Five Minutes Left

My eyes are closed, and I keep them closed, not wanting to wake up. What was my last thought before sleeping? I already know the answer, the same as every night: Please—not the dream. Not the one where the clocks bleed, not the one where she won’t wake up.

Today, like most days, my head throbs—another self-inflicted wound from a night at Jake’s: the shots, the beer chasers, and was there cocaine on a woman’s room vanity? And was there a guy named Andrew? Or was it Andy? I tell myself today will be different, today I’ll stop drinking.

A familiar voice in my head laughs. You say that every day. Thirty years old and you have your looks, your brains, and not a single gray hair—and what do you have to show for it?

“I’ll get my shit together,” I whisper, “or I won’t.”

Sunlight pierces through the bedroom window and stings my eyes. I light a cigarette, drag myself to the shower, then drift to the kitchen, where I drink orange juice straight from the carton. Living alone means no one to judge you’re not using a glass, but it also means no one to notice the overflowing garbage, or care that your apartment reeks from rotting food.

My forefinger swipes the news on my iPad. I need a job, but later I’ll think about how I can update my LinkedIn, Facebook, and all the rest. For now, I flip the screen to the next news article. A headline stops my finger mid-swipe:

"LEONARD THOMAS EXECUTION SET FOR MIDNIGHT."

I gag. Nausea constricts in my throat, my hands are covered with cold sweat. But I stare at the screen and try to feel nothing.

The photo is old, probably from his booking. The man’s face is thinner now, the lines around his mouth deeper, his eyes somehow vacant—but it’s still him. My dad.

I haven’t seen him in sixteen years. Not since the trial. I keep him tucked away, only bringing him out in a tightly closed box. I think of it as a jewelry box for my memories. Maybe with his dying, I can close the box for good, lock it up, put it in the closet on a high dark shelf, and never open it again. But he’s not dead yet, so I open the box.

And there, lying in the pink velvet of my imagination, is his laugh—deep and warm.

In the corner, tucked to the side where memories are best, he’s lifting me on his shoulders, like dads do in movies. We’re whistling old country songs. We’re cooking Sunday pancakes.

But there are other memories in the box: early mornings in my bedroom, My mom braiding my hair with gentle fingers, telling me stories about her childhood in Michigan. "Your grandmother," she's saying. "I wish you could have met her. You two were alike, the way you set your jaw." But beneath this memory lies another: a bruise on her wrist, poorly hidden by her sleeve. "Your father's going through a rough patch," she says quietly, tucking a loose strand behind my ear. "The layoffs at the plant hit him hard. He's a good man, Claire-bear. Her fingers pause in my hair. "If I were a better wife, maybe..." I can tell she’s lost in thought, that familiar look of guilt crossing her face. I'm sitting still as she finishes my braid. The memory is wrapped in my wanting to shake her, to scream that it isn’t her fault. Instead, I sit still as she finishes my braid, pretending not to notice the tremor in her hands.

Silence has its own memories, ones that stretch too long at dinner, only broken by the sudden sharpness in my dad’s voice when he demands I get him a beer, and it better be a Miller Lite. I’m thinking it better be a Miller, or the one I bring will explode on the wall, and when it does, at least in the box, I can shut it out.

Another memory peeks out from under the velvet: my dad and I crouch together over my homework. I must be twelve. “This is the way you balance sums in algebra,” he says patiently. “Now show me how you’d do it.” My brow furrows in concentration. “When x equals y, right?”

“That’s my girl!”

Our eyes meet. His smile breaks across his face, his teeth gleaming white, his eyes shining with pride.

Clawing to the surface of the box with the sharpest of nails, my mother’s tight-lipped smile appears, her tension like weather building, a layer of darkening. I step back, alarmed; my father’s hands clench a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, his knuckles white as he guzzles.

And there I am in the box, beneath the shiny velvet, standing in the hallway, hidden, listening.

“Len, you need help. We can’t live like this,” my mother is saying.

My father’s rough voice echoes from the living room. “You think I’m some kind of monster?”

The silence goes on. The girl in my memory is biting her nails.

My mother’s voice sounds like wind through broken chimes. “No. I think you’re lost.”

The memories now crawl, leap from the box, leering at me. He’s pouring Jack Daniel’s at the kitchen sink into a shot glass. Downs it, downs another, and his bloodshot eyes fall on me. He glances away, hesitates, then stumbles back to the living room. Doors are slamming.

This is too much. I try to close the box, press it with one hand over the other, but the memories squirm. I press harder. They bore into my chest, my mind, a burning itch.

I am fourteen, in my bedroom, and my headphones make the world vanish with the driving beat of Morrison, ‘Just what the truth is, I can’t say anymore’. The light flickers under the door. Despite the music, I hear shouting, shattering glass.

My bedroom door flings open; I walk down the hall as it compresses on each side. Now I’m at the kitchen door.

My mother lies slumped against the cabinets. Her eyes are open but unseeing. Beneath her, blood spreads like red oil on the white Formica. There is a pungent smell, the air thick.

