A Tapless Shoulder

by Mark McCann

  “Okay, so your dad’s behaviour can be a tad, shall we say, erratic, at times, uh, do you think maybe that’s where you get it from? Hmmm, mmmaybe?”

  “Uh, your dad thinks pop-up ads are acts of terrorism. I’ve seen it happen; he pulled the plug on the computer like he was stopping it from catching fire. It was the fastest I’d seen any old person move ever.”

  “So, your dad’s a drunk.”

  “And your dad’s too paranoid to get drunk; he’d suspect himself of being two people, one of which would have to go, and then things would really get ugly.”

  We were leaning toward each other with our faces almost touching, as if to intimidate the other. “Look, I’m on your side here,” I raised my hands in surrender. “My point was that your dad can be just as irrational or whatever, and yet he hasn’t gone off the charts with incomprehensible activity.” I sighed, and sunk back against the bed. “He promised he wouldn’t do this,” I said with less conviction than most false statements should bear.

  “He promised, did he?” she countered, knowing very well that I was not exactly being faithful to truth. I looked into her face. I wanted to plead with her to just go along with it, no matter how far it went. It was me, and I could use the company.

  “Well, he said, you know, ‘I’ll be there all the time for anything’ or something like that, and stuff, but the fine print of what he was saying was, ‘I am not gonna hook up with a tranny.’ Or maybe it should have been. Yes, now that I’ve had a moment to reflect on it; he should have taken me aside and told me he was steering clear of transsexuals and transvestites and hookers. Like OH MY holy fucking hell. Who has this problem? Who is out there saying, jeez, dad and those damn transvestites? I steer clear of the gay pride parade because of the traffic. I don’t care either way, but what now, ‘come on kids, we’re going to see Grandpa in the big parade. Save your questions for the end and only ask your mother. Thank you.”

  “Okay, honey, I love you, but if you don’t even know what you need to hear from your dad to help you be okay with what he is doing, with his own life by the way, how do you expect him to know?” she asked innocently like she still loved me and wasn’t sabotaging my industrious rant.

  I swallowed, like the reason was there in my mouth. A tremendous fake smile formed on my face, “I love you shut up good night.”

  “Look, I’m just saying you know you need to talk to him, you can’t keep standing by like this if it’s going to keep eating at you. I’ve had a long day, I love you, but I would really like to go to sleep.”

  “I’m trying – the talking thing, he… I’ll –” I looked down at the bed, then back at her, “I bet a lot of marriages survive on the fact that a long day counts as foreplay.”

  “I will kill you.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. Turn out the light.”

  Chapter 23 … Hold It Together, Man

  I sat nervously, tending to my mug with both hands like it needed to be corralled or it would wander off. I was annoyed with myself for being nervous. I stared at the foamy surface in my mug, trying to remember what it was, maybe a mocha espresso from Chino or something. What had I ordered? I was craning my head to better see the menu above the counter when I realized I was really only looking for something to distract myself, anything to keep me from thinking about having to have this talk with my dad. Why couldn’t I just sit there and not think of something? The drink was what I always got: whatever Katie ordered. She had taken hers to go and gone off into the mall with the boys. It worked best this way. She got to shop, the boys got to walk around and point at things they needed, and then break down when they didn’t get them. Win, win. We were to text the other when one of us was ready to go, and figure things out from there.

  The Starbucks at the mall was in the back of a bookstore. I looked at the time on my phone, at the same time thinking my dad was probably down at the Williams by the school saying to himself, ‘Hey, this… isn’t…’ I would give him another five minutes before phoning. I tried to remember if I’d told him it was in the bookstore. I believed I had. But, really, what I believed was still just an opinion, and his opinion could easily have been different, no matter what I had actually told him. We should have done a dress rehearsal. I could have gone and gotten him and we could have acted the whole thing out, and then tried, with a little readiness under our belts.

