You Only Get So Much (4 page)

Chapter 5

The door to my father's room is metal. Not the nice metal
doors that people paint in matching shades to fit a home's exterior color. It's
a shiny beige that looks like three-day-old snot. Latex paint covers the door,
screws and various fasteners in a thick lather of snot.

Perched near the upper third of the door is a simple
square window sliced into diamonds by tiny gray wires.
 
I'm not sure what you call those little
wires, except that they are supposed to stop the glass from breaking into large
shards that might hurt someone.

I can imagine some old kook wielding a cane and trying to
smash his way through the little square window, completely forgetting that had
he tried the handle, he could have simply walked out. The door was meant to keep
people—my father—in. Not invite others for a visit.

My father sits facing his window—not the square one
surrounded by snot, but a larger afterthought of a rectangle squeezed in at the
top of the exterior wall. His back is to me. His hair is thin. The dark black
color has faded to a mousy brown.

His first floor room is backed up against the side of a
hill. His view is only that of a tire on a service truck parked outside. He can
only look up to see outside and his view was a dirty truck tire.

I step in the room, walk around the bed and position
myself so he can see me. He continues to stare at the tire.

"Dad?"

No response.

I touch his arm, which is sitting on the armrest of his
wheelchair.

"Dad?"

Like a slingshot he grabs my wrist and clamps down, staring
at my hand now, instead of the tire.

"I won't take them," he says. His teeth are
clinched and his lips are curled back.

"Dad, it's me. It's Billy," I say.

His grip doesn't subside. In fact, his forearm shakes
from the labor of the squeeze.

"It's OK Dad. You don't have to take them," I
say. Whatever "them" is.

We remain like that for just a few moments. Long enough
for me to see the leather restraints hanging from the headboard.
 
My wrist was starting to ache. The
strength that he'd amassed over the years has definitely not left him, even as
his body deteriorates around him.

He eventually lets go of my wrist, then looks up at me,
cocks his head slightly to the right. His eyes narrow. Curious.

"Jane was here," he says.

Jane?

"She brought me pencils," he says. "They
don't let me sharpen them. Bastards."

"Dad, can I have my wrist back?"

He looks down at his white knuckles on my arm and lets
go.

"I won't take them," he repeats.

"Take what, Dad?"

"The yellow ones. I said it before, but they don't
give a damn," he says, then adds in a high-pitched mimic, "
'These are your
orders, sir. From the doctor
.' Like I give a rat's ass what that twerp has
to say . . . you know that we don't even have a flag here? No Stars and
Stripes. In this day and age. Disgraceful."

Pills, obviously. He was being prescribed something that
he didn't want to take. The yellow ones. Whatever the yellow ones were for.

He is back to looking at the tire, but I can't tell where
his mind is—years ago with Jane and her pencils, or today fighting the
nurses about his medication.

"She was sad," he says. "She gave me
pencils and stayed with me."

This was impossible of course. Jane had never come to the
GreyHawk before. Maybe he was mistaking her for someone else. His mind was
clearly not making the connections that it should be.

"They are in the drawer," he says.

"The pills?"

"The pencils, goddamnit! Aren't you listening?"
he spits the words at me.

I go to the nightstand next to his bed. It has a wood
pattern in fake plastic, trimmed with brown plastic edges. Hospital-style all
the way. I open the first drawer and there sits a collection of eight white
pencils bound by a cracked rubber band. The band snaps as I pick up the
collection.

I'd seen these types of pencils many times before.
Pressed into the side of the pencils were black letters. The name of the dental
office where Jane used to work—Edge Water Dentistry. Included was the
phone number of the office.

 
Apparently
she really had come to see him.

"Dad, when did you get these?" I said, showing
him the pencils.

"Last week," he said. "When the world came
to an end and they took all the flags down and burned them in the dining room
fireplace. You should have seen it. Stars and Stripes. Disgraceful."

"Dad, think again, when did you see her last?"

He just ignores me and looks out the window, searching
for something.
  

"He won't be able to tell you that, William,"
my mother says from the door. I don't know when she came to the room. "He
struggles with time. When things happened. His short term memory is OK, but
everything seems to be short term for him."

She wheels over two chairs by Dad and motions for me to
sit in one. She kisses Dad on the forehead and whispers something to him I
can't hear, and then sits down by heaving herself into the chair. Her orange
pants have blue triangles on them. I can't think of any store that would sell
such a garment. Maybe she had them custom made. Quite the statement. You can
always count on Mom's crazy pants.

