by Tyler Perry
10:00 am
3 hours before kickoff.
I seal my moment of orientation, glancing around the Cleveland bar in search of my father. Somehow I beat him here. My father, of all people. Traffic from Ashtabula must have been stop and go for him not to be on time. I tuck my hands in my pockets and find a stool at the bar.
I admit the Huron Point Tavern does not appeal to me. The entirety of the bar is narrow like an alley, so much so that to get to the bathroom you have to squeeze to the back and down stairs that lead directly to the inside of the restroom. The food is okay but nothing special. I do like all the various Cleveland sports memorabilia that litter the walls, though. Especially now that LeBron came back. That helped make half of these displays relevant again. It pretty much comes down to the fact that it’s the tradition, rather than food or atmosphere, that brings us back here before Browns games.
“What’re you drinking?” Cameron asks me. I have no idea what this guy’s name is. He has been the bartender the last three years we’ve visited and he always wears a Jordan Cameron jersey. If the notion were to be reciprocated, I would be Thomas.
“Angry Orchard, please.” Hard cider. A good mix between looking like you’re drinking beer but also a solid taste. I’d drink “normal” beer but unfortunately I was born with taste buds.
“Hey, Cat.” My dad enters the bar in hurried fashion. He’s wearing his usual Sunday get-up: jeans and his Brownie the Elf shirt. I stand up from the bar and give him a hug. He smells of Speed Stick deodorant and coffee.
“Happy birthday, dad.” I say as I pull out two Browns tickets from my wallet. “They’re kinda high, but we should have a pretty good view, I guess.”
My dad is a diehard Cleveland fan. Browns, Cavs, and Indians. He’s pushing sixty years old soon and hasn’t experienced a championship since he was eight. That kind of patience astounds me. I often have daydreams of being the quarterback or point guard that brings Cleveland the championship fans thirst for. I imagine how proud he would be. How proud the city would be.
“It’s going to be great. Thanks.” He smiles and waves Cameron over with his rough, calloused hand. Black permanently stained under his bit fingernails. Labatt Blue. I glance down at my soft, thin hands.
I sip my Angry Orchard.
“So, everything going okay with school?” He asks. I shrug it off.
“Tough but manageable. I’m learning a lot though.”
“You’ll be fine, I’m sure. That’s how grad school is supposed to be, right? Tough? You just gotta roll with it and adapt to the changes.”
#
Last year was my first year of graduate school. I established a routine for a few years where I worked all summer at a restaurant so I could focus solely on school. But this was grad school. Something had to change. If my nearly sixty-year-old father could put in fifty hours a week of hard labor as a mechanic, I thought I should be able to work part time and go to school.
I signed up on Snagajob. Basically, it was like online dating for jobs. Looking back, I treated it that way, too. I started off very picky. I only applied to jobs that had good pay, weekends free, and (most importantly) not in food service. After three weeks of zero phone calls I ended up lowering my standards to any pay, decent hours, and any service. Desperation knows many names. Fourteen applications later I finally received a call back from a clothing store. Retail. That’s a step above food service, right?
There definitely existed a honeymoon phase between me and the store. The people were great and I was actually paid during the school year. Hours weren’t the best, but everything was new and exciting to me and people were always willing to relinquish shifts.
I realized much later that the best aspect of the retail job correlated negatively with the worst. I loved the discount card. I’ll hand it to them, their sales were legit. I’m not saying their clothes were out of this world amazing and insanely durable, but for the price, it was a good deal. Especially after that extra twenty-five percent employee discount. I turned into a regular walking and talking billboard for the company. Wait a second. Where did my paycheck go? Right….
#
11:15am
1 hour 45 minutes to kick off
My dad polishes off his second Labatt blue while I still work on my first hard cider. He uses the back of his hand to wipe his beard and waves Cameron over to us.
“You want anything to eat? I think we usually get the Stromboli, right?”