  The setting, with all those books, not only invoked a bit of confidence, but may have even made me happy, a statement I found I now said after years of hearing my wife say that this or that ‘made her happy.’ It was an adjective I didn’t like catching myself using. ‘Yeah man, killer work on the tattoo, it makes me happy… what? It does! Seriously, it makes me really, really happy!’ It was an expression of an expression, like laughing and saying, ‘that is funny.’ Really? I couldn’t tell, I guess you were laughing too hard for me to understand your reaction.

  Of course I liked – I more than liked, I needed – how positive she was. I had nearly feared I would have a negative impact on her positivity, but with time and reason and, most of all, communication, we both coexisted quite happily. Any struggle I endured was my own doing. Thinking too much was the problem, and she saw that in me when she met me. The effort to be positive never dwindled on my part. The success rate outnumbered the failures, and I was beginning to realize that was all I should have wanted in life. Maybe I didn’t need any medication, but maybe it’d prove helpful – I didn’t know anything for certain anymore.

  Either way, I reasoned with myself, the lift from simply being in a bookstore, coupled with an intake of caffeine – a thought that sent me searching my pockets and wallet to see what money I had, and I was relieved to find I had enough for both my dad and I to still get whatever else we might like – I deemed this to be the perfect place to talk calmly and clearly about what may be currently fogging the air between us. It was neither the time nor the place to talk about anything that may make me squeamish or hesitant, and by ‘hesitant’ I meant ‘mute,’ and by ‘mute,’ I meant ‘ready to run away.’

  I sat at a table near the rows of magazines. I felt compelled to buy one, but my uncertainty of what I’d be interested in invariably stopped me. It was still just my nerves telling me to do things so I could be distracted: get up to sit back down, again and again, now maybe do it faster and faster until you fall over or someone takes the chair away. That was when I began thinking there were just too many thoughts in my head that should have gone without thinking.

  Luckily my insanity was finally interrupted when I heard a “Hey,” from over my shoulder. It was my dad’s elongated greeting that nearly always sounded somewhere between serious and joking.

  “Hey,” I replied and stood. My chair slid out from beneath me with a strange and horrible screech as I got up. It hadn’t made a sound when I pulled it away from the table when I’d arrived. “But of course,” I said with a smirk. I handed him a twenty, “My treat, Dad, get whatever you want, get something to eat if you’re hungry, I’m still good here.”

  “Oh, hell, that’s okay,” he said stopping beside the table.

  “No, I insist, I asked you here, but, just, it’s not about formalities,” I began to say, but could already feel myself wanting to cut my sentences in halves, then quarters, and on and on until I had nothing but fractions of sounds, “Crap, it doesn’t matter, take this and, yeah, go get coffee, get some lunch.” I waved him away, my head pointed toward the counter.

  It struck me how him and I were so alike, possibly too alike; the eventual reaction, the glint in the eyes, the air that it could all just explode and we’d be first to laugh. He smiled warmly, took the bill, and said, “Okay, if you insist, thank you,” and then moved toward the counter at the pace age had graced him with. I could take comfort in knowing my current spastic state would at least eventually slow to that as well.

  I sat back down, watched him still making his way to the counter, and noticed he had a bit of a lean in his walk, like maybe he
’d be breaking right at any moment, but he never did. I’d never noticed that before and wondered if something was wrong with him. Seeing him that way worried me even more. He was getting weaker while the pull of time got stronger. We all were, I guess, but my strength and my time weren’t being measured the way his were.

  I realized then without question exactly why I wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t my worry for him that had invited him there; it was my being inconvenienced while he tried to get over losing his wife, my mother. That truth hit the surface and sank through me only to become buoyant again, but not without first letting me feel it hit the bottom, where it left a dent, possibly for my pride to curl up and hide in.

  My head sagged forward; couldn’t this have occurred to me after I’d said whatever it was I was going to say? I was positive I would have been better off with the guilt. I moved on perfectly well from things; that was why I didn’t remember them. I shook my head, and it seemed to help.

