Dispensations

by Randolph Thomas

  “You going somewhere?” I say. “Looks like you’re waiting for a bus.”

  He opens one eye, then the other, and he looks me over. He shuts his eyes again.

  “You walked a long way,” I say. “Where were you going anyway?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “We better go home,” I say. “Come on, I’ll help you to the car.”

  “Can we wait a minute?” he says. “I’m tired.”

  His head is leaning forward uncomfortably, and his eyes are closed. I tell him to let me know when he’s ready. He nods, and I sit down beside him on the bench. I think he’s gone to sleep, but then he says, “I don’t want your mother to worry, to get mad. Don’t tell her I went for walk, okay? I was going to come back. I just needed to be by myself a minute. Everybody does.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  He turns and squints at me.

  “I got people to see,” he says. “Not like you. I’ve got deadlines.”

  I don’t want to be lectured by him, even if he’s half joking, so before he can go any further, I touch his arm, a gesture that surprises us both.

  “We’ve got a job to do, don’t we?” I say. “We’ve got to get home before Mom does. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” he says, and he leans forward to push himself up.

  Melanie agrees to meet me at the Tavern. She’s a little stiff at first. We share a pitcher and gradually she starts to open up. She tells me she’s recently broken up with some guy she met in college, and since then she’s quit college and moved in with her parents. She’s saving money, although she’s not sure what she’s saving it for. I tell her about some of the places I’ve been: Atlanta, the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans. She wants to know how I’ve gotten by, and I tell her some of the truth, that most of the jobs were retail like hers. Management, in some cases, once at a hotel. I leave out how poor and lonely I was, how most often I squatted, how most of the people I knew were more lost than I was. I say I learned something I’ve always suspected, that it’s a mistake to trust people too much, and Melanie nods and says, “No shit.”

  To change the subject, I tell her I even tried my luck at school. I took a course in film and when I flunked out, moved to California with the idea in the back of my mind—but not too seriously—that I’d get into movies, and I wound up working at a store that sold movie memorabilia. That’s where I was when my mother called with the news about my father. It wasn’t much of a job, I tell her, easy enough to part with.

  We run out of catching up, so I start telling her what it’s like at home, about my father and how he tried to get away. She knows my parents and heard all about them when we were dating in high school, and she knows that they could never see me as a grown-up person, that their goal was always that I should be a polite, responsible young man who did whatever was expected of him.

  “Maybe your dad’s got a girlfriend,” she says. “You ever think of that?”

  I say the thought has occurred to me before. He’s had every opportunity to cheat, but he’s too straight-laced and too dependent on my mother.

  “Did you ever think of taking over his business? Not permanently, I mean. I know you don’t want to stay around.”

  “He’d never go for it,” I say. “He doesn’t trust me.”

  “But would you consider it?”

  I shake my head, and she says she figures his business is doomed. I say it wasn’t much to begin with. This is the most comfortable I’ve been in a while and when we run out of things to say, we just look at each other. At the end of the night, after I walk her to the car, she hugs me. I go to kiss her, but she’s not ready for that. She pulls away, gets into her car. We say goodnight, and I walk back to my father’s car.

  A week passes and my father improves some at getting around and at talking. He seems to understand more, but something’s happening to me. I feel like I’ve caught the stroke from him, like I’m moving in a fog through long gray days. I lose lots of sleep, spend too much time watching TV, and a couple of times my father catches me mumbling to myself and looks at me like he thinks all the dope I’ve smoked has finally caught up with me.

  Every few days my mother consults with Dr. Cupp over the phone. He reminds her, then she reminds me, that my father needs exercise, but nothing excessive. We all need to be patient. One day after lunch I suggest we get some fresh air at the park on Wasena Drive, and my father’s face brightens. He dresses in a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, which is very casual for him. He’s dressing himself a little better, buttoning his shirt right, but his hair is still wild looking even though he spends a long time combing it before the mirror.

  The temperature is in the mid-sixties. He limps along beside me at the park. We come to the Roanoke River, where people fish and rent paddleboats. I pick up a rock and skip it across the water.

  “You don’t do it right,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

  He searches around until he finds a flat, smooth rock. He rubs it between his fingers like he’s just found a ruby.

  “You getting tired of us?” he says.

  I shrug and say, “I’m okay.”

  “I’ll bet,” he says. “Where were you? California, wasn’t it?”

  I nod. He looks like he’s pondering something as serious as both our fates and says, “You need to get back there.”

  I thank him for his concern, but add that I can decide things for myself.

  “The sooner I go back to work, the sooner you go back.”

  He slings his rock at the water’s surface, where it plops and sinks.

  “There goes fifty years practice,” he says.

  “You’ll learn to do it again.”

  He raises his index finger and says, in a forced sincere way that almost makes me laugh, “And you’ll get back to California.”

  I don’t say anything. I remember something he used to tell me about the art of being a salesman, that the goal is the sale, period. As long as you kept the other person listening, even if you’re making a fool of yourself, you’ve still got a chance at making the sale.

