Dare

by Glenna Sinclair

  My mother looked contrite and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. We were young. Invincible, you know. The way you feel right now. Like nothing bad could ever happen. We were more focused on the farm, on raising you, than anything as morbid as that.”

  That didn’t help at all. “Do you know if he made a will?” I asked. “Maybe there would’ve been something in there.”

  “You’re the one who’s been living with him for the past ten years,” she said flippantly. “You would know better than me.”

  “Look, I get that this isn’t a priority for you to be here,” I snapped, done with her. “I know that you probably left behind some very important shit in Las Vegas, but this is the father of your daughter, here, lying in a bed. Can you at least pretend that you want to help me deal with this? If only because you had a hand in creating me?”

  “Maybe you two shouldn’t have this conversation here,” Sebastian said, making me jump as he squeezed my hand. I’d forgotten he was here. “I think only good energy should be in here, if only to make your father more peaceful.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel,” my mother said, her shoulders sagging. “I…I don’t know how to do this mothering thing. I think I used to, but I obviously wasn’t very good at it. I left you, after all, and that wasn’t fair to you. I don’t think I can make it up to you, and that’s just something I’ll have to live with. It keeps me up more nights than I care to admit. But will you let me buy you a coffee downstairs so we can get this hashed out? You deserve to be angry with me, but your friend is right—oh, sorry…your ‘more than a friend.’ We should take the negativity outside.”

  I caught a quickly hidden smirk from Sebastian at the “more than a friend” comment, and I turned to my mother.

  “I guess we should take this outside,” I said glumly.

  “I can stay here with your father,” Sebastian offered.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “You’ve already done enough. I know you’re busy.”

  “One of the perks of being president and CEO is that I can choose when I come in to work. Today, I feel like taking the day off. There are more important things.”

  “Thanks,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “You’re not so bad after all.”

  “I told you so,” he said, winking.

  “Wait, he owns his own company?” my mother asked, as we walked out of the room and down the hallway toward the elevators. “Is he rich?”

  “I guess so,” I said glumly, more at the fact that I had just agreed to spend time with my estranged mother than at the fact that Sebastian was rich.

  “Well, if you’re not going to ask him to marry you as soon as we get back, I will,” my mother said, stepping into the elevator behind me. “You need to lock that down, girl.”

  “Can you not for a little bit?” I asked her. “I remember a few things about you when you were still my mother, but being a flirt isn’t one of them.”

  “I’ll always be your mother,” she informed me. “Nothing can change that.”

  “I think absence can,” I countered, walking out as soon as the elevator doors rolled open.

  We walked in silence toward the cafeteria as I let her absorb that barb, hating myself a little bit. She didn’t deserve how mean I was being to her, but I also didn’t deserve to hear her drone on and on about subjects unrelated to what I needed her to dredge up in her memory.

  “Two coffees, please,” I told the cashier at the register when we got to the head of the line. “Do you want anything else?”

  “A slice of pie, please,” my mother said. “Oh, and a sandwich. I’m famished.”

  I thought about asking her how she could eat at a time like this, but I resisted. After all, I had sought comfort last night in the form of Sebastian, and I had a closer connection to Dad than she did. It wasn’t right of me to judge her, and I resolved to find some crumb of patience to offer her.

  We took our coffees—and my mother’s feast—to a table outside, the sun just starting to slant into the courtyard. It was kind of a sad place, that courtyard—trees walled in and the smell of stale smoke even with the surfeit of no-smoking signs. But it was better than Dad’s room in the intensive care unit, no matter how much I loved him.

  I let my mother have a few bites of her sandwich, waiting for my coffee to cool, until I tried again.

  “Are you sure that you and Dad never discussed this kind of thing?” I asked, blowing over the mug, watching as the steam vanished before rising again. “Whether you would want someone to wait for you to try and come back, or pull the plug and let you go? You know, like a late-night conversation or something you talked about when you were bored and driving somewhere far away?”

  My mother waved her hand in the air dismissively, talking around her mouthful of sandwich. “Rachel, nighttime was for sex and sleeping, and we never went anywhere far away in a car. Your father was crazy about that farm, and it drove me crazy. That’s not a mystery to you.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But are you sure you can’t think of anything? Like whether he leaned one way or the other?”

  My mother shrugged exaggeratedly, cursing as she took a sip of her coffee before it had cooled down enough. “No, Rachel, we just never talked about it.”

  “Not in all the years of being together,” I said flatly.

  “No.” She polished off her sandwich and took another sip of coffee—this time, more carefully. “Would it make you feel better if I made something up? If I told you that I suddenly remembered something that would help you make up your mind? I can do that, if you think it would help.”

  I recoiled. “No, that wouldn’t help.” She could’ve lied to me and I would’ve seized on it, I realized, eager for someone else to make the decision for me. But I was beginning to realize that Dad’s life, his future…that was going to be all up to me. No one knew him better than me. Not the woman with whom he’d made me. Not Sebastian. Not the doctors. Me. I knew the implications of what I might have to do, but it didn’t make the decision any easier.

