One Last Thing Before I Go

by Jonathan Tropper

  “Shit,” Jack says. “Pregnant? You’d think by now these kids would be smarter than that.”

  “Says the proud father of Emilio Jesus Baker.”

  “Fuck you, Oliver. She had an IUD.”

  “I guess your sperm was too much for it. Ate through it like acid. Good thing she wasn’t giving you head.”

  “If only,” Jack grumbles.

  Oliver turns back to Silver. “Will she get an abortion?”

  “I think so,” he says. There’s no reason to think her plans have changed at all, and yet, when he says it, he feels a stab of uncertainty, and a vague sadness that has yet to take shape.

  When Casey was three, she’d fall asleep holding on to Silver’s arm like a doll. He’d lie next to her in her bed, both of her little arms wrapped around his forearm, her fingers playing with the small hairs on his wrists, and he would listen to her breathing slow down as her eyes closed. He’d stay there long after she’d fallen asleep, unwilling to untangle his arm from hers, knowing, even then, that the time was fast approaching when she’d be too big to wrap herself around him like that, when she wouldn’t even remember that she had. And then, eventually, he would detach himself and head down the hall to his and Denise’s bedroom, where Denise would already be in bed, reading a book, wearing the plastic, black-rimmed glasses that made her look like the sexy secretary in a porno. And she’d pull back the blankets for him to join her, and sometimes she was naked, and sometimes she wasn’t, and either way, he never appreciated the luxury, the sheer bliss of moving from one warm bed to another like that.

  * * *

  Jack and Oliver are staring at him.

  “Did I just say all that out loud?” Silver.

  “Your inner monologue seems to have broken free.” Oliver.

  “You were having a moment. A soliloquy.” Jack.

  “Shit.”

  “You were very eloquent.” Oliver.

  “And by eloquent, he means depressing as shit.” Jack.

  Dan Harcourt has just shown up, limping in his space-age knee brace. He played ball in college and refuses to give up the ghost, still going to the park to play in pickup games with younger guys who tolerate his forty-six-year-old ass because he buys all the drinks. One day soon he’s going to pull up for a shot (he stopped driving to the hoop more than a decade ago) and his tattered knee will finally pull free from that last worn ligament holding it in place, and he will hit the pavement hard and wish he’d made the switch to golf years ago.

  And the first batch of college girls have just arrived, flitting about their chairs with weightless grace, young enough to be their daughters and old enough to make them feel even more pathetic than they already do.

  “I feel like crying,” Silver says.

  “Please don’t,” Jack says. “I’m begging you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Denise and Casey live in North Point, a pleasant if somewhat cookie-cutter neighborhood on the north side, with curving streets and no sidewalks to speak of, in a small, redbrick Georgian with a beard of ivy crawling up the front walls that, like beards often do, makes the house look like it takes itself too seriously.

  Rich opens the front door, looking none too pleased with him. He still owns a smaller house just outside Elmsbrook, closer to the hospital, but he moved in with Denise and Casey about two years ago, taking over the payments, a move that demonstrated a level of commitment and optimism that Silver will never understand.

  “Silver,” Rich says. People, once they’ve known Silver for a while, tend to pronounce his name with a certain weary inflection. It’s not so much a function of the specific syllables of the name but more a tone, really. Until now, he doesn’t recall Rich ever having attained this level of familiarity, but it’s clear now that he has. Silver feels a sense of loss. Rich was the last person in this house who liked him.

  “Hey, Rich.”

  “You don’t just walk out of a hospital.”

  “Mitigating circumstances.”

  “You’re going to die.”

  “Not yet.”

  Rich shakes his head at him, disapproving of his cavalier dismissal of medical science. If he thought about it, he’d no doubt come to the conclusion that Silver’s death would somewhat enhance his own quality of life, but after twenty years or so of saving lives, Rich doesn’t think that way.

  He is still standing in the doorway blocking the entrance, and Silver is acutely aware of their positions, on the porch, in the family, in the universe.

  “Can I see her?”

  “Which one?”

  “Both.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Either.”

  “Now is not the best time.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Rich.”

  “I know. But they’re . . . in the middle of it right now. Why don’t I have Casey call you later.”

  “I might be dead later.”

  Rich opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Silver has stumped him. Doctors can be slow like that, he finds.

  Rich looks tired, with a few more gray hairs than he had yesterday. He is supposed to be getting married in a few weeks. He is supposed to be dealing with florists and caterers and party planners or, more likely, making the right supportive noises as Denise handles the logistics. Instead, he’s dealing with a pregnant future stepdaughter, a hysterical fiancée, and now his fiancée’s somewhat unbalanced ex-husband. Silver almost feels bad for him. But then he remembers that it’s his ex-wife Rich is marrying, and his daughter he’s safeguarding from him, and he can feel the rage start to build inside of him.

  “Rich,” he says.

  “Yes, Silver.”

