Dad

*Trigger warning* This story alludes to substance abuse and struggles with mental health. No substance abuse is graphically depicted. No self-harm or violence is depicted.

"Dad is..." My brain was unable to process how to finish that sentence. You'd think it would be an easy one, considering the life he'd led up to that point. The ending wasn’t a surprise. We’d been expecting it for years.

The most my brain could do was run screaming backwards in time through every catalogued memory of him and picture every story I'd ever heard about his life before I was born. Every fact I knew to be true about him was still unable to reconcile with the reality I had to face with the spot on the floor in front of me—the spot that had only hours before been mopped clear of any evidence of his demise that had been left behind. I could only sit there, my eyes soaking up and taking in the spot where he had been found in a pool of his own blood and urine as if it held some sort of answers for me as to why he didn’t simply “bounce back” like he had every time before.

He knew what would happen if he didn’t drink the Lactulose. The doctor, the nurse, the pharmacist, us—he had been told! All he had to do was drink the medicine that would absorb the ammonia backing up in his body. Well, and cut back on the drinking, but Lord forbid he ever do that.

Lord forbid he ever actually choose us, came my inner monologue from the void. I was almost immediately bombarded with memories of every time he did choose us, though, as if half of my mind was warring with the other over how my dad should accurately be remembered. The tug of war continued with one side tugging at my heart, begging me to remember how good he truly was, while the other called up every reason to question whether our lives might be quieter, simpler, easier…better…without the hand grenades he so recklessly threw into our lives without a second thought.

Dad was…

“My daughter is the best teacher in the entire state, and it’s only her first year!” he’d proclaimed to everyone he spoke to for months after I’d told him how well my students had done and how proud of them I was.

“You’re pathetic,” he’d told me as I’d sat on the stairs in my little windbreaker outfit, trying desperately not to cry. “Go ahead and call your mom to come pick you up if all you’re gonna do is fuckin’ pout this weekend.”

“Look at you, sweety. Best thing I ever did, only thing I ever did right…right there,” he’d declared on my wedding day as we stood with immediate family, beaming with pride and telling everyone how beautiful his baby girl looked in her dress.

The reader light illuminated the pages of a Harry Potter book in my lap as I sat in the parking lot outside of the bar for hours into the night as he drank inside, knocking back beer after beer in his anger over his wife having kicked him out during his weekend with his daughter.

Dad was…

I saw so clearly the truck bed he’d refashioned into a working prop for the play I was in. It was at the climax of the play that vandalism of a teenage boy’s truck, his pride and joy, occurred, and Dad had taken a truck bed, mounted it on a frame so that it could be wheeled out onto the stage. He’d expertly finagled the taillights to still work, able to be turned on and off via a switch on the side. He had done the whole thing free of charge and donated it to the drama coach. Everyone was so impressed by that one shining prop, and I was happy to tell everyone who said how awesome that truck bed was that my dad had put it together.

My maternal grandmother died the weekend of our opening night, and Dad—who hadn’t been a member of her family for over a decade—wrangled his other kids from his other failed marriages together and drove three hours to attend her funeral and pay his respect to the woman who had helped my single mom raise me when I was little.

I pulled off to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to collect my nephew. He’d called me to come get him because Dad had kicked him out of the house in the middle of the day on the hottest day of July without even allowing him to grab his shoes. “I’ve never seen Papaw like that,” he’d confided, distraught and confounded by the sudden blow-up from nowhere that had occurred as he stared out the windshield.

“You were never supposed to. You weren’t supposed to have this version of him. I’m so, so sorry.” Damnit, Dad. After three years without a cigarette, I’d started smoking again that day.

Dad was…

“Alright, sweety. Hop in the driver’s seat…Now, I’ll shift the gears at first, so you brake when I tell you. Gonna teach you the right way, too. Both feet! You can practice that one-foot shit in a couple of years when you need it for the test. We’ve got this whole property we can drive around on, and there’s plenty of open space…” We were on my grandfather’s warehouse property, and, if memory serves, we were in a 1960-something Camaro—one of the many random cars that would be bought and flipped in the shop they had there.

I slowly crept down the stairs, even though I knew from experience that his snoring at that volume meant he wouldn’t have woken up for anything. I’d heard him retching earlier, and I needed to make sure there wasn’t a mess to clean up. His wife would be furious if that was the case. As I made my way into the hallway, the acrid smell of vomit tinged the air and nearly made me gag. Judging by how strong the smell was from the entrance into the hallway, it wouldn’t be a simple fix of spraying the air freshener and turning on the exhaust fan.

As the war continued inside my head, the spot on the floor was still taunting me. It was a puzzle I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. If I stared hard and long enough, knowing exactly where to look, I could have sworn I could still make out the shape of the puddle where the essence of him had pooled together and marked the spot he’d taken his last breath. It was the last physical mark he’d left in the world, and only if you’d known where it was could you see it. Maybe under the right light?

Getting up, I walked over to the window and adjusted the blinds to flood more daylight into the room. When that didn’t reveal it any better, I marched over to the light switch and flicked the ceiling fixture on. Whirling around, I glared back at the spot on the floor, willing it to show itself more clearly. At its final defiance, I let out a sound of frustration and sat back down to continue my examination of the floor.

Dad was…

“You’re stubborn, just like your mother,” or, “You get your stubbornness from your mother,” he’d tell me. It was always with a wistful smile—never a sarcastic sneer, and it felt like it was an observation he made fondly. He had more than once or twice confided that my mom had been his favorite wife and that he’d never stopped loving her. Of course…those confessions were always given during his drunken phone calls.

