Something Irrevocable

Performing doesn’t come naturally to me the way it does for men like my father. My wife Maria is more like him than I am. She can be loud. She loves to dance. An honorary Cajun, my father would call her, or anyone he particularly likes when drinking. But Maria doesn’t know about being Cajun. That it’s different from just being from the South, which she looks down on. We live in Southern California. It’s not easy for me to explain, either. Only my father is Cajun, and growing up, that seemed to be some indivisible part of him, an excuse for the life he led. Back then he drove the “reefer trucks,” or refrigerated trucks, for shrimpers. My mother told us when we were young that Dad was gone on hauls, but he was gone intermittently, sometimes just for the week and other times for months.