Crying Laughing

by Lance Rubin

  When I turn down the freezer aisle, it’s empty except for one shopping cart, so I look down the next aisle instead. There’re a couple of people—an older dark-haired woman, a young father with a baby in a carrier—but no Dad. Huh.

  I go back to the first aisle, thinking I’ll check out the contents of the one cart there, see if it’s ours, but before I’ve even made it halfway down the aisle, I freeze. (Pun truly not intended.)

  Just past the shopping cart, Dad is lying on his side on the floor.

  It is not a fun thing to see.

  “Daddy,” I say, using a name I haven’t uttered in at least five years as I rush over to him.

  “Hey, Win,” he says, grimacing in pain, three boxes of frozen chicken sausage scattered around his body. I’m so happy he can speak.

  “Ohmigod, are you okay?” My voice is trembling. “What happened?”

  It feels like a stupid question the second I say it.

  “I fell,” he says, with just a touch of snark. “My right foot stiffened up, and I— So stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid. People fall all the time—I fall all the time.” My heart is racing, and I’m not sure what to do, and I can’t comfort him because my arms are still overflowing with goddamn crackers and pasta. I drop it all and crouch down next to him, where I see for the first time that he’s bleeding from a spot just above his eyebrow. “Oh god.”

  “It’s not a big deal. My head grazed the side of the freezer on the way down.”

  “I should probably go get some help.” I look up and down the aisle, those terrible fluorescent lights shining on us. How can there not be a single other person desiring frozen goods? “Did this just happen?”

  “No. A minute or two ago.” The thought of Dad lying here helpless for even that long shatters me. “You don’t need to get anybody,” he says. “Nothing’s broken. I just need a hand getting up.”

  Technically no one outside of our family knows about his diagnosis, and I’m sure he’s worried we’ll know someone who’s shopping, and it’ll turn into a thing.

  “Okay,” I say. I wrap my arms around his torso, awkwardly trying to lift him to a sitting position. Dad grunts in pain, and I pull my hands back as if I’ve been burned. “I don’t think— I mean, you’re not supposed to move someone after they’ve been injured like this. In case you had a concussion or something.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a concussion.”

  “Well,” I say, even though I don’t think that’s something you can assess by feel. But the last thing I want to do right now is argue with him. I stare down the aisle, trying to will someone into existence to come help us.

  A man walks by, and I shout out.

  “Excuse me! We need some help over here!”

  “Win, don’t,” Dad says.

  The man stops, and it is only once he turns into our aisle and starts slowly ambling our way with his shopping cart that I realize he is approximately ninety years old.

  “Yes, what is it?” the man says loudly. He’s wearing pleated khakis and a blue polo shirt. It might actually be unsafe for him to help Dad get up. We need somebody else.

  “What’s he doing on the floor?” the man asks. I feel Dad looking at me, and I know he doesn’t want me to make this a big deal. I look ahead of and behind us, hoping for someone else, anyone else, who can help.

  The man points. “You dropped some crackers.”

  I can’t stand here anymore. I dash down the aisle and scan the front of the store, almost immediately finding who I’m looking for. “Fletcher,” I call out, seeing his lanky frame steering an empty dolly in the opposite direction. He stops and turns, blinks twice. “Can you come with me?”

  Fletcher doesn’t ask any questions, as it’s probably clear I’m not asking for produce guidance, and moments later, he’s taking in the strange tableau in the freezer aisle.

  “We, uh, my dad fell,” I say. “Dad, this is Fletcher. He just joined the improv troupe too.”

  Dad grunts as he pushes himself up to a sitting position. There’s a thin trail of blood connecting his forehead and cheek. “Good to meet you, Fletcher,” he says, looking sheepish as he extends a hand from the floor. “I’m Russ.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Fletcher says as they shake hands. Dad is about to let go, but, much to his surprise, Fletcher transitions seamlessly into pulling him up into a standing position.

  “Oh, thanks,” Dad says, leaning on the freezer to stabilize himself.

