I lean toward crankiness on my birthdays.
My father woke me by kicking my bedroom door open and flashing the light on and off.
“I’m up, damnit,” I said.
My father grunted. He never spoke first thing in the morning. He remained silent in the car when we started driving.
It was hot in the car already. My birthday is in August. I wondered if the August heat contributed to my birthday crankiness. I already knew that my father did.
“Do you have to wake me every morning like a storm trooper?”
My father set down his coffee cup in the holder. “At least I’m consistent. Don’t be so sensitive,” he said. “I’m your father. It’s my job to toughen you up.”
“Really? I thought you were supposed to back me up.”
“That too.”
“So why harass me?”
“It’s done out of love.”
“So are most murders.”
“I’ll watch my back,” he said.
The suburban streets flickered past. “Where is the cemetery, anyway?”
My father had decided that today would be a good day for us to visit his own father’s grave. This was not high on my list of fun birthday activities. Neither was spending time with my father.
“We’re making a stop first.”
“Shit.”
“You suffer from the impatience of youth. We won’t be long.”
I sighed. “So where are we going?”
“The school.”
“Thrilling.”
He shook his bald head. “Eighteen and still a pain in the ass. Thought you might start acting like an adult suddenly.”
“Thanks for the flattery. You’re proving my point.”
He lit a cigar. The blue smoke curled around him. “Hey, what’s the problem? At eighteen, I’d already been working for four years. Grew a moustache as soon as I could, so I would look old enough to hire.” My father honked at the truck in front of us. “Guy needs to choose a lane. He’s all over the road.” We passed the truck, and the driver flipped us off. My father ignored him. “I hauled soda cartons up the steps. Old apartment buildings with no elevators. Then I was drafted. I’d say your eighteen is going better than mine did.”
“Wish I’d brought a violin,” I said. I coughed and opened my window. “Everything is relative. I have my own problems.”
“The only problems you have are the ones you make for yourself.”
“Like secondhand smoke? Why should I bother to make problems? I’ve got you right there to make them for me.”
“I don’t want to argue with you, Douglas.”
“That’s a change.”
“Okay. Good. Fine. Name one problem.”
“I don’t get along with my father.”
“Must be nice to have one. Mine died when I was a kid.”
“Jesus.”
We lapsed into a joint silence. It was safer.
The suburban streets slowly turned into highways, and then urban streets. Waves of heat rose from the asphalt. People sat on crooked front stoops fanning themselves. We pulled into the parking lot of a decrepit old building. A handful of other cars already sat in the lot.
“We’re here,” my father said.
“Terrific. This is your school?”
“You didn’t see the sign out front?” He looked over his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, they knocked it down again.”
It was a three-story, L-shaped brick building with more broken than intact windows. I could see shattered glass glinting in the overgrown weeds. A pile of tires filled one corner of the parking lot.
“I’ve never been here. It looks abandoned.”
“It’s the summer. They’ll have most of the windows fixed by the time school starts, or at least boarded up. Come on.”
The place didn’t look much better inside. Empty soda cans littered the hallway. Lockers hung open on broken hinges.
“My lab is right down the hall.”
“Lab?”
“It’s what I call my classroom. I’ll show you.”
The lab consisted of two classrooms joined by an arched doorway. In the front room were the usual desks and chairs. The rear room looked like a very organized junk shop. There was a naked mannequin with one missing arm, a cash register with Monopoly money inside the open drawer, a long counter with two more cash registers and a Burger King menu stapled to the wall behind it. Broken glass and rocks were strewn around in both rooms.
“What is all the stuff in here?”
My father thumbed through the old mail on his desk. “Grab that broom, will you? There’s a shovel in the closet.” He crumpled up a letter without opening it and tossed it into the wastebasket. “They’re work training tools. You know that’s what I do, right? Train students for entry-level jobs in retail? Where did you think I trained them?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“You mean you never think. Come on, don’t just hold that broom. It’s designed for pushing.”
“You don’t want to know what I’m thinking right now. Let the custodians do it.”
My father snorted. “Custodian, you mean. He doesn’t start until the school year—budget cuts. Doesn’t matter, though. He’s usually at the bar down the street. Give me a hand here.”
