by Sherry Shahan
In 1957, Daddy drove a short-bed pickup.
I was eight years old, no more than fifty pounds, standing a head above the handlebars on my scooter. My frizzy hair had its own rules, so I’d given up the pink plastic barrettes popular with other third graders. At least I wasn’t mean, at least not yet.
We’d just moved into our first real house in a suburb of San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. No air conditioner. It felt airless even with the windows open. The screens kept out most things that crawled. Having a garage was another first.
The rooms quietly took Daddy’s side, sopping up beer and cigarette smoke.
Mom punched a cash register at Thrifty Drugs: Save a Nickel. Save a dime. Save at Thrifty every time. Before the rabbit died, she’d never made meatloaf or written a check. She’d never held a baby or changed a diaper. She must’ve felt so trapped. Twenty-five with a full-time job and two young kids.
I wanted a mom who laid out an outfit for me before the first day of school—bought new with the tags still on. Striking at 5’ 7”, she’d sit on my bed after a late shift to catch up. “How was school honey?” “Did you memorize your spelling list?” “Have you made any new friends?”
Meals—spaghetti or mac and cheese—seemed to appear from nowhere. English muffin pizzas were my favorites: thin slices of hot dogs slapped on a muffin half, spread with American cheese and broiled bubbly.
It’s the same house where Daddy, drunk one afternoon, barged in during a game of Davy Crocket with my brother Steve, who was about three and still in diapers. I’d tied kitchen towels on our heads for beaver-skin caps. We sat on the kitchen floor, building a fort with Lincoln Logs.
Daddy grinned, changing shape, becoming his monster self. He terrorized us with a creepy scene from The House of Wax. His voice was flat like there wasn’t a real person behind it. I shrank into myself, and Steve pulled at his cheeks screaming.
I needed to be brave: King of the wild frontier.
I dragged my brother into the bathroom and locked the door. We huddled in the tub with Frankie-the-Fish and Debbie-the-Duck. Why couldn’t Daddy put a lampshade on his head and tell stupid jokes like that lush on TV? Or put on slippers, smoke a pipe, and work a crossword puzzle?
Even then, I knew I had two Daddies:ne and the other one. I never knew which one would walk in from the side patio or front door. Both had the same dark hair thumbed with Vitalis Hair Tonic. I hated him, feared him, loved him.
Around this time I began to believe his drinking was my fault. That if he didn’t have to be our babysitter, he’d be a movie star living it up in a mansion with servants.
Even a drunk actor needs fans, so he tweaked his role, wheedling us through the closed door. “Come on, Sherry. You know I’m just kidding. Stevie, can you hear me? Tell your sister to open the door.”
My brother grabbed a hunk of Mom’s skirt, which I was wearing because I’d been playing Betty Crocker to my doll Carol Sue. She slept with me and I told her secrets.
Steve, a sucker for anything Daddy, scrunched up his face. “Let him in!”
Daddy was a double-dealing drunk. Like other times, he coaxed us with a make-believe Creamsicle behind his back. “Come on, Sherry. I’ll be your best friend.”
This one got me, “Don’t be such a sissy-hole.”
I was hungry and wanted to believe Daddy had gone back to the fun guy after only one beer. The Daddy who made us laugh with silly knock-knock jokes. “Knock. Knock. Who’s there? Amos. Amos who? A mosquito.” The Daddy who bought me a bicycle with a bell on the handlebars and taught me to ride without training wheels so I could ride and ride without ever looking back.
I helped Steve from the tub, unlocked the door, and peeked out. Bam! Daddy twisted into his hideous monster self. He’d tricked us. Tricked me. Again. That’s what I hated most, being tricked by someone I wanted to trust.
He laughed. “Gotcha!”
Daddy never spanked us or said, If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about. But his actions cut to the bone. Every time I think about being left with him, I want to rip off the legs of a spider.
Those rare times when Daddy played Jim Anderson in the 1950s TV series Father Knows Best, he took me to Will Rogers State Beach, over curvy Topanga Canyon with its sheer, drop-off cliffs.
No Botts’ dots back then to warn drivers when they drifted into oncoming traffic. Daddy never drove faster than the speed limit—not because he loved me so much and didn’t want to crash, but because he didn’t want to get pulled over for drunk driving.
