Good for Nothing

by Brandon Graham

  He paces around to warm up his back, finds the prescription bottle, and pops two more pills. He pushes the code on the phone and Kristin speaks into his ear.

  “Just wanted to let you know I have time for dinner tonight if you want to get together and chat about DynaTech.” She leaves her number again.

  Intuitively, the undercurrent of neediness in her tone scares him, and although the dinner with his father is early and likely to be short, there is no way in hell he will meet with her. No good could come of it. Besides, Flip knows she would be appalled by the way he’d let himself go, and he isn’t strong enough to cope with the look on her face.

  Carefully he lowers his haunches onto the bed, rotates gingerly, and lays out flat. He pulls a pillow over his eyes and tries to find a few moments of peace.

  The Least Flattering Reflection

  At the Country Sizzle Buffet, Flip’s father is already seated at a booth in front of a plate heaped with food when Flip finds him. It is only five fifteen. The drive had taken longer than Flip expected and apparently Byron couldn’t wait.

  “Philip?” his dad says. “Is that you? Wow. You got fat.”

  “Byron,” Flip nods as he scuffs his butt across the cracked, padded bench seat. He chooses not to respond to his father’s observation.

  He scrutinizes his father while the old man salts and peppers his gravy-laden pile of meat and starch: chicken fried steak, a fried chicken leg, a pork chop and a T-bone, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and hash browns, also a little side of tapioca pudding.

  Byron is lean, but not in a healthy way. His flesh is gray, his stubble white, and his head bald and peppered with liver spots. His cheeks are slack, hollow, and seem to be hanging off his jawbone. His eyes have dark bags, and the whites are falling into their sockets. His nose is long and drips from his face like a skin stalactite. He has a crust at the corners of his mouth, a silver tooth in the front of his head, and his neck is crinkled with crisscrossed folds and wrinkles like a paper bag that’s been bunched up and smoothed back out. The sight of his father makes Flip sick, and he wants to leave immediately.

  “You know who started calling you Flip?”

  “Yes,” Flip wants to cut the old anecdote off at the knees.

  “When you were just big enough to walk, you would run up to me and say ‘flip flip flip.’ You would hold your little arms up and wiggle your wet fingers till I held your hands so you could walk your feet right up my body. Then you’d flip over and land right back on your feet. You would do it for an hour if I would stand there.”

  “Then you started calling me Flip,” Flip finished. “So even though Mom named me Philip, after her father, you called me Flip, and it stuck. Which always pissed her off a little, which I suspect is why you like to mention it so often.”

  “I guess you heard it before. You gonna get yourself some food? You’re paying. Might as well eat.” Byron shakes out a bunch of sugar packs, rips the tops off, and dumps a fistful into his glass of tea. The granules collect on the ice cubes until he goes at it with a butter knife, then they burst into an angry cloud and mostly settle to the bottom. Byron takes a swig.

  “Ah,” he says. “Sweet tea.” He stirs it a bit more. “I said, are you gonna get food or not?” He points at Flip with the damp butter knife when he says you.

  “I ate,” Flip lies. He’d slept through the alarm; the volume was too low in relation to how exhausted he was. So he’d rushed out without a shower or a watch, much less any kind of food in his gut.

  “Suit yourself, Mr. Moneybags.” Having reminded Flip several times who is responsible for the bill, Byron is ready to get down to business. He tucks a paper napkin in the neck of his pocket-T and picks up a utensil in each fist. He saws off a piece of breaded meat, swipes it through some gravy and mashed potatoes, and chews with his mouth open. The sound is wet and violent and he grunts and breathes through his mouth as he goes. After a while he reaches deep into his maw and pulls out some gruesome, mangled bit.

  “Gristle,” he explains. Then he picks up the chicken leg and crunches through the glistening skin.

  “Dad,” Flip says.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Go the hell ahead, I said.”

  Flip shoves the table away from his middle a little. Byron’s tea sloshes a bit and Byron glares at Flip. “Goddamn it if you haven’t changed a bit since you were a whiny little baby.” Flip knows generally what’s coming. He’d heard it before.

