11.
father’s day breakfast
(inspired by My Struggle, Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard)
On Father’s Day, I find myself sitting alone, on the middle stool at the bar of a breakfast place, wedged between pairs of strangers, reading a book. There’s more going on around me than I’d prefer, this early on a Sunday morning. I’d forgotten it was Father’s Day before I set out on this solo breakfast outing (which I’d rather not have taken, but was necessary for feeding myself, the refrigerator at home having died a few days earlier, leaving all my food to rot).
I’m taken aback when one of the women sitting to my left interrupts my reading with an “excuse me, sir,” which leads merely, cryptically, to her cracking a joke about how terrible everything on the menu at this place is (the punchline being, no, in fact everything’s so good), and to me being unsure how to respond, not only because I wasn’t expecting to partake in any exchange (other than is required to place my order) prior to having consumed coffee or food, but also due to her joke being more awkward than funny. I muster a barely sufficiently polite reply about having been here many times before.
My server arrives around the same time, looking on awkwardly at this awkward exchange, then taking the opportunity of this interjection to ask for my order. Her hair is dyed an unnatural orange. I tell her I’d like the omelette with braised mushrooms, spinach, and cheese. She nods her head to register this, but holds no pad nor pen in hand, and thus writes nothing down. I quietly prepare for the wrong food, my nervous mind never fully trusting servers who don’t write down orders (especially in a restaurant this busy).
The moment passes, I try to slip back into my readerly peace, get stuck in my head replaying the interaction with the woman to my left, and find myself in unseemly annoyance at her having interrupted my reading at all, since the visual clue of holding a book close up to my face should’ve unambiguously indicated not to intrude upon me unless necessary (the clumsy recitation of a bad joke not qualifying).
I am more than halfway into this book, the first in a multivolume novel of first-person confessions which has received much attention and praise (specifically, for how it details the internal emotion-monologues and situational minutiae of everyday life). I’m enjoying it enough so that I’m making my way swiftly through. Maybe I’ll even pick up volume two. The style reminds me of various writing projects I’ve undertaken over the years, under the self-conscious auspices of “breaking down genres” (while really just navel-gazing), but which I’ve never brought to completion as a novel, let alone one of several volumes.
Potent tinges of my envy weave between each line I read, as I passively immerse myself in someone else’s mundane thoughts, again, instead of putting in the time and toil to articulate my own. Also, encouragingly, I note a shadow of hope. I too could do as he’s done (perhaps to similarly lauded effect) if I sat down and did it. But I’m always more hopeful about my writing when I’m thinking about it somewhere other than at my desk or in front of a notebook.
I would like to describe the scene around me in more detail, only it does not register in my memory nearly as clearly as my considerations about the book I’m reading, such as how the writer describes details of the scenes around him, how he decides which details to include, whether he consciously invests these details with meaning (an outline of a face in the sea on TV, for example) or just catalogs them, in hopes they are meaningful to the reader.
Behind the bar where I sit, there’s a large plastic vat filled with pre-skewered spears of pickled vegetables (cauliflower, carrot, cucumber, green bean), awaiting their future as bloody-mary garnish, presumably prepared in such volume in anticipation of the Father’s Day rush. I ponder having a morning cocktail, despite harboring no real urge to drink this early, part of a recurring wish to be the type of writer who drinks myself silly, grappling with genius. I then think about how tired I would be in a couple hours if I consumed alcohol now (and therefore less likely to write) so set the wish aside.
This story is about a man’s struggle to be (or become) himself. It deals centrally with his difficult relationship with his father, who features prominently in a patchwork of anecdotes which reveal yearning, disappointment, love, and emotional detachment. As I sit at breakfast, he’s dealing with news of his father’s death. He heads to the airport with his conveniently-already-packed suitcase (for he’d been planning to attend a different funeral when this sudden news arrived). The taxi driver asks if he’s going on holiday. “No,” the man replies, “Not exactly. My father died today.” That shuts the driver up and shifts the tone, not unlike my own mood being jolted by my reading of this father’s death (there’d been no immediate warning it was coming right now, though foreshadowing implied it would come) and realizing I’m in a restaurant, on Father’s Day, reading about fathers dying while families feast to their fathers all around.
My food arrives faster than expected, and is, thankfully, the correct order. I reach across the counter to my right to grab condiments (ketchup for the hash browns, butter for my biscuit, salt and pepper). As I do so, I encroach into the space of the party to my right. They look like a father and daughter. They don’t stop talking to each other to acknowledge me, and I’m grateful for that.
My father’s dead, a sentence that arises again and again in the book. Had the writer’s father died in advance of his having written the sentence? (We presume yes.) I will go home and type those same words into my laptop, right after I call my dad to wish him a happy Father’s Day. I will tell him how my refrigerator stopped working and I must buy a new one. He will ask whether I ever got around to replacing my stove (which had never been the plan at all). When the stove finally does stop working, whenever that may be, I will remember this conversation. My father’s dead. Maybe it will be true by then.
The restaurant is loud and packed densely enough so it’s hard for people to move through the tables and chairs. While I’m usually able to tune out noise in order to read, my mind now struggles to separate itself from the echoing roar of family units breakfasting behind me (especially when stray family members keep bumping my stool while trying to pass). Noise collides with words. I keep losing my place. The protagonist sips coffee at an airport café, watching crowds circulate through the concourse, contemplating what percentage of them will be dead within twenty-five years, fifty, a hundred, all of them. A piercing female voice, a jubilant cackle; another Father’s Day breakfast.
I sit in this restaurant reading about a writer’s father’s death, while thinking about going home to write about thinking about fathers’ deaths and writing. Everyone I notice is a reminder I’m thinking about death (and rather coldly). I think that I think that I think. I harbor delusory hopes about how I will feel in the writer’s position, wondering if I’m as well prepared to face the inevitable as I imagine I am. I see myself sitting in an airport, my father dead, picturing his face while I wait to fly to see him off. I start to feel nauseous.
I had assumed it would be hard to get my check on such a busy day, but as soon as I think about wanting the check (and before I have to ask for it), my server is already stretching across the father and daughter to my right to place it in front of me. I am relieved to have cash in the right denominations, so I can pay right away and won’t have to wait for change (therefore dodging another exchange). I tuck the bills in the black vinyl pocket, maneuver my way through the boisterous breakfasters, and exit the restaurant.
I walk home and call my dad.
the in-between*
© 2020 Barry Perlman