One day, he swung me into the bed of his truck with its low sidewalls and dented tailgate. His beer breath smelled crisp because a can of Schlitz had just been opened. Or maybe it was because he’d sliced green apples for breakfast.
I loved riding on the sheet of cardboard Daddy laid out in the truck bed. I loved the bitter hot metal stench, like sucking on an electrified penny.
Whenever he hit the gas, I skidded feet-first into the tailgate, never thinking the hinges might bust loose. I slid the other way when he braked, crashing into the back of the cab. Free-fall fun.
Even though I rode in back, I’ll never forget the smell of stale beer and pool-cleaning chemicals in the cab. Even now, a whiff of beer stops me where I stand. Not cigarette smoke or a dirty ashtray, but beer.
Hot wind brushed my face, and I imagined myself in infinite adventures: Nancy Drew solving The Mystery in the Old Attic; an orphan girl in the 1950s TV series Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd as my best friend.
I looked for the cave beyond the gulley on the north side of the road. We’d driven past it dozens of times that summer and I imagined horned beasts living inside. In my dreams, there were voices, but they weren’t scary. I liked the company.
The dreams made me feel special because when I was dreaming, I wasn’t myself, but someone else, someone special. The beasts wanted me to help save the world.
The day is coming. It’s time to go to the cave and battle the Evil Ones.
I didn’t have to ask which cave. It was the one on the right, just before the traffic light on Pacific Coast Highway.
Daddy parked parallel to shore, ten or so feet above a sea of glistening sunbathers. The breeze was a mixture of tanning lotions and baby oil, promising the deepest, darkest shade.
He got out of the truck, ignoring cars rushing by. “Look at this.” He showed me a rubber mask with a devil’s face. “Our little secret, okay?”
His secrets bored into my skin, wiggled into blood and bone, grew where no one could see. “Okay, Daddy.”
“That’s my girl!”
He rolled the mask, stuck it in the waistband of his trunks, and lifted me over the tailgate. I turned my face because he’d been sweating beer, and it reminded me of the day I threw up sourball candies.
Daddy held my hand, a beach bag slung over his shoulder. Chips of quartz winked at me from slabs of granite. Diamonds sparkled on the water. We staked a patch of sand with our towels.
I clapped my hands when I saw the bag of Laura Scudder’s potato chips he’d brought, and set pebbles on the corners of my towel so it wouldn’t flip and throw sand in my eyes.
Daddy kissed the top of my head. “You’re going to like this, honey.”
Then he took off, zigzagging around sunbathers, bright plastic pails and shovels, and a drip-sandcastle I wish I’d made because I loved wet sand oozing through my fingers.
Daddy stepped into the brownish foam. He had a fairy-tale relationship with the Pacific Ocean. He could drink like a fish, and the waves just rolled him around before spitting him out. He warned me about riptides and undertows. But they didn’t scare me.
I knew about finding something fixed on shore, like a house or car, and lining up with it. Anytime I was carried too far, I’d get out of the water and walk back up the beach. The water was never cold enough to make me gasp. Or I was just too tough to gasp.
Now Daddy pushed through the waves, buoyant with beer, and bounced toward a trio of girls who looked older than me, maybe in fifth or sixthgrade. He bobbed closer, keeping his back to them like he might be waiting to catch a wave.
I dipped into the bag of chips and put one on my tongue. It sort of melted, leaving the burn of salt. Daddy ducked underwater to put on his mask. He came up slowly, water dripping from his devil face.
There were screams, so many, and so loud they thumped inside of my chest. I wanted to scream back to show the girls I was on their side. They beat it to dry land, running down the beach, bawling until their voices gave out.
The lifeguard stayed in his tower.
I crunched a mouthful of shame, acting like I didn’t know Daddy when he trudged back to his towel. He’d taken off the mask, but not really.
He dropped it on my towel like a cat with a headless prize. I didn’t want it.
“I really scared them.” He tilted his head sideways to drain water from an ear. Then he shook his head so forcefully I imagined his brains falling out. “That might be my greatest performance ever. What do you think, honey?”
Would the potato chip bag fit over my head? “You should be in the movies, Daddy.”
“Haven’t I always said that?”
I didn’t tell Mom about his stupid pranks or drinking beer in the truck or other things I knew. Even at eight, I didn’t want to be a tattletale. Daddy got in enough trouble on his own.