#ch: frank deluca

[motownfiction]

it was never easy

Say what you want about Frank DeLuca, but the man had great taste in music.

He had such great taste in music that Daniel’s never really been able to divorce him from the songs. He’s tried. He’s gotten pretty close on a lot of them. Now, three years after his father’s abrupt death, he can listen to “The Tracks of My Tears” while only getting a blurry image of his silhouette.

It used to be really bad. As recently as last year, if a restaurant started to play “Under the Boardwalk,” Daniel would have to run out of the room, almost screaming on the way. Last summer, when he and Sadie took the kids to that fancy place on the river, Daniel ran away while his lasagna was still piping hot. He’s pretty sure he’ll be angry about that one forever.

But it’s just not that bad anymore. Yesterday, he dropped Rosemary and Billy off at school, and the oldies station played “This Old Heart of Mine.” Daniel didn’t even really think about the way his father used to dance to that song in the living room when he thought he was alone. It used to send him into a crying fit. It used to make him think about whether he’d overestimated Frank. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Would a bad guy clean up around the living room, listening to The Isley Brothers?

Yes, he tells himself as he pushes the cart through Meijer on Wednesday morning. Even bad guys dance sometimes.

Daniel turns down into the bread aisle, trying to think about anything other than his father. But the radio is testing him. Big time.

They’re playing “Wait a Million Years.”

Of all the fucking Grass Roots songs to play. This one.

The one that was playing when his father packed up and left for good, for good, for good.

Daniel white knuckles the shopping cart. His grits his teeth. It’s just a song, but a song is a bomb. Sam taught him that a long time ago.

Songs and smells, he said. Those are the strongest ways to bring back a memory.

He wasn’t kidding. God, why couldn’t he have been kidding? Daniel thinks he’s going to be sick. Slowly, he pushes the cart forward and hopes no one notices what’s going on; how weird he’s being.

It was never easy, he thinks as he wheels through the aisle. But this time, it was just too hard.

But then, the song ends.

And Daniel is still inside the grocery store.

It’s a win, but his stomach still hurts too badly to celebrate.

[motownfiction]

black jeans

In the fall of ‘81, Daniel buys a pair of black jeans at the mall.

At first, he doesn’t think anything of it. He needs new pants, these fit, and when he brought them home for his mother to look at, she thought they looked nice. Sam must’ve helped you pick them out, she says, and she’s right. Sam’s the most fashionable friend Daniel has, besides Lucy, and red dresses aren’t his thing. He’s got good taste.

They’re not the most popular pants in the world. Everybody else wears blue denim, like the perfect Levi’s poster children. Daniel’s the only guy he knows with black jeans, as he finds out the first time they have a dress-down day at school. But he doesn’t mind standing out. When you’re a short freshman guy, you tend to blend in. Most of the time, Daniel’s OK with it. There are just times when it gets old. When it gets old for people to look past you so they can get to your very tall, very handsome friend Sam. When you never raise your hand in class, and the few times you do, your teacher is already in the habit of not looking in your direction. The black jeans don’t change Daniel, but for four hours on a half-day of school, people see him there. Seems like they kind of like seeing him, too. In their long row of lockers between first and second period, Kim Campbell even tells him his pants are cool. So, Daniel believes her. You always believe it when the most popular girl in your class tells you that you look cool.

And you almost believe it when your father says you’re trying too hard.

Frank always picks Daniel and Lola up from school on half days. That’s the agreement since he and Linda separated (and, as of last month, officially divorced). When Daniel trudges toward his father’s car, the first thing Frank does is open the door and say, “What are you trying to prove with those pants?”

Daniel doesn’t have an answer. When it comes to his father, he’s usually silent. He just takes his seat and looks down at his legs in those black jeans. Those cool black jeans. And he laughs to himself, just a little bit, so quietly that even Lola can’t hear him. This morning, when he put those jeans on, they were just pants. Sam might have thought they looked good, Mom might have thought they looked good, but it didn’t make a difference to Daniel. It didn’t even really make a difference when Kim Campbell said she liked them.

But his father hates them.

So Daniel’s going to wear them forever.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day iv!)

[motownfiction]

saturn

Daniel’s Bronco died on the day after Sadie tells him she’s pregnant.

And even though he’s no poet, he understands that it’s a metaphor. The car he drove through his adolescence and his college years ekes out its last clunky breath not even twenty-four hours after finding out he’s going to be somebody’s father. He does not cry as the tow truck takes it away, to be crushed into something the size of Coke can, never to be seen again. When he tells Charlie about it, he shakes his head and says, “Man, all those memories.” But Daniel doesn’t care about memories – not in the same way Charlie does, anyway. Charlie cares about having something to touch and smell and taste to remind him of something. Daniel doesn’t want to remember some things at all.