  “You’re a good guy. You’re sleeping with the only woman I’ve ever loved, and that makes things uncomfortable between us, because sometimes when I’m talking to you, I picture you fucking her, and I picture her making the sounds she used to make when I fucked her, and then I picture myself fucking her, and I get jealous and upset and I hope like hell that you’ve got a small dick, and that when she’s underneath you, she has to be thinking of me. I mean, you can’t have sex with someone for that many years and not, in some way, just associate them with sex in general, you know what I mean?”

  He’s gotten off point here. His brain is draining into his mouth at an alarming rate. And Rich, he looks like he’d like to punch Silver in the face, but he can’t, because, like Silver, his hands are his livelihood.

  “You need to shut up now, Silver.”

  “My point is this whole delicate dynamic we’ve been navigating like adults since you started dating Denise, it all falls apart if you start preventing me from seeing my daughter.” Silver looks him straight in the eye, to underscore the seriousness of what he’s just said. “The dynamic gets fucked.”

  “As I said, now is not a good time.”

  Be a better father. Be a better man. A better man, Silver thinks, would come back tomorrow.

  Silver looks up at the house. “Casey!” he shouts.

  “She can’t hear you.”

  “Casey!”

  “Silver, don’t make me call the cops.”

  Be a better man.

  Silver turns to say something to Rich when his legs suddenly buckle, and he falls against the railing. “Christ,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse.

  “What is it?” Rich says. He steps out onto the porch, alarmed, and right at that instant Silver ducks around him and slides into the house. He catches a glimpse of Rich’s expression just before he slams the door and locks it, and he swears to God that Rich actually looks hurt.

  It takes a moment for him to get his bearings. Like all houses that have been professionally decorated, Denise’s looks cluttered, unlived-in, and, when you take in the throw pillows on the couch, the art over the fireplace, and the tasseled curtain valances, jus
t this side of ridiculous. He leans against the front door as Rich bangs away on it, shouting his name. He is once again acutely aware of their respective positions. Yesterday he was hooked up to a heart monitor while Rich diagnosed his aneurysm. Today, he’s locked him out of his own house. The universe can be flexible like that.

  “Silver!” Rich shouts. “Open this goddamn door!”

  “Now’s not a good time,” Silver says, heading for the stairs.

  The dynamic is most definitely fucked.

  CHAPTER 20

  He figures he has roughly two minutes before Rich comes in through the garage, or a back door, so he’s moving pretty quickly when he bursts into Denise’s bedroom, which scares the shit out her.

  “Silver! What the hell?” She jumps off of her bed instinctively. Casey, on the window seat across the room, jumps up as well.

  “Dad?” she says. His daughter’s voice, calling him Dad, his adrenalized assault on the house, it all packs an emotional punch he isn’t prepared for, and suddenly he’s crying.

  “Hi,” he manages to get out, after a stifled sob.

  “Where’s Rich?” Denise says.

  “He’s outside.” He turns around and locks the bedroom door. Denise’s eyes grow wide.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I just . . . I just need to catch my breath for a second,” Silver says, leaning against the wall. Casey, her eyes red from crying, has moved across the room and is now standing in front of him. “Hi, baby,” he says, and cries a little bit more.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Casey says.

  “Nothing. I don’t know.” He can smell Denise’s moisturizer. In all these years, she hasn’t changed it. He used to rub it onto her arms and legs after she showered, her wet hair, longer then, dripping onto her naked shoulders, and he would think to himself, I will love this woman forever.

  He looks down. There are patterns in the carpet. You don’t see them right away because it’s gray on gray, but they’re there—little floral shapes repeating until they make no sense. She picked this carpeting out herself, furnished this room, this house, by herself, because she was alone. Because he’d made her that way.

  “You’re crying,” Casey says.

  “So are you,” he says.

  They look at him, these two women, his lost family, at an utter loss to understand him. He knows how they feel. “So,” he says. “What did I miss?”

  Casey laughs. Denise doesn’t. “Why are you here?”

  “My daughter is pregnant.”

  “And suddenly you’re Father of the Year.”

  “I’m just trying to be her father right now.”

  “She has enough to deal with as it is.”

  He turns to Casey. “You came to me. I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

  “Thanks, Silver.”

  She doesn’t call him Dad. He guesses that that was a temporary thing. Still, it was something, right? Below them, the room shakes lightly as the motorized garage door opens. He’s running out of time.

  “Listen,” he says. “This, right here, the three of us, we’re a family. We’re a screwed-up family, sure, and that’s my fault, but still. There was a time when the entire universe was outside the front door, and it was just the three of us, in our house, happy. And we’re still those people. That’s not gone.” He turns to Denise and he can see that she’s crying now. He’s made contact. “Please, Denise. I know you haven’t forgiven me. But the thing is, I still love you, I still can feel us, how we were then. Let me help my daughter.”

  He can hear Rich’s footsteps pounding up the stairs, and then his body hitting the door. “Denise!” Rich shouts. His body hits the door again. Silver can hear wood splintering.