  I looked at the aisles of books. I could remember wanting to be a writer. I think I just liked the complete control the writer had over the words. The bumbling and stuttering to obtain them had been removed and just the heart of the matter remained. That was what I needed: I should have written flash cards, prepared a nice little speech, okay, dad, prepare to be impressed by your son who can’t do something as simple as have a conversation with you. I laughed nervously. These were the very thoughts I’d been thinking I shouldn’t have been thinking at all.

  I would again one day write, I thought and nodded with approval at the safety and appropriateness of the thought. Writing was simply a dropped passion, and there was time still to pick it back up. Maybe when I wasn’t so tired certainly, then would be best. I had always loved it and would get back into it, I even almost promised myself. I already had a working title for my first book, The Great Book of Apologies, by My Sorry Ass. You’re kidding, right? I wondered. I mentally slapped myself in annoyance while my mind backpedalled erratically, adding quickly to that thought, yes, of course, by you I mean me: I’m kidding.

  “What is wrong with my brain?” I said, apparently louder than any thought that was to remain inside the head should have been. The woman at the next table quickly looked away, swallowed a bite of muffin, and then looked down at an open book lying on her table beside her plate. My mouth opened, but I hadn’t a clue what to say to cancel that out and feared strange sounds would have just made it much, much worse, so I looked away as well. Every single one of us is crazy in some way, I thought, and because I was being honest about it suddenly I was crazier than most. If she had said it I’d have smiled at her and asked, you think you’re crazy? Then I’d have started licking the table.

  I laughed, something I thought I should not have done after having just said there was something wrong with my brain. I silenced my mouth, and thought I would try to silence my mind while I was at it. What was taking him so long? What was he doing up there, showing the cashier pictures of his new girlfriend… or Uncle Donnie? I took a deep breath. I took two more. I didn’t stop breathing but tried to slowly let go. I found some stillness, and it was peaceful and exactly where I needed to be. Now I almost didn’t want him to come back. Maintain, I thought, that was what I needed to do. Maintain and hold the nothing in my head, let it be a bubble, but not a bubble; that’d break with the slightest movement of my head, never mind the dullest of distractions… ah crapping hell.

  It didn’t matter; my dad was finally sitting down at the table. He very carefully set his coffee cup down and then pressed around the outside of the lid to make sure it was on properly.

  “What on earth took so long?” I asked lightly so it sounded polite and like a comment, and not the end of the world. I smiled, thinking it would help, but then realized that it probably came off a little sudden and therefore weird. Ugh, act normal, I thought… be yourself – MYSELF, holy – yes, maybe I’ll try to be myself. I thought, sarcastically… idiotically. I would definitely have to use that from then on too, if I’d been stupid about something; I would claim to have just been being an idiot sarcastically.

  My dad was smiling. “Oh,” he said with a soft chuckle, “that was my fault it took so long. I dropped the first one. He shook his head, “Yeah, I tried to get your attention but you were a little busy, I think checking out a certain someone.” He nodded toward the woman next to us. “I couldn’t tell from there but I think I would have been staring at her too. She is easy on the eyes, eh?” He nodded toward her again. Just head-butt her, I thought, she may not have noticed all the attention yet.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, but she probably doesn’t have a penis,” I said just above a whisper and with my face angled away from her.

  He laughed. He should have smacked me in the mouth, but he laughed, then I laughed and apologized.

  In my head I was thinking, Way to address the issues, to which I quickly countered, hey, who the hell’s side am I on? But this made me wonder why I would think ‘hey’ like I needed to get my own attention, are thoughts not the very attention of the heads they’re in? Hadn’t we been over this? ‘Come on people, work with me, and, hey, we are not people, okay, stop it, with the ‘hey’ and the addressing of us as many… um, us? Concentrate! WHAT THE HELL?! Okay and yelling in my own head will not make me listen any better. I am taking you straight to the psychiatric ward at Woodland Acres, where you can get the help you need. And, again, by you I mean me.’ I shook my head; maybe you shook our head, who knew?

