The Reason You're Alive

  Despite the other fact that she was always up my ass about my smoking, trying to get me to quit—she didn’t understand that the cigarettes hadn’t killed her father, his buying the bullet is what killed him—we became sort of close, and I consider Sue to be family now. She was there for me when my son wasn’t. She did a lot for me, like driving me to the hospital when I was too sick to get behind the wheel without killing anyone, back when my BMW was totaled anyway. Whenever I told her I felt bad wasting her time, she’d say she wished she could do all of this for her own parents, but she couldn’t because they were dead. I was all she had left, and she was all I had. So she helped me get my medication at the store and sort it into that Sunday-through-Saturday pillbox for idiots like me. She made sure there was food to eat in my refrigerator. She kept me company. And she was also the one who made me call Hank after the operation. She would have tried to get me to call him before I went under the knife, but I tricked her into thinking he was in Europe and couldn’t make it back in time, and that he knew already, which made Sue hate Hank until I told her the truth about my keeping the brain problems from my son because I was so fucking pissed at him.

  The extra drugs they gave me at the hospital after they opened my skull made me softer than usual, and Sue used the sneaky part of her Asian heritage, took advantage of my incapacitated state, and cracked the case, which—I can see in retrospect—was what brought Hank and me back together in the end, so I guess I’m now grateful.

  Hank doesn’t know it, but I’ve even written Sue into my will. Behind Ella, Sue might be my favorite woman alive. Jessica remains my favorite woman, living or dead. I still love my dead wife even more than I love Ella, although Ella is a close second. Before I took out that telephone pole with my BMW and my head got all fucked up, I was starting to love Sue more than I loved Hank, who had abandoned me in favor of a Dutch cunt. It gives me no joy admitting that now, but it’s true.

  One of Sue’s best attributes is that she is kind. Despite all I confided in her about my dumb liberal son, that little yellow woman was always thinking of Hank, trying to get me to look at things from his point of view, moronic as it was. Even Sue agreed my son could be one hell of a stubborn idiot. But Sue has a big heart, which reminds me a lot of my Jessica.

  8.

  So I was supposed to tell you about Hank meeting Sue for the first time, but I got sidetracked. These brain meds they have me on are brutal. It’s hard to stick to just one train of thought, so I apologize for my past and future offenses.

  I invited Sue over for one of Hank’s “nutritional” and “fair trade” and “certified organic” dinners, which are often completely devoid of meat and bread and anything that tastes good at all. My son makes mashed potatoes with cauliflower, for Christ’s sake. There are no potatoes in his mashed potatoes. No butter either. What the fuck? I asked him what could possibly be wrong with potatoes, which grow in the ground naturally—keeping the Irish alive for centuries—and he said they are high in carbs and then implied that I was fat, only he said it in a politically correct way. According to my son, I am “not heart-healthy.” I prefer “fat” to “not heart-healthy.” And I prefer potatoes to fucking cauliflower.

  But dazzling Sue’s taste buds wasn’t even the secondary goal of the evening. If I wanted her to eat well, we would have gone out for a good steak at the Union League, where I’ve been a member for decades, because that patriotic society is pro-veteran and dedicated to the policies of Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican, by the way. The current liberal party, who wants to enslave us all, did not emancipate the blacks. Republicans did that. They serve potatoes at the Union League too. I love potatoes with bacon and sour cream and chives and ketchup. That’s real eating. But back to the goals of the evening. Like I was saying earlier.

  First, I wanted to prove to my son once and for all that I was neither a misogynist nor a fucking racist. Having a woman who was also genetically Vietnamese for a best friend was my trump card. Two birds. One stone. I knew Hank couldn’t say shit to me anymore about my colorful language once he’d met Sue, who fully accepts me for who I am, warts and all. And that’s true equality, by the way, because Hank and Femke often acted like elitist snobs. Despite being so-called liberals, they looked down their noses at and hated more people than anyone I ever met.

  The second part of my plan doubled down on the fact that I am no lousy fucking racist. Sue is a nice-looking and smart lady who is just about my son’s age, give or take ten years. And she’s a trillion times better than Femke. Femke was cold as ice on your balls, where Sue was like warm South China Sea sand between your toes. I wouldn’t mind one bit having Sue for a daughter-in-law. I knew she’d be a big hit with Ella, and I was right about that too.

  Sue came in with flowers for Hank and fun balloons for Ella, who hugged Sue right off the bat. The balloons had some cartoon princess on them that I couldn’t identify, but apparently Ella could. I know because my granddaughter started jumping up and down like she had a firecracker up her ass just as soon as she recognized the princess. Already I could see that Sue would be a good mother for my granddaughter because she knew about the things Ella likes, and also Sue is thoughtful, having been raised by a fellow Vietnam veteran and his classy American wife. Most morons don’t have enough class to bring anything to a dinner party. Pay attention, and you can spot a moron a mile away.

  Like I said before, Hank’s eyes popped out of his fucking skull when he saw Sue standing in his living room. It was a hilarious sight, because I knew he wanted to say I never thought I’d see the day when my racist father would bring a Vietnamese woman to dinner, but then he would have to admit that he was wrong about me all along and that would make him look like the bigot, which he wouldn’t want to do, especially in front of a nonwhite.