  Denise looks at him for a long moment. He hasn’t been nearly as coherent as he needed to be. He doesn’t know exactly what he was hoping to accomplish coming here, but even though he can no longer recall most of what he’s said, he’s pretty sure he didn’t accomplish it.

  “It’s OK,” Denise says. “I’m just going to let him in.”

  As she moves past him to the door, he reaches out for her arm. She stops, and for one electric moment, he can feel her fingers come up and wrap themselves around his forearm, her nails digging into his flesh. He feels her connected to him, and once again, the universe seems to be shifting beneath his feet. But this all happens in a fraction of a second, and before it can settle into reality, before it can actually take on any weight, Rich, who is on the other side of the door and thus has no idea of the nature of things on this side, hits the door with his shoulder, hard enough to break the latch. And the door flies open with violent force, connecting solidly with the face of his bride, who flies back across the room, going down hard when the corner of the bed takes her out at the knees.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER 21

  Denise rides, pumping away fiercely as she hits the first incline. Lake Terrace Boulevard is a long, winding road with three major inclines, which makes it a favorite among the local cyclists, all gluttons for the punishing hills. Denise, in black spandex shorts and a yellow top, crests the first hill without the usual sense of adrenalized accomplishment to propel her. The sweat, originating beneath her helmet, is trickling down her forehead, stinging her in the thick scab that has formed at the corner of her eye.

  It was the corner of the door that hit her, the effect both severely bruising as well as lacerating, and now she looks like the battered wife in a television movie. It’s been three days since Silver stormed the house—that’s how she thinks of it, in those exact words—and despite an aggressive regimen of prescription anti-inflammatories, the swelling is only now beginning to recede, the deep purple bruising starting to yellow at the edges.

  As she hits the second incline, she hears “On your left” as another cyclist passes her. He’s forty-five or so, riding a carbon fiber Pinarello, for God’s sake, and wearing one of those absurdly colorful racing jerseys like he’s training for the Tour de France instead of getting in a morning ride before putting on his jacket and tie and heading off to an office somewhere. The Pinarellos start at $5,000, like you need a bike of that caliber to ride Lake Terrace Boulevard. Men and their hardware. Rich is the same way about golf, always looking for the latest equipment. And she remembers teasing Silver about his constantly evolving drum kit. He couldn’t walk into a music store without finding something to buy. She wonders about the nature of the hole they’re trying to fill with all of this gear.

  She is suddenly filled with a fury that makes her bowels clench. Rising off her seat, she leans into her pedaling, unwilling to let this brightly colored asshole beat her. She has had it with men, with their gear and their holes, their relentless cocks, and the messes they make.

  The cyclist, sensing her approach, takes a look over his colorful shoulder and Denise sees his own ass rise from his seat. It’s on. She shifts down one gear and speeds up her pedaling. Ahead of her, she hears the grind and click of his $5,000 gears, and she knows he’s done the same. He’s not about to let a woman pass him.

  Fuck you, she thinks at him. Fuck your middle-aged, weekend warrior, veiny-calved, overcompensating, overspending ass.

  She’s barely spoken to Rich since the accident. He’s been staying back at his house near the hospital, at her request. Denise told him she needed some one-on-one time with Casey, but she could see in his eyes that he suspected something more. She knows she’s being irrational, that it was an accident, as much Silver’s fault as anyone’s, but something happened in that room, something she hasn’t quite been able to wrap her mind around. In that instant just before Rich had broken through, she’d been looking at Silver, and she’d seen something in his expression—a passion and determination she hadn’t seen in years. The dull, defeated expression that had become his default in recent years disappeared, and she’d seen, well, her Silver. For
that one instant, she had felt her family around her, Silver and Casey, and something in her, some long-dormant protective instinct, had sparked to life. And it had thrown her, badly. So much so that when Rich burst into the room, she felt like he—and not Silver—was the intruder. And then the door hit her in the face.

  They have reached the second crest. There’s now a small straightaway, the briefest stretch of downhill, before the road curves sharply into the third and final incline. She is inches from his rear wheel. She bends over her handlebars and comes up one gear. “On your left!” she shouts as she starts to pass him. But the guy doesn’t yield. He stays where he is so that they are neck and neck, their legs pumping just inches apart from each other. The bike lane is narrow up here, and it’s nothing short of reckless to be riding abreast like this. She should let it go, give him his senseless victory, but something in her won’t yield. She’s on the left, closer to the passing cars, and as she leans in, she can feel their elbows tap lightly. She turns to look at him, sees the sweat sliding off his pointed chin, the long muscles of his forearm grinding as he presses forward. For the briefest moment they make eye contact. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

  She is filled with a fury she doesn’t understand. Ahead of them, a large fallen bough lies across the bike lane. She’ll pass it with no problem, but it’s directly in his path. He will have to fall back to get behind her. Instead, he speeds up and tries to veer into her space. Are you kidding me? she thinks. She speeds up, forcing him back. The bough is a thick one, with numerous smaller branches that still have their leaves. He will not be able to ride over it, would be an idiot to even try.