The Last Breath (8 page)

9

PRISON HAS NOT
been kind to my father.

How ridiculous is my first thought upon seeing him through the living room window? Of course prison hasn’t been kind; that’s why they call it prison. I push my face into the glass to get a better look, and something sharp and spiky twists in the pit of my stomach. Riverbend Maximum Security Institution has stripped my father down to a ghost of an unrecognizable stranger. A hard, angry, bitter stranger.

Then there’s the cancer eating away at his insides. His face and neck have grown gaunt, his eyes sunk deeper into their sockets. His chest no longer fills out his shirt, which is now concave down to his protruding hip bone. And thanks to the tumor squeezing his pancreas and shooting sprouts into his liver, his skin has turned an awful yellow-orange like he’s been dipped in carrot juice.

Two armed and uniformed men settle him into a wheelchair. They tuck a heavy wool blanket around his scarecrow frame and then stand guard on either side, which is, of course, ridiculous. If there’s a working muscle under those state-issued scrubs, it’s not strong enough to win a race to the end of the driveway, much less a getaway chase through the woods.

And running looks to be the last thing on my father’s mind. He tilts his face into the sunshine and puffs out a breath long enough to have been saved since 1994.

Has it been that long since he last felt the sun’s warmth?

One of the guards, a stodgy man with thinning silver hair, pushes the wheelchair up the ramp Cal built. The guard whistles a country tune, but not loudly enough to drown out the protesters at the end of the driveway.

“Ray Andrews is guilty. We want justice.”

A news van pulls up, scattering the protesters like cockroaches, and a camera crew piles out. They find a spot on the front lawn and begin taping, the house as their backdrop. Two seconds later their newscast is interrupted by a noisy procession of trucks and SUVs, their drivers laying on their horns. The cameraman abandons the broadcast and swings the lens around, focusing in on the lead truck where a bearded man leans out the open window. He lifts a bullhorn to his mouth. “Wife killer! Die, wife killer!”

His evil words echo through the valley and slice, as sharp and deadly as a buck knife, into my gut.

My gaze darts to my father, now almost to the top of the ramp. He chomps down on his lips and burrows farther under the blanket, but not before I catch his expression. The sixteen years’ worth of outrage and indignity have slashed lines on either side of his mouth, his eyes, his forehead, but there’s still plenty of room in between for this afternoon’s mortification.

Fannie tsks, stepping up behind my left shoulder. “Crackpots. No matter what your father did or didn’t do, darlin’, he doesn’t deserve that. Everybody deserves to die with dignity and respect.”

“He used to be respected.” My voice is thick, and it cracks on the last word. “He was a member of every service club, raised money for every nonprofit, served on every board. Just look at him now.” I swipe a cheek with the back of a hand. “He’s pathetic.”

The guard makes the last turn onto the porch, and Fannie pats a palm on my shoulder. “Get ahold of yourself, sugar. ’Cause here he comes.”

She leaves me sniffling into the curtains, waddles to the door and pulls it wide. Through the window I see Dad’s gaze land on her with an expectant thud.

“Welcome home, Mr. Andrews.” She lifts a hand. “I’m Fannie Miles, and I’m gonna take real good care of ya.”

Disappointment is written across Dad’s forehead as clearly as the Tennessee Department of Corrections painted in big blazing block letters on the van behind him. He cranes his neck toward the side of the house, searching. Searching for Bo and Lexi. Searching for me. I step into the shadow.

The protesters increase their volume, marching back and forth on the road while the news crew films their angry chants. Dad returns his squint to Fannie. “I see you called the welcome wagon.”

Fannie motions for me to come to the door. “Your lovely daughter Gia is here. We were just getting acquainted.”

His eyes flash to the window. “Where is she?”

I don’t move. I barely breathe. Last month our convoy was almost ambushed by four armed bandits, and I sped the Rover away without breaking a sweat. Now I’m about to hurl my coffee onto the burgundy Rooms To Go carpet.

“Gia’s right here. Come on inside and say hi.”

He shakes his head. “Hold it right here, fellas.”

