All That I Can Fix

by Crystal Chan

  Dad looked at me incredulously. “You see what a hypocrite you are? You berate me for leaving you, but listen to yourself. You’ve left us.”

  There was suddenly a strange smell in the house, but I couldn’t pin it down. I shook my head at Dad. “If I’m a hypocrite, then you’re a pathetic mess. You’re powerless. You fucking failed us,” I said, but at that moment, something inside started to stutter, to break down. Because with those very words I remembered just how powerless I had been with Sam. How deeply I had failed him.

  Just like Dad.

  I had to get out of there. I stomped down the hallway and into the living room, and when I got there, I stopped cold.

  There was a tiger looking at me.

  A live tiger. In the living room.

  It growled.

  Mom must have left the door ajar.

  I froze. The sharp, thick smell of musk saturated the house. My nostrils flared. Every single goddamn hair on my body stood on end.

  Dad was on my heels. When he got into the living room, he stopped too.

  “Um . . . ,” I said.

  “Ronney, get out of here,” Dad said. His voice quivered.

  “Right,” I said, my eyes still locked on the tiger. “Trying.”

  I inched toward the kitchen door, and the tiger approached me. One step. Two.

  I stopped and put up my hands as if it were a holdup.

  “Ronney,” Dad said.

  The smell of musk was everywhere. Fucking dripping. I could barely breathe.

  “Dad,” I said. My voice was high and whispery.

  Dad made another step toward me.

  The tiger swished its tail and growled again. Its eyes locked on Dad. Dad stopped.

  “What if we run for it?” I said.

  “Once we turn our backs, it’ll jump,” Dad said.

  “So then what?”

  “Go slow.”

  The kitchen door was a million fucking miles away. I swallowed thickly and inched again toward the kitchen.

  The tiger crouched low and made a couple steps after me. Stalking me.

  I stopped. “I don’t want to die, Dad,” I whispered. My entire body trembled and dripped in sweat.

  “You won’t, son,” Dad whispered back. “Just go slow and steady.”

  I kept walking to the kitchen door, step by agonizing step, and the tiger kept countering each step of mine with a step of its own. Each paw was the size of my face.

  “It’s going to jump—I know it,” I whispered. “Look, Dad, I’m sorry for—”

  “Ronney, stay focused,” Dad said.

  It took everything that I had not to turn and run for that door. But I knew Dad was right: If I lost my focus, it was over.

  It was as if that tiger knew the plan, knew what doors were, and knew what I was heading for. The growl came thick from its throat, and its eyes narrowed into slits. It crouched even deeper.

  “Dad?” I squeaked.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “What do I do?” I asked.

  “Keep going,” Dad said. “You’re getting there.”

  “I won’t make it.”

  “Ron-Ron?” a voice said. I wrenched my eyes from the tiger and saw Mina maybe twenty feet away.

  Holding the gun.

  The tiger leaped.

  Dad threw himself between the tiger and me, his arms outstretched and wide, trying to make himself into a living wall.

  “Nooo!” Mina howled. She squeezed her eyes shut and fired the gun, and as she did, the gun flipped up and flew out of her hands—when it hit the ground, it went off again, and another scream: Dad’s.

  The tiger was standing on top of Dad, and there was blood. Blood everywhere. The tiger’s neck was red and wet, and Dad was down, lying in a gathering pool. Mina froze, and the tiger crouched again, this time for Mina. It snarled. I launched for the gun on the floor. As I was running for the gun, the tiger looked in my direction, and in one breath it leapt at me, its huge paws outstretched, its claws curved and glinting. As it careened through the air, I grabbed the gun and fired. The tiger smashed into me, and I hit the ground, continuing to fire into it, a solid wall of wet fur and heat and musk, and I fired until the gun was empty.

  The tiger’s weight was a vise pressing me to the floor, but I somehow crawled from under it, gasping at the fire of pain that engulfed my arm. When I stood up, the tiger’s huge body was lying in the middle of the living room. The very tip of its tail curled, then uncurled, then finally lay still on the carpet. It was motionless.

  So was Dad.

  “Dad!” I shouted, and ran to kneel over him. Dad didn’t move. His shirt was drenched in deep red, and the red was spreading quickly. He lay not far from the tiger, which had blood gushing out of multiple places of its body. Dad’s blood pooled with the tiger’s, and maybe even with mine; at that point I could no longer tell where it was coming from, just that it was awful and thick and dripping down my hands, soaking my jeans, my shoes.

  That smell of blood. I could recognize that metallic, sweet smell anywhere. And it was everywhere. Dark and thick. On the carpet. On my hands. I saw myself running to get the phone. Slapping Mina.

  I blinked.

  Dad groaned and shifted beneath me. I could hear Mina dashing for the phone. “Dad, I’m sorry, okay? I’m really, really sorry. I’m sorry for everything,” I whispered. “Hang in there, Dad. Don’t die. Oh God. Please.” Then I started to cry, and before I could stop myself, my crying turned into sobbing, and I was shaking as I knelt over him, I was sobbing so hard.

