by K. M. Walton
And again.
Oscar
I stand in Dad’s bedroom doorway. His bed remains unmade but the cans are gone. I didn’t clean them up. Did Vance? I can still see Dad lying there holding up his beer, defiantly saying, “Cheers!” He fell into a coma that next afternoon. He never made it to the liver doctor.
Vance and I found him unconscious in his bed when we got home from school. We called 911, and he spent a short time in the hospital before they moved him to the hospice.
His service is in two hours. It’s only going to be me, Vance, Joey, and Bill.
Once the cell company released Dad’s PIN, we got into his phone and called our grandparents and aunt.
My grandparents couldn’t make it from Alaska. My aunt couldn’t make it from Singapore. Vance and I seriously didn’t care if they came or not. They were just people. At first we didn’t even want Joey and Bill to come, but then Vance made a good point—he said Dad would’ve wanted them there. He was right. They liked Dad, and Dad liked them. They’d stuck by him.
Ms. Becker really is our liaison with the funeral home. She calls each morning with a list of questions for me and Vance. We put her on speaker and answer them, together.
• No, we don’t want to speak at the service.
• No, flowers are a waste of money.
• No, we don’t practice any kind of religion.
• No, we don’t want a memory book or funeral cards made.
• No, we don’t plan to bring photo boards.
• Yes, we want Dad’s coffin to be nice.
• Yes, we want his burial to happen right after.
• No, we don’t want a limo. Vance can drive us. We know the way. It’s the same cemetery as for Mom.
The Child Protective Services woman comes tomorrow morning. Ms. Becker says she is her favorite CPS social worker. We’ll see.
“Eggs are ready,” Vance yells up the stairs.
“Coming.” I close Dad’s door until it clicks. Of course we’ll have to open it, maybe even when we get home, but there is the tiniest comfort in shutting his things away for the time being. A temporary break from one space in which he lived.
Vance and Growler sit at the table, already eating breakfast. It was my idea to invite Growler over last night. I thought he’d be the perfect person to hang out with. Vance objected at first, saying he wasn’t ready to see people. I reminded him that it would be nice for Growler since he wasn’t invited to Dad’s service. Growler loved Dad. And besides, we still had the sunglasses he’d left at the hospice.
Vance texted him, and he got permission to sleep over. We hung out in the living room telling Dad story after Dad story. It was during one of those stories that I had a mini-revelation. The fact that I insisted on calling Growler “Stephen” was annoying. Growler was Growler, and that was that. The only reason I did it was to annoy Vance. I’d moved on from that.
The kitchen smells of melted butter and toast. “Looks good. Thanks.” Complimenting Vance, showing him gratitude, still feels awkward, the words clunky in my mouth.
Vance drops his eyes. “Sure.”
We trip over the exchange. We are unsure. We are in strange territory.
“Tasted good,” Growler says. “I gotta bolt. My dad’s expecting me to help with the garage cleanout, which starts in ten minutes. I’ll be thinking of you guys today.” He lifts his half-empty OJ glass. “To your dad!”
Vance and I raise our glasses, and the three of us clink. Growler simultaneously squeezes both of our shoulders before leaving.
We eat in silence. The seriousness of the day is all-powerful.
I cannot count the number of glances I take at our father’s empty chair. Hundreds maybe. Despite my efforts at being subtle, Vance says, “Maybe we can start eating in the dining room.”
I shrug and blink rapidly. The tears can’t come yet.
He says, “You know how Dad loved Cliff’s ‘Many Rivers to Cross’?”
My hand trembles as I take a bite of eggs, and I nod.
“What if we play it on my phone and put it up to Dad’s ear? Before Joey and Bill get there. Do you think he could really hear it?”
Who is this person sitting across from me? Will he retreat into his old personality soon? How long will Vance, the actual brother, be present and accounted for?
Vance answers his own question. “Probably not, right? I guess it would be more for us than him, wouldn’t it? It’s stupid.” He stands and clears his plate from the table.