I swept the glass into a neat pile. My father tried to squat down with the shovel but didn’t make it. He caught himself on the side of a desk and rose gradually to his full height. I could feel the pained effort of his rising. I took the shovel and he used the broom to push the glass onto it.
“So tell me what we’re doing here.”
“I’m trying to get a jump on the first day of school. It’s only two weeks away.”
“There’s a happy thought.”
“Well, it’s got to be done. And nobody’s going to do it but me.”
“And me.”
“And you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I feed you, don’t I? No need to thank you.”
“Mom always says thank you to people. So do Ellen and Anne.”
“Your mother and sisters are polite. I’m not. I’m your storm trooper father, remember?”
“How can I forget?”
My father went back to his paperwork. I started to gather the rocks. I was about to throw them out the window when he looked up over his glasses and stopped me.
“Don’t do that. I have a bucket for them. It’s right over here.”
“You save them?”
“Yup. Going to fill that bucket with rocks and glass and mail it to the Board of Education. I’ll include a polite suggestion of where they can put them. And a recommendation that they consider rehiring the summer security guard.”
I almost laughed. “You’re kidding.”
My father grinned. “Do I ever kid you?”
“All the time.”
A few of the rocks were smooth and cool, and I slipped them into my pocket without really thinking about it. I wandered around in the stifling room while my father worked at his desk. My eyes stung from sweat.
There were over a dozen framed teaching awards and commendations on the wall. One was from the mayor. Another was from Washington.
“You really win all these?”
My father glanced up. “What? Oh, those. Yeah. I leave them up there so the administration leaves me alone. I’m their award-winning work-study coordinator. Good press for them and good protection for me.”
“I thought you were a teacher.”
“I am. I teach kids about business. Then I get them jobs so they can learn about it first-hand.” My father swiveled in his desk chair and began filing the sorted mail in a dented gray cabinet. “Most of these kids don’t have a clue about working. They don’t have fathers who work. Half of them don’t have fathers. They don’t know how to go on an interview. They can’t even ring a cash register. So I train them. I had eighty students working last year.”
I kicked one of the loose rocks across the worn hardwood floor. I was surprised at how little I knew about my father’s job. “Do you like it?”
“I like the students. I don’t like the jackasses in the administration or the board. Give me a hand here.”
My father had marked up a large wall calendar with projects and due dates for the first month of class. He held up one side of the calendar against the wall. I had to climb onto a rickety stepstool to hold the other side at the same level.
“Just push the nail into the wall. I think they used cardboard instead of plaster when they built this place.” We stepped back. “Look even to you?” my father asked.
“Almost.”
“Good enough. Anyway, the kids I understand. I grew up a few blocks away from here.” My father pointed out the window. “Three streets over and two back. Peshon Avenue. They used to call it ‘piss on’ avenue. Probably still do.”
“Charming.”
“Isn’t it? I know how to sell, so I sell these kids on working and I sell places on hiring them. This isn’t so different from when I was a salesman. Everything in life is selling. Selling and buying. Remember those words of wisdom from your old man.”
I’d heard them before.
“I’ll take a memo.”
We lined up all the desks and chairs and put a torn shirt on the naked mannequin before leaving.
My father stopped by the main office on the way out. There was a woman sitting at a big metal desk. He tapped on the door to get her attention.
“Hi, Carol. Sign me in, ok? Out, too. This is my son, Douglas. Eighteen today.”
She patted her gray hair into place and stood. “Oh, hello, Mr. Manning. Douglas, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” We shook hands. She smiled. “Wow, eighteen. Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.”
“You can vote now.”
“God save the republic,” my father said.
“Your father never stops bragging about you. He’s so proud.”
It was news to me.
“As long as I’m up, do either of you want a drink for the road?”
“Carol makes a mean cup of coffee,” my father said.
“Thanks, no,” I said.
“Fill me up,” said my father.
Carol filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee, added two sugars and milk, and handed it to him. “You probably don’t remember, Douglas, but you fixed this electric pot for me about five years ago. Your father brought it home. You must have just been a little boy. I’m still using it.”
I looked at the battered pot. “I forgot all about that. It was a broken coil. I soldered it back together. I can’t believe that thing still works.”
“It does. Someday when you’re famous I’ll sell it and retire.”
“Don’t cash in your pension,” my father said.
“Just ignore him, Douglas. It was so nice meeting you.”
“I always do. Likewise.”