  “No prob,” Fletcher says.

  “Well done,” says the man in pleated khakis, who for some reason is still standing here.

  Fletcher nods.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I say. I feel so relieved I found him so quickly.

  Fletcher is already bending over to pick up the six boxes of crackers and pasta, which he places in the cart with an almost balletic athleticism. “Can’t leave without your carbs,” he says, giving me a quick smile (the second I’ve ever witnessed from him), then bending down again, this time to pick up the sausage boxes. “Did you want all of these?” he asks.

  “Uh, just one, actually,” Dad says. “The others, you know, sprang out and knocked me over.”

  “Yeah, gotta watch out for that spicy sausage,” Fletcher says, placing a box in our cart and the other two back on the freezer shelf in what seems like one fluid movement. It’s bizarre; he almost seems like a different person from the guy I spoke to five minutes ago next to the toilet paper. “Here,” he says, taking a tissue from a small packet he’s pulled out of his back pocket and handing it to Dad. Fletcher carries around tissues? “Just to clean up some of the blood on your…” He points to his own forehead.

  “Oh,” Dad says, newly alarmed, “is there…?”

  “Just a little,” Fletcher says.

  I take the tissue and dab at Dad’s face. He tries to be stoic but winces a little.

  “So, you all good?” Fletcher says.

  “Fine, thank you,” the man we don’t know says.

  Dad and I stare at the man, then at each other, and Dad is making his holding-back-a-laugh face, which is comforting on a deep level I can’t begin to articulate.

  “Glad to hear it,” Fletcher says to Ol’ Khakis before turning to Dad and me. “What about you two? Good?”

  “I think— Yeah, I think we’re good. Thanks so much, Fletcher,” Dad says, extending his hand.

  “No prob,” Fletcher says again as he shakes Dad’s hand for the second time in two minutes.

  “Really, thank you,” I say, and I truly mean it. I think what I’m most grateful for is how few questions he’s asking. And how nonjudgmental he seems.

  Fletcher gives me a thumbs-up. “See ya in school.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I say. “See ya.”

  “I think I’ll continue my shopping as well,” the ninety-something-year-old man says, pivoting his shopping cart back the way he came.

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks for your…” I’m not sure how to finish that sentence…annoying unhelpful comments? I don’t think he heard me anyway.

  Dad and I silently watch the man until he’s left our aisle, on to greener shopping pastures.

  “I’ll miss that guy,” Dad says.

  “Ha, me too.” I laugh, and clearly I was holding in a lot of tension, because it comes out really weird, like a cockatoo mating call or something.

  “And your friend Fletcher. God bless him.”

  “I know,” I say. “I don’t even know him that well.”

  “Can’t believe he had a packet of tissues on him.”

  “That’s what I was thinking!”

  “So, shall we?” Dad nods his head toward the front of the store and the checkout lines, as if he’s ready to jump back into our usual rhythms and pretend nothing traumatic just happened.

  “Uh, are you sure you
’re all right? Should we call Mom?”

  “I think I’m fine,” Dad says. “We’ll tell her what happened, but calling would just freak her out. And on her birthday weekend, no less.”

  I can already hear Mom’s incredulous voice asking Dad why the hell he didn’t let her know right away. But again, he’s the one who just fell, so I’ll leave it up to him.

  “Okay,” I say. “Do you want me to push the cart? Since…?”

  “Nah, I got it,” Dad says, a little more forcefully than I would have expected.

  “Okay, great. I was just offering in case— Yeah, great.”

  Dad and I don’t say anything else as we walk toward the checkout lines. I deliberately slow down my pace so we can be side by side.

  15

  “You sure I can’t help?”

  “Back away, woman!” Dad shouts at Mom as he stands at the stove guarding the eggs in his pan. He’s being funny, but he’s also nervous, so it comes out super-loud and intense.

  “Okay, okay,” Mom says, hands in the air. “Geez, somebody ate their Wheaties this morning.”