“My youngest started reading when she was THREE,” he would brag to people. “She’s the one with all the brains…Gets it from her mama.”

Dad was…

“Nah, now…Stop! Stop. You’re poking the ball. Watch…,” he would instruct as he’d line up his own pool cue while “Rockin’ Robin” played in the background on the jukebox. He always let me pick the music when I was still in the single-digit age range. “You’re poking. You gotta follow it through, sweety. Hit it just right and follow through, steady.” No matter how much he’d been drinking, he’d make the shot.

My thoughts led me to other games of pool in the home bar in his old house.

“Daddy, I’m sleepy,” I would say as I rubbed my eyes around 3:30am.

“You can sleep after you make the shot,” he’d promise for the umpteenth time. How many hours did we spend around that pool table throughout the night as he set up the balls in various configurations, telling me which ones to get in which pocket and resetting everything if I didn’t get it right, or having me break over and over again?

Dad was…

Movie nights flooded my brain, watching James Bond, Indiana Jones, Oceans 11—the original and the reboot, various other heist films, and Joe Dirt while we munched on either Totino’s pizza or chicken he’d grilled. He loved grilling, and the chickens—I laughed as I remembered how he’d grill the birds propped up on top of beer cans, swearing it did something for the tenderness and flavor while keeping it from drying out. He’d make jokes about how it looked like they were “on the can,” like any other typical dad would.

I walked inside Dad’s house with the new BBQ utensil set I’d gotten him for his birthday/Father’s Day gift to find some woman sitting on the couch in his pajama bottoms and an old, black T-shirt that swallowed her frame. Her blonde hair was thinning, and her face was sunken in with a near skeletal appearance. Her skin was sallow, and she had some exposed scabs. “Where’s my dad?” I asked hesitantly.

She smiled at me, exposing her brittle teeth that were beginning to gray. “He’s in the back. He’ll be out in just a sec. When you called and said you were ‘round the corner—”

“Hey, sweety!” I heard from behind. Turning around, I took in his appearance. He’d lost a significant amount of weight in the couple of months since I’d last seen him.

“Happy Father’s Day…and birthday,” I said as he wrapped me in a hug. After hugging him back, I pulled away and handed him his present. “Who’s that?” I asked in a whisper.

“That’s Caren,” he answered dismissively enough. “Oh, I like this brand!” He stated with all the dad-level excitement one would expect as he looked over his new BBQ set.

“I know; I recognized the logo was the same as the set you used to have. Where’s Marnie?”

He blew out a breathy, humorless laugh. “I know you liked her, but she was starting to bitch about…”

  I couldn’t listen anymore. I tuned him out, and without even thinking about it, I turned back around and left the way I’d come in. As I was getting back into Mom’s car in the driveway, she said, “That was quick.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Just go.” He hadn’t even bothered to follow me outside.

The floor in front of me was starting to swim behind a watery filter. Blinking my eyes, I looked around the living area. We’d managed to gather up all the beer cans and empty 36-pack boxes into black garbage bags. We’d emptied the ash trays and attempted to clean up the area as best we could. He hadn’t actually had a bed, preferring, apparently, to sleep on the couch or in the recliners in the living room. It seemed whatever money he did have at one point, he’d put into that living room set, so I had to give him that. It was certainly comfortable.

The dining area was devoid of a table, and we had to be careful where we stepped to keep from falling through the floor. A rug had obviously been put down, made taut, and stapled in place over a gaping hole. The state of the trailer in general had been making me furious since I’d arrived. Dad had always been handy and had worked in construction and remodeling when he wasn’t fixing up cars and racing them at the track. It was even his regular job at the time he’d met my mom. In his younger days, before his knee had been crushed, he was no stranger to walking on stilts as part of his work, and he was constantly doing maintenance and alterations around the homes he lived in. The decrepit state of the place he’d spent his last few years was a far cry from what he could have had…if he’d cared enough to do something about it.

Dad was…

“Your birthday is coming up, and I wanted to take ya’ll out. Where would you like to go?”

“Who is ‘ya’ll?’” I’d asked, slightly bewildered.

  Laughing, he’d responded, “All ya’ll. The man, the kid, your mom and Johnny—”

“You want to take me…my fiancé and kid…and your ex-wife and her husband…out to celebrate my birthday?”

“Yes, I do,” he’d said with all certainty. We all met at a hibachi restaurant, and he’d been true to his word—covering the entire bill, even with a few extra people who’d shown up without any expectation of him paying for their meals.

A few months later, he crashed the semi he was driving with a 0.27 blood alcohol level. He, rightfully, lost his commercial license as well as any chance of legally continuing the work he had been doing for a decade as a driver in the trucking industry.

“That’s when you gave up,” I said to the merciless spot. He was long past the days of his prime in which he traveled the country, tearing up tires on the track. He was long past the days of being the smooth talker who was chasing love and never knowing what to do when it was reciprocated. He was long past the days of teaching his babies to walk and talk, and he no longer felt he was of an age to learn anything new himself to change his circumstances. The man had been fifty when he’d gone to truck driving school. What was there new to do in his sixties that made any sense?

Taking in a deep breath, I tried again, my gaze never leaving the place where he’d crumbled as his liver was failing him and his stomach lining had ruptured. “Dad is…”