Dad doesn’t wait for the silver-haired guard to stop the wheelchair. He grips the chair’s metal arms and tries to push himself upright, but his feet are still propped onto the metal flaps and his scrawny body can’t get more than four or five inches of air. After a few clumsy tries, he sinks back into the chair, his face ashy-orange beneath his whiskers. “Somebody get me out of this goddamn chair.”

The second guard, a stocky man with a bottom lip bulging with tobacco, plants his feet and palms his billystick. “Sir, my orders are to escort you into the house and tether your ankle monitor before allowing you out of that chair.”

My father flops one slippered foot onto the ground. “I aim to walk.”

For the first time I notice Jimmy standing guard at the bottom of the porch. He gives my father a disciplined smile and climbs the ramp, his equipment chinking at his belt. “Afternoon, Mr. Andrews. You remember me?”

Dad glares up at him. “Of course I remember you, Jimmy. But right now I’m trying to walk through my own goddamn door, so our little reunion’ll have to wait until I get inside.”

Jimmy’s mustache doesn’t even twitch. He motions his silver-haired colleague aside and stomps on the wheelchair’s brake. Fannie rushes to help, tucking the foot supports out of the way and planting my father’s feet onto the cold concrete. Together, the two heave him out of the chair.

Dad grumbles he doesn’t need any goddamn help and then grips their sleeves until he’s found his balance. He eyes the distance to the door, four feet at best—so close, but it must seem like a country mile for this dying man.

Fannie and Jimmy hover at either elbow, waiting, watching. Dad takes his first wobbly step. His knees knock through his state-issued pants, and he holds out both hands for balance. Three halting steps, and he’s at the door. He falls against the frame, punching a victory fist into the air.

My heart flips right over. One more step, and he’ll be inside.

Fannie’s cheers are cut short at my father’s first teeter. She pushes his wheelchair forward and scoops him up with it right before he crumples to the ground. Behind her, Jimmy looks relieved. The guards look bored.

Fannie wheels Dad inside the house and fusses over him. I sink farther into the curtains.

But it’s too late. My father looks over, and our eyes meet for the first time in sixteen years.

I drop my gaze, and I have the sudden urge to cry. Eyes burning, throat squeezing shut, sob pushing up my chest. I want to fall into a ball at Dad’s knees and feel his skinny arms around me, and I want to run away from him, from this house, from this town, as far and as fast as I can. But mostly, I want to believe my father without a sliver of a shadow of a doubt when he says he didn’t harm Ella Mae Andrews.

I take a breath, haul air deep into my lungs and blow it out slowly, once, twice, again and drag my gaze to my father’s. If I can’t give my father my unwavering belief in his innocence, the least I can do is look him square in the eyes. Around him the room fades and spins.

“Where’s everybody else?”

His voice cuts through the ocean roaring in my ears. I try to answer but my mouth won’t work. Neither will my lungs, which are burning a hole in my chest.

Jimmy catches my eye, and a frown blooms between his brows. He says my name, low and slow as sorghum syrup, and that’s the last thing I notice before everything around me goes black.

* * *

I awake on the couch, something cold pressed over an eye, and Fannie hovering above me. The ceiling fan frames her head like an asterisk, its blades jutting out from her overteased hair like whirling exclamation points. She’s wearing her nurse face again, but this time it’s directed at me.

“Lucky me. Two patients for the price of one.” Fannie gives my arm a little pat. “Though I gotta say, I sure didn’t take you for a fainter.”

“I’m not.” My voice scratches my throat, my breath scraping over sandpaper.

She cackles. “Tell that to the coffee table.”

Which would explain my throbbing brow. I reach for the bundle of freezing cloth pressed over the left side of my face. Fannie stops me with a hand to my wrist before I can wreck her makeshift cold compress. “Leave it. The ice will help the swelling.”

Swelling?
I think, or maybe I say it.

“Swelling,” Fannie repeats. She pushes to her feet and grins at Jimmy, standing stiffly at the foot of the couch. “You can call off the rescue squad, Officer. She’s conscious.”

Jimmy hooks his thumbs in his pants pockets and leans back on his heels. “Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen anyone go down that fast without a bullet.”

“My head feels like it took a bullet.” I push myself upright, holding the ice pack in place over my eye. “But I’m fine.”

Or I will be, as soon as the room stops spinning.

