Free Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling Page A

couldn’t get the consequences to give themselves up to me.
    So. Here I am. Here is the state of affairs. This is it.
    ~
     
    I heard my grandma was dead. Before she died, she had a heart attack and went to live in the St. John’s Rehabilitation Centre for a while. She lived a few more years. She even went home to her apartment some of the time. When she died, she left me her car. My sister got the silver.
    ~
     
    The first book I ever bought was about the red-tailed hawk. I still have the book. I just remembered it when a little girl came up to me at the reference desk and asked for a book about the red-tailed hawk. At first I thought she said, “I need a book about the red-tailed cock.” But then I realized it was the red-tailed hawk. The girl was about six years old.
    We didn’t have any books about the red-tailed hawk. There were citations in some of the encyclopedias, but she needed something she could take home. She said she wanted to cut out some pictures. I told her she shouldn’t cut the pictures out of library books. I told her, “Don’t cut the pictures out of library books. Okay, honey?” I called her honey.
    ~
     
    Tutti and Sammy are in the living room watching Bambi . They want me to turn off the radio so they can hear the movie better. I’m in the kitchen frying bacon. Tutti calls from the living room, “Can you shut that thing off? We can’t hear Bambi.”
    I can hear Bambi. I can hear Bambi from out here in the kitchen. I can hear Thumper, too. I can hear all the little fuckers of the forest.
    ~
     
    If I had more of those tiny decorative magnets , Hammersmith concluded, I could put up more pictures of my wife . He was writing down things he wanted to have for dinner: liverwurst, steak tartare, Filipino bean sprouts.
    ~
     
    I probably shouldn’t be in charge of putting Sammy to bed. I always put him to bed too late and in the morning he’s tired. He calls me at work to tell me Mommy won’t let him do something. I can hear Tutti in the background telling Sammy to give her the phone. She gets on the phone and tells me I have to get him to bed earlier at night or else I won’t be allowed to put him to bed anymore.
    ~
     
    I know you don’t respect me for this. But I don’t care.
    I live with it.
    You try living with it.

S AMMY GETS his blue stool and carries it over to the toilet. We have one of those plastic things to put on top of the toilet to keep Sammy from falling in. I help Sammy get his pants down.
    When he’s got himself sitting down on the toilet, I ask him if he’s okay there all by himself. I tell him I’m going back to have my dinner. If he needs me, I tell him, he should call.
    He’s in there singing Christmas carols. We have a Christmas tape going in the living room. Sammy is sitting on the toilet, singing along to the Christmas tape playing on the tape machine in the living room. I wanted to tell you about this, because I wanted you to know something. Sammy is alone in there. He is in there alone in that bathroom, sitting there on that toilet, and he is singing.
    ~
     
    Dad goes, “Where are the clips? The wind is blowing the tablecloth off the table.”
    Dad’s second wife, Gretchen, says, “You were supposed to bring out the clips.”
    “No,” Dad says. “I was supposed to bring out the wine and the salad. The person who brings out the tablecloth is supposed to bring out the clips.”
    “Dad,” I call. “I just dropped your burger into the barbecue. You got another one in there?”
    “No,” Dad says. “That was the last one.”
    Dad eats these special burgers. They are called veggie burgers. They come in a powder. You just add water and then put them in the frying pan. After that you can barbecue them if you want, according to the box. From my limited experience, I find they tend to fall apart and drop between the bars of the grill, into the coals of the barbecue. So far tonight I have lost one hot dog and Dad’s veggie burger in the coals of the