  “When you were born you was a little runt. You needed your mommy all the time. No one else would do. You were jaundiced and had the colic. You didn’t sleep at night, and you wouldn’t wake up during the day. Plus, you had a weak stomach, so you shit yourself about every ten minutes, and when your momma went to change ya, you’d shit and piss all over her if she didn’t move out the way.

  “When you weren’t crappin’ you were spittin’ up curdled milk and strained vegetables. You ate so many carrots you turned orange, like one of them little singing midgets from that candy movie. The point I’m making is you were a mess. And looks like you haven’t changed so much after all.” Byron takes a big pull of tea and some runs down his chin. “Except you got fat.”

  “I was a baby. That is how babies are. My two kids had some of the same issues. Did you know I have two children? They both had the same kinds of issues. They grew out of it. I grew out of it too. Oh wait. You wouldn’t know that, would you, because you weren’t around the house much. Were you?”

  “No. I suppose not,” he admits. “Is that why you brought me here? Try and make me feel like a bad father? Mission accomplished. I was a shitty father. Better than my old man. But only because I paid my child support and didn’t hit anyone.” Flip lets the comment pass. But he knows the child support had started out spotty, and eventually stopped altogether.

  Byron gnaws the residual scraps of flesh from the chicken’s leg bone and lets the remains of his carnage fall on the table. Then he goes back in for more breaded meat and gravy.

  “Well. That isn’t what I want to talk about. I wanted you to know that I moved out of the house for a little while.”

  “Ho-ho,” Byron says triumphantly, gravy-tinted spittle spraying across the table.

  “I lost my job at the beginning of the year, money is tight, and Lynn and I are fighting, so we’re taking some time. That’s all.”

  Byron grins like a shit-eating opossum. “Not as easy as you thought, huh? Being married? You remember any of the bullshit you said to me over the years about how you would be a real man, not like me? How you weren’t like me? You wouldn’t make the same mistakes? You remember that? Well, the chickens have come home to roost is what I would say.”

  “Dad. I know I said some harsh things. I was young and pissed about not having you around, angry how you treated Mom and me. I was trying to let you know I was hurt, standing up to you out of loyalty to Mom. Besides, this isn’t the same.”

  “You said you were better off without me and that leaving was the best thing I ever did for you. That’s what you said.” He takes the last bite of chicken fried steak on his fork and smears it with the last of the potatoes before stuffing the oversized bite right in his face. He works his jaws in an exaggerated way, like a horse chomping a whole apple. But he continues to glare right at Flip.

  “Yes. I said those things. And I’m not sure they were wrong to say. I still feel that way about it. Mostly.”

  Byron swallows hard and follows it with sweet tea. “Well. You are still full of shit and think you’re better than me. But at least you’re man enough to stick by what you think. Right to my face even. So that’s something. Maybe your balls finally dropped.” He picks up the pork chop with both hands and starts chewing the meat away from the bone.

  “I asked you here, though, to tell you something else, Byron.”

  “Why you always call me Byron? Why don’t you call me Dad? You never called your mother Belinda. Did ya? No. You didn’t. You called
her Mom.”

  “Byron. She raised me. You are practically a stranger to me, more bad memory than reality.”

  “Well at least you have a good reason. Not just to be an asshole to me then?”

  “Not today, Byron. Maybe in the past,” Flip admitted. “But not today.”

  “Go ahead then. What did you bring me here for? What do you have to tell me? ’Cause if you want money, I don’t got any.” He drops the half-eaten pork chop back on the plate, grabs another paper napkin from a chrome dispenser, and scrubs it on his face, leaving bits of napkin crumbs stuck to his cheeks and chin whiskers.

  “To be perfectly clear, I’ve never needed money worse in my life than I need it right now. But I would never ask you for help. Never.” Flip’s voice is getting loud and shaky. Several tables of elderly diners look his way. One man twiddles with a hearing aid; if it’s to turn it up to eavesdrop or to turn it down, Flip doesn’t know. “Shit. This is pointless. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He starts to slip out of the booth, but the tops of his thighs press against the underside of the table, impeding an abrupt exit.

