Dinner with Dad

“Your Dad can’t be here,” Tim told me as I crawled into car. That was two months ago, but I hear it like it caught in my ear. Behind me… I wasn’t sure how many people were chasing me through the streets that night. I was losing consciousness, struggling to hold it together. “You can’t be bothering him every time you need help.”

“You changed your hair,” was the first real thing Tim said to me last night as we sat down to dinner. It was sort of a diner atmosphere, so he yelled it across the table. “Why did you pick that color?” Nothing about it was conversational.

“What’s wrong with the color?” I shot back. He was wearing a polo, probably the same thing he had been wearing all day. Which was fine. But my Dad wore nice pastel blue button-up and shiny black suspenders. Everybody looks dumb in suspenders, but he always gets so excited to wear them. I was just happy to see he had the energy to dress up.

“You look like you’re making a statement,” Tim said.

My Dad reached over and put his hand on his leg, “You know what they say about cigars.” The server returned to the table, placing a glass of white in front of Tim and red in front of my father. He set a murky brown IPA in front of me. “Okay, guys,” Dad said raising his glass. “To my boy, who has overcome the worst few months he’ll ever know.”

I don’t know if Tim begrudgingly met his glass to mine. I don’t always read him well. But he avoided looking across at me, focusing instead on the pictures of food standing in the center of the table.

A bit of wine rushed over Dad’s lip, running down his chin and landing on the cuff of his left sleeve. He didn’t say anything like, “Damn it, why did I wear this nice shirt?” or “Every fucking time” like Martin used to say my mom when little things happened. Dad’s lower lip pushed up, his brow curling down and then he quickly smiled.

“Oh, well,” he said. “I guess worse things have happened.” He laughed comfortably though I felt it was a decidedly awkward thing to say.

“Are you up to being out of the house?” I asked.

“Your dad doesn’t have long, Andersen,” Tim told me as he drove through crowded streets. He didn’t bother to wait for me to buckle up and instead I buried my face into the passenger chair. It sounded like he was bumping into pedestrian trying to get through. In fact, it was the night before I started writing this blog. I was beaten, maybe drugged, and that was the worst moment of all was this: “You need to start saying good-bye to him.”

“Your dad is really responding to his treatment,” Tim said now, his arm across my father.

“Well enough to speak for myself,” Dad said kindly. He always speaks kindly, even when I want him to be mad, when he should lash out. I looked at him last night and wondered if he isn’t the reason I’m so weak, why I run instead of standing up for myself. “How’s work, Andersen?” I was still dressed for it, the worst-looking of the three.

“Don’t call me ‘Andersen’.” Dad looked down and Tim stopped himself from speaking up. I used the moment to take a big drink, close my eyes and think. “Work is good, Dad. Thank you for asking.”

“What do you do at the museum?” Tim asked, adjusting his position in the chair and clearing his throat.

“It’s sort of janitorial, I guess. I do a lot of cleaning. I help them set up new exhibits, store old ones.”

“It sounds like it keeps you out of trouble,” Tim said. Keeps me out of trouble, I wedged my teeth into my lower lip. Tim caught my father’s eye before standing, “I’m going to go to the bathroom before the food gets here.”

The wine stain setting into my father’s sleeve, looked like old blood against the fibers of the shirt. He had never bothered to even wipe it off. “What’s going on?” he asked. My glass was empty and I pushed it to the end of the table. “I want us to have a good night.”

“We just got here. Why aren’t we having a good night?”

“That’s so funny. That’s exactly what I was about to say.”

My volume lowered, but my voice became more forceful, the way you might imagine a librarian might sound chewing out a couple of kids. “Why does he have to be here? Why couldn’t we have just done it the two of us?”

“This is a celebration. He’s happy for you. He wants to be here.” For so long my Dad has been struggling to keep his eyes open, hardly able to stay awake or walk from one end of the hall to the other without leaning against the wall. “You’re my son. He loves you, too.”

“This is all going to be over soon,” Tim told me. I don’t think he looked straight at me that whole ride. He was driving my Dad’s car, the one he had since I was ten. Tim owned it now. Nothing inside of it was familiar. “When your Dad is gone,” he said, “we won’t have to bother with each other anymore.”

At the other side of the restaurant, I saw Tim step out of the bathroom. My dad’s eyes were open. He was holding himself up for the first time in as long as I could remember. And I didn’t feel like smiling, but I did. Dad was alive and trying to make the best present possible.

“Okay, Dad,” was all I needed to say.

