My Father's Keeper

by

Sarah Vaughn

ONE of the most valuable things my father ever taught me was how not to chop off my fingertips with a steak knife. Fingers tucked in, blade brought down smoothly away from myself, I learned to dice tomatoes when I was five, and scramble eggs at six. The time I sliced open my left middle finger with a paring knife my father showed me his scars in lieu of consolation. “This was my first one,” he said, pointing out a faint mark on his right forearm as I sucked on the cut and fought nausea at the sight of my own blood. “My brother pushed me into a hot stove when I was five.” I gave a weak nod, and then shuffled towards the bathroom for a Band-Aid. “You ok? You don’t need stitches, right?” he yelled down the hall.

Though he inherited his father’s name and his temper, Holland Radcliffe Vaughn III would never beat on his wife or abandon his five children as Holland Radcliffe Vaughn II had done. The eldest, my dad cooked for his siblings and began his first job at age twelve as a busser alongside his waitress mother. He went to college for a few years to become an engineer, but dropped out to cook full time. “It’s like engineering, but with food,” he explained to me as he commandeered the Father’s Day brunch I was attempting to make for him.

It’s Father’s Day but instead of relaxing obediently on the couch, he’s sitting at the counter. “Like this?” I ask, carefully laying bacon in the hot oil, the way I’ve seen him do hundreds of times before. Eggs lay in careful rows beside me ready to go on next, extras on hand for when I inevitably break the yolks trying to flip them over. The hash browns, though out of a box, offer the biggest challenge.

“When you add the water, make sure you don’t press down on the potatoes,” he says, as I try to make out the instructions.

“Why? What’s the difference?” He explains how the steam needs room to move under the potatoes to heat them, but after they’re warm all the way through they get pushed down with the spatula to make them crispy. He lets me borrow his book, The Science of Cooking, but no matter how much I study it I’m never able to understand it the way he does.

I basked in the glory of having a chef for a father. The only reason anyone came to my seventh birthday party was because I promised my dad would make us pizza from scratch. Samantha, the coolest girl in the second grade, stood in my kitchen with her mouth agape as my father and I theatrically tossed dough in the air. “What do you want on yours?” I asked, and for once she copied me, piling her pizza with artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and feta cheese. At times, though, I joined my sister Emily in her preference for canned ravioli.

“Come on, you’d rather have that crap than this?” my father would ask, offering something like liver and onions, something that no kid, not even the most gourmet, would ever willingly ingest. “You’re going to like this stuff one day,” he admonished. “And foie gras and bell peppers and maybe even coleslaw.” Usually I’d make a face and the matter was dropped, but on one occasion he refused to let me leave the dining room table until I ate a quiche topped with gruyère, a cheese so detestably pungent I cried and pleaded to go to my room instead. “You’ll try this, and you’ll like it!” was his only response. Always the obliging child, I held my breath and took a hesitant bite. “It’s ok,” I grumbled, as my dad leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

We were co-conspirators, my dad and me. He let me get away with things my mother would never have allowed: sipping his Jack Daniels, taking puffs of cigars, lying down in the back of his van with no seat belt as we drove home from the babysitter’s, watching R-rated war movies. Sometimes we’d go out on dates, my favorite of which were our trips to the Asian grocery. The fishy odor that met us at the door was almost palpable, as were the other patrons’ eyes on us while I happily followed my dad through aisles of glorious and alien foodstuffs. “What’s this?” I’d ask, holding up a jar of tahini or a package of krill, to which I’d receive a lengthy explanation of its origins, how it’s made and what kind of dishes we could concoct with it. Afterwards, our purchases were transformed into spicy Thai curries, Szechuan stir-fries or fresh sashimi. My mother and sister never cared to share our eccentric meals, especially when they featured octopus,but we couldn’t have cared less, slurping down noodles or crunching on our seaweed companionably as we settled in front of the television for a Disney cartoon or History Channel documentary.