  “So how are you?” he asked so I would maybe not just stare at him.

  “Oh, I’m… okay, like, good… okay,” I said and suddenly felt like I meant it, and even would have felt great had my thoughts refrained from overlapping one another. It was true, it seemed by fluke I had to come here and see him like this in order to gain that tiniest of difference in perspective, perspective enough to know I was fine, and would be fine, but just needed to… talk to this man. He was my dad, and he was right there, he was still there.

  I smiled broadly, “So did you seriously just throw your coffee all over the town up there?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, you should have seen the mess, but I think they quickly threw a few others at it after it fell. Why the hell not?”

  I laughed and didn’t know if I was going to stop. My dad sipped timidly at his coffee with a gentle smile. I took a drink of my own. I felt like I was trying to remember how to begin a conversation. “Dad,” I said, believing that to be a good start.

  “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FUCKING BELIEVE THIS!” Nate suddenly appeared shouting beside our table. I wished I was still laughing. He stared at the doors and then squatted beside the table. His head floated above the tabletop and I wanted to shoo it away. He was breathing like he’d been running. He looked at my dad for a moment, then at me. “I was followed here – someone tailed me here!”

  “They should have tailed you somewhere else,” I said angrily. He had startled me. I looked at him. He stared back. I looked at my dad, and then back at Nate and wondered why and how, and why again. “What?” I was confused. What he’d said was transforming from something weird he’d shouted just to scare the shit out of me to the statement it actually was. I had gone full circle. “I don’t – someone followed you here? Or why are you here? No, how are you here? Who followed you?”

  “I followed you,” he said. It struck me that he couldn’t have gotten any farther from a reasonable answer than that. I wanted to grab his head and yell, where are you in there? He must have sensed something not quite right in the way I was staring at him as he quickly stood and pulled a chair over from another table. I wanted to push it back, then, when it was too late, I wanted to push him over, chair and all.

  “What the fucking hell, Nate, are you talking about? That’s – you – fuckin’,” I stopped myself. I noticed everyone at the other tables had stopped what they were doing and were curious about what was going on over at our table. I pretended to smile. “Nate, I just,” His eyes were empty, apparently when he was frightened he looke
d like he always did. My dad bobbed softly in his seat with laughter. As far as he could tell it was all a joke. I was living one lifelong interruption that dulled and erupted, and it struck him as funny. I was alarmed by how angry I had suddenly become at the both of them. I didn’t quite know exactly why. Maybe I knew why, but was accustomed to reacting to more details than this.

  I got up from my seat and again the chair screeched out from beneath me. Everyone winced. I wanted to hurl the chair towards the magazines or run maybe just far enough away to hurl it back at Nate. I stared down at the stupid chair for a long and overdrawn moment. I didn’t want to hurt anyone; I knew that. I just wanted them to look like they didn’t understand because I knew that was how I looked. My eyes met my dad’s, he shrugged. He didn’t know what Nate was going on about and wasn’t stirred in the slightest by it. He had always seen Nate as a bit of a clown. Hell, he had good reason to. I wanted to say something apologetic to him and maybe something abrasive to Nate. Maybe telling him I’d considered throwing a chair at him would be enough. I looked at them both. Everything seemed to go wrong with Nate and those stupid, useless phone calls. If I said anything, I’d have been speaking only because I expected myself to. Maybe it’d actually have been because they expected me to. That was how they were looking at me; sitting, waiting. I usually did have something to say. Why was that? I felt certain I wanted to be done with that too. “Fucking hell,” I muttered and gave the chair a quick shove. I turned to go find Katie and the boys. Nate said something loudly to my back. I kept walking. It could join everything else I didn’t know or understand.

  A minute later my phone beeped, it was a text from him. Dude, I was messing with you, I just ran into Katie in the mall, she told me you were in here!