A Film by Spencer Ludwig

Spencer goes back to the car, retrieves the backgammon set and hesitates for a moment, because he has left the cellphones inside, clearly displayed on the shelf above the glove compartment, then hesitates for a second moment because he has parked the Cadillac, inexpertly, across two bays that are reserved for buses; but there are three stretch limousines parked there too, and a police car, New Jersey State Trooper, beside an Academy bus that announces cheerily that it is an Atlantic City Casino Special!

‘No,’ he says out loud, alarming the line of passengers descending from the bus, most of whom are old, most of whom look poor, all of whom snake away from him.

A few still slumber in the rear seats, faces uncomfortable against the window. He says NO! again, louder this time. He will take this at least from his father, that this is his world and he shall do what he likes.

His father is waiting impatiently in the centre of the eating area. Spencer wonders whether he would pick him out even if he didn’t know him. His father’s pastel-yellow short-sleeved shirt, white windcheater, beige chinos, the large nose and small eyes that can barely contain so much impatience and quiet fury; and Spencer’s burdened heart lifts with love and tenderness for the old man who used, once, to terrify him into tears and a sense of the difficulty, perhaps futility, of accomplishing anything meaningful in the world.

‘Well what do you want? They have burgers, pizzas and, uh, yogurt, by the looks of things.’

His father shrugs. He’s not listening, and he doesn’t care. Even if President Cheesequake himself offered him a pickled cucumber dripping brine and a buttered bagel from the Warsaw streets circa 1939, Spencer’s father would not care. Food is a burden, forced upon him by his wife and now his son.

‘Let’s get to work,’ his father says, and opens up the backgammon set.

‘I’m going to have a burger. Do you want a burger?’

‘Whatever you like, I’m not tired,’ his father says.

Spencer orders cheeseburgers for them both, medium rare, and cups of coffee. When the waitress returns with the coffees, his father, ungraciously, grabs his cup off her tray.

‘Where’s the…?’

‘That’s mine. Yours has got milk.’

‘That’ll put hairs on your chest,’ Spencer’s father says. ‘From the inside.’

He holds out three pink packets of Sweet ‘n’ Lo, which has become an unspoken ritual between them. Spencer’s father has hardly any strength left in his hands. He is unable to tie his shoelaces or button up his shirts or behead the packets of sweetener he laces his coffee with. Spencer twists off the tops of the packets, and Spencer’s father nods, both in gratitude and as a kind of statement of the dry banal horror his life has become reduced to.

As they wait for their food, they play backgammon. When their food arrives his father sulks, because he has just won two games in a row and resents the break in their sport.

Spencer eats in a kind of voluptuous joy. He had not realised how hungry he was. His father eats more or less effectively. Spencer suspects that his father has no sense of smell and little sense of taste. Spencer’s father is accustomed to two meals; Spencer likes to eat at least three or four times a day. It never occurs to his father and it never has that anyone else might be feeling something different to him. You have no empathy, Spencer had once told his father. You remind me of your mother, Spencer’s father had said in reply, which was not a statement of approval.

When he was a child and stayed with his father and stepmother, Spencer’s appetite was always being confounded. He spent the days either hungry or overstuffed from the monstrous dinners that Spencer’s stepmother provided. It never occurred to either adult that the child might be hungry, and Spencer had found it always difficult to express his desires in his father’s and stepmother’s world.

‘How is it?’

His father makes a doleful face. It is the expression he uses when he is asked how he slept, when an elevator man asks him how he is feeling, when he deigns to look at his wife when she is talking.

‘You want to try some?’

‘No. No thank you. Here. Try some of mine.’

The doleful face becomes brutal in its contempt. Spencer is grateful for the return of the waitress. Despite his protestations of hungerlessness, Spencer’s father consumes his cheeseburger, with only a few dots of mustard and ketchup on his trousers and shirt to show for it. He pushes away the plates, which Spencer is about to dispose of, but is deterred by his father opening up the backgammon set again. ‘Let’s get to work,’ his father says.