by Mark McCann
“For crying out loud, Nate,” I said, “and you,” I looked at my dad with a face that said now I know something I wished I didn’t.
“Oh, yeah, um, well, we can’t take all the credit, the whole thing was Rhonda’s idea,” my dad added as if we weren’t just talking about a prostitute.
I looked at him, “Who on earth is Rhonda?”
“Oh, she’s from Woodland Acres too.” He said as though I might have easily guessed that had I thought about it a little longer.
“Funny; I was thinking of that place just the other day,” I said distractedly. “Wait… you mean to tell me a doctor planned all this?” I said; a little frightened at the thought.
“Oh no, she’s a schizophrenic.”
“Oh, yes; the crazies, a patient, the group, of course, almost forgot. I don’t think I even know what to say to that. This is my life and you – I don’t know, went way out of your way to pull it apart… or put it together, or something, like, what? I seriously don’t even know.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know,” I said again.
“Some of her are very nice,” he said with a wink.
“Yeah, that’s a good… joke, I’m sure I’ll laugh about it tonight in bed.” I had no idea how I must have looked, but my face felt like it was reacting on its own now, and I was moving around like if I didn’t my weight would stake me into the ground where I stood, right there in that situation, forever. “Man, wow, I mean I can’t believe I didn’t just guess all of this right down to the mental patients interfering with my life; that is just so weird.” I turned away from them, then right back. My mind had opened its hands and let go. “Nate, the hooker, you didn’t… you know…welcome her to the ‘goodbye club,’ did you?”
He glared at me like I might have scorched his face a little on that one. “It was only gas,” he said in a tone that suggested we had been over this.
“Gassing the ones you love is hardly redeeming,” I said pointedly, and laughed for the sake of my sanity. “Nate, buddy, you’re better than fat hookers, much better,” I paused, “well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, that, ‘much,’ just jumped in there, but given the circumstances, what the hell, eh? What the hell,” I repeated slowly, trying to figure out exactly that. What the hell. It was a statement now. What the hell. I looked at Nate squarely. “I just bug you because someone has to, right?” He nodded; his appreciation in the gesture. We didn’t need to look far for it; it was always there, no matter how faithless our banter became. He could take a joke better than anyone I knew, and wreck it, but there was still hope. That I knew. I nodded, “Yeah.”
My dad stood looking at me with his hand on his head, “I don’t know,” he said, letting the words drift between us, “I thought maybe you would at least get a book out of all this, hell, maybe even a better life.” Laughing, he added, “I think I had to drink just so I could go through with anything.”
“Okay, two things: why would I write about this? No, actually, I don’t mean that. I think I mean, how would I write about this?” I paused to see if he was going to catch up with what I was thinking. “We can skip that, that’s… let’s just move on. That’s why you were drinking? That’s why? Yeah, it helped, did it?” I felt like I was talking to young child, a young child that drank too much. “Is that what helped you pass out in front of me and pour beer all over yourself? I really hope you wouldn’t have done that without alcohol. Yeah, I’m just trying to imagine you getting ready for that, all that preparation and opening of bottles, man; the work you put in there.”
He looked at me unimpressed and possibly even embarrassed, which was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen. “Are you done?” he asked flatly.
“No, but I can be. I can probably just stop. Um, though I had a whole thing I was going to say about you going to Mexico – in the middle of dinner. You know, and that you should have at least borrowed our camera, so you’d have mementos, stuff like that. But I don’t have to get into it, I mean, if everyone gets what I’m getting at, then, yeah, we’re good. Nate, you see how what he said was maybe, since I’ve… yeah, okay, good.” I threw my hands into the air, flabbergasted, “How did you even get on a plane?”
