Alone With the Radio On

This story is for my mom, whom you can all blame for giving birth to me.
1
Kathy sat at the head of the dining room table, waiting for the boys to come home from school. The amber, afternoon sunshine cast a bright rectangle on the center of the table, highlighting the autumn influenced centerpiece. She bought it a few days ago at the market, along with a small family of wart-spotted gourds and a cornstalk to garnish the front porch. That was when Danny was still talking to her. Even Josh, whose yearning for attention was developing into an addiction, had shied away from her since then. She tapped her nails on the brown kernels of the Indian corn cob as she thought of the best approach toward reconciliation.
The tears were coming back, and the boys would be home soon, so she rubbed her puffy eyes with the back of her sweater sleeve and took an exaggerated sniff in an attempt to break her melancholy. The radio is what did it this time. The soft rock station played the hits from her life, the songs that were inescapable back when she was career-committed and her future was undefined, before she met Captain Jack. She stood up from the table to shut off the stereo and the phone rang as she turned down the volume dial. She answered and knew who it was before he spoke because of the crackling static of his cell phone. He always yelled into it, and Kathy had to hold the receiver a few inches away from her ear because the treble of his voice made her temples throb.
"Hello, this is the Independence Middle School nurse..."
"Hello, Jack."
"Well, how is he?"
"It looked a little better this morning."
"You know, this might not have happened if you just would've let him take the damn class."
"Jack...please."
"Ok ok. I'm just saying, it would have helped to learn it for the same reasons you wouldn't let him take it, that's all. Be over in a half, spark."
She hung up the phone and returned to thinking about what happened, and how to mend the rift that had since formed between her and Danny. When the nurse called Wednesday afternoon and told Kathy about the fight, she knew that he wouldn't say a word to her in the van on the way home, and she was right. She replaced his icepacks and left them at the foot of his locked bedroom door. Now she wished that he had thrown a tantrum, had screamed and cried and declared his hatred of her. Instead, he erected the fortifications, the moat with the alligators and other aquatic sentinels, that now only his brother would be granted passage to. While it used to be the three of them, Kathy was no longer welcome inside Danny's protective shell. When Josh got home that day, he walked past her in the living room and said "Ya see mom? Huh? Do ya see now?"
2
It was Friday, so the Captain was picking up the boys for the weekend. Every week at around four o'clock, the car horn started its rhythmic blare all the way up the street, (he had moved out on unfriendly terms with some of the neighbors), and the ivory Cadillac flashed past the dining room window on its way to turning around in a driveway at the top of the street. At the first blare of the horn, the boys grabbed their bags and raced each other to the first block of the sidewalk, fighting over who will get to sit up front with their father.
It didn't turn out as bad as some divorces do. He only moved a few miles away, and the alimony checks were never late. But despite the utter lack of effort he put into the marriage, and his happy-hour "board meetings" that eventually took precedence over the soccer games, it was impossible to stay angry at the Captain, just like it became impossible to live with him. He was a brilliant conversationalist, and had a flair for coining original compliments, the effect of which left most people feeling good about themselves after talking with him. But the infectious optimism he exuded at the bar faded when he got home and sunk into his recliner for the evening sports recap. At home, he was drained from his workday and barroom antics, and he saved none of his energy for Kathy or the boys.
Sometimes it took all of her discipline to restrain from uttering the occasional snide remark, to let them know that he wasn't the hero that they saw him as. In the past she had bit her tongue rather than telling Danny that instead of witnessing his birth, the Captain was at a Steelers playoff game with tickets that he won in a poll at work, and that when he finally did arrive he was so drunk that she wished he would just go home and sleep it off. It would have been so easy and well deserved to tarnish his flawless image with the occasional cheap shot. After all, when she made a mistake, like something as forgivable as buying the wrong flavor of jelly at the supermarket, she always heard about it afterward.
But she held back, because she wanted them to love their father, even though he chose happy hour over soccer, frivolity over family. She wanted them to love him because he still made the same half-assed attempts at fatherhood as he did when they were married, which was better than a lot of deadbeats that disappear as soon as they are legally free. Now, the first time she made a Captain scale error, she fought herself harder than ever before from dragging a few of his colossal blunders into it.
