My Own Private Patriarchy

One father was driving a gold Mercedes-Benz.

One father was listening to the Beach Boys.

One father was having an affair with every woman in California.

One father asked me if I preferred Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

He had never heard of Djuna Barnes or Jessie Fauset or Laura (Riding) Jackson.

One father mowed the lawn every Sunday of every summer.

One father wanted another grandson. And another. And another.

One father had a mouth that flattened whether grimacing or smiling.

One father had never before sat on a beach.

Never before had he let the tide rise up and turn the sand liquid under his skin.

Never before had his swim trunks filled with salt and shells, his whole body toppling over by the force of the Atlantic.

One father sat quietly in his cell reading books he once found dull.

This father could make friends even in prison.

One father would dog-ear the last page of the book he’d just finished reading.

One father had been attacked by a cocker spaniel as a child and couldn’t stand to be in the same room as the neighbor’s beagle.

One father sliced the cantaloupe, the honeydew, a dozen golden delicious.

He sliced the Bartlett pears, the mangos, the papayas, the watermelon, the pineapple we only had at Christmas.

One father washed and ironed his dollars, and for a long time, I thought this is what money laundering is.

One father kept a closet full of suitcases, inside every suitcase another smaller suitcase.

One father thought there was nothing better than having another, another, another ...

One father was afraid to enter the woods behind his house.

One father shelled the peanuts before handing the bowl to his wife.

One father watched his wife eat the shelled peanuts.

One father changed his mind and ate the peanuts himself.

One father had no patience for teaching his daughter how to ride a bike.

How to drive a car, how to tell the truth.

How are driving and lying not the same motion forward, faster and forward, keep going, keep going ...

One father called Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Busan, Tokyo in the last hours of dawn.

One father had frequent flyer miles he distributed to his family like the dole.

One father ran five miles every morning in whatever weather the weather happened to be.

One father could say hello in almost every language you’d find in Queens.

In Mandarin, in Cantonese, in Urdu, in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Korean, in Polish, in Russian, in Tagalog, in Chechen, in Fujianese, in Arabic, in Hindi, in Assamese, in Italian, in Hebrew, in Greek, and once he said good-bye in Galician.

One father, for seventeen months, rode the elevator up and down a Park Avenue mid-rise.

One father said he was American.

One father said one day he’d go home again.

One father forgot all his children’s birthdays but remembered to pay off his credit card bills.

One father thought freedom was lying or that lying would free him or he lied again and I forgave him again, and now we are free and still lying.

One father said good night, good night, I miss you, I miss you.

One father did not say anything, or maybe I never listened to his voicemails.

One father was not the only father I had.