself to sleep most nights, or school where no 12 or 15 year old wants to be, or church where Dad was once an elder in our Mormon congregation. The shop was where Ryan and I could watch Star Trek, work on Dad’s pickup, or sleep. A place where we could get away from the home phone that sat silently waiting for Dad’s call.

Ryan decorated the shop with light up action phasers, models of the USS Enterprise, and Klingon Figurines. When not working on the pickup, Ryan and I sat on the sofa and watched VHS tapes of Star Trek; his blue eyes foggy, his sharp chin rolling side to side, and me slouching into the sofa, my hands behind my head. Exploring space was dangerous, life altering, and more important then the heartache we felt when thinking about Dad. He was our final frontier, an endless struggle that would never be fully explored, and Ryan and I could spend the rest of our lives trying to understand our estranged father.

For years, Ryan and I could see the pickup through the shop widows as we walked along Grandma’s gravel lane. But I don’t think either of us thought about it much until after Dad left. The first thing Ryan and I did in the shop was climb inside Dad’s ‘35 Ford. We sat on the bench seat, Ryan behind the wheel. We didn’t make motor noises or screeching tire sounds, and we didn’t jerk at the knobs or push on the pedals. We didn’t talk about Dad, ask questions about what he was like in his youth, or look in the rearview mirrors to see if our faces resembled his. We just sat there, Ryan with his hands at ten and two, his slender face expressionless. I slouched a bit, my right arm resting on the door, left palm flush against the bench. Both of us sat church quiet, relishing in Dad’s past. I wondered where the pickup had been, and I wondered where Ryan and I might one day take it. The key to the pickup sat in the ignition connected to a small eight ball dangling from a thin chain. Ryan reached forward and turned the key. A sharp click sounded somewhere beneath the hood. It did not start.

Ryan and I scrounged for parts at junkyards, thrifts stores, and neighboring farms. Each find was a victory. Ryan showed me how to change spark plugs, an oil filter, and a fuel line on Dad’s old pickup. He described each step with intimate knowledge concerning the flow of gasoline, oil, and air, his soft face child like, but his blue eyes and well-trained hands revealed knowledge of machinery I’d grown to expect.

Nearly 16, Ryan was already taking drivers ed. We often talked about racing the pickup at the sand dunes south of Provo, or driving it to Wyoming to get roman candles and bottle rockets. Sometimes Ryan spoke of pulling the pickup into Dad’s driveway and honking the horn. “He’s gonna freak out,” Ryan said, “It’ll be the best thing ever.” In our fantasies, Ryan was always driving with me in the passenger seat.

Once I asked Ryan about girls and he hesitated. When meeting new people, Ryan’s eyes drifted down and to the right, the corners of his lips drawn between his teeth. If he spoke, his choppy dialog was forced, and each line ended with a low chuckle. I doubt Ryan had ever said more than two words to a girl. “Don’t worry about that yet.” He said, “Let’s just worry about getting this pickup to start. Once that happens, we won’t have to worry about talking to girls. They’ll want to talk to us.” I believed him.

In the shop, Ryan showed me how to use a drill and tie a tie. With a water bucket, Dad’s old double edge safety razor, and the pickup’s driver’s side mirror, he taught me how to shave. Ryan knew that Dad would never show me how to shave or work on an engine, because he never showed Ryan. If I needed math help, or wanted to know how to pitch a tent, build a fire, tie a bowline or a square knot, I went to Ryan. I still hoped that Dad would realize I was important. But I was aware enough to know that if I asked for Dad’s help he’d have “better shit to do,” or a “full plate that day,” or he wouldn’t pick up the phone. If Ryan didn’t know how to do something, he would figure it out, take me to the shop, and teach me. Sometimes I didn’t have to ask. His sensitivity was something special. It grew from our shared disability, like how the blind can hear a far off whisper. Each time he showed me something, the world appeared a little more manageable and I felt a little more grown up.

In March, Ryan showed me how to replace the pickup’s main belt. The left side of the hood was open, and Ryan and I hunched between the cab and the heart-shaped grille. He released the pulley with a crescent wrench, and the belt sagged with enough slack for me to remove it. Then I placed the new belt on the pulley and Ryan pulled it taut again. I told him “wow,” and “thanks,” and “this is great.” And Ryan smiled, his thick-framed glasses sliding to the end of his nose, face warm with satisfaction. We gazed at each other, and I felt comfort knowing that Ryan was there, willing to fill in the gap that Dad had left.

