I Secretly Love Kylo Ren
People think because I don’t turn myself in that I hate sick
people.
My father has to lean against a doorframe to stand up. “You
changed your hair,” was the first thing he said to me this morning. “I like the
color.”
“Should you be up?”
“I heard your key in the door,” he said, pushing against the
wall to turn himself around. Clutching the bannister, he began pulling himself
up the stairs. I ran to help him but he heard me start up the steps, managed to
get his hand out, “I’m fine.”
It took him almost two minutes to get up the next five
stairs. How he managed to be standing there as I walked in the door…
My dad built a patio on his roof, and he led me out to where
he looks out over traffic and the dry canyon beyond. “Have you seen it again?
What did you think?”
“It was the third time I saw it. I don’t have anything new
to say.”
“I saw Empire Strikes Back more times than I can remember
when it was in theaters. Every time I felt differently about it,” he said
easing himself down into his stretched out lawn chair.
“Why don’t you go see it with me?”
“I don’t go to the theaters anymore,” he said, catching his
breath. After a few moments he turned his head to face me, his eyes still
closed. “Are you safe?” He pulled a few deep breaths and took his arms onto his
chest for warmth. “Where you’re sleeping…” There’s a basket near the sliding
the glass door. I pulled out a faded purple afghan my grandmother had made for
him and laid it across him. “…are you safe?”
“I think so,” I told him.
“When was the last time you talked… to her?”
“It’s time to let it go, Dad.”
“You can’t fight what you feel, Andy. You’ll lose in the
worst way.”
“And I can’t put my love before my health, Dad.”
His eyes slowly opened, “Is that what you think I did?”
“I have too much to keep me up at night without worrying
about things I don’t control.”
“I’m not saying anything other than just allow yourself to
acknowledge how you feel.”
“I do that, Dad. I do that too much.”
Don’t Apologize
Dad shimmied his way up the gradual incline of his chair,
until his head was held up by a pillow. “Are you disappointed in me… because of
what I’ve done?” He waited for a response before reaching over to his
mini-fridge where he keeps his medicines and poured two red, plastic cups of
lemonade. My dad thinks that that carbonated lemonade covers the taste of
citron vodka. I don’t know why, especially without how much he uses.
“Have a drink,” he said, settling back into his chair. I
walked over and picked it up. “Everyone I see is going outlive me.”
“I’m not asking you to be sorry.”
“I’m not sorry. I didn’t say I was ‘sorry’. I did… If I had
to choose between this and living to be eighty years old with your mother, I’d
choose this.”
I hate the view from my father’s house, no matter how much
can be seen. It’s ugly, characterized by the congestion of the highway and
perpetual death that turns the hillside brown. But even when he didn’t struggle
to keep his eyes open, my dad would sit up there and stare happily for hours. “What
I want you to understand is that there’s nothing here that’s unconsidered. And
I have made peace with all of it.”
“Are you ashamed of me?” I asked him. “Are you ashamed of my
decisions?”
“I don’t know,” he said without hesitation.
“Well, there you go.” I sat down on the edge of the roof, my
legs hanging over.
“Tim said he had to pick you up the other night.”
“Last Sunday,” I told him. “I had called looking for you.”
“I’m not… going to be able to there for you… much longer,
champ.”
“I don’t really know what I was thinking. You were just the
number I called.”
“He said you were pretty beat up.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“You didn’t return my calls. You didn’t… answer my texts.”
The next day I was in community service. If they see your phone, you don’t get
credit for the day. But, no… I wouldn’t have responded, anyway.
“I might not be able to be there for you much longer,
either, Dad.”
“You control your fate, son.”
“What makes me so special? What makes me so different than
you, waiting for… whatever is going to happen?” I looked over at him. He wasn’t
able to keep his eyes open anymore. The shimmer from his white, pasty skin
shrunk my pupils but I tried not wince looking at him. “Should I get you some
suntan lotion?”
“Why? Am I going to get cancer?” he asked.
I looked back over the highway. It was eleven in the morning
and the road had already slowed, cars begging to bump into one another, each
desperate to be somewhere else but no one getting anywhere. “If I knew that my
blood would cure you, I’d turn myself in. If I knew I could go in and let them
run some tests and they’d let be back out… I’d turn myself in.”
“How do you know they wouldn’t?”
“I sleep in my car, Dad. I live off money my mom sneaks away
from her husband. I don’t see my friends anymore because I don’t trust them to
not try and hurt me. I have very little, Dad, very, very little. I just need to
at least have your trust the things I do are done with… consideration, that I
am as at peace with my world as I can be.”
My Dad was quiet for a while. “Did you see Saturday Night
Live? They did an Undercover Boss with Kylo Ren.”
“No, Dad,” I said. “I must have missed it.”
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