Though I admit I was troubled he never bothered to clean that wine off his sleeve. He loved that shirt.

On the plus side: I finally figured out how I can make the rest of Dad’s life better.

Nothing Weighs More than a Check

I stood outside the ATM last night punching the frame as hard as I could.

I stood there punching until security rolled up and I ran off.

Today I can’t close my left hand all the way.

Monday night I had been paid for the first time since I was fired from my old job. They cut me a check and told me to stay away. But Monday, my boss paid me in cash. Normally I spend less than three dollars at Taco Bell and eat my dinner in a dark parking lot somewhere. Monday night I went and I got a real burrito. Sure, I still slept in my car but at least I was full. I had breakfast the next day instead of a few handfuls of the trail mix I keep in the center console.

Tuesday I got paid, I took what was left from the day before and I deposited.

The ATM read I had a zero balance.

There was hardly any gas in the Bronco. I should have gotten gas first.

So I drove about a mile or two from where I work and slept there instead of the nice, private spot I usually hide in. There was barely enough gas to get there, anyway. Afterwards, money in my hand again, I put it all in the tank. And this is a Ford Bronco, mind you. All the money I made today took me to the halfway point in the gas tank.

Throughout the day, during any break I could take, I called my mother’s office to make an appointment with her. Apparently they don’t want me in the building. My mother’s receptionist told me she would meet at the Starbucks in Hillcrest. “Here’s the check,” was the first thing she said to me.

Yes, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, my mother has been helping me financially. “I got job, Mom.”

“Great, I’ll write you a new check for the right amount. How much do you have?”

“I don’t have anything.”

“When do you get paid next?”

“Tomorrow. I get paid every day.”

“So why don’t you have any money?”

“The state says I didn’t file my taxes in 2012. They said they sent me a few letters. Ever since my apartment I’ve had my mail going to your house since it’s so close.”

“I know. Martin checks the mail.”

“Well, what I mean is, nobody told me the tax board was looking for me. So they froze all my assets. Or just the one I have, I guess. They said they needed five hundred dollars from me.”

“But you’re working now." 

"Right, but I’m… I’m working now.” Mom isn’t a rigid person. I’ve seen her at parties, with her friends. With my sister. She’s still the person she used to be. Just not with me. “Do you want to sit for a bit?” I asked.

“It’s late, Andersen. I have to get home.”

“I was hoping I could ask you for a loan in a week or two, help me to get a security deposit somewhere.”

“Why don’t you just room with one of your friends?”

“My friends beat me up. They tried to turn me in.”

“Not all of your friends. Surely there’s someone who will let you stay with them.”

“It wouldn’t a lot that I’m asking, Mom. And I’ll pay you back.”

“Martin has already started to notice the amount I’ve been giving you. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to give you anymore.”

“But it’s your money. You make more money that he does.”

“When you’re married you make decisions together, Andersen. There’s no room for being selfish.”

“I love you, Mom. I’m grateful for everything you do for me. I just… I was hoping to get out of the car soon. It’s been so cold at night. Since I can’t stay with you I just thought it might be nice-“

“Why don’t you stay with your father?”

“I don’t want to watch my father die every day on top of everything else.”

“You need to be grateful for what I’m already doing for you, then.” She zipped her purse and turned away.

“Mom, what did I get out of it?” She stopped. I didn’t expect her to stop. I didn’t even mean to say what I said, it just burst out, a groaning exclamation like when someone knocks the wind out of you. If she hadn’t, I would have never said another word. “What did I get when you went back to school?”

“I was doing that for us.”

“What I get spending my childhood in after school care because you wouldn’t let my Dad take care of me.”

“He abandoned us. And he was sicker then than he is now.”

“What did I waiting for you to stop studying and come watch the movies you rented?”

“If you hadn’t dropped out of college maybe I’d explain it to you. You don’t know what it’s like-“

“You weren’t paying for college. I was. So what do you care?”

“You don’t have a future, Andersen. You don’t have a future and you blame everybody but yourself for that. You have anyone to blame but yourself.”

“It used to be just you and me, remember? Do you remember before Martin? Do you remember waking me up after I’d put myself to bed and saying you were doing it for us?”

“I was doing it for us. I was doing it so we could have a better life.”

“Like what? Like a house with my own room? I had that for four months before you got pregnant and had me sleep in the garage so the baby could have a nursery. So we could travel? We never went anywhere, not like the life you’ve given my sister. Not like the trips the three of you go on without me.”

