Monte

My parents are gone, and the house is quiet accept for the gentle clanking of the dryer in the laundry room and the whisper of the ceiling fan overhead.

I’m thinking about my parents tonight and the relationships we share—mostly the relationship between my mother and father.

There’s a picture in the hallway that leads to my mother’s bedroom of my parents on their wedding day. Their arms are locked and they smile as they climb into the back of a limo. My mother is holding a bouquet of white flowers.

My father told me about the time he asked my grandfather for my mother’s hand in marriage. Over some scotch, my grandfather told my father that he could marry my mother on one one condition: “Don’t ever hurt her.”

The last car accident my father had, my parents screamed and fought while I pretended to watch “When Harry Met Sally.” When I heard my mother shout divorce, I ran from the house into the backyard and cried in the grass. Later, I held my father in his room for an hour and whispered to him that everything would be okay and that I’d talk to mom. My father cried and told me that he didn’t want to be a weekend Daddy.