Holland can be a stern-looking man with his sharp nose and large frame, but his harshness is softened by his mustache, belly and penchant for baseball caps, cargo shorts, flip flops and Hawaiian shirts. We share similar light-colored eyes with dark circles under them, similar thin lips that purse when we’re thinking, and a similar sun-fearing complexions. When I was little I was surely his daughter, unlike my sister, who with her brown eyes and round face was often jokingly referred to as the milkman’s. As I grew up, though, I gained my mother’s hips, and a shorter haircut revealed a face more like hers than I had ever realized. I balked when people accidentally called me Sharon instead of Sarah; I constantly pointed out how my smile, freckles, straight hair and thoughtful demeanor marked me as my father’s.

What I didn’t inherit from my father was his temper. His fits were always unpredictable events, sudden transformations from genial dad into a door-slamming tyrant, screaming bizarre ultimatums. I’d be reading in my room and hear low, tense voices, which would crescendo into yells, stomps and slammed doors.

“Emily, I told you to do these dishes yesterday!” my dad would begin, after an otherwise pleasant dinner. It was always the little things.

“No, you didn’t,” was my sister’s reply. “That’s it! It’s time you start respecting me, or get out of my house!” came next, or threats to sell the dog. Then came the throwing, usually of dishes, and when my sister was little enough, dragging. She would kick and scream as my dad hauled to her room and then she’d beat against the door as he held it shut. When she got older and still continued to infuriate him, he would steal her things and hide them. Sometimes I tried to intervene.

“You’re both acting like children!” I’d yell over their shouting.

After all the doors were finished slamming and the curses and I-hate-you’s faded into quiet fuming in bedrooms or morose television watching, I would resort to damage control.

“Em, you know he didn’t mean it. He’s just been under a lot of stress,” I’d say and she’d glare.
“Bullshit. He’s out of control and you know it.”
The only reply I could muster was a shake of my head and a hug. I never heard him apologize.

I was a happy child, but learned to worry young, about my parents, about money, about everything. It wasn’t their fault; I just saw too many snuck cigarettes after being assured that our parents had quit the nasty habit, overheard too many terse “discussions” (they were never referred to as fights) late at night about paying the bills, internalized too many stories about our family’s nasty history of dying violently or wasting away from cancer or mental disease. The thought of something happening to my mother or father haunted me.

The relatively comfortable catering company job my dad had enjoyed for five years came to an end when I was eleven. Instead of finding similar employment at another catering firm or a country club, he set his sights on an executive chef position at a big local Indian casino. Nothing, not even a broken down car on the day of his interview, could get in his way. That afternoon he burst through the front door, triumphant, exhausted and alarmingly red after walking three miles round-trip from our house to the casino and back in the August heat.

“This is going to be worth it,” he assured us, and it was, for a little while. In return for the grueling work schedule he had authority, the power to experiment with recipes, dictate menus and transform a mediocre food service operation into a top-notch dining establishment. He’d come home late at night with thick binders under his arm, working out new dishes inspired by Peruvian or Swedish cuisine. His creative efforts, however, were thwarted by politics. The casino manager insisted he buy ingredients from hand-picked suppliers, usually the guy’s family members who distributed second-rate meat from the trunks of their cars in the parking lot; he was put at the beck and call of spoiled performers and forced to lay off half his staff as the casino cut his budget.

Then came the day my dad’s employment was terminated. Whether he was fired or quit I never did come to know, though according to him it was his own choice. I came home from school to find him at the dining room table, eating a turkey sandwich and looking over an open newspaper, more relaxed than I’d seen him for a long while.

“What are you doing home at three in the afternoon?” I asked.
“Whatever I damn well please,” was his reply.

He soon embraced life as a housewife, baking bread, chauffeuring us to school, obsessively vacuuming. After three disquieting months of this, he finally decided that he would leave the kitchen behind and venture into the exciting world of real estate. He occupied himself with studying for the licensing exam and imagined eventually starting a private firm that would thrive on his street smarts combined with my mother’s people skills. I have no idea why he chose real estate of all things; maybe it was the adventurous, make-your-own-fortune appeal of it. I couldn’t imagine him exchanging his aprons and his ridiculous toque hats for suits, pleasantly discussing square footage with potential young homeowners. But what did I know? If this was what it took to make him happy, so be it.

