But aside from the “fuck a lot of women” and “stay in school” and “never give up” lessons that were oft repeated, I also became privy to things I’d have rather remained ignorant about, such as jealousy and its destructive tendencies. Of all the things I didn’t learn from my father, that was something I certainly did.

Though my mother was fifteen when my parents met, before my father she had already acquired two lovers. He was enraged that he was not her first—tormented, really—by thoughts of her with the two men who came before. Ostensibly he feared she’d stay promiscuous or, in his words, would forever remain “a fuckin’ whore,” but really I think he couldn’t stand the thought of somebody else having what he did, that on some level my mother might still think about them, even make comparisons. He reverted to it during every fight they had, throwing it in her face when she had gained the upper hand, never mind the dozens he had slept with before her.

My first memory of this came when I was six, seven at the oldest. I was sitting at the bar drinking juice and waiting impatiently to go home. My father walked in after five. It was winter and he wore a full beard and a flannel shirt tucked into faded jeans. The month before, he had started working as a machinist in a factory ten miles away. The rigid tenseness in his hands, the way he flexed his jaw with a raised brow, and the creases deeply cut across the length of his forehead all told me we wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. I slouched as he took the stool beside me. My mother walked down. He ordered a boilermaker without saying hello and she eyed him suspiciously.

“Just get me the goddamn drink, Darla,” he said in the slight Southern drawl he was never able to lose entirely. My mother spoke with one, too.

She shook her head, poured a shot of Jack Daniels and a mugful of Bud Light, and set both in front of him. She walked away to finish the conversation he had interrupted. There were ten people, give or take, mostly those of the “stopping in for a quick one” variety. My father took the shot, didn’t touch the beer. He leered sideways at my mother as she talked to Danny, a bear of a man who I had always loved for the simple reason that he treated me as an adult. He was around my father’s age, midthirties, and had kind eyes. He worked construction and had the eternally chapped hands and muddy boots that came with the job. My father turned away and stared down at the empty shot glass.

“Darla,” he said, not in a yell, but loudly enough so that everybody heard.

My mother sighed, walked down. “What?”