Crisis over, Fannie receives the last of the house-arrest instructions from Jimmy and walks him to the side door. He tells her he will check in daily by phone or in person, a promise he manages to make sound more like an assurance than a threat, and turns to wave one last time before slipping into the icy afternoon air. Fannie clicks the dead bolt in place and disappears into the kitchen, muttering something about the restorative merits of tea with extra honey.

“You always did have a particular talent for upstaging everyone, didn’t you?” Dad says.

A rhetorical question if I’ve ever heard one. I twist on the couch to face my father, reclined on his hospital bed behind me, but don’t respond.

“Things are about to get a lot hairier, you know.” Prison has hardened his easy drawl into a sharp twang. “Can’t wait to see what kind of tricks you have in store for us then.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m not a fainter.”

He points to the floor by the coffee table. “Then what do you call that?”

“Jet lag and last night’s tequila.”

Dad snorts, his gaze darting to the front window. “Did you get a look at the lynch mob? They’re a rowdy bunch.”

“Sorry about that. Cal and I tried to run them off.”

He barks a mean laugh. “I’ve seen worse. A whole helluva lot worse. Those stories you hear about men in prison? They don’t even come close.”

There’s really nothing I can say to that.

“Well,” he drops his head back onto the pillow and stares at the ceiling, “as much as I’m enjoying this little family reunion, you can go now.” His hand fans the air above a sharp hip bone, dismissing me.

I drop my hand, and the ice pack clatters to my lap. “Go...?”

“Yes, go. Frannie’ll keep me company.”

“Fannie.”

“Fannie will keep me company, so git.”

The edge of self-pity in his voice doesn’t mitigate his message. I’ll admit I saw my coming here as some sort of half-assed atonement for not visiting Dad in prison. Not once, though, did I ever think he wouldn’t want me here.

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“Back to saving the world. Back to acting like I’m already dead.”

His message knocks me silent. Is that what I was doing? Acting like he was already dead? A barbed ball of guilt pitches and rolls in my belly.

“Sixteen years, seven months and twenty-three days. That’s how long I’ve had to put up with people looking at me like I’m guilty of murder. I’m not going to have it in my own home, from my own daughter.”

“I don’t—” I begin, then stop myself. There was more than anger and accusation buried in his words. There was also an unmistakable question.

I don’t look at you like you’re guilty
is what I was going to say, but that’s not quite the same as
I don’t think you’re guilty,
is it? My father would recognize the difference. He’s a man who misses nothing, including, according to his scowl, the reason behind my silence.

Dad’s face goes slack. “That’s what I thought.”

Still. I don’t budge from the leather couch.

“Goddammit, Gia! Either get out or stop looking at me like I killed Ella Mae, because I didn’t. The only crime I ever committed—the only one—was loving that woman more than she loved me.”

I hold his gaze and my breath, not moving, not speaking, not capable of lying. Not about this. Not without him seeing right through me.

My father looks away first. “So go on back to those brown babies you love to save. There’s nothing for you here. I’ve got cancer. I can’t be saved.”

“I know.”

“If you hurry, you might be able to leave this afternoon.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Would you listen to me? I don’t want you here.”

“Too bad, because I’m not leaving!”

The force of conviction driving my words surprises him, surprises both of us. After all, why shouldn’t I leave? My siblings wouldn’t notice, and my father says he wouldn’t care. Nobody would miss me, except perhaps Cal. As far as I can tell, I’m not bound here by anything but guilt and a warped sense of duty, so why not simply leave?

The chants outside crescendo into an offensive clamor, a sick sort of anticheer. I turn to the window and beyond it the protesters, an army of bodies wearing puffy jackets and woolen hats and angry expressions. Judging by the gear they’ve lined up on the lawn—a dozen camping chairs, multiple hot plates, a portable butane heater—they’re here to stay.

As am I.

I can’t leave. Not yet. Leaving now would be the equivalent of packing up the camp in Dadaab and moving on to the next bigger, better disaster before eradicating famine in the Horn of Africa: unfinished. My father would still be dying, my siblings would still be hiding behind their busy, busy, busy lives and I would still be tackling everyone’s disasters but my own.

Dad says I can’t save him, and in a way, he’s right. Not even the doctors can reverse the cancer coaxing him into a quick grave.