On our first date, my wife said to me
"I have to warn you, my family can be pretty crazy."
My face lost all expression and in a flat voice I answered her challenge in less than a heartbeat:
"Do your worst."
I like to remind my wife of that story every now and again. Her eyes sort of glaze over and she silently shakes her head, realizing she has never before or since been quite so wrong.
The day that she officially joined said family was beautiful. The late Michigan fall produced, as it sometimes does, a gem. The sun shone brightly and occassionally hid behind huge white clouds which kept the temperature perfect. The energy of friends and family was palpable and the revelers were giddy. It was great.
I was a nervous fucking wreck.
The idea of the nervous groom is so common it's cliche' but it really was out of character for me. I get nervous about weird shit. Usually when it's a scenario that would make most jittery, I'm fairly calm. I've spent a lot of time in nerve-wracking situations and am well equipped for high-stress scenarios provided they didn't involve U of M football or Tigers' playoff games. That's what made this particular bout of nerves so crushing. I simply never saw it coming and it hit me hard.
Typical groomsmen activities had commenced and we were in the middle of our round of golf when I realized I was nervous. I tried my usual array of tactis and tricks. I tried to find the source of what was making me nervous and rationalize through it and I couldnt put my finger on it. This made it that much worse. In large part it was this feeling that I had to orchestrate everything so my wife would have the wedding day she dreamed of but really everything was taken care of. I should have been able to just relax and enjoy the time but I couldn't. I pulled my co-best man, Z , aside and told him I was ducking out of post-golf lunch and beers. As he always did, Z stepped up and covered so I could leave without questions or my relentless teasing.
From the moment I realized I would marry someone, which would have been approximately seven years of age, I had been sattled by another source of worry. The possibility that some wayward member of my family, of which there were many, could fuck this day up was a very real one. It was one that I could not escape or rationalize. It was a foregone conclusion. There were far too many candidates to adequately police and prevent. I was outmanned.
It was this thought that was rattlng in my head as I pulled into the parking lot and saw the unmistakable 1994 grey Chevy that belonged to my father and his live-in girlfriend, Mama Larue. As I drove to the hotel I thought if I could have an hour to lie quietly in a dark room, I'd be just fine. My father and his beastly paramour would see fit that this wouldn't happen
The two of them made quite a pair. My dad was a handsome man in his day but sixty years of hard and not often good living had taken it's toll. He was gaunt and grey and bent and slow moving and he looked like someone who walked into the hotel directly from a forced labor camp...or a morgue.
Mama Larue was something else altogether. So named because she worked at a local breakfast place we frequented called "LaRue's," my asshole friends knew I didn't approve of this woman and as friends do,they exploited this to no end. Mama LaRue was huge. She stood a shade under six feet and had hands the size of Andre The Giant. She had a raspy voice that added a harder edge to the string of profanities and dropped g's that spewed from her mouth. I always thought she looked like the ugly sister of Katherine Tremmell, the Senator's daughter from The Silence of the Lambs. This thought prevailed right up until I saw a picture of my dad dressed as a woman for Halloween and realized he was a dead ringer for Mama Larue.
Upon seeing the two my cousin and co-best man Doug relayed to my mom, the best description of the two ripped right from 1970's pop culture and the groom's love of breakfast cereal:
"Oh look, Shane invited Count Chocula and Frankenberry,"
Climbing from my car, I gave myself one last shred of hope. If I could just get up to the room and turn off my cell phone, I could give myself that moment's peace. I had zero conscience about making the monster cereal duo meander around the parking lot while they waited for me. Iwas actually hopeful-for maybe four seconds.
My dad rounded the corner with a look of shear panic on his face.
"They aren't going to let Frank into the hotel!"
There really was some question as to whether my dad and Mama Larue would come. He had presented all sorts of alleged slights -Shane hasn't called me in months, he doesn't want me there- and excuses both legitimate -This car is a piece of shit. I'm real low on money.- and bullshit-Mama Larue has made it to the finals of Nashville Stars and it's important that I'm there. I knew he wouldn't miss my wedding. I solidified that by promising to pay for a nice hotel room and his tuxedo and his gas. He had no expense. The last hurdle was Frank.
My dad and I had a conversation about this very fact and I was blunt and borderline rude. Under no circumstances was Frank to make an appearance at these proceedings. Under normal circumstances, this should have been a given but as the evidence shows, these were not normal circumstances. Not normal people
As if his huge, gaunt, Vincent Price like affect wasn't bizzarre enough, my dad added a small lap dog to his motiff. Dirty dishwater brown and adorned in a sweater, Frank was the six pound half terrier, half rodent that was a constant compaion to my drug addled father. Stoned on Percocet and reading about General Custer or The Battle of Gettysburg, my father would sit with Frank on his lap all day, every day. I knew that the issue would have to be addressed early on in the planning because in a life altering, multi-faceted, high stress event like a wedding, of course I would need to clarify that the fucking dog wasn't on the guest list.
"Dad, I'm fucking serious, leave Frank at home"
"Oh I couldn't do that. Mama Larue's fucking mouthbreathing kids will let him out or something. I won't enjoy myself. I'll worry about him the whole time."
"Dad, they wont let him in the hotel. This isn't the fucking Red Roof Inn. Find a fucking place for him but he can't come"
Even writing it now, I can't believe I had to have that conversation and for all the good it did, I might as well imagined it as my father stood there with Frank and a look of sheer panic on his face. He looked at me, pleading with his eyes for a solution to what, in my father's mind, was THE issue facing all of us on this, the day I was to marry.
