Twisted

Dad liked to call his lair “the study”, but it was just a basement, with spiders and damp patches on the ceiling tiles. His office stuff- desk, computer, file drawers, and bookshelves- filled one corner. A burgundy leather recliner was positioned next to the high-end Bose stereo. His model-train set stretched on a long, custom tabled in the middle of the room. Framed accounting certificates hung on the walls.
He had retreated down there after dinner. I gave him half and hour, then followed.

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He was hunched over his desk, face in the computer screen, wearing a faded University of Pueblo sweatshirt and the best headphones money could buy. In the blueish lights, it looked like his eyes had disappeared into his sockets.
“Dad,” I said.
He didn’t move.
‘Dad?”
The headphones were plugged into the stereo. A CD case was sitting on top of it. Mason Profitt. They were the hippie southern rock headbangers of the 1960’s.
I tapped his shoulder. “Dad?”
He gasped and spun around in the chair. Papers scattered on the floor. As soon as he saw it was me, he glared. He pulled off the headphones and dropped them around his neck. The hippie voices coming through them were loud, but tinny.
“I knocked,” I said.
“I didn’t hear you.” He bent down to pick up the fallen papers. “Do you need something?”
“I, um…” Deep breath, deep breath. “Mom says there’s more pizza.”
He tapped the papers on the desk to straighten them. “Tell your mother I had enough to eat.”
“Okay.”
“Anything else? I have to finish this report.”
The air-conditioning kicked in and blew cold, clammy air through the basement. Dad’s nose wrinkled. He flung the headphones on the desk, strode across the room, and shouted up the stairs. “Janet? Turn off the damn air-conditioning! It’s only seventy-five outside!”
There was something in his voice that made me want to ram his head into the concrete foundation.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like Mom’s an idiot. I asked her to turn it on,” I lied. “I was hot.”
“So why don’t you go up and turn it off?”
“So I will, in a minute.” I walked over to the model train layout. He’d spent years building it. Santa drove the engine. The freight cars were loaded down with elves and presents. The track wound through a village, by a lake, and into a mountain tunnel. The mountain was covered by fake snow. Mom’s touch.
I rocked the engine back and forth on the track.
“Don’t touch that,” he said. “You know how fragile it is. Was there something else?”
I wiped my hands on the front of my skinny jeans. “Yeah, um… I need to change my schedule.”
“At school? Why? Is there a problem?”
“Three AP’s plus Calc is insane. I’m not that smart, Dad.”
“Your grades from last year were good enough to get you in.”
“Just barely and only because you and Mom made a big stink about it. I’m not asking to drop all of them. Just one of the AP’s, or let me switch out of Calc.”
“No. You’re not changing anything.” He sat down and leaned towards the screen. “I have work to do.”
That was Dad code for “go away”. I was supposed to say, “Okay”, and trudge upstairs, grateful he hadn’t yelled at me.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. I stepped closer. “I can’t do that level of work, Dad. Not in every class. I’ll flunk.”
The muscles tightened along his jaw and up the side of his skull. He inhaled deeply through his nose and rolled his neck from side to side.
“You want me to take care of your problems again.” His voice was low.
“You guys forced me into these classes. I’m just telling you it’s not going to work.”
“When are you going to grow up, Elise?”
One punch, a long slo-mo shot to the soft underbelly of the beast to make him double over, just one punch, my fish so far inside him that the knuckles scrape on his spine…
I tried not to clench my fists.
“I’m so sick of this,” he continued. “You expect me to wave a magic wand and make everything all better. Dad will talk to the teacher. Dad will pay for the lawyer. Daddy fix.” He spat the words out.
Step closer, two steps, get in his face and remind him that I have him by two degrees of a black belt and twenty extra pounds of muscle he wishes he had. Pick up the monitor and bring it down on his head, shove the keyboard down his mouth, cram his beer-belly ass into the trash can…
He wiped his mouth with the back on his hand and rolled his neck again. “This discussion is over.” He rolled his chair closer to the desk. “You’re staying in your classes. And you will quit working for that Perogi fellow.”
“Pirelli. Mr. Pirelli. I like working for him.”
He looked over his shoulder. “This isn’t about what you like.”
The air conditioner shut down and the room fell silent, sour air suspended between us.
“I’ll be eighteen in November,” I reminded him.
He put the headphones on and turned up the volume.

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