  “Sorry,” he says, “but the birthday girl does no work on her birthday. That’s the rule.”

  “Well, if you bite the birthday girl’s head off,” Mom says, “there won’t be a birthday girl. So.”

  Dad chomps at the air like a dinosaur.

  I’m watching all this while covering the kitchen table with a My Little Pony tablecloth that Dad and I found at Party City. Even though Mom and Dad are being a little snippy with each other, it’s mainly good-natured, which is about eight billion times better than the fight they had most of the day yesterday once we got home from Stop & Shop.

  Dad was able to keep his fall a secret for exactly zero seconds, as a purplish goose egg had sprouted on his forehead by the time we walked in the door. As I’d expected, Mom could not wrap her head around the idea that Dad would get injured and not call her immediately. Especially since it turned out this wasn’t his first fall. Back in July, right before I left for camp, he’d gotten a huge bruise on his elbow that he’d told me was from “being whacked with a prop” by one of his students. Not the case, Mom informed me. How much else don’t I know?

  “Win was there,” Dad said, justifying his most recent postfall behavior. “We had the situation under control.”

  “I can’t even— Let’s talk about this later,” Mom said before proceeding to do the most passive-aggressive grocery unpacking of all time. You can’t actually slam a fridge, because it always closes with that gentle suction of air, but she came close.

  “I didn’t want to worry you on your birthday weekend,” Dad said as she set the pickles in the fridge so hard I was sure the jar would shatter.

  “I said we’ll talk about it later. And that’s bullshit, and you know it.”

  I’ve gotten over the novelty of my parents cursing, but when they’re cursing at each other, something I’ve only witnessed a couple of times, it still shakes me to my core. It seemed like Mom was reacting a little too strongly, considering Dad was the one with ALS who’d fallen in the freezer aisle, but I stayed out of it.

  I caught bits of their arguments the rest of the day, so I knew Mom wanted Dad to start using a cane, and he said he wasn’t ready for that. Not sure if I am either, to be honest. My father, sauntering through town with a cane. Kind of badass in a way, I guess.

  But now Mom and Dad seem to have worked through whatever it is they had to work through, which is good because people will be arriving for the brunch soon, and the stress of watching Dad try to hide his ALS from them is anxiety enough for one day.

  “Oh, you guys,” Mom says now, smiling as she notices the My Little Pony tablecloth.

  “Only the best for you,” I say.

  “Glad my sister’s not coming today.”

  When Mom was five, she baked Aunt Michelle’s favorite My Little Ponies in the microwave during an ill-conceived game of Tanning Salon. They came out as melted, deformed pony monsters, and Aunt Michelle didn’t talk to Mom for a week. It’s obviously one of my favorite stories.

  “She’s gonna FaceTime us later,” I say, “and this tablecloth is the first thing I’m going to show her.”

  “Nooooo­ooooo­,” Mom says, as if in slow motion.

  The doorbell rings, and Dad’s shoulders tense up as he spoons his egg-spinach scramble out of the pan and into a bowl. “It’s not eleven yet, is it?” he asks.

  “Nope,” Mom says, already heading out of the kitchen to the front door. According to the oven, it’s 10:24. And if I had to bet, I’d say it’s Grandma Mitzie. She’s always early.

  “Hi, Mitzie!” we hear Mom say after she opens the door.

  Yup.

  “Do you smell something?” Grandma Mitzie asks. “Something smells bad out here.”

  And yup. No “Happy birthday” or “Nice to see you,” just an immediate commentary on how our home has assaulted her olfactory glands.

  “Oh boy,” Dad says, cracking an egg for his next batch, then accidentally missing the bowl and sending yolk oozing onto the kitchen floor.

  “I got it,” I say, rushing over with paper towels before he can attempt to do it himself, possibly creating another catastrophe before a single guest arrives.

  Out of all the people coming over, I know Dad’s definitely most anxious about his mother. He even put a Band-Aid over the bruise on his forehead.