“Yeah, sure. I can get it, if you want.” I offer.
“No, no. Save your money.”
I chug another gulp of my hard cider. My eyes shift to the television on the wall. Bernie Kosar discusses how Josh McCown gives the Browns the best chance to win even though he is most certainly not the future. I lift my hard cider to my lips again. I salute all the fans who put up with this shit year after year.
“Mr. Perry.”
Both my dad and I look toward the voice. Two of my Uncle Steve’s friends whose names I forgot. A tall man with a goatee in a Joe Haden jersey and a petite woman wearing a Browns winter jacket.
“Hey, Frank. Lydia. How are you guys doing?” My dad reaches out shaking their hands. They exchanged pleasantries. After a few minutes I reintroduce myself for the third time in three years.
They are season ticket holders like Uncle Steve, my dad’s brother. Uncle Steve is likely busying himself at his Arizona house this week instead of attending the game. Needless to say, my uncle is rich. Crazy rich. The kind of rich where if he wanted to golf in Ireland that afternoon, he went. The kind of rich where he and his friends flew to New York City for the sole purpose of drafting their fantasy football teams. As my Godfather, every time he brings up school I have the strongest urge to slide him a blank check along with my student loan total. Joking aside (although I’m not joking), he is a great guy.
They ask about me. Then about my sister. This is where it is my father’s turn to brag. My sister, Kayla, is currently getting paid to finish her Ph. D. in Entomology. While he gushes over her success I think about the student loans I’ve taken out and the future ones I’ll need to cover the rest of my MFA program.
In the past my dad told me he regrets not finishing college like Uncle Steve. Sometimes, a nonexistent future where he has a degree and an amazing job pounds in his head. Overall I think he is happy being a mechanic. He’s good at it and can’t complain about money. But that “what if” is his own personal monster that hides under the bed.
They continue to shoot the breeze as I watch more Browns pregame. A LeBron James commercial flashes across the screen. It reminds me of last year when I wanted to buy my dad Cavs tickets. With LeBron coming back and all the excitement that surrounded the city it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money. Instead I bought him a cheap Browns hat with a stupid dog wearing an orange helmet.
#
Like most relationships, the honeymoon phase between the retail store and me perished after a few months. Hours became more and more scarce. Management looked at us “sellebrities” as potential credit card quotas instead of people. If a customer strolled down my checkout isle and had over two hundred dollars’ worth of clothes, sure, I’d suggest signing up for the card. It could save them thirty bucks. I was on board with that. However, the customer that buys a pair of socks and a t-shirt for nine dollars…not so much. Instructions were to pitch the card regardless of the amount spent. “Fifteen percent today and ten percent the next two months!” When I made the personal choice that a customer would most likely not find interest in 15 percent off five dollars, I received a stern word in my uncomfortable earpiece fifteen volumes too high.
Money became incredibly tight after a while. I took full responsibility for that. My wardrobe thrived but after paying rent, electric, and cable, there was very little money left over for other needs such as gas and food. About once a month I asked my dad to transfer money into my account. So much for supporting myself. So much for being adult. Each money transfer ripped at my self-confidence.
I reached a low point when my 1997 Jeep Wrangler broke down. Until I could get it checked out I had to call off work all week and miss my classes. I spent days sprawled out on my couch wearing a ripped tank top and boxers. The bare Akron apartment was dark except for the flashing light illuminating from the television. Old take out containers created pyramids on the ground. My face stuck to the couch as I watched episode after of episode of One Tree Hill with crusty and tired eyes.
My cat, Gus, lifted his front paws on the couch and dropped his toy ball by my arm. I gave it a half-hearted toss into the shadows. He chased after it and quickly pranced back with it in his mouth. Before I could give the ball another chuck my phone rang. I answered, it was Jayson. A good friend from back home in Ashtabula.
“You need a job?” Jayson asked.
