Sprout

the next time my dad filled up* at the Kwik Shop (the * indicating that the fill-up had to be with Premium Unleaded); the scissors my dad had used to cut the coupon out of the PennySaver ; the PennySaver ; a long reddish-brown chili pepper; a Polaroid so sun-bleached that all you could see was a bluish-black circle that could’ve been an eye, or an oil slick, or the opening at the end of a gun; and then, all the way down on the floor, so that you had to lie down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall to read it, seven fortune-cookie fortunes that had been stacked on top of each other so that they read:
    He who throws dirt is always losing ground.
Build your house on solid rock, not shifting sand.
Judge not according to appearances.
Failure is the mother of success.
Your mother has the answers you need.
The truth is slippery, but lies are sticky.
THAT WASN’T CHICKEN!
    This pegboard had always seemed like a pretty accurate diagram of my dad’s life. Kind of random, kind of boring, kind of crazy. But random and boring and crazy in a very specific kind of way, and so describing exactly how limited and repetitive his life was. But what would it look like to someone else? Would it look like he couldn’t tell the difference between junk and things worth holding on to? Or would it look like nothing at all? Like my dad wasn’t really a person anymore? Wasn’t capable of making his presence felt in the real world, but could only scavenge from it, let the world know how he felt through tattered, second-rate symbols and the occasional drunken outburst? And why was I thinking about all of this now, when all I’d ever thought about was getting cash out of him, or the car? Why all the sudden did I want him to be, I dunno, happy ?
    The next thing I heard was the sound of the front door opening. There was one of those giggles followed by one of those expressions (“Don’t I just know it!”) that made me wonder what my dad had just said. By the time I got to the living room Mrs. Miller had sat down in the chair beside the front door. There was a lopsided but still sort of triumphant grin on her face, and at first I thought it was related to the leafy garland my dad had wrapped around her forehead (not itch ivy, phew) but then I realized it was just her body that was lopsided, the left side being slightly higher than the right. My dad stood half beside, half behind her chair, looking at the top of her head so intently that I wondered if maybe he was checking for ticks.
    “You’re sitting on a glass,” I said to Mrs. Miller.
    For a moment Mrs. Miller looked like she was trying to figure out what I meant, like maybe “sitting on a glass” was some new teenage slang she hadn’t heard, possibly a dis. Then, realizing I was speaking literally, she reached her left hand under her left thigh and came up with the glass my dad had set there when he first opened the door.
    “Why, so I am.” She looked around for something to set it on, but basically all there was was the loveseat and the floor. After a moment she handed it to my dad. It seemed to me we’d gone full circle, save that now the two glasses in my dad’s hands were empty instead of full, and we were all trapped inside the way too cramped confines of our living room.
    “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m not drunk enough for what’s about to happen. Excuse me, Janet, while I freshen up our drinks.”
    I’m not really sure why my dad said “Excuse me,” since the bottle was on the dining room table, which is also the kitchen counter, which is also the end table for the loveseat, which was all of five feet away from where he was standing, but Mrs. Miller waited until he was symbolically out of the room before she said, “So. Sprout. You really want to write about being gay?”
    Her voice had calmed down, but it wasn’t the calmness of alcohol, which usually made her confused. She’d worked something out while she walked around with my dad. She’d come up with— cue scary organ music —A Plan.
    “Why don’t you get him to write about all the time he spends in the woods?” my dad suggested from the kitchen, which is to say, from the other side of the room, which is to say, from about five feet away. “Or, you know, that hair .”
    “It’s not really a good story,” Mrs. Miller said without taking her garland-shaded eyes from me. “Sprout wants to write about something more … interesting, doesn’t he?”
    It’s one thing to talk about