That night was the last time I saw Mr. Lundak. He was cooking steaks in his driveway, tongs in one hand and a highball in the other, making no attempt to control the inferno rising from his Weber grill. He was my best friend, Lucy’s dad, patriarch of the whole Lundak clan, which consisted of nine kids and one long-suffering wife.
The Lundaks lived in the better part of town, across the street from a municipal park, so they didn’t need a yard. Nights, Lucy’s older brother and older sisters and their friends drank and made out there, on blankets under the elm trees, and sometimes they’d bring the party home. That’s when Mrs. Lundak retreated to her bedroom and her portable TV and her McCall’s magazines and we wouldn’t see her until morning unless someone broke something or threw up.
Mr. Lundak owned a bar and worked nights. After that night, I only ever saw him on the six o’clock news.
I was an only child, something they all considered mildly exotic. Mrs. Lundak especially treated me with suspicion. All the Lundak kids had their own kneelers for praying and their own rosaries in leather pouches that were monogrammed. Guests had to pray too, but I didn’t have a kneeler so I just knelt on the floor and faked my way through with a loaner set of plastic beads. Jesus, his heart exposed and thorn-wrapped, watched mournfully from his place on wall.
Once, Lucy’s brother, Steve, picked me up and twirled me high over his head until I puked. He was sixteen or seventeen, with shoulder length hair and kind, dark eyes. When he told me to smile, I smiled. When he told me to fly, I splayed out my arms and legs like Superman.
The Lundak’s basement was full of kids drinking and smoking pot and there were black light posters of Elton John and Jimi Hendrix and music pouring out of Pioneer speakers as tall as me. Lucy had been pilfering wine in Dixie cups for the two of us all night.
My vomit, a glorious shade of pink, splattered down the back of Steve’s shirt and onto the floor. He stopped spinning and set me down on a beanbag chair, and proceeded to pass out. Mrs. Lundak came down with a bucket and some rags and told everyone to go home, including me.
It was midnight, but I changed out of my pajamas and pedaled my bike woozily through the dark streets and across the bridge. My dad was sitting on the front step when I got home. I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or awake. My dad liked highballs, too, but one day he quit cold turkey, and after that, he started walking in his sleep. What ho, little one, he said, and I sat next to him, cupped my hand on his knee to keep him in place.
The night in question, Mr. Lundak plopped the platter of steaks on the kitchen counter, got into his shiny Cutlass Supreme, and peeled away. Everyone, including me, was given a t-bone steak in a puddle of blood and a little cup of iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing. Lucy and her siblings tore into their steaks, knives and forks clattering, but I didn’t know what to do with mine. Finally, Mrs. Lundak cut my steak into tiny bites and shoved the plate back to me, but I still couldn’t eat it, so she boiled me a hot dog.
Later, down in the basement, Steve let me sit on his lap as he explained a Steely Dan song to me. When Mrs. Lundak came down the stairs I figured someone must have thrown up, but she had no bucket. She flicked on the light switch, immobilizing everyone in the room. When she saw me, she came over, knelt down, and took my hand.
As it was explained to me, the girl in that song didn’t deserve Steely Dan, but Steely Dan did his best to understand her even though women are complicated. That’s when Steve gave me a sip of PBR and asked me if I was complicated. And before I could answer, Mrs. Lundak had come down in her housecoat to deliver the news.
Mr. Lundak never showed up at the bar that night. He’d been out driving around when he lost control of his shiny Cutlass Supreme, striking my dad from behind, killing him instantly. Mrs. Lundak told me my dad had been alone, all by himself, walking down LaPorte Road in his boxer shorts. Something, she said, he had no earthly business doing.
