Ultimatum

by K. M. Walton

  Oscar had to be medicated like an old lady. Dad gave him one of Mom’s anti-anxiety pills so he could function, and it turned him into a zombie. He blinked in slow motion all night, and all he could mumble was a weirdo version of “Thank you.” He sounded like one of the drunks at the Blue Mountain. He should’ve stayed locked in his room with his art and not stood there like a drugged psycho. Everyone I knew came through that line.

  Each time I looked over at my mother’s body, I swear to God I thought she was going to sit up, shoo everyone out of there, and send them on their way. I guess when you die at forty-eight—in a car accident that doesn’t put a scratch on your face—you look that good as a dead person.

  As if that made a difference. If one more person told me how beautiful she looked, I was prepared to punch them. Luckily, the last in line were two of Mom’s old-lady coworkers and they didn’t say it, or I would’ve laid them out right there on the cream carpet.

  When the funeral parlor guy announced that tomorrow’s burial information was being handed out at the door, the room cleared. He came back carrying a little silver tray with three Dixie cups sitting on it. He handed us each one, and I threw the ice-cold water back like a shot of vodka. I can’t remember water tasting better than at that exact moment.

  “You have anything a little stronger back there in your office, Bob?” my dad joked. Bob pursed his lips and shook his head. I was glad Bob wasn’t standing as close to my dad as I was because his breath reeked of the two martinis he’d had for breakfast. Bob told us we could have a moment alone before they closed her casket.

  I turned and stared at my dead mother. We’d argued over what dress to put her in. Each of us had a different favorite, a different moment attached to it. I wanted her to wear the dark-red one from the time we all dressed up as vampires for Halloween. It was Mom’s idea, and I swear it was one of the only times we did something together, the four of us, and we had fun. Even Oscar.

  Oscar wanted her to wear the orange-and-yellow-flowered sundress. He said it reminded him of sunsets. Dusk was her favorite time of day. She used to say how amazing it was the way the sky exploded in color, how it was so different from the bright blue of day. She loved how one thing could change so dramatically but still remain beautiful.

  Dad’s choice won though. She was laid out in her fancy, emerald-green lace dress. He said he loved it because it made her green eyes even greener, and she wore it whenever they went out to special-occasion dinners, otherwise known as the happy nights.

  I got it. I understood. Dad wanted to remember her smiling and laughing. He wanted to remember her loving him. And she did love him, just probably a long time ago. I have memories from when I was little of them kissing and dancing to reggae in the kitchen, of them being happy together. That all changed after Dad’s first affair.

  “I’ve stared at her enough today,” my dad announced.

  Oscar winced, knelt down in front of my mother’s body, and dropped his head in his hands.

  My dad threw his arm around me. “I need a stiff drink after all this.”

  “I hear ya, man. This was rough, Dad.” He never hit the hard stuff. Beer was his thing. He said he hated the way some of his regulars at the Blue Mountain acted when they got into liquor. But Dad deserved to have as many as he needed. If there was ever a day for drinking, it was then.

  “She shouldn’t have stormed out of the house like that so mad.” He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She never let me finish.” That’s when his tears came. He dropped his arm and turned away. I knew not to say anything. He needed to get it out. He’d been like a rock all night.

  Dad was right. Mom shouldn’t have left so angry. After I left the kitchen that day with the simmering chicken and mushrooms, my parents went at it. Screaming, crying, plate throwing. I sat on the closed toilet in the bathroom at the top of the stairs and listened to every word of their argument. It was where I always sat when they fought.

  My dad had gotten caught cheating on my mother. Again. This time it was with Miss Rawlins, Oscar’s first-grade teacher. Dad must’ve run into her at the bar.

  See, the thing was, I understood my dad. I got the impossibility of staying faithful to one girl. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Some guys weren’t wired that way. He was a fan of variety and excitement. Truthfully, what real man wasn’t?