"Jane saw us just a few days before she died,"
she says. "We didn't live here then though. We were still at the Corbin
Park house. She and Aspen stopped by because we had a Valentine's Day gift to
give Aspen. They gave us Valentine's Day cards too. The pencils were actually
from Aspen. She didn't want Grandpa to go without something from her on
Valentine's Day, so she pulled out those pencils from her little purse and gave
them to him. I remember it well because it was the last time I saw either of
them."

I was afraid for her to tell me any more of that story.
To fill in the gaps of those last days of my family's life. What I caused. I
knew enough to not ask for more. It hurt too badly to know. I needed to lock it
away. I'd been able to do that so well by leaving. Why the hell did I have to
come back home?

Mom continued in her slow measured tone, ignoring my
internal wrestling.

"Jane was sad, you know, just like your father said.
I'd never seen her that way. I'm not sure of the word. Despondent or dazed. She
just seemed out of sorts. I guess sad is the best word to describe it. It was a
long time ago. My mind doesn't recall things as fast either. You never asked me
about it, so I never mentioned it. I'm sorry."
 

Jane had been in Spokane, but looking for me. That much I
knew, even if my parents didn't. I'd been gone from our home in Spokane for
over a week. I flew to New York to meet with my agent. To try to hammer out a
third draft on yet another novel that I'd written and not published. The world
was awaiting my next work—to see if I could top
Isolated Highway
. I couldn't. Not by a
long shot. My agent, Monique Lang, wouldn't let those drafts see the light of
day. But it was more than that. I was in New York to see Monique. And I'm not
proud of what I was doing.
 

"Why did you come home, William?" Mom asks.

"For the funeral, you know that."

"Do I? I haven't seen you in more than a decade.
Have you forgotten how to use the telephone? Because if you have, I would be
happy to show you how it works. It's quite simple really."
 

"I needed to pay my respects."

"You came out of hiding for that?" she says.

"I wasn't hiding."

"You're blowing smoke, William. I'm too old for
that. You hide away for over 20 years—"

"Twelve years."

"Doesn't matter. You hide away and leave your family
to worry about you," she says. "You could have been dead in a ditch
somewhere for all I knew. I just need to know why."

Why indeed. Because I didn't want anyone to see me.
Because I cared about my family and couldn't hurt them anymore. Because I was
ashamed and scared. I've had plenty of time to work out the reasons. I know
why.

But I couldn't say that.

"I just needed time away," I say. Which was
possibly the worst, chicken-shit answer of all time.

"Sometimes I need to get away too," she says.
"But you still know where to find me and I've mastered dialing the
telephone too."

Mom always had a way to put you down and elevate her
status at the same time. She would have made a good priest.

"I'm glad to see you," she says. It's the first
kind words she's said to me for as long as I can remember. It's a surprise and
it feels nice.

Then she drops the bomb, "Because you're getting
Trevor's kids."

Chapter 6

I misheard what she said. I must have. It was the
strangeness of seeing my father in a dream state—half lucid. It was
talking to Mom and feeling like I was an elementary school kid again.
Can I have a
dollar for the ice cream truck?
That's the conversation I was having. She
couldn't have said that I—the guy who has successfully stayed away from
everyone he loves—was supposed to
get
anyone's kids. Let alone the children of my
brother—the action-figure-worthy doctor.
 
No, I misheard what she said. I must have.

"The will is going to state that April be awarded
custody of the kids," Mom says. "I know this because Trevor told me
years ago. But obviously this was before she got caught up in the drug world so
heavily and whatever else she's into now."

April couldn't take care of the kids. April couldn't take
care of herself. I'm not the one for the job, but she's not either. April's
always been unreliable, even before she got addicted. Why Trevor would even
think to give them to April is beyond me. I know he was closer to her than I
was, but still. How do people make these decisions?

"You have to take them, William," Mom says. She
lifts a folder off the side table and hands it to me. "There's no way that
a judge is going to let April have those children. Not with her arrest history.
Not with the drugs and not if someone capable contests it."

I open the folder. It was some sort of insurance
document. I skim it.

"I did some research," she says. "One of
the residents here at the GreyHawk used to be an attorney and he walked me
through it. The judge is supposed to honor the wishes of the deceased, but if
the family intervenes and provides a willing guardian to take the place of the
original named guardian, then he has to consider it."
 