  “You don’t want me to drive,” he says. “But why can’t you drive me around?”

  “The doctor doesn’t want you getting stressed out,” I say.

  “I can talk to people without getting stressed. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

  “The doctor has to say it’s okay.”

  “You live by too many rules. You’re the one that needs to loosen up.”

  I’m backing away from him. He’s following, his good hand outstretched, imploring me.

  “The doctor doesn’t know everything.”

  “I can’t argue with you. It’s not for me to decide.”

  I meet Melanie at the Tavern, our hideout as she likes to call it. I tell her about the way my father acted. I describe in detail the scene at the park, imitate his gestures and facial expressions.

  “He looks like a cartoon salesman,” I say. “There’s no way he could sell anything.”

  Melanie shakes her head. “It’s sweet, though.”

  “Sweet? What’s sweet about it?”

  “The way he wants you to help him. You two are a team.”

  I shake my head, and she laughs.

  “We’re not any team. I’m here because he had a stroke. As soon as he’s able to take care of himself, I’m gone.”

  “Oh, right. So why are you helping your parents, if you hate them so much?”

  “I don’t hate them, exactly. I can’t be around them long. I owe them something, though.”

  “Where do you think you’ll go, then? When you cut out?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Melanie looks down at the table, at the pitcher between us, and I’m expecting a rebuke, expecting her to say I’m just as stubborn as my dad.

  “You want to leave so bad, you should help him,” she says. “What harm would it do if you drove him around?”

  “The doctor says he shouldn’t,” I say.

  She shrugs.
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  “You could keep an eye on him. If it gets to be too much, you bring him home.”

  I’m shaking my head. “So, now you want me to leave?” I say.

  “It’s what you want. You said so. I can’t change you, so why fight it?”

  I look at Melanie a long minute. She raises her eyebrows at me.

  “What kind of life do you expect?” she says. “You think you can just dip into people’s lives a little bit?”

  She’s quiet another long minute.

  “Why did you come after me anyway?”

  She looks like she might start crying. I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. I just look at her. She starts kicking her feet against the base of the booth, clunk, clunk, clunk. I’m nervous too.

  “Let’s just drop it,” she says. “I know better, and it’s none of my business whether you help your dad or not.”

  After we finish our pitcher, I walk Melanie to her car and she kisses my cheek.

  “I didn’t mean to spoil the night,” she says. “Sometimes I have to say something.”

  “Nothing’s spoiled,” I say. “You had to say it, so you said it.”

  “As long as nothing’s broken,” she says, but I’m wondering if she’s thinking, so what if it’s broken? Let it break.

  I say I’ll call her tomorrow. She kisses me on the mouth this time, gently, and says she really enjoys seeing me, she’s glad I came back, and she wishes I’d stay a while. I’m wishing it too. I keep my mouth shut, though, because I’m pretty sure the feeling will pass.

  It does. When I get home, I have to listen to my mother haranguing me about drinking. I’m twenty-four years old, and I don’t have a hope of a decent job. I’m not even interested in one. All I do is drink beer with my high school girlfriend, who’s about as ambitious as I am. I’m a drifter, an old fashioned-bum.

  Once again I’m awake most of the night, staring at the shadowy titles of the mystery books my mother spends her evenings reading. I wonder why my parents are even together, and why I agreed to come back here rather than making a clean break with them.

  I can remember what the room looked like when it was really my room, what my parents were like when I was very young. I’m wondering if there has ever been a time when they were different, when I was different. But they were always the same, as long as I can remember. I was the same too, waiting for something to change.

  In the morning, after my mother leaves, I’m sitting at the breakfast table, still stewing in my fog. I’m watching my father eat and play with his watch, repeating to myself things Melanie and I’ve said, forgetting half the time who said what.

  “Suppose I took you into the city,” I say aloud. It’s feels like I’m talking to myself, but I’m talking to him. “You promise to take it easy?”

  After breakfast, he directs me to carry some of the boxes back out to the car. Before we leave, he stands in front of the bathroom mirror, stares at himself, and runs his comb through his hair. His lips move, reciting the words he plans to say when we get where we’re going. By ten-thirty we’re settled into the car, driving across Roanoke, headed to the Allegheny Motel. All along, my father has catered to the smaller motels and restaurants, and the Allegheny is one of the last from the motor court days. The line of freshly painted room fronts are perched on a ridge, with thin pillars holding up the awning that connects them. We pull up in front of the office. As soon as the car stops rolling, my father is fumbling with his seatbelt.

  “I’ll get your briefcase,” I say.

  “I’ll get it.”

  He steps out of the car, opens the back door, and lifts his briefcase from behind the seat.

  “You want me to come with you?” I ask.

  He looks confused by the question and says, “Why don’t you go to a movie?”

  “It’s a little early,” I say. “How long will you be?”

  He seems to be thinking about it. “A while,” he says. “Why don’t you get a soda or something to eat? I’ll pay.”

  He reaches for his wallet, but I wave for him to stop.