  My mother lost her shit that afternoon, and her voice hit levels I’d never heard a human voice reach before. My dad tried to explain that he was a man, and if she would take the time to understand him, things would be much better for her. She was real quiet at first, and it was a one-sided shout-fest, with my dad hurling slurred statement after slurred statement.

  “You’re too much. You get off on humiliating me, don’t you, Steve?” my mother screamed.

  I heard my father pop open a fresh beer, but he kept his mouth shut. I remember thinking, Good call, Dad.

  “Alyce Rawlins?” My mother’s voice cracked and she coughed. “She is young enough to be your damned daughter!”

  When he told her Miss Alyce Rawlins—who was now married to Dr. Beech and known as Mrs. Beech—may be pregnant, the plates started shattering.

  “I.” Plate smash. “Am done.” Plate smash. “With you.” Plate smash. “Steve!”

  He shouted, “Done? Where’re you gonna go? I know everyone in this town, Peggy!”

  “Then I’ll move out of here. Vance will be getting his license soon.”

  Hearing my name being screamed from my mother’s mouth made my stomach cramp up. My dad got Miss Rawlins pregnant? That sucked in every way something could suck. Everyone would know, and Dr. Beech was Oscar’s orthodontist.

  Oscar

  I close my sketchbook and stand to stretch. Movement outside catches my eye. It’s the girls’ softball team practicing on the side field. This hospice building is directly across from our high school, which is odd because in the three years I’ve gone to WCHS, I’ve never noticed this place. It was always just some medical building—one I passed day after day, completely unaware of the human lives ending, the wailing and hand-wringing taking place behind each window. I didn’t know any of this world here existed, and I was better off for it.

  Now I know.

  My father’s suite smells of grease and cheese, and my stomach is full of both. I shove my hands deep into my pockets and look for Jacque. I know she’s out there so I squint to see if I can pinpoint her on the field. It’s hard to tell the team apart—they all have baseball caps on. I think she’s at bat, but I’m not sure.

  Then she runs and I’m sure. It’s her. No one runs as breathtakingly as Jacque Beaufort. It’s like her muscles are conducting a magnificent symphony of movement just underneath her light-brown skin. It’s stunning.

  She’s stunning.

  And she doesn’t know I exist. Well, technically, I’m pretty sure she knows I’m alive because she knows I’m Vance’s little brother, but she’s never uttered a single word to me. Not even hello.

  The first time I saw her was when she walked in late to my sculpture class freshman year. She stood in the doorway looking flustered, tugging on her sleek, black ponytail and biting her lip. Mr. Gill ushered her in without any drama—he’s the most laid-back teacher at WCHS—and she took a seat in the back. Right next to me.

  Two days later, Jacque dropped out of sculpture, but in those two short days I learned all I could about her. She bobbed her right leg nonstop. The only makeup she wore was lip gloss. Her backpack was different from everyone else’s—made of a coarse woven fabric with Rasta stripes and a drawstring. She never made eye contact with a single person in class because her gaze was always out the window.

  We sat around tables in sculpture class so I had a full-on view of her face. Something outside captivated her, and it fascinated me. It was the way her eyebrows rose, the way her eyes danced, the way her mouth would slip into a tiny smile w
hen she got lost in whatever she was staring at. Her expression was fleeting—but when you can’t stop watching someone, you catch things. A few times I’d joined her and looked to where she did. It had to be the sky. There was nothing else to see.

  My stomach flipped, wondering what made her light up like that. Was it the beautiful color blue? Was it her daydream? I’d eventually concluded—while simultaneously blanking out on what was going on in sculpture—that she felt things deeply. Like me. Clearly I had no proof of this conclusion, but either way, it started my crush.

  A few weeks into freshman year, Jacque turned up in Vance’s party photos on his Facebook page. That’s when I realized she was in the popular group. My brother considers himself the king of WCHS, so if you’re in a photograph with him, you’re popular too.

  Even though I suspected a girl that beautiful and emotionally complex was socially above me, seeing those Facebook photos is when I knew Jacque Beaufort was the princess to my peasant.

