Caleb invited me down for dinner the other night. Mostly because he said he wanted to go over the receipts for Henry's school clothes and supplies, haircut, shoes, sports fees, student fees, etc, etc. (Actually Henry said no haircut this year because haircuts are dumb. Hahahahahaha. Also kid with no interest in clothing suddenly wants Adidas! DONE.).
But mostly he wanted me to just be there, with him, instead of anywhere else so he handed me a cheque for the right amount before he finished cooking and there, business is out of the way, now how about a nice romantic dinner?
Sure, I offered. You didn't tell me you invited Loch too. Or is Ben home already? Is he a surprise?
But the look on Caleb's face said with those comments I clearly stepped over a line and was being difficult.
I'll have dinner and then I need to go home. I promised the kids a movie.
He demurs. Fine. Let's get to the food.
Lobsterrrrrrrr. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Wine. Melted butter. Bread so good I missed it when we ate it all. Scallops and collard greens. Fresh lemons. Fried potatoes.
I think I died and went to a restaurant in heaven because wow.
Then over dessert (brandy and warm chocolate cake) he starts right in. I'm getting sick because I hang out with a filthy carny. Dirt doesn't come off those kinds. It becomes part of their genetic makeup. They just aren't right, or worthy or sanitary or clean.
What the..
FUCK.
Then he asks me to think really hard. Had nothing ever happened, would I have married Lochlan and lived in a trailer forever on appropriated land, churning out babies and tricks, singing old gypsy folksongs to a screaming ginger brood forever? How long would we have stuck it out once we were saddled with children and debts and hardship and routine, not the good circus kinds that take place four times a day, six on the weekends, either?
I sat there, thinking. In silence. For a good long time before I realized I had no answer for this. Or did I?
I laughed. I laughed until I cried and I dabbed at my eyes with the corner of what had to be a Porthault napkin and then I got up and left without a word.
Because I'm learning ever so slowly and over many decades indeed that his judgements and litanies, his lectures and namecalling don't necessarily deserve an audience or a reply for that matter, and if he continues to slam what would have been an exceptionally amazing, dirty carny life with every facet of every dream I've ever had about it firmly fixed in place then he'll get no more time with me.
I don't need that. There's little out there that's worse than someone torching your unrealized dreams of a filthy brood and a happy home and a whole lot of tricks and singing and abject poverty and love. Maybe it's romantic but it's a hell of a lot more warming to me than the thought of Caleb's perfect, sterile life in which everything is cold and grey and quiet and dignified and carried out only because people love people with money and latch on to that lifestyle like lemmings, bloodsuckers who see nothing but dollarsigns in the blood they draw.
I don't fit in to that. I think it's finally dawned on me precisely how obvious that is.