“It’s not stupid.”
He turns around. He’s biting his cheek.
I point to Dad’s empty chair. “How do we know where his soul is? What if he’s here?” My voice rises. “What if he’s sitting there, listening to us, screaming that he wants you to play the song? How do we know anything anymore, Vance? I don’t know shit! I just don’t know shit!” I pound the table with my fist. My fork jumps from my plate and rattles around.
Vance wipes a tear away. “I don’t know shit either.”
We silently clear the table and pack the dishwasher. I walk into the living room and plop down onto the sofa. Vance follows—again, this is new because he usually would be anywhere I wasn’t.
“That picture…” he says, his voice drifting off.
What picture? Is he talking about one of my drawings?
He walks to the corner table, grabs the framed family photo from the zoo, and holds it up. “Let’s bring this with us to Dad’s thing. Mom loved this picture.”
“Do you think they stopped loving each other?”
Without hesitation Vance says, “No.”
I don’t know where his certainty is coming from, and I’m not sure he’s right, but it feels so good to hear it.
Vance
Two days ago
Calling Oscar a dick and an asshole stuck to me for some reason. I couldn’t erase the hurt look on his face. Despite multiple instances of me trying to forget it, blow it off, tell myself it was no big deal, I couldn’t shake the guilt.
Guilt was new for me.
When Dad crumbled and landed in the hospice, I had lots of time to wrestle with this new feeling, and I had no idea what to do with it.
Oscar was still sitting in the empty stands over there. I squinted to see who was running around the track. Just some mom, nobody I knew. I headed back into the hospice. Waiting for my brother to return wasn’t something I’d do. We did our own thing.
I took my seat next to Dad’s bed and immediately started counting his breaths. For three minutes in a row I only counted four breaths per minute. Only four. I was outside for barely five minutes, and he was down a breath. The nurse, I had to tell her. She was still sitting just outside the door at the mobile nurse’s cart. “Excuse me?” I said.
She looked up, her expression kind. “Yes?”
“My dad’s breaths are down to four a minute.”
She stood and motioned me back into his room. After checking him out, she said, “It’s a step closer. But I’d say he’s still a day, maybe a day and a half away from passing. I’m sure you’re not fond of our saying this, but it’s true—he’ll go when he’s ready.”
“Could it be sooner though?” My stomach knotted as the question left my mouth.
She nodded as she answered me. “Maybe. Again, I’m sorry for my wishy-washy answers. This place and our patients don’t follow a regular time frame, which can be difficult for the families.”
She asked if I needed anything, and when I told her no, she left me be. One of Dad’s loud and startling breaths made my body jump. I wanted to go get Oscar, just in case. I grabbed my backpack and told the nurse I was going to bring my brother back inside. As soon as my feet hit the blacktop, I beelined it for the car.
My mission did not involve Oscar yet.
Once in the car, I fumbled around in the inside zipper p
ocket of my backpack. When I’d been cleaning up the scattered beer cans in Dad’s bedroom, I’d found this small, hand-carved wooden box. It wasn’t hidden; it was just underneath his side of the bed. I’d known what it was before I’d opened it: his stash of weed. There wasn’t much, maybe enough to pack his Rasta-colored glass bowl—which was also in the box—two or three times.
I stared at the box on my lap and then scanned the hospice parking lot. Not a soul. Before “probation brain” got hold of me, I packed the bowl and took a hit. I smoked, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Mostly because it was Dad’s pot.
When Dad landed in the hospice and the doctor explained that he wouldn’t be coming home, that he would die in that room, in that bed, I made a plan to smoke a hit when he had a day left. Today was that day. Now was the time.
I figured, Dad was a rebel. Always was. And he’d die one. The toke-up was in his honor, to let him know that I understood him and that I’d never forget how he’d lived his life—with freedom, with a fierceness. Like every human being, I’m sure he had regrets, but he didn’t let them box him up. He powered onward.
Me taking a hit was powering onward.