Even when they were married, his low maintenance parenting enabled him to enjoy nearly all of the freedoms of bachelor life. He drank every day, but that was never really a problem because he held his Grand Dad and waters very well, and was much more pleasant after a few of them. The divorce really couldn't have catered any better to his lifestyle. While he dressed in fashionable clothes and lived slightly above his means, leasing a Cadillac and juggling three different credit card debts, Kathy bought the utilitarian station wagon, then the mini-van, and downgraded her once chic wardrobe to Sears apparel.
After the boys adjusted to the schedule of living on a tight budget during the week only to be spoiled rotten every weekend by the Captain, they began to ridicule her frugality. Running jokes carried on about what became known as the "Sunday Coupon Spectacular," when once a month, Kathy spent the entire afternoon at the dining room table, furiously clipping her way through the bulky savings section of the newspaper, then spent the evening stocking the shopping cart with groceries at the supermarket. The boys would drop to their knees, rejoicing "Colors! Beautiful colors!" after spending so much time in the aisles with the black and white generic brands.
3
The front door swung open, and Joshua scurried in with Danny close behind, the back of his shirt hanging out and his right shoelace untied. They dumped their backpacks on the floor and Josh walked over and sat next to Kathy while Danny sulked over to the fridge. He poured a glass of chocolate milk and sat down at the end of the table, making great effort to avoid eye contact with her.
"Hi Danny." He took a big sip of his milk and kept his eyes fixed on the window. Kathy looked at the purple sickle under his eye; it wasn't nearly as swollen as it was last night, but the bruise still looked fresh.
"How was school?"
Gulp.
The horn started beeping and the kids' faces brightened. Before Kathy had a chance to plead her case, they jumped up and scattered for their things. While they stomped up the stairs to collect their weekend necessities, she enjoyed the commotion as she looked around the room and sensed the approaching quiet that only she would be around to disturb for the next few days. The boys ran out of the house and she followed behind, and as the Cadillac slowed to a stop, the passenger side window descended.
"Dannyboy! Joshman!"
The Captain turned the radio dial from sports talk to the station that the boys liked, cranked it up and mock-sang a bar of the song into his microphone fist. He got out of the idling car while the boys hopped in, and hustled around the trunk toward Kathy.
"Jesus spark, Your eyes look almost as bad as Danny's. Tough week, huh?"
"You know Jack, I'm used to being the unpopular parent. Hell, I'm a veteran. But do you think for once you can give a little support? ...I feel like I'm losing him."
"Like I said, this could've been prevented if for once ya just would've given in and let him--"
"Stop. He is entirely too frail and you know it. He's not even going to be able to play soccer much longer, once it gets more physical. Plus, if he takes it then we'll have to let Josh take it and you know he'll abuse it. No, just--no, Jack. He needs to fight his battles in other ways. His words and actions are much more effective than his fists...believe me, I know."
The horn honked and Joshua, sitting Indian-style in the front seat, rolled his eyes back in his head and pulled on the skin of his cheeks. Then he reached his tongue far out as if getting a throat culture. The Captain looked at him, protruded his bottom lip, furrowed his brow and extended his forehead into a simian scowl. He bashed his chest with a clenched fist and the delighted boys applauded from inside the car.
"You better get going, I guess."
"Yeah yeah, look. I'll say something to Dannyboy, so don't worry. It'll pass, spark."
"Right. Ok, have them back by dinner time Sunday."
As the Cadillac pulled away, she looked for a wave from one of the boys, but saw nothing but the backs of their heads. The overused car horn was silent all the way down the street. Reluctant to go right back inside, Kathy sulked around the front yard, picking up two soaking-wet plastic bags containing the local newsletters and carried the worthless, saturated advertisements to the trash bin at the end of the driveway.
She sighed and dragged her feet toward the house, staring at the violet mums that were mulched in as borders to the sidewalk. Entering the quiet, empty living room, she turned the radio back on and dropped into the couch. She knew the song; it was a great one. It pushed the recent conflict out of her mind, replacing it with the fantasy that she often indulged in, where she never went to the bar that night she met him, and never put her education on hold to have his children, only to bear the burden of raising them almost entirely alone. She knew the song that followed too, and while the radio became the score to her impossible hopes and wishes, it didn't take long before she once again gave way to the dam of tears that was swelling behind her eyes.