  “The farm will be yours, you know,” my mother said offhandedly, as if it had just occurred to her. “If your father doesn’t make it, of course.”

  “I thought you didn’t know if he had a will,” I said.

  “I don’t have to know. We’re divorced. You’re his heir. The farm is yours. It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure that one out.”

  My mother had started on her pie, but I still hadn’t tried the coffee. I didn’t really feel like drinking it. The idea that the farm would be mine was overwhelming, to say the least. I didn’t know what I would do with it, or whether I actually wanted it. The farm would come with the bank, all of the various creditors Dad owed, all of the bills that were past due. The farm was a tangle of headaches and heartaches, and I was about to inherit all of it.

  “I thought you might be excited about having the farm,” my mother said, watching my face carefully. “You stayed there, after all. Even after you finished college.”

  “It was what I majored in,” I told her, giving up on my coffee and setting it on the concrete table.

  “You don’t want the farm,” my mother said. It was a statement, not a question, and I knew she could see it in my expression. I tried to make my face as blank as possible, but she just laughed. “It’s no use. I can read you like a book. You’re my daughter, Rachel, no matter how much that idea might repulse you.”

  “It doesn’t repulse me,” I sighed. “I just…I don’t understand how I’m your daughter. We’re really different.”

  “Are we?” she countered. “We look just alike.” I gave her a dubious stare, and she backpedaled. “Well, you look like I did when I was your age. I had you when I was twenty-two, you know.”

  “I know. But beyond appearances, we’re completely different. You act so…”

  “I act the way I do because I know what I want,” my mother said simply. “That’s all there is to it. I decided, after I left him, that I was done pretending to like things I did
n’t, demurring when I knew that sounding off would get me what I wanted. I was done pleasing others. I was ready to please myself. Everything I did was something that made me happy. No regrets.”

  “Not even leaving me behind?” I asked her.

  She eyed me. “I’m sorry, but no. I don’t even regret that. I could’ve taken you, but that wasn’t a life for a child. You’d have been backstage waiting for me every night, or with a babysitter, or out in the audience, nursing a soda while I danced. That wouldn’t have been a good upbringing for you.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have,” I agreed. “But neither was suffering through my childhood with the idea that my mother didn’t want me.”

  “I’m not sure what I can say right now that will make you feel any better, Rachel,” my mother said. “What do you want from me? What do you want? Have you ever asked yourself that? You don’t want the farm. So what do you want? What would make you happy?”

  But I couldn’t answer her question because I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted, whether it was the farm or something else.

  “You’re trapped,” she said, draining her coffee. “I recognize that. I would recognize that anywhere, in anyone. I was like you. And then I left.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not leaving Dad. Not like this.”

  “Rachel, say even the miraculous happens. He’s not going to be able to manage the farm anymore. Not like he did. It’ll fall to you, and I can see that you don’t want it. I don’t have to know the details or hear the reasons behind them, even if you have your reasons. I can see it. I can smell it. I can taste it. You feel trapped, and it doesn’t have to be like that.”

  “We’re very different,” I said, standing up. “I have a sense of loyalty. You don’t.”

  “You say loyalty, I say a brick tied to each of your ankles,” she remarked. “It’s the same thing.”

  “It’s not.”

  She shrugged, declining to fire anything back at me. She knew she was right, and damn it, I was afraid that I knew it, too. I didn’t need the farm and all of its problems on my shoulders right now, not when I was carrying Dad there already. I wasn’t strong enough to handle anything.

  “Well, this has been nice, I guess,” I said sarcastically. “Lots of insights from your motherly advice.”

  “I’ll be here when you need me,” she said, taking my untouched coffee without asking. She’d already seen in my face that I didn’t want it. She knew exactly what I wanted and didn’t want, and I didn’t have a clue.

  “I don’t need you anymore,” I said. “You can go back to Vegas. Wouldn’t want you to miss a performance over Dad.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until there’s some closure,” she said, taking a sip of coffee without breaking eye contact with me. “One way or another.”

  I turned my back on her and left her in that motionless courtyard. Not even birds would go in there, I noticed. I made the trip back up to the intensive care unit by myself, drifting down the halls until I found myself in front of Dad’s room, Sebastian standing there, saying something to me.

  “Rachel, are you okay?” He was shaking me, and I realized I’d been so overcome with disappointment at my first in-person interaction with my mother that I hadn’t even been listening to him.

  “Sorry,” I said, sinking gratefully into his hug. “Thanks for staying with Dad. Have there been any changes?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Sebastian said, and I knew in that moment that there wouldn’t be. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. It was as if understanding suddenly blanketed me.

  “Would you do something for me?” I asked him, leaning back from his embrace to look into his eyes.

  “I would do anything for you.” I wished that were true, but I knew better. There were some things I just had to do myself, even if I didn’t want to, even if I would’ve laid it at the feet of someone else to take care of if I could have.

  “Would you get the doctor for me?” I asked. “There are some things I need to discuss with him. Privately.”

  “Of course.” But Sebastian stayed in front of me for a long moment, his dark eyes examining mine, before he hugged me again and left. I knew he understood what I needed to do, and that I needed to do it alone.