Only it didn’t make him happy, nor did it make any money. The year he started was an abysmal one for the housing market, and instead of achieving the effortless success he had imagined, he spent hours in his office scrolling through listings and calling friends to beg for properties to sell. My sister and I joined him in hanging fliers on the neighbors’ doorknobs. On Memorial Day and Fourth of July the whole family woke up at six in the morning to plant little American flags in lawns, courtesy of “Holland Vaughn, your friendly neighborhood real estate agent.” His face even graced a bus stop on the corner of Sterling and Highland for a while, though it was always obscured by graffiti and sleeping hobos whenever I passed. Miserable as he seemed, he still would have kept at it if the money hadn’t run out.

Then, my sophomore year of high school, he found the perfect job: business owner. The first time I ever saw Ye Olde Lamplighter restaurant, my dad picked me up early from school and treated me to lunch there. My appraisal of the place wasn’t favorable: it was empty except far a few somber-looking old people at the bar smoking, country music played on the radio, the decorations comprised of fake greenery and bric-a-brac, and, worst of all, the menu was second-rate pub fare. “What’d you bring me here for?” I asked, picking warily at the Cobb Salad I had ordered. He just smiled mischievously as a woman sat down at our booth, introduced herself as the owner, and began speaking with my dad in hushed tones. The only part of the conversation I was able to make out was the word “sale.” I nearly choked on a piece of hard-boiled egg.

“You’re thinking of buying this place?” was my distressed reaction. He shushed me, saying the deal wasn’t final yet and Lynn didn’t want anyone else knowing about it.

“But this place?”

Running our own restaurant had always been a quaint little dream. For a career chef and waitress it seemed like the thing to do. One of our ideas was a sweet little diner called Mom’s, where all the waitresses wore grandma wigs and dresses, had names like Flo and Wilma, and served meals on roller skates. Or perhaps it would be a swanky joint where I would help plan the fusion menu and we’d garner five-star reviews. This place, however, was not even close. This was where grandmothers came after bingo in gaudy floral prints to sip their pink wine, where sleazy middle-aged men started nursing beers at ten in the morning. This would not do.

My parents’ minds were set, however. They took out a second mortgage on the house and immediately set to work hiring new employees, redecorating and completely overhauling the menu. My mother became Accounting and Public Relations. Daytime hours were spent in her tiny office in back, stacks of bills and receipts surrounding her as she counted each shift’s bank, made sure it corresponded with the bartender’s report, and entered it onto a spreadsheet. She left the door open in hopes that someone would come in and distract her. Smoke from her cigarettes mixed with the smell of scented candles and wafted out to greet any visitors who did stop by. At night she charmed and flitted her way around the dining room. If it were slow she’d coax some dinner from my dad in the kitchen and sit at a corner booth or the bar, then make her rounds.

“Kevin, how are you? Where’s Maryanne?” she greeted regulars. A career waitress all her life, she never forgot a name or drink order, and constantly honed her expert gossip collecting skills.

Meanwhile, my father relished the role of the equally feared and loved dictator. Flushed with the heat of the giant stoves, deaf to anything but his iPod and the hiss of food, he slammed pans, cursed customers and repeatedly threatened to fire the dishwasher. The beleaguered waitresses were at his mercy.

“Tell them I’m not making any more bread. And put the damn temperature on this steak!” he bellowed when it got busy. Despite this, everyone loved his food. We specialized in steaks: prime rib, filet mignon, rib eye and his real love, top sirloin. He also experimented with the menu, making seared ahi tuna or bananas foster crème brulée and passing samples around the restaurant when he was in a good mood. Off duty, he smoked alone back by the dumpsters or lounged at the bar with his whiskey and exchanged bawdy jokes with patrons. When my father got home, he swallowed a fast food dinner and collapsed onto the couch.

“So this is the dream, huh?” I asked, as I rubbed his sore legs and varicose veins.
“Got to make a living somehow,” he would reply.

Just after the Lamp’s two-year anniversary I started college.

“Make sure you call every once in a while,” my dad said as he set the last box down in my dorm room. I came home nearly every weekend and was greeted with a steak cooked perfectly medium rare.