As any good and dutiful son might, I provided an answer.
"Well, I guess you're going to have to drive your dumb asses home then. I could give a god damn about fucking Frank. I fucking told you not to bring that god damn dog. What the fuck are you doing? Who in their right mind brings a fucking dog to their son's wedding?"
Answer: no one
My dad tried again, louder albeit unsuccessfully
"MAMA LARUE'S IDIOT KIDS WOULDN'T...."
"I COULD GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THAT FUCKING DOG OR MAMA LARUE'S KIDS DAD!"
We stood there, one terrified and one furious, when Mama Larue lumbered in and brought her usual grace and calm to the situation with a raspy shriek from a distance of approximately 75 yards across the 3/4 full parking lot
"BUUUUUUUUUTCH, YOU FUCKEN FAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I FUCKEN TOLD YOU TO WAIT AND WE'D SNEAK THE GOD DAMN DOG IN-YOU FUCKEN RE-TARD!"
"Or," I said quietly to no one in particular, "you could have left the fucking dog back home."
Mama Larue continued to berate my father at a Spinal Tap 11 volume while hotel guests began to take notice. None of this mattered to my dad in the least. He was not bothered by my stress or frustration. He was not worried about a flawless wedding for his beloved son. He couldn't care less about the other guests being privy to his business as it was bellowed across the parking lot by Mama Larue and he didn't even register the slurs and profanities hurled at him by a pre-menopausal wookie. He only cared about Frank and where Frank was going to be housed during the forthcoming nuptuals.
It was more than I could take and my anger boiled over.
I double timed it to my room . They skulked behind me and at least had the good sense to make Frank the Dog wait in the tattered Chevy. The arguing and cursing continued through the halls and into the room. I could still hear them as I showered and could take no more. Sopping wet and clad in boxer shorts and rage, I stormed into the room
I felt like the hitman driven insane by Jeff Daniels and Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber.
"HEY! GOD DAMN! WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO GET MY TUX AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE?!
"What am I going to do about Frank?"
"DA-AD! DAD,DAD" I raised my hand to him now, in a gesture of pleading mercy, begging that he might shed light on his thinking , if nothing else. I lowered my voice to an over-dramatic whisper
"Why the FUCK do you think I'd care about that? What in the name of Christ would make you think that Frank's hotel accomodations are anywhere near my list of concerns? Tell me that. Just tell me that one thing."
Oblivious he looked at Mama Larue.
"You think we can get him in that side door?"
"Oh for fucks sake..." I grabbed my tux and walked barefoot through the hotel to the sanctuary of my groomsmen.
The rest of the day went off without a hitch. Frank was not mentioned. My bride was beautiful. The wedding was perfect. All was forgotten for the time being. Years passed and my wife and I began our life, had a son, and experienced all those things that couples do. It was several years later when we were talking with friends and my wedding came up in conversation with our friends Drew and Jamie. As it often does, the conversation turned to my dad and his bizzarre countenance.
"He looked rough," was the only understatement I could muster.
Dropping all pretense that her family could ever hang with mine, my wife made a face and added;
"ROUGH?! He looked like The Cryptkeeper-bleeeck!"
Looking creeped out and unsettled, Drew added "I'll never forget him sitting in the back corner of the reception mindlessly petting that dog."
"Yeah...wait....what?"
"Your dad sitting in the corner petting that fucking dog of his while there's a huge party going on around him."
Its not often that I'm surprised. Its a fraction of that time that I am genuinely shocked.
My mouth hung agape. This was one of those times.
"Wait a fucking second. He brought the fucking dog into the reception.?"
Drew's tone took on one of confusion and then amusement as he realized he was breaking this news.
"Yeah dude....he had that little fucking dog of his in his lap and sat there, you know..."
Drew mimed the action that I could see all too clearly. My dad, in his rented tuxedo, stoned on some phaaraceutical and stroking the dirty fur of his beloved companion while Mama Larue hunkered down next to him, probably calling someone a cocksucker loud enough for the tables around her to hear.
I looked at my equally shocked wife.
"Did you know he did this?"
"NO-OO!"
To her credit she joined in the rest of us and laughed hysterically at her father-in-law. She laughed at the notion that her family could ever in a million years produce anything close to the train wreck that mine could. She laughed to keep from crying.
The thing is, while he often does and says the wrong, most offensive thing possible, I am strangely lucky to have the father that I do. Tragic and flawed, he is still my father and his love for me is unwavering and I have known that my whole life. I know a few people who simply can't say the same or buried their fathers at too young an age. I look at the moments of humor and frustration and heartbreak that he provides as face value events from which I learn how to and how not to be a husband and father and man. The endless supply of material he provides is a wonderful ancillary benefit
Knowing all this, it was no suprise when halfway through the reception, my dad cornered me. Considering that I didn't think he was going to come, I took the fact he stayed through half the reception as his best effort and smiled as he approached. He motioned me away from the crowd. I wasn't sure what to expect. He had the capacity within him to convey his most tender emotions where I was involved and I thought a father/son moment might be forthcoming.
He shifted somewhat awkwardly then and I thought perhaps he was reflecting on lifetime of being a model of how to and how not to be a man and trying to form those perfect words with which to send his beloved son into the world. My dad placed his hand on my shoulder and looked at me:
"Buddy, Do you have twenty bucks I could borrow?"
Completely unsurprised, I shot back
"Uh, no dad, I didn't figure I'd need cash at my wedding..."
