Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (10 page)

“O
f course you're going to lose.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad.”

I was at my dad's apartment for Monday night dinner, meaning I'd need to leave before
Monday Night Football
started or risk offending him with my lack of knowledge. Just because my dad had trained me to sit through sporting events, it didn't mean I understood them.

“Oh, now, don't get huffy,” he said. “Your mother used to do that all the time, too, get huffy.”

“Mom never got huffy!”

“Okay, but she had every right to get huffy and I could hear her carefully trying not to be huffy underneath her nonhuffiness which is almost the same thing.”

“Huh?”

“Hey, I make sense to me. Don't worry so much if I don't make sense to you. Anyway—” he stirred the pasta in the pot “—all I'm saying is that if you're going to gamble, you have to expect to lose occasionally, too, maybe lose big.”

“Whatever.”

Ever since I'd moved out, Monday night dinner had been an on-again, off-again tradition with us. When my dad was in a good mood about his prospects for the future because he'd recently won big, it was on. When he lost or was depressed about the future, it was off.

At the time of my mother's death, my dad knew how to cook exactly two things: he could boil water for instant coffee (“instant tastes like liquid dirt, Baby, but what are you gonna do?”) and s'mores (“they have all your major food groups”).

“Your mother did everything for me,” he'd said at the time. “She even ironed my underwear. How will I ever survive without her?”

“For one thing, you'll start wearing unironed underwear like normal people,” I'd said. “But you're a grown man. Don't you think it's time you learned how to use the microwave?”

“Feh,”
he'd said. Whenever Jackie Mason played any of the casinos my dad was working, he'd always take time out to catch the show and some of the Borscht Belt lingo had worn off on him. He'd never pass Conchita and Rivera's test of Portuguese-Spanish, but he could say
gesundheit
or
schmuck
with the best of them. “
Feh.
I hate all that modern-technology
mishegas.
I'll learn how to cook for myself. How hard can it be? Your mother always said if a person could read, a person could cook. I'm pretty sure I can read.”

But his earliest efforts gave the lie to that.

“Is pasta supposed to look like that?” he'd asked in dismay, showing me the contents of the pot—it was a cream-colored sodden mess without a complete noodle in sight.

“You bought gluten pasta,” I'd said, studying the box. “I think that maybe you weren't supposed to cook it that long?”

“Shit,” he'd said. “I didn't know pasta could melt.” Then he'd tossed it over the fence of the family home—he'd still lived there right after Mom's death—into Mr. Finnigan's yard.

“Brownie'll eat it,” he'd said, referring to Mr. Finnigan's gray-and-white schnauzer. “That mutt'll eat anything.”

“I hope that stuff doesn't kill him.”

“I should be so lucky.”

Then there was the time, that very same first year after Mom's death, when he'd tried to make my birthday cake.

“I wanted it to be so special for you,” he'd said.

“I don't think an angel cake is supposed to be charcoal-broiled, Dad.”

“I wanted it to be so special for you,” he'd said again.

“Maybe we can just scrape some of the black stuff off the outside and dunk the inside into the leftover pink frosting.”

And that's exactly what we did.

But as time went on, my dad got better at it.

“I found some of your mother's old recipe cards! I can read! I can cook!”

If not exactly a Julia Child or Emeril Lagasse, he could now do a lot more in a kitchen than I could, which may not be saying a lot but it was enough.

And he knew my habits.

“I've got the lasagna you like as backup!” he said, opening the freezer to reveal my beloved Michael Angelo's Four Cheese. In the past year, he'd even broken down and learned how to use the microwave.

“Are you making one of Mom's recipes or your own version?” I asked.

“Your mom's.”

“Then I'll have what you're having.”

Despite my devotion to all things frozen, I was always okay with eating the foods I'd grown up with.

What was okay to eat, what wasn't okay to eat—Hillary often said most people saw their lives in terms of choices. But not me. I saw my life in terms of a series of compulsive obsessions that were like touchstones for me—things I
had
to do, foods I
had
to eat in order to stay sane. I didn't want to be like that. How I would have liked to learn how to be one of those people who saw their lives in terms of choices. How I would have liked to be like everyone else.

I set the table and Dad got a bottle of Jake's Fault Shiraz out of the fridge.

“Do I know my girl or do I know my girl?” Dad asked.

“You know your girl,” I admitted.

“Good.” He sat down, put a real linen napkin in his lap. (“It's important, no matter how Fortune is going,” he'd often tell me, “to eat like a man of consequence. And the hotels never even miss the napkins.”) “Then you'll understand when I say I know you well enough to know what's going through that head of yours. You've convinced yourself that you can't be beat, that you're somehow smarter than the old man.”

“How…” I stopped myself before finishing the thought, which would have sounded something like,
How did you know that?

“Hey,” he said. “Before I was old, I was young once. And I know how you think because it's the way I used to think, ‘I'm invincible. No one can touch me.' It's my duty to tell you this because, as Hamlet says, ‘I must be cruel, only to be kind.'”

“Yeah, well, ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be,' right back at you. But, anyway, I've never thought that about myself, Dad. I've always thought, ‘I suck. Just about anyone could destroy me.'”

“Stop swearing. Salad?”

