How to Be a Bar Stool

1.

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My Momma used to tell my Daddy every night for 10 years, she'd yell out to him from her bedroom just as his foot was steppin' out the door: "Don't you go turnin' yourself into a bar stool tonight, 'cause I ain't pickin' you up this time when you fall over."

He'd yell back: "Yes, dear," and he'd slam the door shut behind him. He'd bust back through it some hours later with a belly-full of liquor, and he'd fall over himself and land on the living room floor. Too drunk to get back up, he'd call out for my Momma – sometimes for hours. And sure enough, every night, she'd go downstairs and help him up.

She was the best woman you'd every have the good fortune of knowin', she really was. But she had her breakin' point, just like anybody else.

I remember my Daddy tuckin' me in one night, tellin' me to close my eyes and to count backwards from one-hundred and that by the time I opened my eyes, he'd be right there waitin' for me. So I did, and I heard him walk out my bedroom and down the stairs; I heard the hinges of the front door squeak when he opened it to walk out.

Only I didn't hear my Momma call out to him like she always did, not this time.

I remember reachin' 60-something before I fell asleep. And I woke up late,late in the night – or early, early in the mornin', whichever way you want to look at it – to that same squeak of the front door openin'.

I heard my Daddy walk in and slam the door behind him; heard him fall over the rug and curse and stumble his way through the room. I heard a loud smack, which turned out to be him bouncin' his head off the corner of the coffee table.

But I didn't hear him call out for my Momma like he'd done every night for as long as I can remember. And I didn't hear my Momma cursin' him as she went down the stairs to pick him up, either.

When I finally crept downstairs, after waitin' forever to see the faintest sliver of light outside my bedroom window, the first thing I noticed was that our brown coffee table had turned red. Getting closer, I saw more red puddlin' on the carpet below it.

There were little bloody breadcrumbs leadin' away from the table and into the kitchen, and I followed those red droplets until they stopped at a cold, gray body slumped upright against our white refrigerator, an empty glass bottle by its hand.

I couldn't tell you why, but I sat right down next to it, rested my head on its shoulders, and went back to sleep. That's how the paramedics found me, and that's the last time I saw my Daddy.

Now, if you ask me, I think he knew my Momma was gone. Somehow he knew it, even in his drunken delirium, even with his head drippin' blood. That's why I didn't hear him call out for her like he did every other night.

I guess he thought that that bottle in our kitchen might console him as well as my Momma ever could, that's why he dragged himself all the way in there to get it.

And I don't know this for sure – I never saw her after that. But I think that night, my Momma finally accepted what my Daddy always was, what he always would be. That's why she left before he stumbled back through the door and needed pickin' up.

I like to imagine her bein' off down the road somewhere, wipin' tears off her face with the napkins she used to keep in her purse.

The paramedics told my Uncle - the one that raised me - that it wasn't the fall that killed my Daddy, nor was it the bump to his head that did 'em in. They said he'd drank too much for that – his blood was pumpin' too slowly through his body for it to fall fast enough out of that hole in his head and do any real damage.