“Something started to take form,” he said, answering a different question I hadn’t asked. “And like an iceberg, a lot of it remained unseen. That night when you met Candy, and I was completely fall-over drunk,” he laughed, “why didn’t you call me up the next day and yell at me? Even when we sat face to face, you let it all slide; you didn’t call me on anything. So I just pushed it farther and harder, hoping something would eventually give. I figured if I kept going the way I was going; my only son would certainly jump in and tell me that I had gone too far, which would have been the best thing for the both of us. But you didn’t. Instead, from what Katie told me; you took that fight to complete strangers. And yeah, by the sounds of it, I don’t blame you. Sounded like they had it coming, some people, anyway, look,” he sighed and stopped there. Everything had been wearing on all of us, I saw that much. “You used to be so alive, so vibrant, so just that: unpredictable, a living being, and now, well, now you seem so tired.” He finished talking and looked at me, maybe for that definitive sign of change he was after.
I shut my eyes. “That’s because I am tired! Uh, hello, I have fucking mono. I’m like one of those dolls that sleeps and suddenly yells things.” I looked at Katie, “They have those?”
“Well, love, if by yelling you mean crying, then yes, yes they do,” she said, like that could maybe pass for what I meant. I’ll take it, I thought, not about to let some stupid nonexistent doll hold me back.
I turned back to my dad, “I should be in bed right now, instead I’m here trying just to be here. The only reason I came out tonight was to try to talk to you…maybe about everything, or at least something. I don’t know,” I wanted so badly to be able to pull myself out of myself, have them fight, and let the winner do the talking. I took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s like a big, something I can’t describe for the life of me, is stuck in the middle of everything and we’re just pretending it isn’t there. I guess it’s the iceberg – see – I didn’t know. And yeah; the longer I waited, the harder it became to say anything about damn near anything. You’re right; I’ve been struggling with everything more and more lately. At first I was blaming you, Dad, then, well, maybe you and Nate at the same time, but now I’m beginning to think the problem is me, and it kills me to know that and to not know what the problem is.”
I couldn’t stand still any longer and turned straight into someone walking by. I apologized, and then cursed quietly at the ground. I felt an itch shuttling back and forth in my legs. I thought I was going to have to sprint far from that spot and them to get rid of it. I stopped myself to see if there were words in my head that maybe my movement had kept from settling. There was nothing, just images like flash cards; strangers, tiled floor, mannequins, Katie, Dad, Nate, Candy’s boobs.
I ran my hand down my forehead and attempted to pull my eyebrows together, “I don’t know what to say,” I said in the process. “I just, like, holy shit, Dad, of course I would love nothing more than to sleep in, hell,”
“You’d love to sleep in hell?” I heard Nate ask from somewhere behind me.
It was either find someone to step on so I could kick Nate in the face or ignore him. I chose the latter and continued. , “I would love to hang out with you, drink beer and watch hockey, look at Candy – I love you, Katie… maybe I’d figure out why Nate is a big fucking…” I drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Dad, I’m really very sorry I haven’t been there more for you. Katie, I’m very sorry I’ve been so impatient and explosive. Nate…” I sighed. “Candy, I’m sorry too, you know that, and I’m glad we talked today too. Dad… I don’t know; I feel like I’m faltering at every step. I’ve been trying to hold it all in as if there’ll be a better time to let it all out. Now I don’t know if anyone’s happy or if that time will ever come.”
My dad was looking at me like I had
thrown a bunch of spatulas in the air and yelled rice. Everyone else stood solemnly by, their mouths tightly shut, except Nate; his was wide open. I didn’t know what else to say so I didn’t say anything. It was someone else’s turn.
“I know,” my dad said calmly, and on cue, “I’m very proud of you. You have no idea how much I want everything to work out so damn wonderfully for Katie, you, and those beautiful boys of yours. It will too, you’ll see. We’re right here, aren’t we? And I’m very sorry you think I’m not happy. I’m getting there, and you would know that if you would talk to me about it. How do you think I can feel better about anything when you look at me expecting me not to be? I feel like I might let you down if I were ever to say to you that I felt good or, even worse, that I felt great. Listen, I love you, but you’re smarter than this. That’s why I wanted to give the ground you walk on some jump,” he did a weird thing with his hands, signifying the ground jumping, maybe. It looked ridiculous and made me laugh.
