MEMOIRIST IDOL 2022
Sometimes, Love Hides in Arithmetic
George I + George II = Dad
My father and stepfather share the same first name, Jiří (George). Other than this one similarity, the two men are polar opposites. If they were to stand next to one another in a police lineup, the height measure would separate them by nearly a foot.
My stepfather’s physique is muscular, his hands large, like shovels. Dad’s body is compact and olive-skinned, his shapely legs, his best feature.
Dad dotes on his hair. During our weekends together, I watch him strut around his flat with a bandana around his head, desperate to tame the stubborn waves.
George’s head is a medicine ball topped with thick, brown curls. When he smiles, a gold crown glints in the corner of his mouth.
I turned six the year Mom changed husbands. Before the second nuptials, I had grown accustomed to seeing George II in his boxers on Sunday mornings. One day, I even caught him touching mom’s breast when he thought I couldn’t see.
He was friendly enough, taking interest in what I was doing and looking me straight in the eye. I liked that.
On a lazy afternoon in August, Mom found me on the living room floor, coloring. “You know,” she said slowly,” now that George and I are married, he’s going to be living here all the time.”
“Uhm,” I said and reached for a blue crayon to color in the sky.
“Why don’t you start calling him, Dad,” she said.
My hand stopped in mid-stroke. I looked up at my mother’s face. There she was with her nose, big like my grandma’s, the carefully plucked eyebrows, the blond hair with a narrow streak of brown at the roots, and the mouth that wasn’t smiling.
“But he isn’t my dad,” I said. “How can I have two dads?”
Mom took the crayon out of my hand and closed the coloring book on my half-finished sky. “Your father is your father, but now you’ll have a second dad who’ll live with us. All the time.”
I knew my mother didn’t want me to question her reasons. “I guess that’ll be okay.” I opened the coloring book back up.
“That will make George…Dad…very happy,” she said, the authority in her voice as sharp as air from a window cracked open in January. “It will make us a real family.” She stood back up and ran her hands down the front of her smock. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”
I walked over to the wall unit and stared at Mom and George II’s wedding photo inside its silver frame. It was taken at Liberec City Hall. Mom’s brown hair was bleached nearly white to please my stepfather, who, she told me, liked blonde-haired women.
Mom’s slim waist slipped into her round hips inside the tight-fitting, white suit grandmother had crocheted for the occasion. She looked like a princess with a sparkly tiara peeking out of her blond locks.
George II towered next to her in his black suit and tie, nearly a head taller, his gold tooth catching the light in the black and white photograph.
When I asked Mom why I was with my grandparents instead of with her at the wedding, she said, “You’d have been bored,” and, “It was no big deal, really.” But I knew it was. I wiped angrily at the tears that spilled down my cheeks.
George II…now Dad, made it easy for me to switch loyalties from one father to another. On school nights, we’d sit at the kitchen table and pour over first-grade math problems; our reflections sharp in the window dark with dusk. Mom would stand at the sink washing supper dishes, her hands deep in water.
My textbook lay open to the page Comrade Techniková assigned for homework. The use of fingers was forbidden in school and to my horror, I realized fingers lost their usefulness for any problem with an answer exceeding ten.
George II sat to my left, the grounds of his Turkish coffee congealed and oily on the bottom of his cup, and a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. Our heads cast a shadow over my scribbler.
I gripped the pencil inside my fingers and carefully shaped the numbers, making sure each made contact with the line below, each the same size as the one that came before. My answers came out like questions, while I watched his face for a hint of my brilliance or stupidity.
Right answers pleased him and neatness was important. I avoided making smudges; no telltale eraser marks that would hint at my uncertainty.
George II sat with me, his meaty index finger tapping at a problem in the textbook and then on another where the numbers were reversed. “See, they just do it to trick you,” he said with a wink. “It doesn’t matter which number comes first; the answer will still be the same.”
“Oooh,” I sighed. “Sneaky buggers.” And he’d laugh.
When I hit on the right answer, he’d ruffle my hair, which was cut short and made my head the shape of a basketball. I didn’t mind, since all the girls in my class had their hair cut short like mine to avoid trouble with lice.
“Now you’re cookin’ with gas,” he’d say. I’d sit up a little taller, my cheeks warm with the flush of praise, and dive into the next problem.
In those twenty minutes, Dad’s attention would envelop me like a feather comforter. I’d feel safe and protected and even loved by this man who was so different from my real father, who came to take me away for a weekend now and again.
And in this way, we’d get through my homework on the nights he was home and not on the job site or the pub. On those nights, I’d be on my own, struggling through the equations, until I’d be forced to hand them over to Mother.
She’d wipe her hands on her apron and take the notebook and pencil from my hands leaving wet fingerprints on the paper.
I’d hold my breath and watch her eyes scan the page. Once or twice, her forehead would frown, carving two lines between her eyebrows. Without looking at me, she’d walk over to the kitchen table and plop the notebook down. She’d stab, with the tip of the pencil, the problems I got wrong.
“Try again!” she’d say, and erase the incorrect answers leaving smudges on the page.
Good luck to all The Memoirist Idol participants. I can’t wait to read your stories.
I was drawn to read, How a Turtle Saved Christmas, The story of Franklin written by Kristine Laco. Although my children are all adults now, I do remember the desperate search for the perfect Christmas gift, lest the bubble of make-belief burst too soon. I especially loved the twist at the end, when it’s the baby brother, rather than Santa Claus, who delivers Franklin. A heart-warming and humorous story in one.