The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver Page B

it.
    “Thirteen,” I said, still traveling along with the watch.
    “Fuck!”
    “Twelve.”
    “Shit,” he cried. “Okay.”
    “Eleven. Ten.”
    “Okay,” he called, one hand up. “Okay, I can do this, here goes:Your mother. Me. 1977. A razor. A bathtub. A slip. A fall. Taa-dah,” he said, hands out in a bow.
    “I’ll follow up later on that.”
    “Worst thing you’ve ever done?” he asked, changing the subject.
    “You mean apart from meeting you here in February?”
    He leaned down to pick up the dishrag eroding the cheap carpet beneath us. “Come on, dollface, answer the question.”
    “The arrest,” I said, matter of fact. “And probably dropping out of school.” I sighed. “I’ve got two. Lovely.”
    He clutched the dishrag tighter. Wrinkles of dark water dripped out from it, over his hands.
    “You know I wasn’t just a one-night stand with your mother. You know that, right?”
    I couldn’t take my eyes off of his hands. They were squeezing tightly, as if he needed to inflict pain on himself.
    “If you say so.”
    “Your mom and me were living together,” he said, sinking into nostalgia. “You can’t actually believe everything she tells you. We were young and in love. What else do you need?”
    “I don’t know,” I said bluntly. “Maybe food, a job. Money. Contraception.”
    He massaged the scar again.
    “You know, I had twelve stitches from that bathtub incident. For weeks, I could barely eat. I had to drink everything with a straw, eat soup and shit like that. I couldn’t even kiss.”
    It was difficult to hold in my laughter, but to this day, I’m impressed with my restraint. “I can’t imagine you would have wanted to after that little production.”
    My father relaxed beside me, stretching out his legs so far that they reached my own. I winced when one of them touched my calf, but don’t think he noticed. Drops of perspiration materialized over his scar, and I pictured them burnt with anguish, sitting alone in a wet tub while he left my mother or my mother left him for … well, Paramedic One? Bruce, the speed walker?
    I stood from the table and walked to the one remaining unwashed table. The previous patrons had crushed peanuts into a spilled bottle of beer, leaving nothing less than La Brea tar pits on the table to excavate. I looked down and waxed over and over to remove the sticky residue on top, but it wouldn’t budge.
    My father walked over to me. “Here, try this,” he added, noticing my grip. “You want to clean in circles,” he demonstrated. “See?”
    “You’re right,” I agreed, watching as the rag in his hand swallowed the crushed peanuts superficially glued to the table. He continued, though, even after the table was spotless, pushing the dishcloth on the glass and pulling specs of moisture off, the rag always in his grip as if it were a crutch. We were silent there for at least another minute, his hands continuously moving clockwise, and up and down, side to side, cleaning tables as if in an unconscious chant—tables, which had already been wiped at least three times, being wiped and rewiped by my father’s calloused fingers and palms coated with scars and remnants from a past I’d never truly know. Each of those nicks and swollen joints got him here; each of those marks brought him to me in Bar Dive, in the humidity of summer, and at that moment, I realized that even though he shared their origins, that even though he’d repeat his stories weekly to me with caricature embellishment, I’d never really know how they appeared. From one of his drives over the border? From the prison boxing ring? From my mother, who had probably attempted to replace my father for the next ten years with varying mustachioed lovers? Without witnessing history, everything that follows is pure perspective.
    Eventually he realized what he was doing and stopped, placing the rag in a corner. He wiped his hands on his jeans, took my hand, and sat me down. A brown slither of