“What was that all about?” I asked my father in the hallway. “I never fixed anything for that woman.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t skip a beat in there. Not bad.”
“But why did you tell her I fixed it?”
My father took another sip of the coffee and then tossed the cup into a garbage can by the outside door. “Tastes like paint thinner. It was the only way to get her damned coffee pot fixed. I took it to a repair place.”
“Why?”
“Did it ever occur to you,” asked my father, “that I’m actually a nice guy?”
“Never.”
The cemetery wasn’t far. My father parked the car and we walked through the wrought-iron gates into the land of the dead.
It looked like a popular destination. There were empty bottles of Scotch and used rubbers on the graves. Some of the headstones had been knocked over. Newspaper pages blew by like urban tumbleweeds. It was starting to rain, the clouds dark and close.
“Where is he?” I asked.
We walked up and down the rows of graves. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here in years.”
“It’s right near where you work, though.”
My father didn’t say anything.
“Why wasn’t your father buried with your mother?”
“There was no money to buy funeral plots. My father’s buried in a Workmen’s Circle grave. Your shoe’s untied.”
I bent down to tie it. “What’s that?”
My father stood waiting. He tore the wrapper from a fresh cigar, the crackling sound of the cellophane magnified in the quiet of this place. He tossed the wrapper aside. “A Jewish benevolent society. You got a grave with your membership dues, which is half the reason people joined in those days. Nobody could afford a plot.”
He snapped open his silver Zippo lighter and held the bright flame over the tip of the cigar. He inhaled in long, slow breaths, the flame diminishing and then leaping each time. “That’s how you light one of these,” he said. “You want it to burn evenly and steadily.” He snapped the lighter shut and slipped it back into the pocket of his shirt. “These are all Workmen’s Circle graves. There were no plots left here by the time your grandmother passed away, may she rest in peace. It was sold out. Standing room only.”
I picked up the cigar wrapper and stood. “So where’s his grave?”
My father rummaged in his pants pocket and emerged with a cigar clipper. He held the cigar in one hand and clipped off the end of it with the other hand. “He’s next to someone named Greenberg, in the middle of a row. The headstone at the beginning of the row has some kind of poem on it. That’s how I used to find the grave. “‘In constant weather by reliable light is the first line,’ I think. Something like that. But I don’t see it.”
I looked at all the fallen headstones. “Maybe it got knocked down. What did he die of?”
He returned the cigar clipper to his pocket and hesitated. “Gangrene. Hurt himself on the job. He was in construction.” I could hear him jingling the loose change in his pocket. “He hung doors. My father was broad like you and tall like me. They say he could hang two doors in the same time it took a smaller man to hang one.”
“Let’s keep looking,” I said.
My father leaned forward with his arm behind him, holding his lower back as we walked. He looked frail.
Lightning flashed.
“We’ll spread out. Look for your birth date,” my father said.
“I know.”
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you already know. I grew up hearing that my grandfather died on my birthday, though many years before I was born. I never thought about it much. It occurred to me now that my father was always cranky on my birthday, too.
I walked up and down the rows of headstones. I could see my father doing the same at the other end of the cemetery.
I spotted the date before I saw the name. It was my birth date, literally carved in stone. I saw my last name. There was a sudden cinematic boom of thunder.
“Dad!” I shouted. I was surprised to hear the fright in my own voice. I waved to him. “Over here!”
My father arrived faster than I thought he could.
“You found it,” he said.
He looked at the headstone. He looked at me. My father doesn’t miss much.
“Thunder scared you, huh?” he said.
“Nope.”
“Really? Scared the shit out of me.”
I laughed in spite of myself. My heart was pounding. “Okay, busted. I admit it—the thunder startled me a little.”
“Damned right it did,” he said, trying to catch his breath. The cigar shook slightly in his hand. “Loud thunder like that. You’d have to be an idiot for it not to…and my son is not an idiot.”
It was the closest to a compliment that I was going to get.
“Reach down there and grab some rocks for us to put on the headstone,” said my father.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. It’s something you do when you’re Jewish, that’s all.”
I had my hands in my pockets. I felt the rocks I’d put there earlier in his classroom and gave him one.
My father leaned against me, his weight pressing down on my shoulder. I didn’t pull away. We stood together in the warm summer rain and placed the rocks on my grandfather’s grave.