Now, at 28-years-old, I doubt I could change that belt. And I can’t change my own oil, fix a sink, or tie anything other than a half Windsor knot. But those moments with Ryan were about more than what I learned. I felt closer to Ryan during those two months than I ever did with Dad. We worked together, we learned from each other, and laughed. We were satisfying our yearnings for Dad. Ryan was teaching me. And I was appreciating him. Unfortunately we were too young to understand that.

We learned a lot about Dad by working on his pickup. The wire clumps held with duct tape, the finger tightened bolts on the fender, and the crazy glue holding the windshield wiper, showed that Dad was hasty. “He really did things half assed,” Ryan said.

Beneath the seat, we found cigarette butts and an empty beer can. Inside the toolbox, we found an empty bottle of whisky. Drinking and smoking is against the Mormon faith, and until Dad left, he was a practicing Mormon. He even held high office in the church. When I was 18, a year before Dad’s death, my aunt said, “your dad was a little shit. He was really good at talking his way out of trouble. He went to church on Sunday, but who knows what he did the rest of the week.” Despite stories of Dad racing cars, I never viewed him as a rebel. But he must have been like the kids at school who went to sacrament meeting, but drank and smoked the rest of the week. The cigarettes and alcohol we found proved that Dad once lived a dual lifestyle long before he met Mom.

Inside the jockey box was a folded slip of amber paper. I cannot recall who found it, but I remember Ryan opening it. The writing was pencil, smooth cursive, with feminine angles. It was addressed to Dad, and much of it was faded. But clichés like, I’m sorry, try and move on, and it’s not you made it obvious that this note was how Dad had once been dumped. Ryan and I let out half nervous laughs. I thought about the cigarette butts and the beer can, and wondered if Dad had been having sex as a teen.

Ryan folded the note, and put it back. He stepped from the cab. In the bed of the pickup was a flat head screwdriver. Ryan gripped it, leaving an outline in the dust. Dad must have left it there, and knowing that made me feel like he was in the room, like 1962 and 1993 were one and the same. It was in moments like these that it felt like I was searching for Dad by following his old boot prints.

When Ryan and I watched Star Trek, sometimes I looked at the USS Enterprise boldly going where no man had gone before, and then at the pickup, and suddenly Dad seemed like a far off planet that could only be seen through a powerful telescope. But there was something about uncovering Dad’s rebellious youth, and seeing evidence of when he tried, and when he didn’t, that made him seem closer then before. There was a gritty reflection cast by the pickup that was identifiable as Dad fingerprint.

We’d been working on the pickup for seven weeks. On a Saturday in March we got it to start. I was in the cab. Ryan was under the hood. “Crank it over,” Ryan said as he pulled from the frame. I turned the key, and heard a sharp click like before. Ryan’s lips twisted, right hand nervous, fingertips rubbing together. He walked to the toolbox, and returned with a small ball peen hammer, its wooden handle grease black. Hunching beneath the hood again, Ryan banged on something with smooth calculated strokes, and then told me to try again. “The starter needed some love.” He said, ending with an awkward giggle. The pickup gasped and shook. The motor vibrated in harsh irregular thrusts, wheezing and coughing, and eventually leveled to a smooth idle.

The pickup ran for two minutes, long enough to fill the shop with exhaust, and for Ryan and me to gaze at each other with satisfaction. The tires were still flat, and the pickup was still lined with dust. We didn’t know if it would ever carry us across town, race at the sand dunes, or help us pick up girls. But we knew that it started. This was something that it could not do 7 weeks earlier. Ryan must have longed for Dad to be there, smiling with pride. Part of me wondered if Dad did know. Perhaps some unseen signal alerted him to this monumental accomplishment.

For the first time I felt like an adult. I’d fixed something tangible. Something that made a sound. I better understood the world, how it worked, and how it will work. For a twelve-year-old boy, this is a monumental feeling. And I too longed for Dad to know about it.

The pickup died abruptly. I turned the key again, but the starter struggled against the engine, willing it, but its will fading with each turn. We never got the pickup to start again. Years later, when I asked Ryan about that evening, he told me the gas was probably bad. “I filled it from a tank I found. Who knows how long it’d been sitting there. For all I know it might have been diesel. I’m surprised it started that one time.”