I closed my eyes, and instead of going ahead in time, I went back, back to his last morning awake. I’d gone in to say good-bye to him before I left for school and found him sitting up in bed, staring out the window. “I’m heading out, Dad. Don’t forget you have your liver doctor appointment when we get home. Four thirty. Shower up, okay? You need one.”
He saluted me. “All right, Dad.”
I shoved his foot and laughed.
“Have a good day at school, Vance.”
I saluted him back.
The fact that the last time we talked wasn’t awful or full of anger was so great. Maybe the greatest thing of all.
Oscar crossed the parking lot. He was about to pass me when I slid my window down.
He scowled. “I thought you weren’t allowed to smoke weed anymore.”
“Get in,” I said. Discussing my motivation for smoking wasn’t his business.
Oscar glared at me.
“It’s serious. Get in,” I said.
“Is it Dad?”
“I’m not telling you shit until you get in.” I slid my window closed.
He huffed, walked around the front of the car, and got in.
I gripped the steering wheel. “His breathing is down to four breaths a minute.”
“How do you know?”
I exhaled. “How the hell do you think I know? I was just up there.”
“Did she say how much time he has left?”
“A day, maybe less.” I couldn’t look at him when I said it. I didn’t want to see the news register on his face. My gaze was straight ahead. A red sports car drove by.
“I’m going back up,” Oscar said. He jogged to the front door and disappeared inside the building.
As I put the wooden box away, zipping it inside the pocket, the last thing I’d said in my dad’s ear up there went through my head: You gotta wake up, man. We leave for Jamaica in a few months. Seriously. If Oscar hadn’t been listening to his music and he’d heard me say it, no doubt he would’ve thought I was a clueless idiot asking Dad to wake up.
I wasn’t an idiot.
I knew he wasn’t waking up. But I didn’t know if he was afraid, if he knew that he was dying. I thought if I talked to him as if he were just sleeping, as if he could wake up, then maybe he wouldn’t be afraid. The logic was shaky, yes, but when your dad was about to die, crazy shit started making sense.
Oscar
Vance and I decide not to wear suits to the funeral parlor. We actually share a laugh in the hallway thinking about Dad making fun of us if we wore them. He wasn’t even wearing one in his casket. One of Ms. Becker’s questions for us was what we wanted to have Dad wear. I remember Vance and I looked at each other and said, “Not a suit.”
Vance is still puttering around in the kitchen. I sit on the edge of my bed and continue wrestling with the same question: Should I put one of my sketches in the casket with him?
When Vance said he wanted to play the song for him, I’d leaned toward “Yes, I should put a sketch in,” but now that we’re about to leave and the whole thing is about to happen, I am unsure.
Would he want one of my sketches in with him for all eternity? He’d never seen one when he was alive—which has tortured me since leaving the hospice—so would he even like what I draw? The sheet is soft under my palms as I run my hands back and forth.
Maybe the gesture is for me, the living. Maybe Dad wouldn’t care one way or another. Having such an intimate part of me, such a secret and private part of me, tucked inside with him could be a small comfort…for me.
I reach for my sketchbook and thumb through.
“You ready? We should head out,” Vance shouts up the steps.
My heart knocks in my chest. “Be right down.” The decision of which drawing was made long ago. I flip right to the page. It’s Dad behind the bar at the Blue Mountain. There’s only one man sitting having a drink. Dad’s head is tossed back and he’s laughing. He didn’t see me come in that day. I wasn’t supposed to work but I hadn’t felt like going home. I’d planned to just sit at one of the tables on the restaurant side and do my homework. After a while, it became clear to me that no one knew I was there, so I started drawing.
I carefully tear it out along the perforated edge and hold it up. It’s folded and in my back pocket by the time I reach the bottom step. “I feel like we brought stuff to Mom’s. Are we forgetting things?” I ask.