  “You must be Hank,” Sue said once it was clear that my son was just going to stand there holding his dick.

  “Actually, my name is Henri,” he said, pronouncing it with a French accent, Ahn-ree. And then he added that his mother had named him after Henri Rousseau. He went on to say that only his father calls him Hank, because his father doesn’t like the French.

  Admittedly, the French are a hard race for this American patriot to like, because they let the Nazis take over their country and fucked up Vietnam before we got there too, but the point is this: My son never ever misses a chance to paint his father out to be a racist. He even tries to make me sound racist against other subsets of white people, like the French! I kept my mouth shut here and kept my mind on the greater good that I was trying to accomplish that evening.

  “I’m not sure I know Henri Rousseau,” Sue said, which did not impress Hank one bit, let me tell you, but he jumped at the chance to advertise his useless encyclopedic knowledge of dead non-American artists.

  “He was a self-taught French painter,” Hank said with unearned schoolboy pride, happy to supply all the art facts that our guest didn’t already possess between her ears. It was like he was trying to win a prize. “Late nineteenth, early twentieth century. We have a really good Rousseau in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Carnival Evening.”

  “Hank’s mother was a painter. And a damn good one,” I said, trying to knock my son off his professor podium before he launched into an art history lecture.

  “Not that I’d know,” Hank said, “because I never saw a single one of her paintings.”

  “Why’s that?” Sue said.

  Hank and I looked at our feet here, each of us daring the other to speak. It was just like Hank to bring up an uncomfortable topic when he should have been making our guest feel at home. Our answers to Sue’s question would have been very different. Regarding Hank’s mother, I’ll tell you my version—aka the truth—before we finish here, but neither my son nor I wanted to talk about Jessica right then in front of Sue, and I don’t feel like talking about my dead wife’s notorious suicide just yet either.

  Our guest broke the awkward silence. “Well, I’m Sue, and I’ve heard a lot about you, Henri.?
??

  “I’m sure you have,” Hank said as he took the flowers, shook Sue’s hand, and gave her body a quick once-over that neither Sue nor I missed.

  Thanks to Gay Timmy, Sue had one of the top female bodies in all of Philadelphia. It helps that she was also Vietnamese, as those women are much less likely to become fat, even when they put down the fucking chopsticks and start eating real American food. Anyway, I could tell that my son had felt a little twinge in his pants, which meant the night had started out perfectly.

  “Do you want to see my room?” Ella said and then dragged Sue up the stairs by the hand. Ella loves showing people her room. I have no idea why, as it looks like a regular pink-and-purple little-girl room, which is painfully uninteresting to anyone who is not a little girl. Sue was too polite to say as much, so up the stairs she went.

  Once the women and children were out of earshot, Hank said to me, “You’re full of surprises tonight, Dad.”

  So I told him that Sue had become my daughter. I pointed up to Sue on the second floor to support my case. Then I outlined all that she had been doing for me—a fucking long list—which was exactly what Hank was supposed to have done as my son. Any real American man would have felt immense shame, but not Hank. He probably thought he had done good stepping aside so that a minority and a woman could have his job as my child.

  In response, Hank just added another place setting to the table. Next he put some water into a fancy crystal vase and arranged the flowers Sue had given him. His arrangement looked like shit, because my son is a heterosexual.

  I said, “I saw you give Sue the once-over.”

  “Please,” Hank said.

  “You telling me a liberal like yourself won’t admit to being attracted to a woman of Vietnamese ancestry? I’m shocked. I thought you quote didn’t see race unquote.”

  Then Hank said, “She’s attractive, Dad. Anyone can see that. Racists and liberals alike.”

  My son was always dividing the world into two categories: liberals and everyone else, all of whom in his view were stupid and worthless and offensive.

  “What?” I said. “You’re too good to marry a Vietnamese woman?”

  Hank shook his head here and laughed with college-scholarship-boy swagger. Then he said, “I’m already married, remember?”

  It was hard to see the level of denial my son was exhibiting. I was embarrassed for him.

  I was just about to ask Hank if he really thought Femke was ever coming back to America, but Ella descended the stairs still holding Sue’s hand.

  “I wanted to introduce Ms. Sue to Mr. Peanuts, but I couldn’t find him!” Ella said. “He’s vanished again!”

  “You have a beautiful house,” Sue said to Hank.

  “Thank you,” Hank said. “My wife did all the decorating.”

  “Ex-wife,” I said. “She’s long gone. Ancient history. Good riddance too.”

  Hank looked over at Ella without moving his head and then said, “Please, Dad.”

  “I know that Mommy has a boyfriend,” Ella said to Hank. “Maybe you should have a girlfriend. That would only be fair.”

  “I agree,” I said, backing up my granddaughter.

  “Wine?” Hank said.

  “Please,” Sue answered.

  “Can’t drink,” I said.

  “We can have Perrier with lemon juice!” Ella said.

  It was moments like this that I worried for Ella. What normal American seven-year-old drinks Perrier?