  I continue watching the softball team do normal practice things: throwing, catching, running, hitting. While behind me, roughly eight feet away, my father, my only living parent, has, according to the new nurse on duty named Marnie, less than forty-eight hours left on this earth.

  I have an urge to smash through this second-story window without covering my face and let the shards of glass slice my skin, let the blood drip and drip and drip as I run across the field, grab the bat from Jacque’s hand, and smash the world to smithereens. To the tiniest bits of nothing. Then perhaps we could all start over.

  My father could be a sober businessman instead of a raging, alcoholic bar owner.

  My mother could be his wife instead of his doormat. And she’d be alive.

  My brother could be my brother instead of an inordinate blob of human skin that simply chooses not to understand me.

  I could be happy. I could be free.

  From behind, my brother says, “Why are you staring at them, psycho?”

  I breathe in and I breathe out to clear the anger from my lungs. Why is he always so hotheaded? I ask myself this question multiple times a day.

  I turn around and walk to my father’s bedside. “I wasn’t ogling the girls, Vance. I was simply looking out the window.”

  “Whatever. And can you stop talking like a dictionary? Talk normal.” He rips off a piece of pizza crust and chews. “I wish I had a beer right now.”

  I squint. “The fact that our father is hours away from dying from liver failure has no effect on you?”

  “Shut up! I haven’t had a sip since my surgery. And if he was conscious, he’d be having one right now, with me.”

  Air shoots through my nose. “Well, you’ve certainly made the most obvious statement, now haven’t you?” He goes back to watching the muted TV, and I go back to staring at our father.

  Marnie comes through the door and stands with her hands on her wide hips. “How we doing in here, guys? How’s the big man?”

  “His breathing’s still the same,” I answer.

  “I’m going to change his sheets and wipe him all down in about ten minutes. I wanted to give you boys some more time to finish your dinner.”

  “We’re done,” Vance says. He stands up and grabs his jacket. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Good idea.” Marnie nods. “Why don’t you guys get the blood flowing while I get your dad situated?”

  I know Vance wants to walk alone. I know I want to walk alone. Neither of us will verbalize this want of course, but we know what we want nonetheless. I grab my sweatshirt and let my brother disappear down the hall and around the corner. I make no effort to catch up or call out to him. I’d rather eat seashells.

  As I saunter past the rolling nurse-station cart positioned directly outside my father’s room, I hear a low, guttural moan from the room across the hall. I know I shouldn’t, but I look in. An African American man is sitting in the recliner, obviously not the patient. He looks to be somewhere near my father’s age—in his late forties—and he’s the one moaning. It’s like a cello, a rich and thick sound. I’m transfixed by it, and my feet are cemented to the carpet.

  The man, who had just been running his hands over his bald head, drops his arms and they slap against his body. He looks directly into my eyes and we stare at each other, stranger to stranger. His mouth opens, and a fresh moan drifts out. I break eye contact and look at the occupied hospital bed. I can only see the lower half of the person. I have no idea the gender or age.

  My feet have come back to life, and I walk quickly down the hall as another loud wail fills my head. The sound is weighted; I fear my skull will crack.

  The man’s pain is stuck to my skin. From the inside.

  Vance

  Two years ago

  “Wake up! Dad puked in his bed,” I shouted directly into my brother’s ear.

  Oscar rolled over and squinted. “What?”

  I reached down and yanked the blanket off him. “Dad puked. Get up and help me.”

  We ran across the hall and stood at the foot of Dad’s bed. My dad was covered in spaghetti-sauce puke, and the room smelled like a mixture of an Italian restaurant and the floor at the bar. “I’ll roll him over to the one side, and you grab the sheets.”

  Oscar opened his mouth as if he had something to say but then closed it.

  “What?”

  “He’ll get the mattress dirty.”

