I laughed nervously, then looked at Mom, who had reached for her
sketch pad without saying anything.
Dad was watching me carefully. He passed me the vodka bottle.
Although I almost never drank, I took a sip and felt the burn as the liquor
slid down my throat.
"This stuff could grow on you," I said.
"Don't let it," Dad said.
He started telling me how he'd acquired a rare tropical disease after
getting into a bloody fistfight with some Nigerian drug dealers. The
doctors had examined him, pronounced the rare disease incurable, and
told him he had anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to live.
It was a ridiculous yarn. The fact was that, although Dad was only fifty-
nine, he had been smoking four packs of cigarettes a day since he was
thirteen, and by this time he was also putting away a good two quarts of
booze daily. He was, as he had put it many a time, completely pickled.
But despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created
in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like—what the
world would be like—without him in it. As awful as he could be, I
always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had. I looked out the
window.
"Now, no snot-slinging or boohooing about 'poor ol'Rex,'" Dad said. "I
don't want any of that, either now or when I'm gone."
I nodded.
"But you always loved your old man, didn't you?"
"I did, Dad," I said. "And you loved me."