  “Your xenophobic grandfather doesn’t drink anything that doesn’t have an American name, let alone a French soft drink,” Hank said and then gave Sue a glance that made me realize he had mistaken my friend for a snooty elitist likely to laugh at his snide jokes. My stereotyping son always assumes that nonwhite people are Obama supporters, which is not the fucking case, and he’d know that if he ever bothered to go out into the world beyond his bubble of morons. Sue voted for McCain and Romney.

  Sue smiled back at Hank because she is polite and my son has his mother’s genes, which means he is attractive. I was counting on Hank’s appearance to compensate for his misinformed worldview. Maybe that would be enough to woo Sue and get her interested in being Ella’s new mother.

  I don’t approve of the way my son eats, but he is fit and looks like one of those model guys who fall out of the Sunday paper wearing nothing but tighty-whitey underwear and smug looks on their faces. The ones with their hands always behind their heads so you can see their shaved armpits. Those stupid advertising inserts no one wants. I think those underwear guys look like fucking assholes, but secretly I also want to look like them, which is why I spin with Gay Timmy, who has probably done some underwear modeling himself. But while I am an old man whose head-turning days are done, my son is still relatively young, in his mid-forties.

  Soon we were all seated at the table, and Hank served something called Caprese Lasagna, which was basically tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil wrapped in gluten-free noodles. I knew they were gluten-free because my son told us ten thousand times. I had eaten Italian food before with Sue, so I wasn’t too worried about her enjoying the meal, especially since younger people generally seem to think my son can actually cook, despite the fact that he cooks pussy un-American dishes. But my hands were sweating the whole time we ate.

  At some point Sue asked about the huge painting hanging in the dining room. A shit-eating grin bloomed on Hank’s face, and then my son stepped up to his college-professor podium again.

  Before I tell you about this painting, allow me to state that if I hung this one in my house tonight, Hank would disown me the second he saw it. You have to be a bleeding-heart liberal to get away with owning one of these.

  It was painted by one of Hank’s top moneymakers—an artist who goes by the name Eggplant X. That’s this fucking clown’s nom de guerre. Eggplant X. If I had come up with that shit, Hank would have snorted at me and called me a million insults.

  The painting is a cartoon characterization of an old American stereotype. It’s a little black boy eating a watermelon, only his eyes are huge, as are his lips and nose, and his skin is black as coal. He’s wearing a little shirt that reads i love watermelons, and he’s sitting on a pile of rinds and seeds. No pants. He’s in a red diaper that looks more like a bandana.

  Even I’m offended when I look at it.

  But here’s the part that’s supposed to make it not racist: over the entire painting, after Eggplant X was finished, he wrote the word shame in big red letters, and that, according to my son, is what makes it politically correct and worth roughly eighty thousand US dollars, if you can believe that shit.

  And here is the best part of this fucking story. Are you ready for it?

  Eggplant X is whiter than me.

  Ain’t that some bullshit?

  If a black artist was getting paid big coin for these sorts of shitty paintings, I’d at least feel good about him—or even her—having a good-paying job. Like I said before, this country fucked the blacks with slavery and we should give them first shot over more recent immigrants when it comes to making it in the land of the free. But it sure as hell didn’t sit right with me that some white asshole, who goes around making other white people feel ignorant and ashamed about race relations, should make a shitload of money by painting what he himself labels racist. But this bullshit is high art, according to my son.

  “It’s . . . interesting,” Sue said, just to be polite. “Why does he call himself Eggplant X?”

  “He refuses to explain,” Hank said. “Which I think is a smart move.”

  “Why?” Sue asked.

  “You want to tell her, Ella?” Hank said.

  “What?” Ella said.

  “What sells art?” Hank asked his daughter, trying to get her to do a trick like a trained poodle.

  “Stories,” Ella said dutifully.

  “That’s right,” Hank said in his college-professor voice. “People don’t buy paintings. They buy stories. And everyone has a theory about Eggplant X??
?s name.”

  “What’s your theory?” Sue asked Hank.

  Hank was pleased with Sue’s question, because it gave him the chance to do some more art-talk jerking off, and so he said, “I think he wants you to make up your own story, which is smart. And why he’s my top-selling client too. He doesn’t explain any of his pieces. He says they exist free and clear of him. Once he lets them go into the world, he lets each piece take on a life of its own.”

  “I bet he cashes the fucking paychecks, though,” I said.

  “First. Please watch your language around your granddaughter,” Hank shot back at me, as if he never said the word fuck himself. “And second, why wouldn’t he cash those checks? It would be un-American to refuse what the market offers, right? That’s capitalism. America’s true religion. You taught me that, Pop.”

  Hank only calls me Pop when he’s making fun of me. And I also knew my son was mocking me with the un-American comment and talk of capitalism, which I believe in wholeheartedly because I’m no lousy red fucking Communist. But regardless of all that, I let Hank’s comments slide. I wanted Sue and my son to get together, and he had to appear confident and attractive to woo her. If I emasculated Hank in a battle of wits—and I could do that easily even with my fucked-up brain—Sue would never again be attracted to him. So I let him be alpha male for the evening, if only for the well-being of my granddaughter.