My mind began to whirl as he described the opportunity at hand. He worked for a catering company that provided food to old, disabled folks throughout northeast Ohio. He made enough money to buy a car, pay for his house, all of his bills, and live comfortably. They desperately needed a new driver. He thought of me because all of the driving I did for him back in high school before he owned a car. Who knew helping him out in high school would pay off six years later?
My body jolted from the couch. I paced my apartment. My feet kicked the toy ball into the television light, alerting Gus as he weaved between my legs.
After an hour of nonstop job description, I only had one question.
“Honestly, why wouldn’t I want to take this job?” The question seemed silly, but it seemed too perfect. Too good to be true. You don’t just go from seven hundred a month to making as much as your father. Did I earn that? The moment felt cinematic, unreal.
“Well,” he paused. “It’s a lot of miles on your car. A lot of gas. You don’t still have the Jeep, do you?”
I laughed.
A week later I had an interview. A week and a day later, I was hired and driving.
It was a hot, August morning on my first day. Sweat traced my spine as I stuffed my recently fixed Jeep with various frozen meals, bread, and milk. Rock solid forms of lasagna, turkey, chicken nuggets, and more packed tightly into tiny plastic trays. Thankfully the route only had twelve people. My boss offered to help pack my Jeep but I declined. I couldn’t take this job for granted. I needed to prove to myself I could do this. I needed to prove to him that I could do this. Nodding, he headed back inside the kitchen as I departed on my route.
Unable to see out the back window and with a few meals riding shotgun, I set off for my first place. It was scary. I had no information other than a name and an address. Was she nice? She could be blind. What if she didn’t answer?
My eyes bounced between my Google maps app and the road. The apartment complex was easy to find. An immense building with nowhere as much parking as was needed to accommodate the amount of apartments it contained. I dove head first into the back of my Jeep searching for the right bag. Mrs. Douglas. Seven meals. Seven orange juice. I held the plastic bags in one hand and my clipboard in the other.
I shifted the clipboard under my armpit and reached for the door. Locked. I searched around the entrance and found a call box. I never used one of those before. All the other complexes I had been to, like my own, you just went right up to the person’s apartment.
I pressed the down key on the box until Douglas appeared. I hit call.
It rang. And rang. And rang some more. The anxiety of my first delivery being labeled a “not at home” jabbed at me. Not that it would be my fault but it would still look bad when I turned my paper in at the end of the day.
“Hello, Bill?” A voice shouted entirely too loud from the box.
“Um, no. It’s Tyler.”
“Where’s Bill?”
“Oh, see, I’m taking over his route right now. I’m not sure, but I think I am going to be your new driver every week now.” I waited. There was a slight pause.
“Wait, where’s Bill?”
“I’m Tyler. I’m taking over his rou—” The callbox timed out. What a great start this turned out to be.
I set down her meals and redialed.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m…I have your meals.” The doors emitted a loud buzz. I snatched the meals and ran inside.
The lobby smelled like mold had relaxed, kicked its feet up, and made itself at home. Generic pictures of flowers and covered bridges covered the beige walls. I glanced down at the clipboard. Room 522. To the elevator I walked.
As soon as the doors opened a little sign instructed to me that 501-517 was to the left and 518-534 to the right. Her brown door had a “Praise the Lord” sign and a big picture of a white cat. It reminded me of Gus. I thought of all the fancy feasts I would be able to spoil him. Maybe a new toy ball, too.
I knocked loud and hard, assuming from our single experience her hearing may not quite be up to par. A few minutes later an older, black woman answered the door. She wore a large, red sweater and dangly gold earrings.
“Hey, hon. How you doing? So Bill ain’t coming no more, huh?”
“Uh, no. I think it’s going to be me from now on.” I was stiff. I realized even in the moment how awkward I must have looked.
“Well, come on in. You can set them meals over by the microwave.”
