A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs Page B

father .”
    It was magnificent, her sudden comprehension, the way simply understanding rearranged her features, seemed to drain some kind of  awful  from her, some kind of dread. I saw relief in her eyes, and something else, a glint of wit? “But do you hear how you pronounce that word? You add an  e . You are calling  dead , d-e-a-d, not  dad , d-a-d.”
    I blinked. It was impossible. “I what?”
    “All these years,” she said, “I hadn’t realized it, not until just now, when I heard you call for him. But you do, you pronounce  dad  as  dead .”
    “But how do you say it?” I felt anxious, something close to panic. Was it true that I called my father  dead  and didn’t even know it? Was it possible something coming out of me could be so terribly, terribly wrong and I didn’t even know it? “How do you say it?” I asked again.
    “Well,  dad ,” she said, “flat  a . Bad, sad, mad. Dad.”
    “Dead,” I repeated. And I heard it, I did. Quickly, I correctly said, “Dad.” Sad, mad, glad. No, I did not say the word like that, not ever. She was right. It was incredible.
    I am the only Yankee in the family for generations. Both of my parents are from Georgia, and so is my brother. I was born in Pittsburgh, so I alone have no accent.
    Dead.
    My father arrived at the top of the stairs from the basement. When he gripped the banister and took the final step to join us in the nowhere area, he winced in pain. As though his shoes were filled with broken glass, as though tremendous weights were strapped to his shoulders, as though corrosive acid and not blood rushed through his arteries. “Okay, okay, I’m here. What’s all this shouting? Is everything okay?” As usual, he sounded like he’d just woken up from a nap, which he probably had. In his voice, the fatigue was clear. What was it now? No doubt, he was expecting to be told that something was in need of an immediate repair—a window broken, a faucet leaking.
    The year before, I was throwing rocks in the backyard and one of them hit the sliding glass door, creating a spider crack. For twenty minutes he’d stood downstairs in the dark looking at the starburst crack, not saying one word. I’d brought him down there myself, apologizing deeply. But as he stood there saying nothing, I became afraid and backed away, one tiny step at a time. Until I was pressed against the far rear wall watching him watch the glass. Finally, I turned and ran upstairs. My father remained downstairs the rest of the night. The cracked glass was never spoken of again.
    It was never fixed.
    He stood there now at the top of the stairs, dread on his face.
    My mother and I stared at him. She explained what we were talking about, my curious pronunciation. “I don’t hear it,” he said. “It sounds perfectly normal to me.” And was he maybe a little angry at the mere suggestion? He seemed to glare at my mother as if to say,  Why do you always have to . . .
    He walked into the kitchen, grimacing with each step. Now that he was upstairs, he might as well pour himself some tea. He pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with ice.
    My mother walked into the living room and sat on the edge of the sofa, loss in her eyes.
    I joined my father in the kitchen and asked, happily, “Do you think I have a southern accent?”
    My father sighed. “I don’t know, son, I just don’t know.”
    I said, “When you were my age? Did you ever think about having a southern accent?”
    He poured tea from his old brown plastic pitcher, discolored now, never washed only refilled. “I don’t remember, son. I don’t know, I just don’t know.” His voice was heavy with burden.
    And I felt sad. “I didn’t mean to make you come upstairs. I forgot what I even wanted.”
    He smiled but it was an effort to do so, as if it caused him pain, physical pain that he had endured for years. He said nothing. Then he turned and walked back downstairs with his tea.
    I went into the living room and