1.8.15

Six o’clock on a Wednesday. Six o’clock on a Thursday. Six o’clock on a Friday. Ten a.m. on a Saturday. Noon on a Sunday (in observance of the Lord). Six o’clock on a Monday. Six o’clock on a Tuesday. That is when you could find Dave Perkins on any given day down at the Patriot. You know, the bar with old raggedy bras hanging from the dusty rafters and the inexplicably placed surfboard at a dive bar in lower Manhattan.

This day in particular was a Wednesday. Eight p.m. Dave hadn’t yet been in touch with his wife, Matilda, about how her day had gone. He hadn’t yet heard that their son got sent home from school because he knocked a kid out for calling his dad a worthless drunk. He didn’t know that their young daughter had a dangerously high fever and was being closely monitored by her doctor. He didn’t know and he didn’t care.

He DID; however, care about telling anyone who would listen about how that libtard Barack HUSSEIN Obama, who probably wasn’t even AMERICAN, was ruining this damn country for us hard-working red blooded AMERICANS with that damn Obamacare. And why wouldn’t he sign in that goddamned Keystone XL pipeline and give some people JOBS. And not just anyone, no, they had to be CITIZENS. Enough of these damn Mexicans coming into MY country and taking money and jobs out of MY hands. And don’t get me started on WELFARE. That Obama, he’s bad for this country. He is a socialist communist dictator and should be IMPEACHED for LYING to us about his true BIRTH PLACE [Africa].

No one was listening, though. An occasional horn-rimmed hipster would argue with him while drinking a pint of PBR for the irony, but there was no talking to Dave in that state. By eight o’clock on this particular Wednesday, he was six scotch-on-the-rocks in and delving deeper and deeper into incoherence and lunacy with each sip.

Matilda called. Matilda called. Matilda called. And with each voicemail, her voice reflected the mounting worry she felt for her little girl’s health. And with each voicemail, her voice became stronger and more resolute in her anger.

They had been married for fifteen years. Dave was always a drinker, but he became an alcoholic around the time that his son was born. There was something about the pressure to being a perfect father, raising his son to be a good man, being responsible for this little life, his little wife, that he just couldn’t take. And it is his excuse, but it’s not really an excuse. That pressure to be a good father was incited by his own feeling of inadequacy. Inadequate to Matilda’s strength and intelligence. Inadequate to his own father and mother’s Christian upbringing of himself and his three sisters. Inadequate to his youthful dreams of becoming a writer for a popular satirical news show.

And rather than rising to the challenges that life presented to him and scores of people before him and after him, he allowed the drink to pull him deeper and deeper into his anxieties, sinking day by day, drink by drink.

It was slowly killing him. It was slowly killing the dynamic of his family. It was slowly killing the happy and peaceful childhood that his children so deserved. Matilda knew they were all being cheated out of happiness and love and this particular Wednesday was it. The end of her rope. The straw that broke the camel’s back. The end.

When Jamie had been sent home from school for defending his drunk of a father, she felt embarrassed and sad for him—having to go to school every day with the other kids knowing just what Dave was—for herself for living so long for it, and for Jackie, still too young to know that all daddies aren’t like hers.

When Jackie’s temperature started rising to frightening heights, Matilda got angry. Angrier than she’d ever felt in her life. Angry enough to be brave and make a change.

She called her sister, Holly, and asked her to watch the children, particularly Jackie, while she took care of business.

She went to Home Depot and got new locks for the doors. She went to TJ Maxx to get some large suitcases. She called the lawyer she had talked to so many times before—the one who already had the papers drawn up—and asked that he expedite them over to her.

She changed the locks. She packed all of his things. Jamie understood it had to be done, but thought maybe not this way. At one a.m., Matilda gave Jackie a kiss, loaded Dave’s things into their shared car (soon to be hers), packed the papers and three pens into her purse, and drove to the Patriot from their Brooklyn brownstone.

There he was at the end of the bar, eleven scotch-on-the-rocks deep, arguing with the exasperated bartender who cut him off.

Matilda took a deep breath and rolled his luggage over to him. She put the papers in front of him.

Dave didn’t need any time to understand what was going on, even through the fog brought on by the drink. It was over. His life as he knew it was over.

She told him about Jamie. She told him about Jackie. She told him about herself. He felt a deep shame burning a hole through his drunkenness. His inadequacies had been realized and laid out before him. He had no choice but to sign the papers.

She told him that if he ever wanted to see the kids again, he’d better clean up his act. She wouldn’t have a drunk ruining their lives any longer. She took a deep breath, put the papers back into her bag, and walked away.

Dave Perkins had no home to go to. No life to live anymore. It was too late to try to let a room for the night. He’d have to shell out for a hotel room. If he had enough money on his credit card. He didn’t know. He couldn’t think straight, but he could see clearly that this was how it was going to be for the rest of his life.