“Are you kidding? There are green things in there.”

“Sorry, my mistake. Next time, I'll try to make the salad without vegetables. As I was saying—”

“I know what you're saying,” I said. “You're saying I'm like you. But I'm not. I never have been.”

“Oh, no? Then how come you're all of a sudden so cocky about gambling? Sure, you made a little money in Foxwoods. Hell, you did great. But that doesn't mean you're ready for the big time.”

“I'm not looking for the big time. I'm just looking for a little…more.”

“Oh, right, ‘more'—I know all about ‘more.' ‘More' is what everyone wants after getting just a little taste. ‘More' is dangerous.”

I put my fork down. “Does that mean you're not going to help me any
more?
”

“Who ever said that? I'm just trying to do what a father is supposed to do—protect his little girl from harm. Now clear the plates while I get the cards. I'm going to teach you how to win with the correct strategy.”

An hour later, with
Monday Night Football
ready to start any minute, I knew what to do if the dealer dealt me two Eights and was showing a Ten for his own upcard.

“Always split Eights,” Black Jack said, “no matter what the dealer is showing.”

“What if I pull another Eight?”

“Split 'em again.”

“But won't all the other players think I'm crazy?”

“Who cares what the other players think? You're not playing against them. You're playing against the House and you should never care what the House thinks, either. The only thing that matters, is how the cards are running and how you play the hand you're dealt. Split the three Eights. I'm telling you, you can't go wrong.”

For practice, he dealt a hand that included four imaginary players, stacking the deck so I wound up with two Eights.

My hand hesitated over the cards.

“Split 'em,” Black Jack commanded.

I did what he said, in effect doubling my bet since I now had to match the bet on the second Eight so that the bets were equal.

“Don't look so white,” Black Jack said. “Those hundreds you're playing with are just Monopoly money.”

Black Jack dealt me my third Eight.

“Split 'em again,” he commanded my hesitant fingers.

Great. Now I had three hundred dollars' worth of funny money on the line. Should I be sweating?

Black Jack dealt cards to the imaginary players. Two busted, one stood on a soft Seventeen, one on a hard Sixteen.

The dealer—my dad—turned over his hole card to reveal a Five: Fifteen. Then he dealt himself a Two and had to stand on Seventeen. The other players at the table, even if they were imaginary, had all either busted, lost or pushed with the dealer.

I was the only winner.

My original one-hundred-dollar stake? It was now worth a cool six hundred. Of course, I'd had to nerve-rackingly risk another two hundred to get myself there, but still.

“Does that feel good or what?” Black Jack asked.

“It feels…
great!
” I had to admit. I was still tingling. Then I thought about it too much and I deflated a bit. “But that'd never happen in real life,” I said.

“Are you kidding? Stuff like that happens in casinos all the time. Believe me, it'll happen to you. In fact, you can bet on it.”

He seemed so sure of himself, but it was impossible for me to believe I'd ever get dealt a classic textbook case like that.

“It's almost time for the kickoff,” he said, grabbing the remote control. “I think Jerry Rice might retire this year, but who knows.”

“Dad, what you were saying before…”

“Which part?” He was already clicking through the channels.

“About thinking you were invincible when you were younger. Does that mean you no longer believe that? Does that mean you think you can be beat?”

Of course, the evidence that he could be beat was right there in the shabbiness of our surroundings. My dad could be beat, had been beat.

“God, no,” he said, clearly offended. Then his expression softened. “If I believed that, ever really believed that, I'd have to quit, wouldn't I?”

I surprised my dad, and myself, by staying through the first half.

“You're still here?” he said, surprised, as the cheerleaders took the field for the half-game show.

“Didn't you notice me exchanging your empty wineglass for a beer sometime around when that guy tried to kick the ball through those post thingies?”

He looked at the beer, now empty, in his hand. “Huh.” He got up out of his chair, went to the fridge to get another. “So, what do you think of the game?”

“I think I still don't understand it. Or why anyone would do it. Or why anyone would watch it.”

“Just like your mother.” He held the bottle of Jake's Fault out. “Another?”

I shook my head. “I still have to drive.”

He popped the top on his beer.

“So,” he said, “Atlantic City, huh?”

I swung my arms back and forth. “Yup.”

“You know, there are only two real meccas for true gamblers—Atlantic City and—” he paused for the kind of respectful moment of silence normally reserved only for those times when he mentioned my mother's passing “—Vegas.”

“What about all those casinos that have sprung up on riverboats and tribal land all over the country?”

“Pale imitators. Just looking for a way to bump their economies. They might as well stick to Lotto.”

“What about Foxwoods?”

“Bite your tongue.”

“But you go there.”

“Only because it's in Connecticut. If I had to cross state lines to get there, I wouldn't bother.”

I felt curiously miffed on Foxwoods's behalf. It had certainly seemed nice enough to me. They had Billy Charisma there and Furthest Guy. I'd won decent money there.

In defense of casinos everywhere, then, I tried one last time.

“What about
Monte Carlo?
” I asked, rather belligerently, I must admit. “Doesn't
Monte Carlo
rate?”

“Well,” he said, getting his own belligerent jones on, “if you want to go all foreign on me…”