Writing Diaries #6

Scribblings from the 1960s

I Should Shoot Him

The thought ambushed me; it came from nowhere:  Where can I get a gun so I can shoot him! Shoot him right between the eyes, nice and clean and quick and then we could all rest easy, said the voice in my head. The “him” was my father.

He was sleeping the afternoon away in the small, cramped bedroom he shared with my mother in old flat in a rundown Montreal neighbourhood. She’d left for work at her garment factory job at seven thirty in the morning and wouldn't be home, exhausted from the work, the noise and the fabric dust, until after six. The work paid all our family's bills because, sure as shit, my father claimed he was too sick to work.  

He’d had a bad night and woke up the rest of us with one of his freaking-out fits. Mamma told my sister and me to go back to sleep and eventually she calmed him down so that by the time she left for work he was asleep. I had no classes since I was studying for finals and when Mamma begged me to check on him from time to time I agreed to do it for her sake. She and I both knew I wished he’d never wake up.

I looked in on him a few times that morning. There he lay sleeping like a baby, the sleep of the innocent, peaceful and deep, so deep he could have been drugged. Except, he never, ever took drugs, not even medicine prescribed by a doctor.  

Around one o’clock I took a break and went into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich.  I was wrestling with a big round Italian loaf the sort of tough-crusted bread my immigrant parents used eat in their Italian mountain village when I felt eyes on me. When I looked up, there he was standing in the doorway to the kitchen staring at me.

Startled, I let out a little cry. “You scared me!” I said.

“That’s the idea -- keeps everybody on their toes,” he said. This was his idea of a joke, but he meant what he said. His eyes were bloodshot but he had adopted the puppy-dog expression I knew so well and despised: “I’m a sick man. You should pity me.”  I’d been manipulated too many times by that look to ever be taken in again.

“Don’t worry, Papa. Around you I'm always on my toes."

That seemed to have offended him. He scowled, turned his back on me and shuffled off to the table in the dining area just outside the small kitchen where we ate all our meals. He dropped heavily into his throne at the head of the table from whence he ruled the household, propped his elbows on the grey-flecked Arborite table with elegant chrome legs, and rested his head in his upturned palms.

I could see him from where I worked but thought it best to ignore him. But my father didn't like being ignored and I felt his gaze on me, poking and prodding me, wanting my attention. I wouldn't give it to him because giving in to him showed weakness, which he would exploit. 

When I finished making my sandwich -- mortadella between two misshapen slices of bread -- I sat down to eat it at the minuscule kitchen table, which sat pushed up against the wall under the kitchen table. It had two facing chairs and I chose the one that gave me a view of what he was up to. My father wasn’t the sort of man you could turn your back on.

As I chomped my way through the thick sandwich, I got worried when he started talking to himself. My ears pricked up. He spoke conversationally, but I couldn't hear him. The sink was closer to the doorway so I pretended to get myself a glass of water. But he'd seen me and lowered his voice. I did notice, however, he wasn't talking to himself. He was having a conversation with the empty chair to his right – my chair at mealtimes. There were moments of silence while he appeared to listen intently to what the invisible person said, nodding of his head and hands gestures, indicating disagreement.  

All at once, something set him off. He jumped to his feet and started shouting at the chair. Oh-oh, I thought, he can’t even get along with invisible people. He hurried back to his bedroom and slammed the door so hard I felt the vibrations under my feet. What could I do but listen and wait?

In between his muffled shouts, drawers opened and banged shut, objects hit wall or floor and fists pounded. What the hell was he doing in there? Was he looking for something or giving in to his rage?

My own rage now surged, lighting a bonfire in my belly and bringing heat to my face. Why did I, a kid, really, not yet out of my teens, have to deal with this madman? He was my mother’s problem, not mine. Why didn’t she do something about him? Send him away? Put him in an institution? Something to protect us from him?

As I was thinking these thoughts, I heard the door to his room open and he reappeared in the doorway. He didn't look menacing but he had one hand hidden behind his back and that scared me. As he came into the room, I slowly backed up to the back door, put my hand on the doorknob and opened it a little, positioning myself so I could get out of there fast if I needed to.  

“What’s that you’re holding behind your back, Papa?” I asked, my heart jumping around inside my ribcage.

He smiled. “It’s a gift for your mother.” 

“Oh, yeah? Can I see it?”

He frowned, not trusting me. but after thinking about he revealed his gift: a small hatchet.

I began to tremble.

He looked down at the weapon and stroked it lovingly with his left hand. “I’m going to bury this in your mother’s head and give her the gift of death. The bitch!”

He didn't try to stop me when I walked out the back door. I took refuge at a neighbour's to wait for my mother so I could warn her that her husband wanted to gift her with death.

The rest of the afternoon I imagined myself shooting him between the eyes over and over. It soothed me.