Father has locked himself in his Subaru Forrester again. He thinks the rain, and the booming thunder will distract us, but we’ve grown older, more desperate for his touch, the smell of his heady sweat. Mother says she has washed her hands of him. She turns on the taps, slicks her hands with soap, points at us, says See with her eyes. Your tears, are nothing to him. See how he cowers in that car?
Outside, the water puddles around our feet as we surround the fogged windows. Four of us, one for each window. We take turns yelling, come out, take me with you, are you afraid of metling, pick us up, Father, we want up up up. Neither of us is quite as cute, quite as young, quite as irresponsible anymore. We’re used to being adorable, of being soft of needing protection, but Dad can’t be manipulated by our dimples or the way the rain plasters our hair to our foreheads, or the redness of our cheeks, or the way our tears slow dancing with the slanting droplets, so he turns up the radio, a host yelling about World War III, that the time is nigh. Father claps and it thunders, and it only persuades us of his magic, that if he’d only open the door, let us in or come out, he could ease our aching, make mom love him again, get her hands dirty for him.
We’re all drowning, he shouts, and we jump in the puddles, water sloshing into our socks, our toes feeling like worms left on the concrete, our father the sun we can’t avoid. I won’t let you see me this way. You understand?
He waves his hands like the air-blown tube man at the car dealer, beats at the steering wheel, the horn bleating irregularly, and the one of us with a murmur only loves him more. He knows my heart song, that one thinks, and puts her lips on the window.
Father’s waving catches the lock button, and there’s a pause after the click, then like rabid dogs we attack the door handles, all four of us breaking the seal, the rain curving around our ears, entering the car.
You’ll ruin the goddamn leather seats, father says, as we shake and twist, the youngest of us already on Dad’s lap, picking at his lips, blowing on the limp poof of his hair, beckoning us all to get closer. We move forward the car rocking, lightning flashing, as we all put our hands on him, his knee, his shoulders, the bristly hair at the back of his neck.
His breath, a pot of coffee left over night, stirs in us, a feeling we won’t name in the arms of our future lovers, because this is something for just us, and we wish we could store it for those dark nights in our future.
Father looks at us, each in turn, says, I can’t take you assholes anywhere, and we laugh and we laugh, and we wait for mother to join us, because who could resist this scene, the fog making the outside disappear, a faraway land, we don’t dare return to.