That same night Ryan and I watched Star Trek from 10 pm to 11. Then Ryan made a phone call from the shop to Dad. Usually he didn’t pick up. But this time he did. Ryan heard Dad’s soft chirp, and rolled his shoulders back, stuck out his chest, his chin arching higher like he’d mustered the confidence of Captain Kirk. “We started your truck today,” Ryan said. Like a telemarketer, he broke into a swift speech about the pickup, belts and wires, and the smell of exhaust. He was getting everything out before Dad hung up. Dad didn’t tell Ryan he was proud of him, he didn’t say great job or nice work. And Ryan didn’t ask him to. Mid sentence, Ryan stopped as Dad spoke angrily, accosting Ryan for calling so late when Dad had work early. He told Ryan to learn decency and respect for others, how to treat people like people. “I don’t need this shit.” Dad said, and hung up. Something drained from Ryan, his shoulders sloped, and his chin fell.

I assumed Dad would be blown away. That he would show interest in us because we had done something that interested him. But nothing happened. Our relationship was still the same.

The next week, Dad came to the shop. He was weary. His boot heals scraped the cement. Black whiskers sprouted along his neck. Thick square glasses sat on the tip of his glistening nose. It was one of his skinny times, when his addictions to Vicodin and Alcohol could be seen in the ropy muscles along his forearms, the stark ridges of his jaw line, and the way his Wrangler jeans hung loosely from the belt like navy drapes. His eyes shifted, searching, a look I later realized meant he needed money. He didn’t comment on the sofa, the banana chairs, or the TV. “Hello,” he said, and then went to the pickup. He looked inside the widow, and then kicked one of the flat tires with his work boot. Ryan approached Dad. Stood next to him. For the first time I noticed that Ryan was an inch taller than Dad. From a distance, he appeared older too.

Dad sized Ryan up, crows’ feet framing his eyes. Then he looked under the hood, his thinning black hair falling forward, and examined the new belt, wires, and hoses.
“You got her to start?” Dad asked.
Ryan nodded.
“That’s great” Dad said. “It looks nice in here. I didn’t think it ever would start again.” Dad pinched Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan’s eyes softened, his legs slightly trembling. This was the moment Ryan longed for. He must have assumed things were changing. Perhaps Dad and Ryan would keep working on the pickup: together. Or maybe they would find some other project now that Ryan had proven himself.

As I watch from beside the yellow sofa, I wondered where I fit in. Would Dad take me along too? Would he teach me? Would he show me how the world worked? I remember feeling hopeful. I wanted to tell Dad about my involvement. But before I did, I noticed a man in the doorway. He was in old jeans and a flannel shirt, his brown hair parted to the side. Dad approached him with a lazy confident swagger. They shook hands, and Dad showed him the work Ryan and I had done.

“My boy here changed some things out. Says he got her to start last week. Real mechanic just like his old man.”
Both men laughed, and Ryan forced a smile, his face between pride and loss as Dad and the stranger negotiated. Ryan inched towards the sofa, eyes searching for a place to hide.

I wanted to wave my arms at Dad, or put my hand over his mouth. I wanted to tell him that this is not the way I imagined it. I don’t know why I retrace this old hurt, over and over in my mind, like this moment can tell me who I am now, or was, or might have been. Or like it could answer these same questions about my father or my brother. Because it never does, and I doubt that it ever will, and yet I know that my mind will drift back to the painful memory of Dad and the man going back and forth and finally settling on twelve hundred dollars.

It sounded like a significant amount of money. But now I know it is almost nothing. Sometimes I think about the note, the cigarette buts, and the moon print gas pedal. I wonder if Dad knew how much of his past was in the pickup, and how many hours Ryan and I spent trying to better understand him through it. And then I think about twelve hundred dollars, and wish he had asked for more. But what would have been an adequate price? Dad probably spent the money on Vicoden and alcohol, and when I think about his funeral seven years later, it feels like selling the pickup was one of many negotiations he made with his own demise.

The stranger backed a yellow car trailer into the shop, and Dad helped him push the pickup along a steel ramp and strap it down with heavy chains. The payment, a green check, stuck out of Dad’s breast pocket.

Ryan and I watched as the pickup was towed along Grandma’s gravel driveway, and then north on Airport Road. I remember a giant distance, as if the void between my father and me had grown in an instant. It felt like Dad had left me once again. I assume Ryan felt the same. The pickup turned east, onto Center Street, and out of sight. I thought about it traveling across town. But Ryan was not driving. And I was not in the passenger seat.