She slapped me across the face. People looked. No one said anything. “I made sacrifices.”

“You married a man who hated that you had a son. And rather than let me go to live with my father, you just let him make it clear I wasn’t supposed to leave the garage.”

“You led a charmed life,” she told me. I don’t know if my face was read, but the skin burned and my eye watered from where I felt the band of her ring scrape across.

“You said that with a straight face,” I said.

She bit down on her lip, raised her eyebrows and looked down at the ground. “I’m glad you got a job,” she said and turned away.

Normally I try to be a little more detailed about the things that happen.

This was all I could really muster tonight.

I think I’m going to throw up.

Sister

I agreed to meet my sister on her birthday. Since what happened at the movies I have been… more antisocial than usual.

“You remember the last time we were here and there were severed dicks in all the paintings?” She met me for lunch before walking to the Museum of Contemporary Art. “And when you took me back home and Mom asked what we had seen you drew a total blank?” I didn’t bother to check what the exhibit was. The museum was between exhibits and so we sat out in the sculpture garden looking out onto the ocean. “When she asked again, you just said ‘Dicks, Mom. Lots of dicks.’”

I smiled because she was laughing but I didn’t remember the moment as fondly. The exhibition we had seen that day was a collection from a lesbian artist, pieces she had done over decades. There was a period where she had a lot of violent imagery, red pastels of men being tied to be burned, their severed genitals being smashed by crowds of women. These pieces covered a massive wall, so even though they were only a fraction of the exhibit, they stood out.

In context, it was frightening. To me, anyway. My sister just laughed and laughed. And I could have said anything when my mother asked me what we had seen but was burned into my head, the image of being helpless and mutilated. And this was before any of this #EatADick stuff happened. But my mother, for whatever reason, told my step-father verbatim what I had said.

The unpleasant life I had led in that household became even more so.

My sister, whose name I have no plan to share for the sake of her safety, leaned against my shoulder. “You don’t seem like yourself.” She’s seven years younger than I am, smarter than her parents, smarter than me. But there’s no way to explain to her what I’ve been through. “How’s your dad?” she asked me.

I don’t want her to understand me. “Do you worry about my dad?” It’s my biggest fear.

“I worry about you. And I like your dad. Everything that makes you so cool, I see in him. So it’s like protecting an older, older brother.”

If she ever understands me, it will be too late for her.

“I called him a couple weeks ago because I needed a ride. He couldn’t even pick up his phone.”

“You can call me now.”

“It was the middle of the night.”

“I’ll still come and get you,” she said. For a moment I remembered what that night was like, bleeding, my chest swelling, like trying to breathe through a straw. There isn’t a great deal I remember, but I do remember getting in the car and seeing Tim in the driver’s seat.

“I don’t ever want you to come and get me.” I like Tim well enough, as much as I can considering the circumstances. But in that moment I was glad it was him and not someone I love. It was better that it was Tim who drove me out of that nightmare. “Are you looking at colleges yet?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she cut me off. “I want to know what we’re going to do for your birthday.”

“My birthday’s not­-“

“I want to know if you’re going to be there. I want to know if you’re even going to be alive. I see your picture online. People at school talk about you-“

“Who does? Do they know-”

“They don’t say it too me. They don’t know you’re my brother. But I have to listen to people talk about what they will do when they catch you. I listen to people say you deserve to die.”

She was in tears at this point but it wasn’t in me to comfort her. I folded forward, elbows on my knees, face in my hands.

Below the sculpture gardens, the streets were filled with sight-seers, a bit strange considering it was early January, even on a Saturday. The sun had yet to make an appearance and the waves were hitting the rocks with building regularity. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you right now. I can’t… I can’t even help myself.”

“How many other siblings do you have?” she asked me. “I just have you.”

“I know.”

“I’m not asking you to help me with any of this. I’m asking to let me help you.”

“I would just pull you down with me.”

“Then I’m asking you to give me that chance.”

I pulled my face up from my hands as a bird flew overhead. It crossed unseen above the throngs and over the violent surf. It flew into the cloudy sky, beyond the point where I was certain I could see it, farther than I could imagine ever going. “Thank you,” I stood. “I appreciate what you said about my father.”

I left my sister there and wandered on foot into the village. There was an inexpensive shop where I bought a bottle and drank alone in an alleyway until I fell asleep. The sun was setting by the time I woke and I wandered back out to the crashing waves where I sat on the rocks and gave life a lot of consideration.

There was so much I wanted to ask her.

The Man Who Sold the World

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.”