  I don’t know how he did it, but Dad slowly raised one heavy arm, draped it over my back, and held me like that while I cried. He was still holding me when the paramedics came in to take him away.

  24

  IT TURNED OUT THAT MINA had indeed shot the tiger in the neck, but the second bullet—the one that went off when the gun hit the floor—shot Dad in the shoulder. The same shoulder, of course. He was out of the hospital quickly this time, released the same day he went in, though he had to start all over with his physical therapy, which must have sucked. I had the feeling that he’d do his exercises better than he did before, if only because getting a gunshot wound to save your son’s life was a hell of a lot better reason than trying to blow off your head.

  I had to admit, I didn’t quite know what to do with Dad. I had really just been kidding about that superhero bit, but now it held true: I had a Superman dad who saved my ass from a tiger. Well, Mina saved our asses too, and I had saved both of their asses, so there was a lot of ass-saving to go around. Mom threw us a little party, made us steak, lit some candles, got us a cake, and she even knew better than to have it be made in the shape of a tiger. She kept saying that she could have lost us all and instead she had us all and that she was the luckiest woman in the world. As for Dad, he walked around the house all confident and shit, doing his new physical therapy exercises with gusto.

  Gusto, goddammit.

  It turned out that two of the tiger’s claws had caught my arm when it crashed into me, but I was lucky—I must have thrown it off when I was shooting it, and the claws didn’t go in as deep as they could have. That’s what the doctor said as he stitched up my arm. However, that didn’t stop it from hurting like a bitch, which of course I didn’t mention to anyone. The worst part was that the tiger had clawed me on the same side where Dad had gotten hit with the bullet. Our injuries weren’t exactly in the same place—Dad’s was in the shoulder and mine was in the upper arm—but bottom line, Dad and I both had bandages on our left side. Thank God I didn’t have to do physical therapy, because that would have just been too much, a dad and a son doing the same physical therapy exercises from the same tiger bullshit.

  Around the house, a part of me was also floundering inside because I couldn’t make my usual Dad comments—it just didn’t seem right anymore. A part of me was really tempted to make the same Dad insults that I always had, just because it was familiar. But I shut that voice up because that was something a
dickwad would do, and truth be told, I really didn’t mind having some awesome dad who had saved my life walking around the house. So I was mostly quiet around him and made sure to put my shoes nice and neat in the shoe pile, which I think he appreciated.

  However, I did seek out Jello soon after the whole tiger bit. He was on his computer when I dropped into his room.

  “Hey,” I said, and I went up to him and fake punched him in the arm.

  Jello fake fell over. “Hey,” he said.

  I helped him up. “Thanks for saving my life,” I said, and my throat felt tight.

  Jello sat his ass back on his chair. “But I didn’t. Your dad did.” His brow furrowed in confusion. Then he grinned. “Your kid sister did.”

  “No, not that. I meant that one day. On the lake.”

  “Oh, that,” Jello said, waving his hand. “That’s nothing.”

  I shook my head. “You saved my life. I owe you,” I said, and at that moment no words existed to express how indebted I felt toward him.

  Jello looked at me oddly. “That was years ago, R-Man. It’s fine.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d still be dead without you, years later.”

  “What’s this about?” he asked, as he grabbed the camera next to him and started cleaning the lens.

  I winced. How could I tell him how much it meant that he had come through for me, that something he did actually was my business, that I had needed him, that it was okay to need someone?

  I shrugged.

  Jello squirmed in his chair and fiddled with his camera. “It’s cool. You’re welcome.” Then he gave a little laugh. “It’s too bad you didn’t go all sappy on me last week, because you know I’d have found something for you to do.”

  His mangled-up raccoon had died, a prisoner in captivity, a couple days ago. On its back, its legs stuck in the air.

  I nodded, feeling damn lucky indeed. “So that’s the end of the safari,” I said.

  Jello gave a sly smile. “Not really.”

  “Jello, they’re all dead. Except for the camel. Game over.”

  “Not really,” he said again.

  I gave him a look. “What do you mean?”

  “Promise not to tell?” Jello said.

  My stomach twisted. “I promise.”

  Jello’s eyes shone. “Well, with all these animals around, the newspaper has been covering different angles on them, right?”

  “Go on.”

  “They covered this story about a lady who had purchased a baby lion cub a couple years ago and is raising it in her house.”

  I stared at him. “Are you for real?”

  “All of it. And I called her up.”

  “Wait. Where is she? In Makersville?”

  Jello’s eyes sparkled. “I’m not going to tell you. But it’s safe, you know? This is a domestic lion cub.”

  I snorted. “A domestic lion. God, are you naive sometimes.”

  “But determined,” Jello added, and grinned. “And I’m going to get my driver’s license in two months. So I can drive out there.”

  “Shit,” I said, almost admiringly. Leave it to Jello to get his way.

  “And, R-Man, you have to admit: Playing with a lion cub in some woman’s house is a whole lot better than going on a safari.”

  I fake punched Jello in the arm again. He fake fell off his computer chair again, then climbed back onto it. “It’s a whole lot better,” I said. “You’re brilliant.”