“The prodigal daughter returns,” he would tease. It was only after being away that I began to see things more clearly. Instead of being the one coming home at two in the morning like most nineteen-year-olds, I found myself staying up to hear my parents home safe and falling asleep on the couch, only to awaken to their loud, drunken arguments. Some nights the bartender would call and I’d have to pick one of them up, hiding the keys when we got home so they wouldn’t try to drive back.

“I’m fine, your dad’s fine, we’re all just fine!” my mom insisted one night in the car.
“Of course you are.”
“But we are!” she said. “We are.”

One Sunday night after work, all the employees came over, crowding into our Jacuzzi and downing beers with me and my parents. My dad had a tall chef’s hat on along with his blue Hawaiian-print trunks, showing off the marijuana leaf tattoo on his left shoulder and regaling us with the story of the first time he met my mother, spotting her in her low-cut waitress uniform through the food window when they both worked at the Castaways restaurant. At one point he went back inside to refill everyone’s drinks and dropped his glass of bourbon. My sister, shuffling sleepily into the kitchen for water, stopped just short of the glass and whiskey all over the floor. She stood there for a second, looking crazy with her disheveled hair and mouth twisted in a grimace.

“What are you doing? You’re an alcoholic, you smoke too much and you’re going to kill yourself!” she screamed at him.

He just shrugged, mopped up his mess and poured another drink.

The night of the flood, however, was not something any of us could ignore.

It began with a phone call from the police in the middle of a rainy night. From my warm bed I heard Emily pick up the phone. Even before the panic in her voice became apparent, my mind conjured up horrific scenarios: my mom in an ambulance, my dad on the wet concrete beside his mangled van. After hanging up she slammed open my door.

“That was the cops. They found mom’s car abandoned somewhere and they’re afraid it’s going to get washed away.”
“What the hell? Where?”
“I don’t know, not at the restaurant.”

We shared terrified looks. Neither parent answered the cell phone, nor did anyone pick up at the restaurant. Going through all the employees’ numbers we finally got hold of Genny, the waitress who had been on shift that night, who told us she and my mom were waiting for a tow truck.

“She got in a fight with your dad and decided to go over to Victoria’s, but her car stalled in some water.”

She had no idea where my dad was.

A few minutes later he called, safe and sound, from the restaurant. He had been there drinking, alone.

“What the hell are you going on about?” he yelled into the phone. “It’s her own damn fault and I don’t give a fuck whether she lives or dies.”

When he finally got home I was sitting out on the front step.
“How could you do this?” I demanded, barring him from coming inside.
“Do what?” he said, pushing past me.
“Do you know how much we worry?” I screamed at his back. “What if it was one of us who didn’t come home? Would you even give a shit?”

He looked pained for a second, then slammed the door in my face.

I don’t try to argue for him this time, only hug my mom as she sobs, and endure my sister’s rants. Dad sleeps in our tent trailer out in the driveway, sneaking inside in the early morning to shower and change. We barely speak to him when we work with him at the restaurant.

One morning a week later I wake up to the smell of bacon and wander out to the kitchen. My father is manning his familiar post in front of the stove in his old white t-shirt, board shorts and the worn slippers I bought him for his birthday. The shadows under his eyes are pronounced, but he’s humming, some tune I can’t make out.

“Is your mom up yet?” he asks without looking up. “I’m making her breakfast.”
“I don’t think so.” I reach into the cupboard for a glass and fill it with orange juice. “Need any help?”
“Sure. What else should we make?”

Rummaging through the pantry I find a dusty box of instant pancake mix.

“I can’t remember the last time we had pancakes,” I say, gathering a bowl and whisk.
We work silently next to each other, me ladling out batter onto the griddle as he scrambles eggs.

“You know, I—” he starts, faltering. I look up at him, but he keeps his eyes on the pan.
“I know,” I say, scooping up the last pancakes. We arrange everything on a tray and start towards my mother’s bedroom.
“I’m sorry,” he says halfway down the hallway.

When we reach the door I pause, carefully steadying the tray in my hands, and reach up on my tip-toes to give him a kiss on the cheek.

He smiles then, and opens the door.