The Milk Man

by Scott Larimore

My family and I were debating what my dad would do for his mid-life crisis. It had been coming on for a while now. My dad was a lawyer and growing increasingly unhappy at work which meant he was also growing increasingly unhappy at home. Just to add to it, my mother found a men’s black hair dye box stuffed underneath some tissues in the bathroom trash can after my three-year-old stepcousin referred to his hair as “cloudy”. I said that his mid-life crisis was going to be in the form of a brand-new Corvette. My dad knew nothing about cars, but he liked shiny things. My sister, just to spite my mom, said that he was going to find a young secretary or paralegal at the office to make him feel like a college kid again. My mom said he was going to buy a boat in the hopes that his mid-life crisis would overlap her own.

My father did none of these things. It all started one day when he went to the store and came back with half a gallon of white milk and a bottle of Hershey’s syrup. I walked into his office to ask him about college. I was thinking of becoming a zookeeper, but my mother said that wasn’t realistic. Accounting was a much better option. I never asked my father his opinion because I became distracted when I found him sipping chocolate milk with a five thousand dollar perfectly symmetrical suit on.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Something from my childhood,” he said. “I thought what the hell. Wanna try?”

“No, thanks Dad,” I said and left.

This became a daily ritual, and he began trying more kinds of milk. Strawberry, 2%, reduced fat, oat milk, almond milk, coconut milk, organic milk, raw milk, even skimmed milk. It was at every meal. He drank banana favored milk with his steak dinner. When he drank at work functions, he only ordered White Russians. In his free time at home, he was locked on the computer, chatting with other milk lovers around the world about favorite brands, optimal mixes, and favorite memories with milk. For vacation, he canceled our trip to Greece (much to the dismay of my mother, my sister, and myself), and made us drive nine hours to tour a dairy farm in the middle of Missouri.

But the worst part was when he started his online channel. He called himself “The Milk Man” and posted reviews of various dairy items online. In a matter of weeks, there were hundreds of videos of him rating and reviewing everything milk related. He stopped going into work to pursue this full time (although he never told his law firm this). My mom told him she was going to leave him. My sister told him he was going to lose his job. I told him he was going to lose the house. But it just didn’t seem to matter to him anymore. He would nod his head every time we would bring these things up to him and then we would hear him late at night in his office breaking the tamper seal off a jug of fresh milk.

One day, my mom really did leave. One day, my dad really did lose his job. One day, we really did lose the house.

My sister and I were packing up the basement the night before we were supposed to leave. She and I decided to move into an apartment together after drinking an entire bottle of Svedka and complaining about how insane our family was. There wasn’t really anything useful in the basement. We were looking for old sets of pots and pans or a microwave or a TV or anything that would make moving out and living on our own a little cheaper. But we only found old memories that were worthless to pawnshops and resell stores and some of them even to ourselves.

I looked through the corner of the basement that had my elementary school arts and crafts projects. It was mostly scribbles of African animals, book reports, and marked up math homework. I found a project I didn’t recognize. It looked much older than everything else. The paper board was turning a dull yellow and the pasted lettering was peeling. Weirdly, it wasn’t nearly as dusty as everything else.

My dad’s name was at the very bottom written crudely and misspelled halfway through. It was a career fair poster that said “Milk Man”. There were all kinds of facts about what Milk Men do: How they provide a service, support the dairy business, and keep a whole community’s bones strong.  Near the bottom, was a picture of my dad as a five-year-old kid. He was dressed up as a milk man while holding a cheap plastic pumpkin basket. I called my sister over to look at it and she just rolled her eyes.

“So, he’s always been stupid then,” she said.

I laughed because I knew she wanted me to, but I didn’t find any of it funny. Not her joke. Not this poster. Not my dad sitting above us in his now empty office talking to no one with a gallon of 2% in his hands. Funny, when I say it like that, I think I really should be laughing.

It’s been two years now. My dad still does his videos. My mom bought a boat she can’t afford. My sister doesn’t talk to either of them. I ended up going to college for accounting. But sometimes, instead of studying, I watch my father’s videos and drink a glass of milk with him.

BIO: Scott Larimore has been published in Roanoke Review and Flash Fiction Magazine. He writes small stories from his small St. Louis apartment.