Borrowed Time

"I want to know why you never told me.”

“How could I have told you, Sheila?” I expected this, I suppose. I must have known a time would come. I guess I borrowed time, anyway.

“This changes everything. How could it not?”

“No, I don’t think there is a way it couldn’t.”

She was still there, in the silence.

“You have a right to this, Sheila. I can’t decide for you if this one thing is what you will remember me for. It would be tough to blame you if it were. I can tell you I have paid every day.

“You paid? I don’t understand how you could do that to someone. How you could be so brutal.”

“I know you don’t. You wouldn’t, because I didn’t put it on you to understand.”

“Explain it then, Dad. Actually, don’t. I can’t deal with his right now.”

The line went dead. So, this was how it went. I’d imagined it many times, trying to prepare my statement, trying to prepare myself. Of course, nothing could.

 1985

“Tim! I’m home! Where are you?!

“Down here,” I called from the basement.

“Hey!” Molly bounced down the steps, her nose red and eyes watering from the cold, and grabbed a cigarette off my work bench. She smiled at me and began to talk around the cigarette in her mouth, muffling her words in a way I found both cute and annoying, depending on my mood toward her. Tonight, it was both. The cold outside air she carried in was replaced with smoke.

“Tina said she could meet at the bowling alley tonight. Are you coming?” She blew the smoke playfully toward me. The alcohol on her breath hit me with the smoke.

Glancing at the partially constructed nightstand, I hesitated. She followed my gaze. Her face darkened as she turned from me.

“Fine, no problem, stay down here in your cave. I’ll go alone.” She turned to leave.

I set the sandpaper down.

Pour Some Sugar on Me, again? How many times can a man hear this song in one night? I nursed my warm beer and thought about the last work trip I took. I’d been driving through Montana, so unlike the flat-land prairie of Indiana, and had come across a group of teenage boys skateboarding down hills I was intimidated to even drive down. I pulled over to watch them make the descent. Over and over, they flew down the hill, slapped high-fives, and raced back to the top to do it again. It had been contagious, their exhilaration. Remembering the delivery I had to make in time, I headed toward Missoula, but I’d sped up, my caution exchanged for thrill too. Now why don’t I do this more often? I decided I would. I would make it a point to enjoy little things like that.

But, I had forgotten all about it.

Molly wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered, “Come dance with me.” I felt her breath throughout my body, like I always did.

Tina was dancing, her breasts threatening to be released from her low-cut top with every twist. It was a trap. Tina would move against me too, something Molly would like tonight, but hate me for tomorrow.

“No, honey, you go ahead with Tina.”

Molly shrugged and danced off.

Heads were starting to turn, as was often the case when Molly and Tina went out in our small town. I could see one head that hadn’t turned away since they’d walked in.

I didn’t like him. His face held of kind of smirk, his general disdain evident. He was no doubt one of those guys who believed he had a special kind of insight, without any real basis for believing so, the worst kind. He was new around here. He’d bought the run-down house on the edge of town. No one knew much about him yet, though I’d heard he had been in the air force. He looked too young to be retired. Dishonorable discharge? There was a dodginess to him that made successful completion in the military hard to imagine. Molly caught him watching. She was playing it up, moving her hips slow and teasing.

“Hey Tim!” the bartender yelled. “You got a call.”

Sheila, no doubt. She would be forceful, demanding to know when we’d be home.

“Hi, Sweetheart.”

“Dad! It is 11:30! When are you guys going to be home? I have that ride-a-thon tomorrow, remember? We have to be at the school by 8:00 and I still need my bike tires filled!”

“I’ll fill them when we get home. Your mother is having a good time. Go to bed. We’ll be home soon.”

Switching to pop, I asked for a Coke and chatted with the bartender about his recent motorcycle wreck. Wishing him a quick recovery and praising him for his one-armed serving with a cast, I turned to the mission of getting Molly out of the bar. Sheila would be calling back within ten minutes, no doubt. 

Tina was at the jukebox, but Molly had disappeared. Fuck. The familiar pit in my stomach hardened. Where the fuck had she managed to wander off to in the time it took me to take a call and grab a pop? I told her she couldn’t start drinking at home. She’d probably skipped dinner too. We always had a bad ending when she started early on an empty stomach. Goddammit, Molly.

I found her outside the bowling alley, leaned back against the old brick building looking up at the new guy. He was lighting her cigarette while she giggled and moved closer to the flickering flame. The man leaned in, blocking the wind. He held Molly’s black curls back from her face.

“Thanks, I’ve got it from here. Come on, Molly. Sheila is calling, we need to go home.” I reached for Molly as he stepped back.

“Thanks for the light, man. What is your name, anyway? Sheila flicked her hair back, taking a long drag off her cigarette, the end burning brighter.