  “Cool your jets,” Byron says. He puts out his hands in a slow-down gesture. “You gotta pay for this. Besides. Least I can do is trade you a little of my attention for some free grub. So you have my attention. At least until I finish my tapioca puddin’.”

  Flip settles. After a few moments he says, “My court-appointed counselor thinks some of my recent actions might be related to how I feel about you. I am supposed to talk to someone. Tell them what I did.”

  Byron takes all this in. By the look of his face it’s clear he wants to say something, take another verbal jab, but he stops himself and only nods before shoveling some macaroni and cheese onto his fork. Flip appreciates his restraint. It’s very unlike the Byron Flip remembers. Maybe people do change. Even mean old bastards.

  “So,” Flip continues. “I tried to kill myself. That is how I ended up being forced to see a counselor.”

  Byron’s mouth stops mid-chew.

  “I tried to hang myself and Lynn found me.” Flip can’t look at his father.

  Byron doesn’t speak. Instead he finishes his pork chop. Then he goes at the T-bone the same way, kind of like he’s eating ribs. When he’s done he knocks out the last of the mac and cheese. He uses the hash browns to sop up the remaining gravy.

  In the long silence, Flip watches his father and remembers this from his childhood: Byron always wiped his plate completely clean with something. When Byron’s plate looks as if it hasn’t been used, he pushes it aside.

  He takes the napkin from his throat, snorts, clears his throat, and hacks something into his mouth. He rolls it around on his tongue, then spits it into the napkin. He balls all his soiled napkins on the plate.

  “Let me tell you about what changed my perspective on marriage,” he says to his son. “Just hear me out. I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. But what I’m about to say needs to be said.” He pauses to give Flip time to object. Flip doesn’t.

  “When your momma was pregnant, she told me flat out that she was not at all interested in me. What she was interested in was making a baby boy, and since I’d played my part she was done with me, I could just go. I thought it was the hormones talking ’cause women can get a little crazy during a pregnancy. And I would be damned if I was going to leave my wife while she was carrying my baby, so I stuck around. But after you were born, she still didn’t want me. And neither did you, really. You were a miserable momma’s boy. I loved you like I never loved nobody else my whole life. But I felt like I was an intruder in the relationship you and your momma had. So, eventually I went.”

  He peels the plastic wrap off his tapioca and starts eating it. As he scrapes the glass dish clean, he says, “I got the skin cancer real bad. I’m not going to be around much longer. All my money will be eaten up by the bills. If I had some extra, I would help you out.”

  Flip doesn’t know how to respond. Thinks Byron is just jerking his chain. So he just stares.

  “You remember that time I taught you to swim?” Byron asks.

  “I remember you threw me off the end of a dock and watched me struggle.”

  “It’s true. But, once you quit fighting it so hard, once you relaxed, you just floated right to the top and splashed right back to the dock. There’s a lesson in that. I bet you still know how to swim, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Byron,” Flip admits. “I guess I do.”

  “That’s good.”

  Byron pushes out of the booth. “Thanks for dinner,” he says as if he means it, and then adds, “Wish we’d done it years ago. You know how to get a hold of me if you want.” Then he turns and leaves Flip.

  In the moment, it’s easiest for Flip to simply dismiss everything his father has said as bullshit, because if what he said about Flip’s mother were true it changes the emotional calculus his whole life is built on. And if his father really does have skin cancer, well it means Flip will have no family left except Lynn and the kids. Which shouldn’t matter, but it does.

  Flip takes the bill and scoots himself out. He reaches in his pocket, comes out with three crumpled dollars and his debit card. He takes the three ones, creases them, and leaves them for the busboy, then he heads to the bathroom.

  In the mirror he sees his father: years younger, much heavier, with plenty of hair and lighter eyes. But still, the same face. He tried so hard over the years to be more, better than Byron. But he’s not really so different after all. Despite everything, he’s still his father’s son.

