The Axeman's Jazz

Dad.”
    “I thought you said you were still a Christian.”
    Missy said, “I think you can be on a spiritual path without going to a church, don’t you?”
    “Well, I thought you were going somewhere.”
    “Tell you what. I’ll come to church this Sunday.”
    “Well, I hope you’ll do that.” His dad sounded angry, but Sonny couldn’t figure out why. It had always been that way. When he was a kid, he’d say, “Daddy, why are you mad at me?” and his dad would say he wasn’t, would sometimes shout it. But he seemed mad all the time.
    I wonder why? He’s got everything he ever wanted. What on earth could be bothering him?
    His father got up and brought a new coaster for Missy’s drink, carefully wiping the one he took away. She had drunk more slowly than the others and the glass had sweated.
    In years past, his mother would have said, “Bull, why are you doing that? There’s no way the moisture could possibly touch the table. That’s the point of a coaster.”
    He never answered and she no longer asked. Everyone accepted his dad’s little habits, said that’s what made him such a good doctor—his perfectionism.
    Seeing him take the coaster gave Sonny a feeling like a stab in his side. If his dad was such a perfectionist, how had he managed to mess Di up?
    Thinks he’s God. If you asked him, he’d say it was her fault. Weak abdominal wall
.
    He hated thinking that, hated the way it came unbidden to his consciousness. He tried not to think about what made his dad tick, tried to just accept him as he was, laugh at the little compulsions, ignore his superiority; but this thing with Di had him going. Whatever people said about Bull Gerard, they didn’t say he was incompetent.
    They’re too scared of him.
    They went in to dinner, to the shrimp remoulade his mother had made. Sonny complimented her lavishly.
    “Shrimp are a little overdone,” said Bull.
    Sonny felt light pressure on his thigh—Missy being supportive, saying, “He’s difficult, but not impossible. You’ll get through it. I’m here.”
    It didn’t help, it made things worse. He always felt so incompetent around his dad. Kind of melancholy and alone, the way he’d felt when he’d been sent to his room for some transgression or other. There was something under the melancholy, something else, but he didn’t know what to call it. It made him not want to be touched, made him reject his mother when she came to comfort him then, made him now want to slap Missy’s hand away.
    Roast duck followed the shrimp. By now his father had had two Scotches and a couple of glasses of wine. Sometimes a few drinks mellowed him out.
    “January’s a quiet month,” he said. “Be a good time to get married.”
    Missy froze; dismay filled his mother’s eyes, and then compassion. She trained them on Sonny, silently telling him she was sorry, there was nothing she could do.
    “Gee, Dad, I don’t think so. Missy and I struck a deal, you know—we’re not getting married till I get out of med school.”
    “No sense paying for two apartments when you could live in one.”
    Missy said, “Oh, no problem, Dr. Gerard. I live with my aunt, rent-free, in a gorgeous apartment.”
    “I’m gonna buy y’all a little house.”
    “Dad, I don’t think we’re quite ready to get married; to tell you the truth, I’ve got my hands full with medical school.”
    “I got married
before
medical school. And January’s a good month. Christmas is over, Carnival’s just starting.”
    Sonny made a great show of chewing. “Great duck, Mama.”
    “It’s about time you grew up, accepted the responsibilities of a man. Isn’t that right, Missy?”
    Missy was tight-lipped, white. Sonny realized this was what the evening was about. His dad had somehow gotten it into his head to marry him off this January and had invited him over to announce it.
    The same way he’d announced which schools Sonny would be attending and what subjects he’d take.
    Missy said, “I don’t think I’m ready, Dr. Gerard. I don’t have enough recovery yet.”
    “Sonny didn’t tell me you’d been ill. Why didn’t you come to me?”
    “Listen, Dad, neither one of us wants to get married this January.”
    “What’s this about Missy being sick?”
    “I didn’t mean I’m sick. I meant recovery from my codependency.”
    “Codependency? Isn’t that something to do with being married to an alcoholic? I didn’t think you’d been married, girl.”
    For almost the first time the