He doesn’t want to remember the day he got the Bronco. It should have been a great day, but it wasn’t. He was sixteen, and he was still sometimes speaking to his father. When he showed his father the car, all his father said was, “You trying to make a point?” Daniel knew what he meant, so the next time he saw his father, he brought Vicky St. John in the front seat. Made out with her in broad daylight in the old man’s driveway. Just to make a point.

For as long as he can remember, Daniel’s been afraid of turning out like his father. No matter how many times Sadie swore to him that it wasn’t possible, that he was always too much of his own self, he was still afraid. But when the Bronco died, he didn’t think of his father. He didn’t have the time. He immediately went to the nearest dealership and bought a Saturn SL. Just needs to find something that will keep Sadie and the baby safe.

When he drives the car up to the house and walks back into the living room, Sadie throws her arms around his neck, kisses him softly, and says, “You know, you’re nothing like your dad.”

And at least for the rest of the afternoon, Daniel knows that she’s right. He knows that he believes her.

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day xxviii!)

[motownfiction]

gasping for air

For a water sign, Daniel is a pretty shitty swimmer.

He was early to walk and late to swim, which his mother blames on his father. Frank was a lifeguard when he and Linda met. It was supposed to be up to him to teach the kids how to swim and float; float and swim. He put it off when Daniel was three, five, and eight. Now he’s ten, and he’s tired of treading in the shallow end of the pool with his friends. Reluctantly, Frank gives into Linda’s demands. He packs the kids up and sneaks them into the pool at Paun Park.

Lola takes to the water like a fish. She’s not in the water for an hour before she’s doing flips and tricks like she was born at the bottom of the ocean. For the first time in all her life, even the day she was born, Frank seems proud to have a daughter. It doesn’t last.

He’s too ashamed to have a son.

Daniel is stuck in the shallow end of the pool. He’s not sure why. Adventure has never frightened him before. This is the boy who walked through a corn maze all by himself on the second-grade field trip to Upland Hills. This is the boy who dressed like the Fonz for Halloween for the sole purpose of telling Gina Lumetta he thought she was cute. And now, he’s stuck in the shallow end of the pool.

He doesn’t know how to move under his father’s gaze.

Frank charges toward him in the water like Poseidon himself. He points toward the twelve-foot deep end of the pool and bellows at Daniel to get in it and learn something. Everybody can hear him, but it’s 1977, and he can get away with it.

Daniel’s not sure what goes through his mind as he hoists himself out of the shallow end and makes his way toward the diving board. The high dive, too, because Frank always says go big or go home. Years from now, he’ll tell his therapist that he was tired of being afraid (to make himself look better). They’ll both know it’s bullshit, but it will go unstated.

He holds his breath and jumps into the twelve-foot-deep water without thinking. Just does it. Goes big without going home. As he sinks to the bottom of the pool, he thinks about what it would be like to die there. He thinks about how horrible it would be.

So, he saves himself. Instincts kick in, and he swims to the edge of the pool, gasping for air and clinging to the edges like a sanctuary. His vision is blurry, but he can see his father swimming over to him. Daniel smiles, expecting some sort of pat on the back or atta boy or any of the other things a father is supposed to tell his son.

But Frank just tells him to do it again.

And Daniel does. Over and over. Over and over.

[motownfiction]

i’ve been thinking

Daniel sits at the front of Sam’s record store on a Tuesday afternoon. He just brought Michael and Rosemary over here (to hide them from Sadie’s morning sickness, which has extended its stay past lunchtime), but Sam insists he stay for a little while. Even when your friend becomes your brother-in-law, you don’t get to spend enough time with him, he says. Daniel’s more than happy to oblige. He agrees with Sam – just quietly, always quietly.

Today, Sam’s playing Stevie Wonder at the store. The album is Hotter Than July, which Daniel remembers from when they were thirteen in junior high. Sam used to sing “All I Do” to Will in the line for pizza slices on Wednesdays, a strange tradition that Daniel’s only recently put together. But today, he’s at the end of the record, and Daniel is listening to a song he thought he forgot about a long time ago.

Lately, I have had the strangest feeling / with no vivid reason here to find / yet the thought of losing you’s been hanging ‘round my mind …

He sighs as his bone marrow fills up with memories he wishes he didn’t need. Before he can take another breath, he’s suddenly thirteen again, sitting in the living room of his childhood home, one year before his parents’ overdue divorce. His father used to listen to this album all the time. Something about Stevie Wonder brought him peace, but you could always depend on Frank never to say what. Frank’s feelings were always drowning in Miller Lite.