He was silent now and mirrored my stillness the way only a father could. I watched him without saying anything more and enjoyed the silence. I took a deep breath, one noticeable to both of us. “The worst part of all this,” I said calmly, “is that I’m going to be you; you’re like an ancient version of me, aren’t you? I really don’t want to be in this place with my kids one day. Well, I’m sure I’ll take them shopping, but, you know what I mean, don’t you, old me? What am I saying – of course you do.” He and I both laughed, everyone else shook their heads. I wanted to point at them and keep laughing.
Chapter 40 … From Now On
My dad stood at my side with his hand on my shoulder; apparently that was how we hugged. He was smiling like it was everyone’s birthday. I really liked that. I had spent a lot of my life looking at that smile; sharing it, greeting it, wrecking it, making it.
It struck me how much I wished my mom was standing beside him then, too. I felt like I could almost see her, like at any moment she would step forward and they would be standing together again, just like my best memory of them. His eyes seemed to say he knew this, maybe they were trying to say she was. He took his hand back when I turned to speak, “Every time I think of her I have something else to say to her.” The words surprised even me. “I feel like, in my head,” I continued, figuring if the words were there I must have had a point, “I’m always trying to piece her together from memory. It just – I always feel so guilty that she’s not just there. But it’s like I have to do that or have nothing.”
“Oh son,” he said, something he’d never done, “it has taken me a long time to realize the only way to live without her is to live as best as I can. Standing still and staring behind us isn’t going to put her beside us. If we want her with us we need to move forward. It’s only fair to us, everyone around us, and her… and that’s where she will find us. She deserves the beauty found in life, not memory. And she doesn’t want to see us miserable; she wants to see us at our happiest.” He paused and looked at me curiously. “Do you know what I mean?” Whenever I asked that same question it was just something to say. It was such a good question when he asked it now. I nodded; I did know. “I can finally happily welcome the little things that remind me of your mother, rather than be upset by them,” he added with an expression that pierced me deeply, “I miss her very much, but in no way is she missing from my life. She was an experience in our lives, for a very long time, that doesn’t stop being a part of us; she’s in everything we do. You have to get past guilt, that’s not fair to yourself. What does memory have to do with this moment now? Memory is just a sentimental destiny for time.” He smirked, knowing I’d have liked that, and then he continued, “You’ll always end up feeling guilty because no matter what you remember; it’ll never be enough and that failure will just keep hurting.” As he continued, I wondered how long he’d been preparing to tell me all this. “Remembering doesn’t do anyone or anything justice. Your mother, God bless her, is watching over you and no matter how we remember her; she’s going to think we’re doing it wrong.” We all laughed and held onto that warm moment, and held her there with us too. He winked at me. “We’ll be reminded of her best by living our lives as well as we’re able to, you’ll see.” He smiled at me bravely.
I looked at Katie, even she was amazed at the statements coming from the man who we had, more than once, heard say, hey watch how fast I can drink this. Without looking at me, she asked, “So I take it you got your penchant for writing from your dad?”
I hadn’t thought of it before. “I guess,” I answered, “I mean, I knew I got my penmanship from him, well: from him when he was a child.”
She nodded in agreement. She had seen it. My dad chuckled gently; acting like it wasn’t out of character at all for him. “Usually the best advice you can give someone is just saying out loud what they already know.”
“Okay, now you’re just showing off,” I said and attempted a chuckle of my own.
Something was pulling at me, something seemingly cerebral and from just outside the edge of reason. I looked at Nate, thinking it was maybe him. He smiled at me, and seemed like a different person – they all did. I wondered what new illness this would turn out to be. I smiled at Katie as warmly as I could. She was wiping tears from her cheeks.