“David.”

“Daaaaad!” “Mom!”

I threw the covers over us.

“What are you guys doing? It is like 2:00.”

“Just taking a nap while you were at the park. What’s up?”

“Can I go over to Christina’s house?”

“I don’t care. We aren’t doing anything.”

“OK! I’m going to call her and tell her you said yes!”

I winked at Molly and pulled her closer to me as Sheila shut the door. Her hair grazed my chest while I gently pulled her ringlets straight and watched them spring back to their unruly coils.

“That was a really nice nap, Molly. Thanks for taking it with me.”

Turning toward me, Molly winked back and thought aloud, “I think we should take Sheila to Six Flags this summer.” Molly always dreamed up summer plans in the middle of winter. I think it helped her cope with the long, midwestern dreariness.

“Sounds good to me. When do you want to go?”

“July. We could stop and see my sister on the way over. Maybe stay for the fourth?”

“I think I have one night at your sisters house in me,” I teased.

“I should hope so, given how many nights at your family’s I have had in me.”

The air shifted.

“Molly, I’m not trying to fight with you. It was a joke. We both know your sister and I have no love lost between us. I’m willing, ok?”

“You say it is a joke, but is it? Aren’t you actually letting it be known the difficulty you’ll endure, the heroic way you’ll tolerate my family? I suppose you think your family gatherings are a blessing to me?”

“Well, to be fair, there is a difference.”

Molly was standing, shoving her legs into her jeans.

“Yeah, you know the difference, Tim? Your family thinks their shit doesn’t stink. They don’t even stop to consider that it might. How is that for intolerable? At least my family is honest. They would rather tell ugly truths than sit around slopping around in pretty lies. You know what else feels like a pretty lie? This afternoon with you. ”

Slamming the door behind her, our wedding picture rattled, settled, but hung a little crookeder than before.

“The bars are closed.” Sheila pointed ahead. She was up late watching Friday the 13^th and refused to stay home alone while I looked for Molly.

There was only one car left in front of the bar, Bill’s old Buick, but we were all used to seeing it abandoned downtown on Sunday mornings, his wife having picked him up, or if he was lucky, having hitched a ride. His family had always lived here, and Bill never missed a Saturday night at Joe’s Tavern. They had closed an hour ago.

Molly had left angrily. It was now after 1:00 in the morning.

She must have left with Tina. I hoped she left with Tina. My body went cold. I remembered Tina was out of town, visiting her mother this weekend. Molly had mentioned needing to go over to feed Tina’s cat.

I turned left at the end of Main Street.

Call it a hunch or call it the refinement of the investigation skills I’d learned to develop over my years of marriage to Molly, in any case, I drove to the edge of town.

    The dread, something gray and shapeless, formed solid, hard and metal, when my headlights illuminated her car, pulled into the ditch in front of the run-down house with the for-sale sign recently marked as sold.

David.

I’d forced myself away from Molly’s exploits before, because of Sheila, because I wanted to avoid prison, because it would change the player but not the game.

  Images of them together flashed through my mind. The urge to interrupt and prevent their coming together overwhelmed me.

“Dad? Are you going to get her?”

     Driving past, I strained to make my voice casual.

    “She’ll come home tomorrow. She probably passed out at a party there. No use trying to wake her up now.”

     Sheila nodded, accepting this. She’d experienced Molly’s dead to the world hangovers. She didn’t remember the hangover I couldn’t forget. I had come home on my lunch break to a silent house. Molly was sleeping. Sheila was nowhere to be found. I thought to check Jackie’s house a few blocks over, a friend of Molly’s Sheila had taken a liking to. I found her crying in her diaper, wandering around Jackie’s yard. Molly had stayed sober for a few months after that. They were good months.

After getting Sheila to bed, I went to bed and stared at the ceiling. I was still awake when the sun rose.

Sunday afternoon brought with it some settling of the torment. Molly always wandered back in by Sunday nights. The chaos was a predictable kind. She would find a way to fight, take off angrily justifying her binge, she’d return, and we would pretend it didn’t happen. I knew her appearance would draw anger and resentment, but also relief. We would return to the beginning of the routine. My body anticipated her return the way Molly’s body anticipated the first drink. I chain-smoked, dazed, and attempted some normalcy. I made Sheila lunch. We ate without talking.

The house filled with expectancy as darkness fell. Our ears tuned in to every car, only to hear them pass. Sheila tried to look nonchalant, but her head popped up from the tv each time headlights shone through the window.

Neither of us wanted to acknowledge it, this new development. When she couldn’t last anymore, she demanded I do something.

“She’s never stayed out this long. Aren’t you going to check on her?”