  “Thanks,” he says. He nods at me, suddenly very serious, and it takes me a second to get what he’s thanking me for. I sit in the car and watch him. I make sure he gets in the door, thinking Melanie was right. Why shouldn’t he get on with his life, and we get on with ours? After a moment, I coast down the hill and drive back along Highway 11 to the Orange Julius at the crossroads. Inside, I get a soda and sit by the window rubbing my eyes, wondering where I’ll go next, when that will be. There’s no place I even want to go.

  I give my father a few minutes—he has some catching up to do, some explanations to get through—before I drive back up the hill to the Allegheny Motel, park and get out. As I open the glass door to the office, a bell tinkles. A man around my father’s age, in a big bulky sweater, comes out of the back. I ask for my father, and the man shakes his head.

  “I asked him to have a seat,” the man says. “I had a phone call, and while I was talking he got up and went back out. I’ve known your dad a long time, and I’ve never seen him like that. What the hell was the matter with him anyway?”

  “He had a stroke,” I say.

  Driving in the opposite direction from the Orange Julius, the way he had to have gone, I pass a furniture plant entrance and an old shopping plaza with empty stores.

  I see my father up ahead. He’s on his hands and knees, on a bridge over a stream, on a narrow ledge above the water, with only the steel guardrail separating him from the traffic. He’s been knocked down, maybe by a car hitting him or coming so close he lost his balance. It is a four-lane highway over the bridge, and I have to drive beyond the bridge before I can pull over and stop.

  I get out and run to the center of the bridge. I grab his coat to help him up, but he pulls away. He says he’s looking for something, his briefcase. He says he can’t find it. When I step back from him, I can see over the rail. His briefcase is in the muddy stream below, with a few papers floating around it.

  There aren’t a lot of cars on the highway this time of the morning, but when one passes, I can feel the wind move through me. A truck comes within a couple inches of me, and I stagger backwards a few steps.

  “Are you sure you had it with you?” I say, just trying to distract him.

  “I had it.”

  “It’s not here.” I keep talking to him, shouting at him, and pulling him until he stands up, and then I get ahold of his jacket and lead him beyond the bridge. More cars pass, and people stare at us. I keep thinking the police will pull up and draw down on me for the way I’m moving him along. It takes us a long time to get back to the car, and by then he’s panting, not fighting as much when I help him in.

  As soon as I get him buckled in, he’s grimacing at me, asking where his briefcase is. He needs it, he says. It’s very important.

  Maybe it is. He could have anything in there, the deed to the house, for all I know. So I tell him to just stay put, and I’ll go back and find it. I run back to the bridge, cross the guardrail, and slide down the short embankment to the stream. Using a stick, I fish out his briefcase. I fish out the pages floating beside it and drop them back down in there. I wipe off the briefcase in the grass beside the stream and hurry it back to him. When I hand him the briefcase, he takes it from me and clutches it to his chest. He tells me it’s filthy and asks what I did to it.

  “Saved it from the depths,” I say. I start the car and pull into traffic. Soon he’s asleep, leaning forward with his mouth hanging open. Remembering what Melanie said, about my father and me being a team, I let out something halfway between a laugh and a groan.

  When we drive up under the carport and park, he wakes up blinking, and I ask him what happened back there, where he was going. Was he looking for me? He doesn’t want to tell me, and he seems unchanged by what’s happened. He stands on the sidewalk watching me while I lift his boxes and carry them back inside. I put them beside the dining room table, and he goes back to the bedroom to change. When my m
other gets home, he’s sitting at the table studying his papers, holding his watch to his ear. I’m on the living room couch, watching an old movie on TV.

  I meet Melanie at the Tavern and tell her what my father did and how he acted. I don’t mean to upset her, but she starts crying. She says she feels terrible about what happened, it was her fault for encouraging me when it was none of her business. She’s really upset, so I get up and go over to her side of the booth. I sit next to her and put my arm around her. We haven’t touched much since I’ve been back, just a few kisses at the ends of the nights, but I can tell she likes me holding her. I like it, and once we start touching it’s hard to stop.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “He wanted to do it, and I’m the one that let him. I’m just glad my mother didn’t find out. She’d have been furious.”

  “I guess it’ll just take some time,” Melanie says. “I’m really sorry. I mean, I know you don’t like it here.”

  “I don’t like it anywhere,” I say, and I laugh. Melanie doesn’t laugh, so I change the subject once again. I start telling her the way I’ve been feeling, like I’ve caught my father’s stroke. “Sometimes I’m so dizzy,” I say, “so lost—part of it is lack of sleep—but I’m almost as bad as he is. Everything’s in slow motion.” Melanie says she understands, she feels the same way sometimes. At the end of the night I walk her to her car. We kiss goodnight and I thank her for listening to me.

  “Will you be here to listen to me?” she says.

  I look at her. I don’t answer because I don’t know the answer. I say I’ll call her tomorrow.

  It’s a rainy, overcast night, and when I arrive home my parents are drinking hot chocolate. My mother offers me a cup, but I don’t want any. I sit with them a few minutes before I say goodnight and go back to my old room.