My dad leaned into my line of sight, “We all have to actually live in order to remember your beautiful mother, and not only live, but live life right in order to remember her right. Life was meant to have purpose, and that can’t disappear because someone in our life happens to physically.”
I’d never heard him speak so clearly. Maybe I’d never needed to listen so badly. It amazed me. “How can you be the madman that you’ve been and this brilliant, here and now, like, I don’t… I think… I know… you’re right,” I confided in him quietly.
He smiled. I tried to smile back, but my watery eyes got in the way. I wiped at them but they got so much worse. I tried again to speak and again couldn’t; my chest buckled against the effort. I was choking with sobs and had stupid broken eyes.
“You’ve so much sense in you, so much compassion and, most importantly, you have your mother’s heart.”
“I don’t… have… her heart… I have… all… her damn… tears.”
He smiled, “Yeah,” he agreed, “but, hey,” he said softly, having remembered something, “what did you tell Ding Ding when she died?”
My body still wanted to shudder when I inhaled deeply, but slowly I grew quiet and calm. I looked at him pensively; his face was patient and reassuring. “That she was gone, gone into the universe.” Each word I let go struggled in the silence and I wanted immediately to retrieve it. I looked at my dad, then Katie, and then back at my dad. I remembered telling Ding Ding that, and then how much harder it was to explain to him that she wasn’t coming back, that she was gone forever. I felt Katie’s hand against my back. Nate and Candy were smiling at me, proudly, and I didn’t know if I knew why. It felt like the very thread of attention that ran from them to me was holding me up, and had I blinked I’d have surely gone over. I wasn’t sure if it was effort or courage I needed to turn my head from them to face my dad again, but once I did, everything in me seemed to change, like so many loose lids had just been tightened.
There was something alive and at work in his eyes as he spoke, “And what did he say about that; about her being gone into the universe?”
“That she was magical,” I said each word very carefully, like anyone of them could have fallen apart had they been too close to another.
“I think it’s in you; you just have to gather it again and keep it in mind. Listen to me, eh, maybe I should do some writing of my own,” he gave me a gentle poke in the shoulder. “I think then you need to keep that in mind, and put what you want to say into your actions; actions that go back into the world, actions that give way to the magic in life. We need to maintain our dignity in the unknown. Don’t you want to walk proudly, fearlessly, through a world like that? God, we seem to be so sure about so many things, b
ut every certainty we have narrows our vision. We’re too quick to throw possibility away. You need to let it be wide open. I remember when it was wide open.” There was an excitement in his voice that sent me somewhere memorable and brought me back before I could recognize it. I felt nearly dizzy, but not in a bad way and was calm given the circumstances. My head even felt like less of a mess. It was like confusion finally said, Fuck it, I am totally filing this stuff. Just like that, it was done and there was some sort of order again.
I shook my head. I wanted to laugh about everything, but just didn’t have it in me yet. I knew I’d have the strength and energy another time and would make up for it then. “God, we’re all so stupid drunk, eh,” I said, and suddenly found I had it in me to laugh quite loudly.
My chest tightened. My eyes were filled with tears again, and before I even knew something was wrong I began to cry like it was the best thing to do at that moment. Things were crumbling inside me and I was happy to let them. It felt good to let them. My dad was smiling at me with such a warm, knowing look. I shook my head. I thought he might be crazy. I feared maybe I was, but I let it drop away like the thought hadn’t been mine to begin with. The voice in my head began stuttering but I didn’t let it continue. My inner dialogue always had me retreating, talking my life away from the moment, distracting me, but I was tired of retreating, I was tired of the circles, I wanted to finally face this. I needed to. I wanted to be myself. I had to finally let myself be sad just so I could realize how happy I was. I could feel it in my heart. I had been walking this emotional edge for too long, diving in on both sides. I was hugging my dad before I even knew I wanted to, and he hugged me tightly back. It was there now: the best thing for me, something I understood without having the right words.
Chapter 41 … We Are, Are We