    “Yeah.”

I’d walked in on her once. Last summer.

Bill had seen me looking for her at the bar. Motioned me over and told me he’d seen her leave with Roy, one of the local mechanics who worked out of his home. I had taken our truck there a couple of years ago, the ancient white and orange Ford we’d taken on our honeymoon, forever hoping it would trudge through the Appalachia camping trip. It held on several more years, somehow.

The door had been left open, the unlatched screen door rattling with the breeze.

Following the sounds, I saw her underneath him, half passed out. He had jumped up, yelled he didn’t want any trouble. Ignoring him as he grabbed his jeans and took off, I shook her and pulled her up, half dragging her through his house to the car. He had the sense to stay out of it.

It got in my mind that every time was this way. Molly too drunk to know better, them taking advantage of the opportunity. It was a small comfort, but it was something, Molly as a passive actor. Molly needing saved from herself. Me, who really knew her. Me, there to save her.

The house looked dark when I pulled in. This was why she wasn’t back. She had started to sleep it off there. I would have to wake them. The door was unlocked.

They’d passed out to his stereo still playing. A small satisfaction, Molly hated Steely Dan. She said it was the most boring of all. She would awaken to reality soon. She would return to herself. To me. She would see this, see David through the day after eyes.

It wasn’t hard to figure out where the bedroom would be, it was a small house. I noted the overflowing ashtray, the empty cans, a razor blade lying on a mirror, and found the hallway. Molly didn’t like a slob and cocaine scared her. I looked forward to bringing her back through here, sober this time.

It was almost over. Steely Dan’s lackadaisical singing seemed to confirm it, though the loud volume seemed mismatched. We would be home soon. The tension in my body started to ease.

“I’m a fool to do your dirty work, oh yeah.”

Wake up, Molly.

But he was behind her, his hands in her curls.

The red lace lingerie. The one she wore on my birthday, the one she took pictures of herself in and hid in my suitcase for me to find when I was away for work. I brought it home for her from Texas. We had played a game when I called her from a hotel.

“A souvenir? Umm,” she had said giggling, “something red. Surprise me.”

I saw her canvas bag in the corner by the door, the bag she took when we traveled.

David’s weights sat next to them, like hobbies on display of a married couple.

She’d packed?

“David.” A whisper, a plea. Soft Molly. I knew that Molly. It was what she did just before she came.

I felt a crumpling, an inward collapse.

No.

The weight next to her bag felt light in my hands.

It grew heavier as I swung it into David’s back, but not by much.

His body sank onto her, twitching.

Again.

I still don’t remember the second swing, but can I still hear the cracking sound it made.

“He’s in bad shape. They say he won’t walk again. He’s over at that assisted living place. Not likely he will be leaving it.”

“Did they ever figure out what happened?”

“Nah, it sounds like he was dealing. They are figuring he messed with the wrong person. He doesn’t remember, and anyway, they can’t make much sense of what he is saying.”

Dissolution of Marriage

June 6^th, 1986

“Dad? Can you come get me? I have school and Mom isn’t getting up.”

“No, Molly, I’m afraid Sheila isn’t going to be coming back for a while. She says to tell you she loves you.”

“You remember hearing about that man who got beat up, left all messed up, back when we lived in Linton? Everyone was talking about it for a while. You know who did that to him? Your father. You think I was the only one who did wrong things. Far from it.”

Sheila,

I hoped you could live a whole life without this.

I know I might feel like a lie to you, and you might wonder if you know me at all. You do.

I loved her. I knew her demons, you’ve heard her stories about growing up, but I knew the rest of her too.

Things were always threatening to unravel. It was like an hourglass, living with your mother, and I was a one-man crew doing my best to bring granules of sand back up to the top as more slipped down, to buy us more time.

I found her with him that night. I could see the last of the sand accelerating down, almost out. I saw her slipping away, and you, along with her.

You know, in a marriage now yourself, those secret moments, sacred to the two of you. I will spare the details, but what I came upon blinded me, flashed so brightly across my vision I couldn’t see around it. I have never known more what it is to be primal, like an animal with its leg caught in the steel jaws of a trap, eyes wild, pain searing.

Maybe it would have gone like that even without the history, but maybe the swings were not just for him. Maybe I was swinging at every man I didn’t, too. Maybe for every time I wanted to swing at her.

It might seem like I got away with it.

Mostly, I didn’t. 

I understand. Whatever you need to do.

Love, Dad

“Dad?” 

It’s a funny thing, when she says Dad, I can hear the way she said it when she was a little girl, all mixed up with the way she says it now. I can still tell when she’s been crying but pretends she hasn’t.

I hear the kids playing. Free in a way she hadn’t been.

“Sheila.”