The screaming leaps from the memory box, the blood onto my hands. My father is leaning into my mother. “Carol? Carol? Carol!” He keeps saying her name, over and over, like that might undo it. But it doesn’t.

Deep in the box is the trial. I don’t look at the trial, or where the fingers point at school. And I don’t look at my mother’s funeral on the hill, or the black cars in the rain. And I haven’t seen or talked to my father since, and I don’t use the word Dad anymore. I slam the box shut.

The orange juice carton is still half-full on the table. I take a bitter slug, and it drips from my chin and splatters onto the white Formica floor.

The iPad is still open. He’ll die tonight.

My phone buzzes.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Claire Thomas?” a man’s voice asks. He sounds clipped, formal.

“Yes.”

“This is Officer Rourke with Black Ridge Correctional. Inmate Leonard Thomas has requested his final phone call. He has chosen to speak with you.”

My breath catches in my throat. “What?”

“It’s a onetime request. The state allows one five-minute call before execution. He’s chosen you. Would you like to accept the call?”

I stare out the window across the kitchen. The sun has fully risen now, warm and indifferent.

Five minutes. Sixteen years compressed into five minutes.

“Ms. Thomas. I’m sorry. Do you want to talk with your father?”

My mouth opens, but no words come out.

“Ms. Thomas. Are you there? We only have five minutes.”

I close my eyes. It would be so easy. A tap, and it’s over—like he never called at all.

“Ms. Thomas? Ok, thank—”

“Yes,” I whisper.

There is a pause. A click. And finally, a breath.

“Claire?” A voice rasps.

Even aged and cracked with time, his voice is unmistakable.

“I shouldn’t have picked up.” The phone’s pressed tight to my ear. “I’m not sure I can do this. I can’t do this.”

“I know,” he says. “But I’m glad you did.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t act like this is some kind of reunion.”

“It’s not. It’s…” He trails off. “It’s goodbye.”

I laugh. I’m surprised by the sound I’m making: a bitter croak. “You said goodbye the night you killed my mother.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying ‘you know’. But do you really? You don’t know anything. Like, do you know what it’s like to be fourteen and find your dead mother on the kitchen floor? To be made to lie to the cops at first, for reasons I don’t remember. I was a child.”

The silence hangs between us.

He isn’t getting away with this. “I watched the trial. I watched you sit there and pretend like you didn’t do it. You never even looked at me.”

“I couldn’t. Looking at you meant facing it. And I was too much of a coward.”

I can feel the tears and will them to stop. I swear to myself; he’ll get nothing. “I spent years trying to forget you. I cut ties. Therapy, medication, everything. I'm still scared I'm like you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’re dying. That’s all. You don’t want to go with guilt still gnawing in your gut.”

“That’s true. But it’s not the only reason I called.”

“Oh? What then? You thought five minutes could fix it?”

“No. But five minutes is all I’ve got. I wanted you to know that I think of your mother every day. That I still see her when I sleep. That I miss her in ways I can’t describe.”

My jaw clenched. “You don’t get to miss her. You get to live in your suffering.”

“I already have. Sixteen years of suffering. Waking up every day in a cell, waiting in penance, knowing what I did. Knowing what I did not just to your mother, but to you.”

Something in my head splits.

“You ruined everything,” I whisper. “You were supposed to protect us. Instead, you made our house pure hell. I remember hiding in closets with my hands over my ears. I remember Mom covering bruises with makeup. I remember hoping—praying—that one day you’d just disappear.”

“I know. I was sick. Angry. I thought drinking made it go away. But it just turned me into something worse. And I hated that version of me. I still do.”

“Then why didn’t you stop?”

He doesn’t answer right away.

“Because I didn’t believe I could. And maybe I didn’t want to. Not then.”

Another silence. The kind that stretches across sixteen years, not five minutes.

I looked at the clock. Two minutes left, maybe less.

“I don’t forgive you. I don’t even know if I can.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“But I need to hear you say it. That it was real. That you know what you did.”

“I do,” he says.

I exhale. My hand is shaking as I hold the phone.

“I hate that you’re the last person who remembers her the way I do.”

“I know,” he says.

“What?”

“I know.”

The clock says thirty seconds.

“But I also hate what it’s done to me. Carrying you around. I want it gone.”

“I hope,” he says, “you find a way to lift the weight. I don’t deserve any peace. My only chance for peace will come tonight.”

A click echoes in the background on the phone. A voice murmuring something.

“Time’s up,” the voice says.

“Claire—thank you. For this. For hearing me.”

I open my mouth. For what, I wasn’t sure. To scream. To cry. To ask why again. “Dad, I want to say—”

The line goes dead. Just like that, he’s gone.

I sit in the silent kitchen, staring at the floor. The phone is heavy in my hand. The orange juice carton is still on the table. The sun has risen higher—brighter. What is it? I don’t feel peace, but I don’t feel sick either.

I go to the cupboard and reach for a glass. Maybe a glass is better than drinking from the carton.