Rules of the Road Read Free

scraping steel, the train screeched around the corner. I gave him two years and seven months worth. “Stuff, you know.” The gas had worn off. I’m definitely off helium for good.
    “Me too.” He swayed down on the steps as two old women moved quickly past us. “You probably think I’m drunk, Jenna girl, but I’m not.”
    “Really.” He always called me “Jenna girl” when he was plastered.
    “I’m on medication that makes me . . .funny.”
    I focused in hard at the Lemmy’s hot dog poster (steamingdog with everything, including grilled onions) so I wouldn’t have to look at my father or see the staring people looking at me like I’m some poor, pitiful case.
    Drunken Dad Disgraces Daughter.
    We stayed there for a while not saying anything. When I was nine, Mom had sent me to a therapist, Ms. Lynch, after she and Dad got divorced so I’d have a place to yell and scream, which I never did. Ms. Lynch had a puppet, a brown furry chipmunk named Chester, that I’d put on my hand and tell him the story of my dad’s alcoholism and how I’d never known if he was going to be a good dad one day or a bad one. One time, Ms. Lynch made Chester’s voice and said it was okay if I got angry. I got angry all right, but not at Chester. I told Ms. Lynch that Chester was a chipmunk and
didn’t
talk. Then I told her I knew that storks didn’t bring babies so stop trying to snow me.
    Dumb as it seems, I could have used Chester now.
    “I’m going to have to get back to work, Dad.” I said this low, mature.
    Dad belched. He was wearing the Timex watch I’d sent him last Christmas. Nice to know it arrived.
    “Jus wanted to see you, honey. I meant to call.”
    He always said that.
    “Yeah. I know.”
    I felt the armor going over my heart and mind, the steel rod shooting through my back. I didn’t ask where he was working now. The jobs never lasted long. He was always selling something—aluminum siding, screen doors, toasters, usedcars—I got my gift for selling from him, that’s what people said. He had a brief stint as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman; kept a ball of dirt in his pocket to throw on the carpet when the front door opened; got bit bad by an irritated pit bull who didn’t appreciate the Eureka suction. Part of me wanted to walk away and leave him there, the other part couldn’t. I’d worked hard at seeing his alcoholism as a disease he was stuck in. Love the person, hate the bad things they do. Sometimes loving from far off is a whole lot easier than eyeball to eyeball.
    “Is there someplace you’re staying, Dad? Someplace you need to get to?”
    He tried standing up to reach in his pocket, fumbled badly, finally pulled a matchbook out, opened the cover, handed it to me. “Sueann Turnbolt, 1260 Wells Street, 555-4286,” it read.
    Another girlfriend probably.
    “Is she there now, Dad?”
    “S’waiting for me.”
    Mr. Romance. I hailed a cab, got him inside, gave the driver ten dollars and the address. “We can get together when I’m not working, Dad.”
    “Okey dokey, Jenna girl.”
    I shut the cab door and watched it head down the street. I felt exhausted, like I hadn’t slept for days.
    Daddy’s home.
    The last time he showed up was when I was a freshman. I was walking home from school with my friends and he pulled up in a broken-down Dodge, jumped out with a big toothysmile like I should have been expecting him all along. Dad always made an entrance.
    He hung around town that summer, drinking, not drinking, making promises, breaking them.
    Daddy’s home.
    I leaned against the elevated train stairway, closed my eyes, threw back my head.
    I didn’t know if I could handle it this time.

CHAPTER 2
    Keep going.
    I ran back to Gladstone’s Shoes pushing aside pain and anger. Murray said customers are like wild animals—they can tell when you’re upset and they’ll use it against you.
    Smile
.
    A few people in the store, but Murray was handling it. Mrs. Gladstone was studying the