50
I’m falling asleep on my living room couch listening to Joni Mitchell. I find her voice to be the most soothing sound in the world and I’m exhausted. She’s lonely, living in paint boxes, and scared of the devil. She believes love is touching souls, and her lover pours out in her words, from time to time. The night has left me drunk and delirious. I’m dreaming of wide open cornfields in the midst of a light falling rain. I’m running and running, I’m looking for something, but what? The running pauses. I hear a quiet knock. The sound grows louder and louder until it brings me to life. Waking up, dazed, I realize that it’s coming from my front door. I look at the time. Just past midnight. I’ve been out for less than a half hour.
I squint my eyes and shake off the slumber. The knocking continues. Who in the fuck at this hour? The sleep is fading from my eyes and I’m more alert as the confusion sets in. I make my way to the front door as the knocking continues. I take a breath, turn the lock, and I open it up. The blood drains from my body. There, standing before me, like the ghost in my nightmares, is my father.
He’s wearing a tan, heavily stained work jacket over a flannel. He’s bearded and silent, staring at me in the night. Sometimes in life there are moments of such dream-like quality they appear illusionary. There are seconds that pass in which time is a construct, the moment is either too stunning or perverse to comprehend. Am I still asleep? My stomach sinks straight through my feet. I feel that and then nothing, only a shocking numbness spreading under my skin. For how long did we stand? As if waiting for confirmation, we are silent, with no wish to shatter the mirage. I cannot fathom this. I have not seen my father for five years. Five full, continuous years. I’d banished him from my mind best I could. He was dead. He was gone. And yet, standing and hunched, eerily quiet, he is here on the doorstep.
He’s lost some thirty pounds, at least, and is more gray than I remembered. His beard is thicker, and his blue eyes are even further away. His face has grown shaded with a faint maroon pigment. He looks ancient and worn. He only breaks my eyes when he starts to cough a bit. He tries to hide the noise behind his mouth, but it still sounds thick with phlegm. I recognize that cough. It’s the same cough his father had before him.
And we stand there for longer, saying nothing. I am empty, have zero. Everything and nothing at once, no speech. There is no electricity between my mind and my tongue.
What is there in his eyes? Sorror, remorse? Is there a gentle, meek flicker in the dark? I hardly recognize him.
“Hey son,” he finally goes.
“I ehm, tried to get here earlier. Bit later than I ehm, than I imagined. I called. I did call. Came up through Illinois. Figured I’d catch ya up and about still. Maybe. Saturday and all.”
It is true that a father carries an enduring power over his son. I feel something else, something unexpected and tender. What the hell has happened? The way he spoke was soft and defeated. There was a pleading in the way that he enunciated. This man is not my father. There is no ice in his voice, no distance. This man is stripped, battered.
I stand dumb in the doorway. I search for the gag. Perhaps this imposter will peel off a mask. Perhaps he’ll float up to the sky. Perhaps he’ll get into that truck in the driveway and drive. But none of this happens. Just a man, looking at his son. What is madness, truly, in the end?
“I know this, uh, well I know this, uh, is probably somethin of a surprise after all,” he continues. Me bein here now. There’s, uh, well there’s some things I oughta say. And, uh, look I’m sorry it’s late.”
And it’s somewhere in that wandering sentence that I finally begin to come down. The current is back, and it starts to course through me. All of a sudden, I’m nearing a blackout avalanche of emotion.
“I think you should leave,” I say.
Quiet. And there’s that heartbreaking softness again in his reaction. The lines on his face grow just a little bit deeper. My words hurt him. They surprised him somehow. What was this? Never in any of my memories had a word pierced his flesh, not from me, not once. But here he is, damaged. His eyes look all watered and I cannot believe that, so I don’t.
“Son—”
“Go on.”
“If I could just have a—”
“If you don’t leave—” My pulse bangs against the borders.
“It ain’t good. You being here. You shouldn’t be here. I don’t feel right. You need to get the fuck out of here.”
And I’m starting to shake. And I’m scared. I feel a dangerous bent grasping for my spine. It’s the reckoning, the sadness of all planets and the rage that comes with it. I have the honest impulse to take my gun from the kitchen drawer, but I keep it all down and try to breathe. My hands are trembling, I’m on the edge of completely convulsing. He knows it. He can see me. As do I, him. Shattered and half a man. A stranger. If he doesn’t leave, I fear I will hurt him.
He senses this and says soft and down low, hardly a whisper.
“I’ll be back, at, ehm, a better time.”
And he takes one last long look at his son. The color of his eyes is faded in the light.
What have you seen? What have you done? He takes a few steps away and slowly limps his crooked body back to the truck. He gets in. He sits there for a moment, then ignites it. The engine turns over and he pulls away into the night. I’m starting to violently shake. I close the door and my eyes fall to the wooden floor beneath me. My body plummets down and down and down. I disappear into the center of the Earth. How long did I stand there transfixed? I don’t know. An hour maybe. Maybe an hour or maybe much longer.
My soul is detached. It’s reaching out desperate, searching for solid ground. It’s possible it won’t ever come back. It’s possible I’m hollowed out for good. I imagined that single moment in my mind countless nights. It never played out like that, but it had. An irregular heartbeat. A tectonic slide. I’ve known in my gut the whole time. My father is alive. I knew it all along, deep down, I knew. I just didn’t think he’d come back. But he had, he had. I saw him again with my very own eyes. I shudder. Can’t cry. Back. Whoever that was, that corpse at my door, I know I do not know that man.