my father only lied to me once.
when i was a young boy, my father and i would watch disney films on the television. generally these were animated pictures. we sat on opposite sides of the same frayed and plaid couch with a large aluminum bowl of popcorn between us. focused on the screen at the front of the room, the two of us mostly forgot the other was there. when music played from the television, we listened. when the plot thickened, we noticed.
a few hours before, my father had put pasta and red sauce on a plate in front of me. each one covered exactly half the dish.
"i hope you like spaghetti," my father told me. i nodded my head that i did like spaghetti. but i didn't.
we sat across the table from one another in silence for twenty minutes. behind him was a large dish rack painted with half-concentrated whitewash, which held a collection of cheap china dishes that he had inherited from his deceased mother. behind me, i knew, even though i couldn't see it, was our small backyard, but there wasn't much land to behold even if i had been able to. we were poor.
when we finished our meals, i helped my father clear the table. i brought my empty plate to the sink, took one last drink from a half-empty glass of milk, and put them both in the basin, which he began to fill with warm, soapy water.
"your mother is not coming tonight," he told me. i nodded my head that i knew she was not coming.
i went into the living room and started the vcr. the red light flickered on, and i pushed in the tape. as the console accepted the cartridge, i pressed rewind and watched the pictures speed backwards. the faces were of characters i recognized, and the scenes were familiar, but i wasn't able to decipher the sounds that came from their mouths. in the face of the static chaos, they seemed to be saying what they wanted to say.
suddenly, i heard a long beep. the smell of margarine began to waft through the air. my father had microwaved a bag of store-bought popcorn. as he emerged in the den with the large aluminum bowl in his hand, i pressed play on the vcr, and the previews began.
my father sat on the other end of the couch, set the bowl between us. raising his voice at me to be heard above the previews, he looked in my direction and asked, "have i ever told you that i hammered this bowl out of a quarter?"
without looking back at him, i nodded that he had told me. my eyes stayed fixed on the television.
"what?" my father asked. "i didn't hear you." this time he reached his arm over the bowl between us, held my jaw in his hand, forced my face to turn and look at him. my eyes met his.
"have i ever told you that i hammered this bowl out of a quarter?"
"yes," i responded numbly. this seemed to please him, and he released my jaw. we began to watch the film, both eating from the aluminum bowl between us. the picture we had decided on, we both knew, was bad: the animals were anthropomorphic, and they all despised one another.
once it was over, my father dumped the seeds from the aluminum bowl into the garbage and rinsed it out with warm water. i brushed my teeth and combed my hair, washed my face, put on my pajamas. i prepared myself for bed.
when i walked through the kitchen on the way to the bedroom, i looked at the empty aluminum bowl on the counter. it was dull, unreflective, riddled with small, flat surfaces where the metal had been struck repeatedly with a large and blunt metal object.
"it is time for you to go to bed," my father informed me from behind. i turned around. i nodded that i knew it was time to go to bed.
my father only lied to me once. but that was enough.