Daniel remembers the way his father turned to him in the living room that day and told him he liked the song. That Stevie Wonder must have known what he was singing about. Hit him in just the right places. And even though he was only thirteen and hardly tall enough to ride a roller coaster, Daniel remembers how he wanted to smack his father’s mouth clean off. The song is about a wife cheating on her husband. Frank DeLuca drank too much, gambled too frequently, and neglected his son and daughter at every turn, but somehow, he was no cheater. Even at thirteen, Daniel knew that. If Frank was in love with a song about adultery, then it was because he was accusing his wife. And Daniel couldn’t take it. He still remembers the way he took the needle off the record and stormed out of the house. Straight out of his house and into the Doyles’ front yard, his favorite place to be.

Sam wanders out from the back of the store with his nephew and niece dangling from each arm. Michael’s got a vinyl copy of The Joshua Tree; Rosemary has a Peter Pan cassette in her hands. He may be sad, but Daniel still smiles. Sam jokes that there’s no family discount, but then, he sees the look on Daniel’s face. He asks what’s wrong. But Daniel still smiles.

I’ve been thinking, he says, about my dad.

He never takes his eyes off his own children. Never stops smiling at them. Maybe one day they’ll know what he means.

(part of @nosebleedclub august challenge -- day ii!)

[motownfiction]

fireflies

The fireflies are Daniel’s only good memory of his father.

Most nights, Frank would be gone – at the racetrack, another woman’s house, the bar, anywhere but the house where he supposedly lived. But some nights, maybe once a month, things would slow down. He’d have no choice but to drink at home.

With a beer in hand, he’d tap Daniel on the shoulder and tell him to come outside. From four to fourteen, Daniel would follow him. It didn’t matter that he knew exactly what was going to happen. If Frank was calling, Daniel was answering. He’d ask if they could invite Lola, but Frank would always say the same thing.

This is something for a father and son.

They’d walk out into the backyard, and there they always were: fireflies, little spectacles that aren’t even trying to be noticed, fluttering around the backyard. By the time he was a teenager, Daniel must have seen a million fireflies, but it didn’t matter. They never stopped being special. He’d stick his hands out and catch one every time. Every time, he’d open his hands just a little and watch the glow. Big and bright and brief. Every time, he’d fall in love with it – enough to let it go.

By the time he released the firefly from his hands, Frank was always gone.

[motownfiction]

very quick guide to character parents

might as well put this together while i’m thinking about it! the criterion for being included on this list is simple: they have to have made an actual appearance in one of the vignettes. just being named isn’t enough. at any rate, here it is.

mary callaghan: lucy’s mother. beautiful, kind, and eternally loving but with high expectations. generous but firm. can make even the most mundane things exciting. carries socks around in her purse in case she has the opportunity to go bowling. a professor of english who writes about contemporary american literature and gender performance.

john callaghan: lucy’s father. handsome, strong, and compassionate with a wicked sense of humor. stern but forgiving. will put others before himself, almost certainly to a fault. also a professor of english who writes about eighteenth-century england and socioeconomics.

colleen o’connor: will’s mother. cute, well-meaning, and traditional. religious, mostly by habit. high-strung but reasonable. strongly believes that pink and green is the best color combination in the universe, which you’ll know as soon as you walk into her kitchen. a nurse at the biggest hospital in the area.

pat o’connor: will’s father. lanky, pleasant, and exhausted from raising five daughters (and one son, of course). religious, mostly because of colleen’s habits. easygoing like saturday morning (not sunday morning -- not in his house). works for one of the big three. not clear what he does there.

maggie doyle: sadie, sam, and charlie’s mother. fashionable, funny, and charming. full of love and favoritism between her sons (charlie over sam). wished to be an actress when she was young. a true romantic at heart. knows even more music than sam. teaches english and drama at a local high school.

mike doyle: sadie, sam, and charlie’s father. cool, rebellious, and open-hearted. has no favorite child and prays that his wife will one day feel the same. wished to be a musician when he was young. an even bigger romantic than maggie. helpful almost to the point of meddling. works as the landscape hero.

linda deluca: daniel and lola’s mother. adorable, tiny, and outgoing. probably the strictest parent of the bunch. pushy without always realizing it. on the overprotective side but wants to do well by her children. general manager of a local restaurant and banquet hall.

frank deluca: daniel and lola’s father. slim, attractive, and sneaky. absent from his children’s lives even before his divorce from linda. in love with party stores and race tracks. unclear what frank does for a living. dies some time in the 2010s, but his children have been grieving him since the 70s (yes, frank actually appears in one vignette).