  I get it. Grandma Mitzie is the very definition of a tough cookie. She’s got a huge heart and she loves me so much and she’s absolutely hilarious, often by accident, but she’s also, um, how should I put it?

  Mean. She’s mean.

  I guess the slightly nicer way to say that is she’s judgmental, but I’d rather be honest. She’s just mean. And most of the time, I don’t even think she realizes. She spends half the year a few towns away from us in Springfield and the other half down in Florida. Mom once pointed out that Dad is visibly less stressed from November through May, and I was like That’s ridiculous, but then I realized she was right. I don’t know how I’d never noticed it before.

  When I was eavesdropping yesterday, one of the main points being argued was when Dad should let Grandma Mitzie know about his diagnosis. Mom was lobbying for telling her in person sometime during or after the brunch, but Dad was pushing hard to wait until November, when Grandma was back in Florida.

  “Are you kidding me?” Mom said. “You’re going to wait three months to let your mother know you’re seriously ill?”

  “I think it’s in everyone’s best interests,” Dad said.

  “You mean your best interests.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Mom let out a huff of air. She’s very good at that.

  “Come on, Dane,” Dad said. “You know what will happen if I tell her. My mom will be over here every day, asking a billion questions I don’t have the answers to, generally stressing me out, which is the last thing my body needs right now. And what’s not good for me is not good for you and Win, either.”

  “Fine,” Mom said (and this is where I had to scurry away down the hall because I heard her approaching the very bedroom door my ear was pressed against), “do whatever you want. As per usual.”

  Mom is often making these comments about Dad doing whatever he wants, and it pisses me off. He’s the one who gave up his entire acting career to move to the suburbs and stay at home with me, so right there is a super example of him doing what he didn’t want.

  Mom and Grandma enter the kitchen, still talking about the smell.

  “It’s like a…like a fish smell,” Grandma says, wearing her usual scowl. “Or maybe it’s your fertilizer. What kind of fertilizer do you use?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Mitzie,” Mom says. She always goes into her interactions with Grandma with an upbeat attitude and a smile, and she’s always beaten down w
ithin fifteen minutes. Faster than usual today.

  “Oh,” Grandma says, handing Mom the two boxes she’s remembered she’s holding, one a white bakery box and the other small and wrapped. “Here you go, dear. It’s a chocolate babka and then a little something for you. Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks, Mitzie.” Mom’s smile is only half sincere, but Grandma doesn’t see that because she’s just spotted me.

  “And oh! Here’s my little Winnala. How are you, my love?” She hugs me and mushes her lips into my cheek, and her perfume makes my eyes sting. But that’s always what happens, so it’s become kind of comforting. When I’m a grandma one day, I’m gonna wear so much goddamn perfume.

  “Hi, Grandma. How are you?”

  “Much better now,” she says, as she always does upon seeing me, finally unclenching from the hug. “You’re not wearing your hair down today?” She lightly swats at my ponytail. “For this special occasion?”

  “It appears not.” Looks are incredibly important to Grandma Mitzie. If it’s not a comment about my hair, it’s a comment about an outfit she doesn’t like. When I call her out for being negative, she’ll say, “What? Better me telling you than someone out in the world, right?” To which I think: Um, how about no one tells me?

  “Hey, Mom,” Dad says without turning from the stove, where he’s moving eggs around in the pan, an obvious bit of busywork so he can put off engaging with her a little longer.

  “Hello over there,” Grandma says. “Am I getting a hug, or do I have to come over to you?”

  “Just doing some cooking so that there will be food for our guests to eat,” Dad says.

  “Well, I know that.” Grandma walks over to Dad, who leans his cheek in as she gives him a side hug. I think he’s nervous about making any sudden moves in case it reveals that he’s not so great at making sudden moves. And that he has a Band-Aid on his forehead. Grandma doesn’t see it. Instead, she peers at the stove, then the rest of the kitchen, like a sanitation inspector making a surprise drop-in. “What can I do to help? Anything?”