  “Yeah.” I snorted. “’Cause he’s not already covered in the shit or anything. It doesn’t frigging matter.” I tried to find the least puke-covered portion of his body, and there wasn’t one. I ran into his bathroom and grabbed a towel. I wasn’t a pussy, but I didn’t want it on my hands. I rolled him once, and he didn’t make a sound. Oscar reluctantly got to work removing the sheets from the one side. Then I rolled him back, and Oscar finished the job. “Wash them in—”

  He cut me off. “Hot. I know. I’ve done this before.”

  We always let Dad sleep the day away and did our own things. Even though I was pretty sure he was done throwing up, I still rolled him onto his side. Just in case. He was the only parent I had left.

  I heard the laundry going, and Oscar’s classical bullshit music blared from his room. What fourteen-year-old dude listened to that?

  I grabbed my lacrosse stick from my room and banged on his closed door with the handle. “Turn it down. You’re gonna wake up Dad.”

  He turned it down, and I shook my head in the empty hallway.

  Oscar

  As I step outside, my brother is nowhere in sight—and that sits fine with me. The early-spring air has a chill to it so I put on my sweatshirt. Each step I take puts distance between me and that moaning stranger’s loss. I keep my eyes down as I walk. My sneakers crunch the shriveled brown leaves strewn on the pavement, left over from a recent spring pruning.

  My life is in desperate need of pruning. I need the dead and withered to be snipped. I need to feel the bright-green shoots breaking through.

  I come to a halt. Listen to me. Using words that would infuriate Vance. It’s a habit I started in middle school soon after Mom died. I don’t speak like that to anyone but him, and watching his reaction is really satisfying. He goes nuts.

  As I walk, I wonder if the pruning event of my life will be my father’s last breath.

  The day of Dad’s car accident we’d thought he was going to die in the ER. Turns out he stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated—the nurse told us after he was brought back. Surprisingly, that was the first time I’d looked my father’s demise in the eye.

  I remember saying to Vance, “What would we really do if Dad died? I mean, holy shit, Vance, what would we do?”

  Vance’s eyes bulged and he shrugged. “I have no frigging idea what we’d do.”

  My father dying, for real, just wasn’t a reality for me. Despite Dad ramping up his drinking to vodka and scotc
h after we lost Mom and waking up covered in his own sick sometimes. Despite the ER doctor’s warning about liver failure.

  The curly-haired social worker talked with Vance and me as our unconscious father lay battered and bruised in his ER bed. She basically talked at us for about fifteen minutes. My brother had his glazed-over look on, so I forced myself to pay attention to what the woman said. She asked if Dad had a will. That question stopped Vance and me in our tracks. A will? A will meant dying. Death.

  Once we calmed down, Vance surprised me by telling her that he did have one, actually two. A living will and a regular will. He said Dad showed him where they were and everything.

  When she actually said the word death, Vance snapped out of it, strung a bunch of curses together, and flung them in the woman’s direction. I remember her ducking down a little bit as he shouted.

  He’d stormed out, and I apologized to her with sincerity. She drew the meeting to a close rather quickly. I had hundreds of questions floating in my head—the most pressing of which was, Where would I live if my father died? With Vance? Alone? But I didn’t get the chance to ask her right then because my father had a heart attack behind the ER curtains. Every conceivable adult shifted into high gear, including the social worker woman. She yanked me out of the madness, found Vance, and deposited us in the waiting room. We were instructed to sit tight, which neither of us did once she was out of sight. Vance paced the length of the rectangular room, and I was up and down from my seat—getting drinks from the water fountain, going to the bathroom, grabbing a magazine, putting the magazine back.

  He didn’t die that day. Obviously. He came to after the heart attack and then proceeded to shake uncontrollably, an apparent side effect from alcohol withdrawal.

  That whole disaster was only two weeks ago, and my father never regained full health. They’d kept him in the hospital for almost a week and sent him home to finish recovering. Each day he was home “recovering,” he drank himself into a stupor. Last week, I noticed the yellow hue to his skin.