Amanda Izzo
I turned ten that May.
Birthdays on the boat didn’t feel like a big deal. I was hoping like everything else, it would slip by Dad without him noticing, or remembering too late.
There wasn’t much to celebrate between the two of us, anyways. We haven’t caught anything on the lines or hidden harbor traps, and there wasn’t gas left to make it past the first marker for at least one or two guaranteed mackerel. The small can I’d siphoned from The Sea Note, an out of season Catamaran a dock over, was all we had left. To take any more would be noticeable, Memorial Day weekend was coming up and I knew the owners would return sooner than I could replace it.
After school, I got back to the boat to find our food cooler empty and on its side. I kicked the bait bucket and heard ice shift around. Lifting the metal lid, I felt the old chum and salted blood smell hit the back of my throat instantly. Coughing and holding my breath, I hooked the last bit of bait.
I whispered a small Hail Mary to myself while intricately threading the hook through a worm. Our Father’s, and my own father weren’t helping anymore and I was in desperate need of some matriarchal mercy and guidance. I missed Mom more than ever.
Flipping the bail with my thumb and catching the line before it slacks with my index finger in one sure fluid motion, I cast the hook out towards the jetty. As if the sound of the reel spinning was his alarm clock, I heard Dad yawn himself awake with the obligatory “Shiiit!” he always said before revving himself up for a hungover stand.
Like the beginning of a song I’ve heard a thousand times, I could count out in perfect measures the beats of his movements until he’d surface in front of me. One, two, rusted cot springs give way and bounce back like a slinky as he gets up. Three, four, the flick of a lighter, a long dragging inhale, followed by the slap of his pack of smokes on the card table. Five, six, a couple of thundering steps as he crosses the plywood floor hatch. Seven, eight, the metal rings slide across the PVC pipe carrying the heavy red velvet theater curtain with it. Nine, ten, with one eye squinted shut either from the smoke or sun, he steps out and curls half his mouth into a smile.
“Double digits, Panda Bear!” Dad mumbled through his lips that were wrapped around a Marlboro. He made his way over to the stern and slapped the back of my neck with his giant leathery palm and shook me excitedly.
“It’s a big one, kid! Rite of passage. What-have-you.”
“Yeah…”, I trailed off while bobbing the rod up and down in time with, but opposite of the waves.
“Yeah?! That’s it?! You’re getting old, and you’re just draggin’ me along with ya!” He rocked me once or twice again lightly, as if trying to shake loose a laugh that must have gotten lost on its way out. I gave a half-hearted smile and met his eyes quickly.
Despite his terrible scruff, dark bags under his eyes and stinking like the bottom of an old beer can that’s been upcycled to an ashtray, he was the most sober I’d seen him in weeks. His brows were pinched together in worry and his eyes were overflowing with shame. I could feel his first ever pangs of addict guilt.
“Soon enough you’re gonna be on your own. You won’t need your old man for anything.”
He sighed the last few words and got really quiet. As if he wasn’t talking about just me anymore, and reflecting on the possibility that maybe the whole world had simply outgrown their need for him.
“If there’s anything I can get you, anything at all, what would it be?”
Food. A new backpack that doesn’t stink like low tide. Food. An E string for my guitar to replace the one you stole for a makeshift lure. Fucking food.
“I don’t know”, I shrugged.
“I’m serious! This is the last time you’ll get an offer like this from me, anything you want at all. I’ll get it or die tryin’.”
He flicked his cigarette out into the harbor and puffed his chest out to say in other words, ‘I’ll get it cuz nothing can kill me.’
“I mean…” the more I thought of what I wanted most in the world, the more I felt like I could never ask him for it.
“What is it? Speak now or forever hold your peas.” He was really pulling out the dumbest Dad-isms to try and make me laugh.
“Anything?”, my voice cracked and I breathed in two sharp, quick breaths that let me know I was close to tears.
“Just ask.” He reeled my line in a bit.
But I just stood there in silence, biting harder into my lip as my vision blurred with fat, heavy tears. I swallowed hard and tried to think. I wanted to be sure, and ask the right question.
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AMANDA IZZO is a writer, artist, and entrepreneur who splits her time between Boston, Massachusetts and Rochester, New Hampshire. She enjoys recapturing her life and youth in the form of creative nonfiction. She also explores different genres and literary mediums, relishing in blurring the dividing lines between them. Recently, her publications include “Tell Me Where it Hurts”, and “Consent Defined” in Levitate Magazine’s Issue #9. And “Junkie Horror Story” in Argyle Literary Magazine’s Issue #5.
Union Spring Literary Review 