My dad comes over to help me work on my leaky kitchen faucet and to finally install my reverse osmosis filtration system. If I have to boil my brown rice pasta in another pot of estrogen laden tap water again I'm going to saw my foot off.
I tell him there's a Home Depot close by. He doesn't say anything, he never does. He just sucks his tongue against his teeth and says he saw a hardware store on his way to my place and says we should go there. I decide it's just easier to look at this place's rating while he's driving than to research it before we go, which saves me the trouble of watching him walk through my apartment and assess whether I'm doing a good job keeping it up or not.
Luckily the few reviews that are posted put my mind at ease before walking in. It's a small place and most of the merchandise is unpackaged and unmarked, organized in no discernible way, but I just follow the canvas back of my dad's Carhartt jacket as he grasps at things and mutters something under his breath, what sounds like approval though I can't be sure. He moves like he's been here before, and down the next aisle we find what he's looking for, apparently some type of pipe wrench I'm supposed to own but don't. It's hanging on a nail and looks as big as a baseball bat, but when he pulls if off the wall it looks like a pencil in his hand. Clearly I inherited the mitts of my mother. My dad's hands are almost cartoonishly big for his body, the tendons and muscles overdeveloped from decades of outside work. The base of his kielbasa fingers are punctuated with polished calluses. You can feel them when you shake his hand, like small discs embedded in his skin that stay year round, the rest of his hands veiny, and the flesh under his transparent skin is dotted pink and white, kneaded into ground beef. He seems satisfied with this place so I don't ask if that's what we need. It would be easy to feel intimidated walking in here alone, the bare bones displays of the store giving an inside baseball type of vibe, a place only the natives know about, but the cashier smiles at my dad like they know each other and he asks what are project is, genuinely interested. I start to say we're installing a reverse osmosis filtration system when my dad cuts me off and says we're getting rid of some galvanized pipes.
He unconsciously bobs his head and taps the steering wheel with one hand, and an uprush of a half-forgotten feeling, being a boy and watching him drive, rushes through me.
My only gripe is that they close pretty early. After a six pack and a bunch of tacos, my dad wanted to go buy a couple parts we ended up needing. By then Alvarez was closed, and I was not in the mode to go to Home Depot. So far we wasted an entire Saturday on this stupid sink ("Wasted?" Dad would say. A guy who installed hardwood floors on Christmas Eve). I'm supposed to meet some friends up at Skylark, but I already know he's going to want to finish this project TONIGHT. When I ask him if we can just finish this later, he crawls out from under the sink and looks at me like I committed some crime. But instead of arguing the merits of just finishing tonight and having it over with, he just shrugs and packs up, and I can't help but miss the fight that didn't happen. He tells me I need a new plunger in the bathroom, and to call my mom. At least I now know where to get the plunger. read more