putting her together.

My feet are the shape of my father's feet. I don't think they're pretty, but they prefer summer, and I prefer to go without socks or shoes. My father never goes without shoes. It took him 55 years to put on a pair of sneakers rather than men's loafers. Even to mow the lawn. I've inherited the bite and jaw of my grandmother on my mother's side, but my father's lips and brow line. My nose is a mix of my mother's and my father's.

I went to a family funeral for my dad's step-father a few weeks ago, and I noticed that I have the same gap between my two front teeth as my grandmother and both of her daughters. My youngest aunt had hers closed, but you can still tell it was there. None of the women or their daughters on that side of the family wear their hair its natural color. I like reds and browns. Some of them like browns and blonds. It's a mixed bag, but never gray. They're a pretty bunch, too. My grandmother always accepted the gray, for as long as I've known her, anyway. There was a luncheon after the service. She looked pleased with the turnout, her three sons and two daughters turned mothers and fathers all gathered in the church basement. I don't know if she saw what I saw, and I know she could never feel what I feel, as one of the daughters of a legacy that she began when she married the man who carried the torch for the women and the wine. Her first husband.

There's a story of a man who lived in a two-room house. It was told to me when I was barely 16, by a friend's father. My friend's father was a shop kid turned husband, father and handyman. He went to trade school and learned auto body, wore leather jackets and boots and drank beer with his friends after school. He met his wife, and she liked bad boys, and they started a family. I met his daughter in the ninth grade, and she had the kind of parents you could talk to. Her mother told me she had been on a date with my father's brother in high school. Her father told me the story of the man in the two-room house. The man in the two room house went to church every Sunday. He lived alone, and on each Seventh day, as he walked home from Mass he stopped at the package store and bought a case of beer.

When you walked through the door of the two-room house, he told me, there was a pile of empty beer cans on the floor. A path from the door to the couch was the only part of the carpet you could see, according to Herb.

Years later, my great-grandmother died; I never knew her. My father called me to tell me, should I have seen the obituary and made the connection, though she lived just across the Fifth Street bridge, not far from where I had been living for six or so years. He didn't go to the funeral. And he told me about her husband.

He lived in a two-room house, on Eighth Street. He died of a heart-attack on the shitter among a pile of beer cans, through which a path was cut from the door to the couch. My grandmother had married his son. She had five children with him, and left him while the youngest girl was just 14. It took her so long, I think sometimes, and I wish she'd have had the foresight to save the other four kids from the beatings, the yelling; the sight of their father with other women. Just a few weeks ago, I learned that my father was always at the neighbors' house, the Fosters. Incidentally, their son's kid taught me how to play guitar.

According to my father's most recent account of the grandfather I never knew - except on some occasions when I was small that he showed up on our doorstep with a blond bombshell to ask my father for money - he was a philanderer. A philanderer because he could be. He was the best-looking man in town, my dad claims. And a raging alcoholic. Once in a while he would call my father and ask him to meet him at K-mart restaurant for a coffee. My step-mother was in college at the time, so she was never home. He'd pile my sister and I in the car, and we would stay in the toy aisle while they talked. I still don't know what about.

He died of liver disease several years ago. Some of his kids went to the funeral, some didn't. They fought a lot about it, I remember.

And now there's my father. He asked me to drive him to my grandmother's house last year. He quit drinking for the occasion, which could be viewed as a step in the right direction. He couldn't drink in front of me - he rarely does unless the vodka's concealed in a Coke can or a glass of lemonade. Instead, about an hour into the trip he started shaking. He said he was cold. He got in the backseat and covered himself with his jacket and laid down, shivering. We made it to the house about two hours later, and he could barely stand.

My grandmother and her husband - my father's step-father - were elated to have company. They made lunch. We sat while my father barely picked at the sandwiches, and ate about three spoonfuls of corn chowder, which she made especially for me. Good thing, because he got up from the table, went into the bathroom and threw it up. He came back and said he wasn't hungry, he was feeling sick and slouched down on the couch, still shaking, but worse. My grandmother paid no notice, and made no comment. She just kept smiling, and asked me whether I'd had enough to eat. I looked at my father across the room, and one of his eyes was drifting to the side, the other straight ahead. He went outside on the porch with my grandfather after lunch.

I talked to my grandmother a little about her divorce. She said she never wanted it. That my grandfather left. She said she picked up the pieces the best she could, met a wonderful second husband, and got on with hers and my aunt's life. She said she was just happy that her family turned out so well, and that everything worked out for the best. I felt like retching myself at that moment. And I realized how poorly loved my father was and is. That no one's going to take the leap and help him get out of this horrible Thomas family saga, and that he's probably going to continue on the same path as his father, and his father, and who knows before that. They don't leave much of a mark on this earth, except for maybe the legend of the man in the two-room house. A legend because that's how it was first told to me.

It's so real now, as my father stumbles into the bathroom some nights and falls down, cracking his skull on the side of the sink, or sometimes the toilet. It may very well turn out to be his story, and they won't print it in the obituary, but we'll know. And maybe one of the neighbors kids will know it, since they've been letting him walk their Basset Hound around the park out of pity, and maybe they'll tell it to someone who'll know my someday daughter. That part remains to be seen, since I'm committed to the idea that I'll have no someday daughter. Because of all of this. Because I love my father, and I've only ever been with anyone who acts like him, except for the parts where they tell me all of the things he should be telling me now. That I'm beautiful and smart, and they're proud of me, and they'll be there for me. But they're still like him.

I'm leaving that behind. I'm leaving a lot of things behind me, because if I keep them in front of me, it's only to punish myself for not being loveable enough to make him take exception to the family rule.

Even considering the history, I think maybe if I had a brother, he would remind me of my father. Maybe he would act more like a father than my own and I wouldn't have to do things this way anymore. If that means that I haven't lost hope, then I'm satisfied for now. With so far to go, and me without my waders. I do like the feel of the ground beneath my bare feet.

My father always wears shoes.