Vance’s face scrunches. “We are. The zoo photo.” He heads into the living room to grab it. He holds it up, shouts, “Got it,” and high-fives me as he passes. The sharp smack of his palm on mine is jolting. We haven’t high-fived since we were kids. I was always jealous watching Vance and Dad share excitement like that. Hungry for someone, anyone to be happy to see me. And now my brother…my brother…is treating me like a friend.
I am not alone anymore.
I smile. “That T-shirt looks good on you.” He had on Dad’s beloved vintage Jamaican Red Stripe. Dad had been wearing it that day I’d sketched him laughing behind the bar. The T-shirt was faded yellow with a drawn beer cap in the middle of the chest. Across the top of the cap it said “Jamaica’s” in bold red script, and then in the center, it had a thick red stripe that ran diagonally with the words “Red Stripe” across it. In the bottom right of the cap, it said in block print “Lager Beer.”
After hanging up with Ms. Becker yesterday, Vance and I picked out what Dad would wear. Vance came up with the idea of us each wearing one of his favorite T-shirts. It was the best idea my brother ever had, and I told him so.
Vance looked down and rubbed his chest. “You don’t think this is the one we should’ve had him wear, do you?”
“No way. His Blue Mountain Lounge was his favorite.”
“You’re right.” Vance blew out his breath. “Dad would totally approve of that chili stain on yours.” He pointed to the center of my chest.
“That’s why I picked this one.” I’d chosen Dad’s Jamaican sunset silk-screen T-shirt that he’d bought from one of the West Chester artisans in town. He said he’d bought it at the very first West Chester Chili Festival, worn it, spilled chili on it, and then two days later I was born. The story, now that he’s gone, has taken on a different meaning for me. My father lived his life, stains and all.
I used to get angry with him for wearing this grubby, old, stained T-shirt. He would always tell me to lighten up.
Choosing this shirt is part of my plan to lighten up.
Vance
Yesterday
Oscar held his hand just over Dad’s mouth to check for breath.
“Do you feel anything?” I asked.
His eyes bulged. “N-no.” Oscar lost it.
My legs refused to hold me up. I fell backward into the chair. Oh my God. I wasn’t ready for him to go yet! He couldn’t be gone. I dropped my head into my hands. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Images and memories flashed in my brain: Dad pushing me down a snowy hill on my teal-blue saucer sled, him and Mom holding hands at the zoo, his bright-red face when he forgot to reapply sunscreen during the family trip to Jamaica, the way his shoulders popped when a good reggae song came on at the bar, the way he walked, talked, laughed, smiled.
I raised my eyes just as Oscar was trying to move Dad’s head. Were people supposed to handle the dead right after they died? It didn’t seem right to me. He shouldn’t touch him. I barked, “What are you doing? S-stop! Stop! Don’t touch him!”
Oscar immediately dropped Dad’s hand, and his limp arm fell like a tree trunk. No! That’s not right either. Just then, at that exact moment, there was a knock on the door. Oscar and I turned, and in walked Jacque Beaufort. There wasn’t time for me to wipe off my tears and runny nose. I didn’t want her in here. This was none of her business. I yelled, “Not now!”
She jumped back a step and apologized. Without another second of hesitation, she turned and ran out.
She was lucky I didn’t throw anything at her. A powerful surge of anger shot through my body like a million pistols unloading their bullets. He should not be dead! How can he be dead? Oh my God. Dad and I understood each other, we accepted each other. No one, not even Growler, would ever be able to come close to him. Dad, come back! Without thinking, I punched the seat of the chair. I had to try to get some of the anger out. My body temperature went through the roof. Beads of sweat ran down my temples.
I needed my fist to land on something again. The chair got it. Unintelligible sounds accompanied each punch. I sounded like an angry bear.
“Vance? Vance!” someone shouted.
I froze mid-punch and raised my eyes. I had to blink rapidly to clear away the tears. Peggy stood a few feet away, and she didn’t look happy. “You can either dig deep and calm yourself down, or I can call down to Thomas and he can help you calm down.” Peggy turned to Oscar. “Thomas is six-five and three hundred pounds.”