  Flip walks out the front door and drives away.

  Again, the orange glow from the idiot light radiates the message that his car is low on gas and the bell repeats the reminder. Flip knows he should swing by a gas station on the way home, just to be safe. But he willfully ignores good sense. I already bought the gas can, he reasons. So all it’ll cost me is time if I run out of gas again. So fuck it.

  He swings by Ed’s Drive Thru Liquors.

  At the window he says, “I want Captain and a six-pack of Coke.”

  “Do you want Original Spiced, Silver, or Private Stock?” the woman asks. Her voice is rough from smoking and drinking. Her face is leathery and desiccated from too much sun, her age impossible to guess.

  “Spiced. A big one.”

  “Sorry, sir,” the woman tells him. “Sunday sales are limited to beer, wine, cigarettes, and other non-alcoholic beverage choices.” She reaches her hand out the window and points to a sign that has the same information printed on it. Her skin is slack and brown on her bony hands, but her nails are glossy, two-tone, white over hot pink with tiny plastic jewels.

  “Are you shittin’ me?” he asks.

  “No, sir. I shit you not,” she replies.

  “Why did you ask the kind of booze I want then?”

  “Force of habit,” she rasps.

  “Forget it,” he says with real disgust and tries to peel out of the lot.

  He parks back at the Lakeside and turns off the engine. In the dark of the car he sits with the heat leaching out of the engine block; it ticks like a time bomb as it cools.

  He sits alone a long time, waiting for something. His breathing slowly settles into an easier rhythm, and he can’t find a good reason not to go to his room. He intentionally leaves the shattered driver’s side window down when he exits the car.

  He wants to see if Dean has any liquor he can have to drink alone. But Dean’s car is gone. He notices that the card he left under the new candle is missing. He drops his keys twice before managing to unlock his door. He turns off all the lights and spreads himself across the bed.

  He’s hungry. He thinks about the Chinese food in the mini-fridge. He tries to recall how many days it’s been sitting. Two? Three? He guesses it’s still good, but he doesn’t get out of bed.

  Bullshit for Breakfast

  He sleeps until eight forty-five and wakes according to his own internal rhythms, without the startling jolt of the alarm clock. He actuall
y feels rested. Maybe for the first time in months he got enough sleep and doesn’t wake irritated by his life.

  His joints are stiff, so he takes some time to stretch. He does pushups and sit-ups. He cleans his body, puts his dirty clothes back on, and goes out for a walk.

  “Thanks for the card,” Dean says from over a cup of press-pot coffee.

  “Thank you again for the haircut and shave,” he replies. He rubs his smooth face guiltily.

  “It looks good like that,” Dean says. “You want to sit and have a cup of coffee?” Dean delicately touches the plunger on his cafetière.

  “No thanks. I’m going to get a little air. Then I’ve got a call to make. Can I take a rain check?”

  “Suit yourself,” Dean says. He shakes a skinny brown cigarette from a pack and rests it in the corner of his mouth. “Thanks for the candle too,” he says, the cigarette bobbing. He picks up the tiki candle and holds the flame to his cigarette. “I am happy to have you as a neighbor,” he adds. “For your sake, though, I hope your stay is short.”

  “It will be,” he replies, giving Dean a friendly wave as he goes.

  Flip expels the sharp smell of smoke from his nose as he strides out toward the road. His feet dodge puddles that have pooled in potholes and low spots during the apparent storm the night before.

  He doesn’t have a destination, but ends up at the Drum Roaster. The toes of his shoes have soaked through and his feet are cold and damp. He walks in the door and stands in line behind two men in business suits, a woman in Dora the Explorer nurse’s scrubs, and a guy dressed in white painter’s pants and a check flannel shirt.

  When he makes it to the counter, a pleasant thirty-year-old woman he doesn’t know takes his order.

  “Small coffee. Black.”

  “Will that be all?”

  “Yes, please.”