"Why can't they go with you?" I ask.

Mom's face goes flat and she looks around the room
blankly as if to emphasize where we are sitting. A snot-stained room for old
people.

"This isn't a home for kids, William. You know
that."

"I can't do this," I say. "You can't ask
me to do this."

"I'm not asking. If your sister gets these kids,
they are going to end up just like her. She's not my prize pig; I know that. I
can't let her destroy what Trevor and Jennifer built with those
kids—Kendall's screwed up enough already. They can't come with me and if
you talk yourself out of manning-up, then they are going to go into foster
care. You know what happens to kids in foster care."

I do. They get shuffled around from home to home by
people who are willing to take in another kid and get a state stipend to keep a
bed open for them. Bad things happen to those kids—not all of them, no.
But enough. Too many. They leave the system with a label. A foster kid means an
unwanted kid. Damaged. These kids weren't unwanted, even if I didn't want them.
Even if I couldn't want them.

"I can't raise kids," I say.

"Oh my Lord," she says. "Don't be such a
spoiled brat. We all do things we don't want to do for family. For someone
other than ourselves."

Did Mom realize that
Gracie is nearly the same age that Aspen was when she died? She's the spitting
image of my Aspen too. And Kendall is just a year or so younger than Aspen
would be, if she were still here today. No. I can't take these kids. How could
I be trusted after what happened? I'm not a good guy. I fucked it all up. It's
my fault Aspen and Jane died. Am I the only one who sees that?

Mom rubs her temples,
then pats me on the knee.

"Did you think I
liked all of the kids April had staying at our house when she was in high
school?" Mom asked. "How many were there? Three? Four girls? Messed
up little women. But, guess what? We were the normal ones, William. The Redmonds
were the standard. Those girls had it rough at home. Bad parents. Violence.
Abuse. At least that's what April told me. So I took them in. I know you didn't
notice."

I'm not sure what Mom is
getting at. I did notice the girls, more than she knew. It started the summer
April was going into high school. Several friends, at different times, needed
someplace to stay. The reasons were as varied as the girls, but they ended up
staying in April's room. Hell, Dad even put another bed in there. April was
only two years younger than me. Far enough apart that we didn't see eye to eye,
but close enough that her friends wouldn't hesitate to come knocking on my
door. It made for some interesting summer nights and a few first-time
experiences that I feel ashamed even thinking about in the presence of my
mother.

"I never wanted
those little sluts in my house," she says. "But I thought I was
helping them out of a bad spot. Doing my part for someone else. We were the
normal ones. We had to help. We do things, William. And you need to do this or
it's all going to blow up in our faces."

"What do you
mean?" I asked.

"That paper in your
hand—the one you pretended to read—is a life insurance statement.
Your brother and Jennifer left everything to the kids. The policies themselves
are going to pay out something like $500,000. This doesn't include the house
and whatever investments they had."

"You act like this
is a bad thing," I say. "The kids are set now."

"No, they're
not," she says. "They can't access the money until they turn 18. Some
kind of trust. Forward thinking by Trevor. A bit. The money isn't to be touched
until then, unless the kids have an immediate need for financial support. If
April is going to be named their guardian, she will have access to that money.
It will kill her. She'll sniff it up her nose or shoot it into her arm. It will
kill her and leave the kids in the same—no—in a worse place than
they are now."

I say nothing and she
continues.

"If you don't do
this, you will be killing your sister and ruining your nieces' lives," she
insists. "There's nothing else to say."

But that wasn't true.
There was a lot to say, I just couldn't say the words out loud. This can't be
happening. She wasn't wrong. I wish she was.

I put my head in my
hands as Mom walks out, leaving me alone with Dad. My mind swirls and lands on
home. My cabin in Montana is always quiet. Just the birds chirping during the
day and the bugs clicking away at night. I try to go there in my head by
picturing the deck. I like to sit on the deck and light a fire in the clay
fireplace in the evenings. I sit on the deck and watch the lake below. I like
the solitude. Nobody around but me. Sometimes I can see boats in the water.
Lovers out on a ride. Or old men, who know when the fish bite. I could see
other cabins too, when the trees were bare. Or smoke from other fires. But the
people are so far away that I can't hear them and they can't hear me, which is
for the best.

The snapping and
crackling of my fire is the only sound on my deck and it has done nothing to
drown out my screams and tears every night for the past 12 years.