I am haunted.
I see swarms of heavy missiles running toward me. They are feverish. They won’t stop for anything, won’t even pause for air traffic. They cut through clouds. They won’t even flinch against a knockout wind. They have orders, strict orders. And they’re after me.
They follow me everywhere.
My father wore a thin blue pajama suit and a white undershirt and dark socks and black slip-on shoes. He sat oddly on one of the bottom steps of the stairs, his hand quivering near his temple, barely touching the paper-thin skin that seemed to be all that remained to contain the blitz of a mental torment. His face contorted and reddened. His cheeks squeezed into small balls of flesh, the size of crab apples, sweaty and, upon close inspection, layers in running tears.
I kneeled down to talk to him. In the background, Mel stood cautiously and respectfully with two armloads for our road trip. She backed up once she saw that my father and I were speaking.
“Dad, you can talk to me. It’s good to let it out. It’s good to express how you feel.”
Suddenly in a soft whimper, my dad responded, “I try to, but it’s hard… You and your mother are always so busy, and your mother is so hard to get a hold of…”
She doesn’t care, he said.
“Dad, you can call me whenever you want –”
“I did speak to Dr. Cotter the other day. He’s a good friend. He understands what I’m going through…”
A couple moments sprinted past us. Benny, Dad’s caretaker, stood a few feet away, holding a black backpack with Dad’s TPN pouch.
“Dad, I’m here for you. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Your mouth to God’s ears…’”
“You weren’t here for very long. You’ve been so angry at me…”
“I’m not angry with you, Dad…” I took his hand in both of mind and felt his veins as thick as his hand bones, making ripples in his skin.
“Dad, I know you’re scared. I’m scared too… I want you to be brave…”
“It’s not about being brave,” he answered, opening his eyes and wiping them under his glasses. He reached up and grasped the railing of the stairs and began to hoist himself up. “I’ve got enough bravery for ninety people…”
As he rose up, his eyes scanning the upper air, I thought for a second about the peculiarity of the number 90, and if it wasn’t about being brave, what was it about?
I stood up with him and smiled. “Hey Dad, look, you’re taller than me again!”
Benny laughed.
My father stepped down to my level, sinking down below. With his back too sharply bent for him to prove it, he replied, “I’ve always been taller than you.”
He walked past me, signaling to Benny that he wished to move to his office. Benny lifted the heavy backpack with a tube running from the top and through my dad’s undershirt sleeve. And into his arm. Benny remained a mere foot or two behind him.
The three of us entered the yellow light of his small office. I watched painfully as my dad bent that spiny back and leaned backward and fell into his large comfortable cushiony red chair. His vertebrae had been molded into a difficult arc from years of slouching back in that chair. I sat down in his swivel desk chair with my hands cupped together, and listened.
“Everything takes so much time now. It takes me an entire day to do simple things. I’m losing stamina…” And his eyes peered over toward some distant corner of his office, as if the word were suspended in mid-air, fascinating him for that second. “Stamina…” he repeated.
Silence carried the word around the room, and finally to drift resolutely through my mind like a log in an endless body of water, gliding forth because someone long ago gave it a push. My father’s eyes were wide open now.
“Hey Dad,” I started, trying to lighten the discussion. “Mel and I are going to a baseball game.”
“Is that so? Which one?”
“The Phillies.”
“When?”
“When we get to Philadelphia. Tomorrow.”
“Who do they play?”
I called out to Mel. After a moment, I heard her quickly walk over so she could hear us from outside the office, near the front door. I asked her who the Phillies playing. She did not know.
After a moment, my dad became silent again and then somber.
“Dad, I’m going to see you again. I’ll be back in a couple weeks.”
His despair muted him. He tried to etch a response, but he seemed to change his mind, the way his face suddenly cleared up and he looked at me, self-aware of his emotions, and started asking questions about the road trip from Chicago to Philly.
When it was time to go, he again walked over to the front door, with Benny right next to him. “Do you have the chocolates?” he asked alarmingly.
“Yep, right here.” I took out a small bag of Hershey’s kisses closed up in a rubber band. He nodded, content and satisfied. Then his face tightened up again as he reached over to embrace me once more.
“I love you Dad.”
He sniffed and said, “I love you too.”
When we made our way to the car, I had to shove a storm of awakened tears back down my throat and into my chest to make my heart beat wildly. He took small steps across the lot in front of our house toward the mailbox with Benny right behind him. After checking it, he crossed back over to the house. He waved at me again, and I again said goodbye. I did not close my car door until the last of him had passed out of sight back into the house. And he did, leaving a chilly emptiness to swell in my mind, as I saw in a way a world with my father departed from my view in a much grander way.
Mel and I closed our doors. I held her in my arms for a second to digest the sorrow. And then I started my car, and we left.
Thornwood passes out of sight. My new home, my new reality, comes into view under thick overcast and rain. Somewhere over those formidable clouds, a fleet of missiles is on their way. Groomed to do just this. Engineered to destroy me. Or perhaps to haunt me. Action at a distance.
They’re coming after me. With great, terrible stamina.
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