Finding Dad

Jonathan Pearce



June 11, 0835 Hours (8:35 AM)

We got to change are life, my dad wrote in his note to me before he disappeared. But my ma is
sitting at the kitchen table, drinking toddy for breakfast out of a jelly jar, and I bet she doesn't care one bit about our current family crisis, a problem that would torment a normal person. I should mention that my ma is a big woman, so her personal torment should be big, too.

"Big" is not enough of a word for my ma. She weighs at probably 300 pounds. Or maybe 240
or so. And she's about six feet tall. And she's got muscles hid under the flab. She gives all of us lickings every once in a while when she's feeling especially mean, and alls we can do once she's got a hold on us is try and protect our soft parts, she's that strong. Usually she uses a rolled up Courier, since it makes a nice loud whack as well as pokes pretty good. After swatting and poking us with the newspaper a while, she'll start laughing. But we're not laughing, especially Dad, since he always looks ashamed while (and after) she's giving him a licking.

Last time Dad got a licking was just last month when he forgot to pay the water bill and a guy
in overhalls came to the front door and said he was going to turn off the water unless we coughed
up the cash. The guy in overhalls ran off scared when Ma went after him, she said. But I seen my dad get it when he came home that night. Pity the poor Serial Gourmet, our new local criminal, if my ma ever catches him in our kitchen.

Today Ma's wearing the same thing she always wears, summer or winter: a muumuu. I think
she's got 40 or 50, or probably at least five different muumuus, all awful colors, and all with rips and tears and stains on them.

All during this last month she's inventing what she says is a new chip dip. So she spends all
day inventing dip, eating up what even she calls the mistakes, and washing them all down with
toddy. Right now her face is red as a rhubarb, something else I shouldn't mention, since one of
the edible things Ma can make is rhubarb. Except when you have it every day at every meal for
three weeks, it does get kind of much. Also hard on the bowels, as my dad will say, but only out
of the corner of his mouth so she won't hear him.

"How come you're not in school?" my ma goes, noticing me finally while I'm rustling around
in a drawer full of bread wrappings looking for a slice of bread. I notice right away she's not
mentioning our current family crisis.

"I'm out of school."

"How come?"

"June eleventh today. Graduated last week." I find a couple of crusts. Not too dry.

"Oh." She's not really with-it this month, being mostly with dips and toddy. "Yeh. Well," she
says, "you can try this then. See what you think, not that what you think is important at all." She pushes a saucer full of pale pinkish-gray gunk at me and indicates I should take a chip and dip.

Chip dipped, I can smell it at arm's length. I guess I must be making a face.

"G'wan!" she commands. "It's just stuff I found in the fridge and stuck in the blender a while
with some Velveeta."

I try it. Tastes like an old used gym-sock smells. I put the dipped chip down after a small bite,
return to my Skippy and Smuckers sandwich --which also has a strange smell, I now realize.

"Wimp." She takes a snort of toddy. I can smell the gin. "You're just like your shpitzn ga-
zonk-a-loo father. Never do nothing that looks like it might be interesting." She's finally got
around to mentioning our family crisis.

"Speaking of which, I probably oughtta go out looking for Dad today, don't you think?"

"How come?"

"Well, he's missing."

"What's he missing now?"

"He's not here."

"Who's that?"

"Dad."

"He's never here. Even when he's here, he's not here. Been missing all his life. Another gah-
dam-oo-la-chee wimp. I shoulda married that futtzn Sammy Joe."

She's mumbling now and not really paying any attention to me, but she's using her made-up swear words which she's famous for, since she thinks they are more high-class than the usual swear words guys use here in Balona. The Sammy Joe she's talking about is Sammy Joe Sly, Sammy Jack's dad, runs the King Korndog factory when he's not pooping around in his Cessna or his Cadillac or his sailboat. He's about half my ma's size, which is something you could say about a lot of Balona guys. Ma and Dad and Sammy Joe Sly all went to Big Baloney together.

Ma's mumbling again. "Actually, I shoulda married Nim, only Nim's my cousin, so maybe it
wouldn't be legal, I think. Probably our kids woulda turned out strange, like you shik-a-ploppers." She's referring to me and Ginger and Richie. She's looking out the kitchen window at the wall of my workshop. Nothing to see there, but she's looking at it like it's going out of style. "I wonder what's happened to Nim."

Usually she disses Nim. Now she's making it sound like she misses him. Nimitz MacArthur Chaud. I don't think I've ever actually met Cousin Nim but I know he's a war hero and is supposably real smart. Now instead of badmouthing him she's looking sad at not knowing what's happened to him.

"Cousin Nim's back here in Balona," I say. "Made a speech over at Tabernacle."

"Who says?"

"I heard it from Claire."

Now Ma looks up, paying attention, since she expects me to get married to Claire some day, since Claire inherited all the money we were supposed to get when Uncle Oliver died. When I marry Claire, Ma figures we'll get our family fortune back. I don't know about that. Claire's a couple years younger than me, but also smarter than me. She's also got some sang froyd in her, being my blood cousin. Sang froyd means "Kuhl blood" actually in German, which I used to think was Latin before my dad set me straight. Kuhl in German actually means cool, which I think is pretty suave. Ma don't seem to worry about me legally marrying a blood cousin, long as the blood cousin's rich.