“I plan on getting in three miles.” She scoops a spoonful. “Which means you have to at least meet me or beat me.”
Mouth full of ice cream, I answer, “You know I’m going to beat you.”
She smirks. “You always do.”
CHAPTER TWO
COOPER
“What’s this for?”
I look up to see Dad holding up a bolt. “Dad, don’t touch shit. I told you I have everything laid out according to how I need it.”
“But this was on the coffee table.” He examines the bolt as I struggle to hold up the shelf I’m building for him. A shelf he desperately needed built before Ford arrived so he could color coordinate all his “literature.”
Retired Martin is a different man from Shop Owner Martin. Shop Owner Martin was quick on his feet, scrappy, and didn’t ever need help. He could look at a stick on the ground and, in a matter of a half hour, whittle a prize-winning flute with an angelic pitch.
Retired Martin is a different species and has apparently lost all faculties in his older years. These days he walks around with one tube sock, one ankle sock, and his shirt inside out and has succumbed to binge-watching reality shows on Netflix while practicing his adult coloring in a book full of swear words.
Get Organized with the Home Edit being his latest binge.
It’s the reason I’m hunched over, trying to put together a bookshelf he bought from IKEA, the devil’s grotto. What should be an easy-to-assemble shelf has turned into a waste of a night as I try to comprehend the elementary instructions that read more like Satan’s playground of insecurities.
“Did you put it on the coffee table?”
He thinks about it and then chuckles. “You know, maybe it was on the floor.”
Jesus.
Christ.
“Dad, go back to your coloring book.”
“Aww, do you want me to color you a swear word? From the expression on your face, it looks like you have a few building up in your head right now.” He taps his chin. “You want a ‘Fuck you’ page, don’t you?”
Sighing heavily while staring down at the directions, I count to five and then say, “Sure, Dad, color me a picture that says ‘Fuck you.’ I’ll hang it on my fridge when I get home.”
He wags his finger at me. “Don’t tease me, son. I expect a picture of my art on your fridge.” He takes a seat in his recliner, a black dress sock pulled high over his calf while a white ankle sock dangles off his other foot.
A total nightmare of fashion, that’s what he is. Not that I care about fashion, but for fuck’s sake, the man is wearing twenty-year-old cotton shorts with a hole in the crotch.
“How’s it going in here?” Mom says, carrying a plate of butterscotch cookies. “Oh, would you look at that, you already have two sides attached. Look at you go.” She gives me a jolly fist pump. “Excellent work, Cooper.”
Yeah, and it’s only taken me half an hour, thanks to Dad’s constant jabbering.
“And did I hear you’re coloring a ‘Fuck you’ page for Cooper?”
Dad nods as he carefully lays his colored pencils out on the TV stand he uses when coloring. “Since I’ve been denied the ability to help our son, I’m going to use my fade technique. Cooper has a work of art coming his way.” It’s not that I don’t want his help—it’s just that he’s having a stiff day. I can see it in his movements, the bending of his limbs. I’m not about to ask him to join me on the floor. I think he knows it too, or else he wouldn’t have asked me to come over.
“Have you seen the fade-in technique?” Mom asks and then thumbs toward Dad. “A modern-day Bob Ross, if you ask me. But instead of happy trees, he dabbles in happy swear words. Did you see the picture I hung in the bathroom?”
Yes.
Unfortunately.
Let’s just say when I stood to take a leak, staring at a framed picture of the word “Pussy” wasn’t exactly what I expected in my seventy-plus-year-old parents’ house.
“Loved the touch of pink,” I say, sarcasm heavy in my voice, but neither of my parents appears to read it that way.
“Thank you, I thought it was clever,” Dad says.
Mom holds the plate of cookies in front of me. “Cookie?”
The last thing I want to do is prolong this project, but it looks like I’ll be here all night anyway. So, I take a cookie and lean back against the coffee table.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“The least I can do, since you’re making your dad’s Home Edit project come to fruition. All he’s talked about the last week while he waited for that shelf to be shipped is how excited he is to organize his books.”