Sherri Levine, “Weekend Call to My Father

Weekend Call to My Father

Sherri Levine

When my father can’t lift his wife off the kitchen floor, he calls the fire department. “They come so often,” he says on the phone. “I buy them boxes of doughnuts.” He coughs a few times, clears his throat, then blows his nose. I can picture him, sitting on his cracked blue leather chair, newspapers strewn over the worn carpet around him.

I used to watch my father talk to himself, his shoulders shrugged as he plucked at his eyebrows, hands moved as if he was shooing flies. Once, in our musty garage, his punching bag hanging from the ceiling, I stood next to him while he fixed his car. Hands covered in oil, he yelled out, “Screwdriver!” but when I gave him the wrong one, his bald head pulsated bright red.

On the phone, he asks, “Do you need any money?” He’s pressing cherry tobacco in his pipe, cracking pine nuts with his teeth, his stocks rising and falling on the TV. I need to get off the phone. I haven’t even had my first cup of coffee. But now, he’s the one who has to go, his wife’s calling him from somewhere in the house, somewhere I hope he can get to in time.