By James Sullivan

Featured Art: Prositabhartruka Nayika by Kripa Radhakrishnan

The kids call him Smash Dad when it happens. “Smash Dad, Smash Dad!” chant six-year-old Kevin and Kylie, voices still almost indistinguishably high-pitched. “Ha ha ha.” Robert forces a smile, squinting to repel the enemy light. I can only imagine the gouging pains and gushing nausea he describes because, while we both like to drink, only he gets these hangovers.

He’s never belligerent or weepy when he drinks. At the worst, he’s increasingly amorous, which is no trouble for me once the kids are in bed. We have a grand time, sampling this and that, lots of reds from Sonoma especially. Sometimes, even knowing what it does to him, he’ll indulge in some Californian IPAs: “Gonna let the gorilla hammer me,” he says, releasing the hop aroma. It’s one of the things that maintains the continuity of our university romance as we’ve entered the house-and-kids phase. I remember him carrying my vodka-smashed body like a bundle of loose logs after a post-exam party, performing Matrix bends to protect my head from cabinets and doorknobs. At parties a couple times a year where I choose to over-indulge, I like to relive that old marriage of tenderness and danger by making myself his unwieldy patient, the only one he takes home from the hospital. Later we sip Pedialyte in bed, and I tease him about his least favorite Beatles song (and my favorite physician, “Doctor Robert”) until our new life demands we get up and fix twin breakfasts.

But even his hangovers are atypical, never the balled-up-in-agony, stay-in- bed-all-day kind. It’s more like someone has gently popped loose his brain case, as if opening up the back of a watch, then swirled a paintbrush around in gray matter, dabbed a little of the juices over here, mixed in some tannins and grape skins, and adjusted the dial on the left, producing a new arrangement of my husband’s faculties. Picture George Martin, alcohol surgeon with a slapstick sense of humor. Parts and labor $20, rebate if you recycle the bottles.

Me, the worst I lose is some REM sleep. But Smash Dad, my remixed Robert, better a Bob in this state, he goes haywire. The man lumbers like a Sixties Toho robot (MechaDad is one of my names for this character), neck stiff and limbs clumsy like a 50-meter city destroyer. He inadvertently thumps and elbows into cupboards and door frames and hunts for the jar of pickles, cheeses and mustards and cartons of eggs spilling to the floor as he fumbles: “I know they’re in here, but they’re not in here!” I sense in these moments anger at the end of a long road of banal frustration. Like a hemorrhaged eyeball on a dopily grinning face.

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