  But before I could go to Dad, the doctor arrived. I was surprised Sebastian could compel him to come so quickly—maybe it was Sebastian’s wealth or influence or brattiness. Whatever it was, and it was probably the same thing that had compelled the man to take a late-night phone call from us, the doctor was here, his lips pursed in question.

  “Can you talk to me honestly, and in terms that I can understand, about my father’s chances?” I asked him before he could ask me anything.

  “Well, we don’t really put it in terms of chances,” the doctor reasoned. “What I can tell you is that your father was having a heart attack long before he collapsed in front of you. If there had been a faster response, as in, if he had called an ambulance as soon as he began experiencing symptoms, there would’ve been a better chance of him recovering.”

  I remembered how gray-faced and sweaty he had been when he found me in the office. I should’ve asked how he was feeling at that point, insisted that he sit down, realized that something was wrong, but I didn’t. I was too focused on getting to the bottom of what was happening on the farm. I was too selfish to realize what was going on.

  “To be fair, he might not have realized he was having a heart attack,” the doctor said, interrupting my cycle of guilt. “A heart attack can manifest itself in many different ways. He could’ve just thought he was tired, that he’d overdone it during a day of work. Anything.”

  “But will he come back?” I asked. “Is there a chance that he could wake up and be all right?”

  “His heart is very weak,” the doctor said. “There was too much damage dealt to it during the heart attack, and too much time passed for any sort of treatment to be beneficial. In cases like this, a transplant might work, but I don’t believe he would survive being opened up again. He almost didn’t make it when we did it the first time, to try and assess the extent of the damage.”

  “So, this is it,” I said, feeling very far away from myself. “He’s not coming back.” Dad, who had been there for me my entire life, was already gone. I expected a torrent of tears to course down my face, but I felt strangely distant, like my mind and my heart and their feelings were occupying a space apart from my body. My ears buzzed with a noise that I couldn’t explain.

  “Are you ready to make a decision?” the doctor asked, but I found that I had lost my ability to speak.

  Dad was still there, not even the expression on his face different, the beeps the only thing keeping him alive. If it had been up to him, if things had happened naturally, maybe he would’ve preferred to slip away at home, on the farm he loved so much. But I had denied him that; I had dragged him into the city he never cared for, to suffer at the hands of machines and doctors.

  I felt terrible.

  I caressed his hand gently, looked into his face for any sign that he knew I was here, but there was nothing. Not even his brow was wrinkled. He was placid, as if his body was an empty vessel. The person inside had already gone on his way. Dad—or the Dad I knew, the one capable of caring deeply for me and his farm—was already dead. Maybe he’d gone ahead and vacated his body when it hit the floor there at the house. That would’ve been what he wanted. To go on his own time, there on the farm, surrounded by the things he’d loved. And I was here with him now. That was all that mattered. That things were done right now.

  Dad had embraced the natural things about life. It was part of his passion. He could’ve been a gardener in some other life, putting his green thumb to use in a flowerbed or a patio garden or something, but he’d chosen to dream big…to be not just a farmer, but also an organic farmer. Doing things the right way was incredibly important to him. He eschewed everything that felt unnatural to him and the operation he was trying to develop, embracing the things he knew were c
orrect and friendly to the environment and the produce he wanted to grow—even if they weren’t the cheapest or easiest methods.

  I knew in my heart—and perhaps I’d always known it, from the moment we arrived in the hospital—that Dad wouldn’t want to linger on here artificially. His body had already made the decision for him, but it was I who was hanging on. It was my selfishness that kept him here. I knew he wanted to move on.

  “I have made my decision,” I said, my voice hoarse as I looked at the doctor. “He needs to do what he thinks is right, and we need to go ahead and let nature take its course. Please take the machines away.”

  “All right,” the doctor said, patting me on the shoulder kindly before bringing a few nurses into the room. “Do you want me to get anyone for you?”

  “No, that’s all right,” I said, smiling even though it felt like my world was dropping out from underneath me. “Dad and I have been together, just us, for ten years. I think we can do this last thing together.”

  “There’s no real way of telling how long it will take, once he’s off the support,” the doctor warned me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call someone if I need someone.”

  The room emptied out, device by device, person by person, and the quiet overwhelmed me. Even without all the tubes and beeps and machines around him, Dad looked a lot smaller in that bed than he had been in real life—even if he hadn’t been a very tall man. It was his vulnerability, I was sure, but I felt an echo of what I’d felt in the office—that we had switched roles. I was the parent, the one in charge, and he was the child, the one relying on me. I had made this decision for him, and I had to trust myself that it was the best one.

  I pulled a chair up to his bedside and sat in it, watching his chest rise and fall, listening to his fleeting breath, in and out of his nose. I took his hand and kissed it.

  “Thank you for everything you did,” I said, choking on the words as I said them. Those words were making it real. I was saying my goodbye. “I know that you didn’t ask to be a single father. I know things were hard, and a lot of the time, that I didn’t make them easier. But I had fun. I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood. I’m going to try to save the farm for you.”