My first step inside my first customer’s home felt like an accomplishment. Not a single inch of wall was left uncovered. Clocks, calendars, religious posters, anything and everything was shoved up there. Her furniture seemed nice and unused. The kind of stuff I’d expect to see at Pier 1.
“You give me more ham this week? You know I like ham,” she said. Her eyes never lifted from the clipboard. Did she still think I was Bill?
“I don’t really work in the kitchen…but I can probably tell them to give you more ham. If you’d like that?” I said. I tried to appear more social. My shoulders relaxed some. I added some inflection to my otherwise monotone answers.
“Thank you, I appreciate that, sir.” She handed me back the clipboard. “Now give Douggie a hug now.” She pulled me in tight and close. As uncomfortable as I thought I would feel, I took it as a nice gesture. She certainly appreciated that I brought her meals. Still strange, though. She released slowly and gave me a soft pat on the shoulder.
“Remember now, a hug a day keeps the devil away.”
I nodded and encouraged her to have a great week. The walk back to my Jeep was a haze. If all of my customers were like this, well, that would keep things fresh to say the least. How long would it take to lose the anxiety that accompanied new encounters? Then I remembered to break it down. What was I doing now? I was delivering meals to older folks that would have difficulty getting meals themselves. I wasn’t pushing credit cards. I didn’t spend four hours folding clothes. A tinge of satisfaction crept across my face in the form of a smile. It faded when I reached my clustered Jeep. The small, cramped jeep. With poor gas mileage.
I promised myself I would consistently put portions of my paycheck and miles checks away each month toward buying a new car. A car with more space and better gas mileage. As in, not a truck. But before I put anything towards myself, there was one thing I needed to buy.
I combed the corners of the internet to find the tickets. First, I naively checked the Browns website. I took one look at those prices and knew that was a mistake. Craigslist, eBay, and various other sites found their way into my browser’s history before I found a decently priced pair on StubHub. A bit high, but we would be there. In person. Together. For his birthday.
#
12:30pm
30 minutes to kick off
I sit and listen passively to my dad. He says Browns fans should tear up and eat their tickets before even considering selling them to a Steelers fan. My Uncle Steve’s friends laugh. He turns to me and smiles. There is a certain distance to his gaze. Four empty twenty-four-ounce LaBatts stand proudly in front of him. I’m still working on my first Angry Orchard. He is drunk, but happy drunk.
“You ready to hit it, Cat?” He asks.
I shake my drink, giving away that I had hardly drank any of it. I laugh.
“Yeah, let’s head out,” I said.
We take turns shaking Frank and Lydia’s hands and wave goodbye to Cameron.
“Go Browns!” he shouts. Before we leave our stools Lydia stops us and pulls out her tickets.
“Where are you guys sitting?” she asks.
“Up super high,” I say. “They aren’t the best seats, but they should be fairly close to the fifty-yard line.” Her face twists to disgust. Shaking her head, she pulls out two extra tickets.
“Here. Take these.” She extends the tickets out toward my dad. “We were going to try to sell them, but you guys should take them.”
My dad releases a drunken chuckle and shakes his head.
“C’mon, I don’t mind, really,” she persists. “Take them.”
Then my dad completely catches me off guard. He places a hand firmly on my shoulder. “That’s nice of you, Lydia, but these tickets are from my son. He bought them for me for my birthday. We’re going to go up to these seats, however high they are, and have a great damn time.”
Her confused expression reveals she doesn’t fully understand why he didn’t accept the upgraded seats. That’s okay. I do appreciate that she offered.
I wave goodbye one more time before we exit the bar. As we leave, my dad keeps one arm wrapped around my shoulder and pulls a Browns hat out of his back pocket. A Browns hat with stupid dog wearing a Browns helmet.
Tyler Perry is in his second year in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts creative writing program. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Akron and discovered his love for writing his fourth year. He is working on his first novel and has finished a feature length screenplay. Nonfiction is a fairly new experience for Tyler, but he is excited to share this story with Jenny.