  Jello’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you being sarcastic?”

  I smiled. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Jello’s eyes latched onto his computer screen, and he shifted uncomfortably. “And hey, thanks for helping me with George.”

  “Yeah, right then you were the biggest whiner ever.”

  “No, I was the biggest loser.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  Jello nodded, then turned to grab a bag of chips that was sitting on his bookshelf. “You were right. She needed me.”

  I felt even more awkward. “Well, I should get going,” I said.

  “But somehow,” Jello continued, “she knew that you and I had talked. She kept saying, ‘Ronney told you to come back here, didn’t he?’ And when I asked her how she knew, she just rolled her eyes and said, ‘Please. Put Ronney in any situation, and he’ll know what to do.’ ”

  My eyes bugged out. “She said that?”

  Jello shrugged. “Yeah. Although I thought that was a little generous. Any situation? Come on, man. I’ve seen you really mess up situations.”

  So had I, but that still didn’t stop the grin on my face all the way home.

  • • •

  The day after I’d talked with Jello, Sam and I were hanging at my house when the doorbell rang.

  I told Sam to stay in my room and went to the front door. It was Nick, who came just as he said he would. Right on time. My insides bounced around.

  “Hey,” Nick said. I could see his car in our driveway, loaded down with his shit.

  “So you’re really doing it,” I said.

  “That’s what I said I’d do,” he said, and the stubborn glint in his eye was exactly the look that had so often come from Sam. He paused. “No news about Sam?”

  I shrugged.

  “I can’t believe that nobody’s heard anything,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Who is it?” Sam asked as he entered the foyer. Nick and Sam both did double takes, then triple takes, and then Nick’s face broke open. Sam gave a whoop and dove into his arms, and Nick picked that kid up like a bag of leaves, then fell to his knees and pressed his face into Sam’s tiny shoulder. Sam’s arms wrapped around Nick’s neck like a vine, like nothing in the world could wrench them apart.

  After what seemed like the longest time, Nick drew Sam away, looked him in the eye, and said, “You’re so stupid.”

  Sam fidgeted. “So are you,” he said.

  Nick winced, then pressed his lips tightly together. “Sam, I’m sorry. But I’m back now, okay?”

  Sam nodded. The thing that almost got me, Sam’s face softened until he looked like a ten-year-old kid again. I’d only seen that look on his face once, with me.

  I swallowed thickly.

  • • •

  Mina, of course, was a hero. No one else but a ten-year-old girl could shoot that tiger, the mayor proclaimed, except for her older brother: It was a strange feeling when I realized that he was talking about me. The tiger pouncing, Dad jumping in between, Mina and me shooting the tiger—we made the front-page story in the paper for four days straight.

  We were famous.

  All the kids at school wanted our photographs. Even the dickwad kids came up to me, all nice and shit, and politely asked for my pic. In the beginning I said sure, but then I felt like a poser for smiling with someone who had given me shit, and I started to walk away from the jerk-asses when they asked. I would have done that forever until Jello mentioned that that could be their way of apologizing. Which made sense. So I agreed that they could snap my picture, and I mostly didn’t scowl.

  For Mina, her classmates made her thank-you cards for helping keep our town and county safe, but some kids were upset that she didn’t get a picture with the bloody, dead tiger, which made her run home crying. At that point Dad called her teacher and demanded that those kids leave her alone.

  For the first days the three of us were hounded by an entourage of journalists and rejuvenated gun rights fanatics and gun control fanatics. Journalist after journalist stuck a microphone in Dad’s face and asked him, “What were you thinking when you threw yourself in front of a tiger for your son?”

  At this, Dad went silent for a while—a long while—and he looked at the foam-covered microphones, swallowing hard. Then he eyeballed the entire pod of journalists and said, “I would do it again, no doubt.”

  “Yes, but what were you thinking—”

  Dad held up a hand, and there was a heavy silence. “I was thinking . . .” Dad continued slowly, “how muc
h I love my son.” At the last couple words his voice went wobbly, and he looked up to the sky, lips pressed together, and I had to turn away too.

  Then they focused on me. A female reporter asked, “Tell us how you felt as you shot the tiger.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. What did she want me to say? It was exactly the same as picking flowers on a sunshiny day? But the thing was, the reporters were all waiting for me to answer, and as they waited for me, I suddenly felt exposed. I swallowed. “I just needed to protect my family. That’s what I was feeling,” I said.

  Once that topic was covered, they asked other lame-ass reporter questions: “How many guns do you have at home?” “Have you ever shot anything before?”

  Dad was about to answer when a young reporter cut in, looking squarely at Dad. “I read that you had shot yourself attempting suicide. What are your thoughts about guns and mental health?”

  Dad went quiet for a long while. A part of me wanted to beat up the jackass reporter for asking this question, and another part of me was curious about what Dad would say. “Depression affects everything,” he said, “especially the people you love.” He glanced at Mina, Mom, and me. “If you could only understand how much depression influences the decisions you make. And that guns intensify it all.”

  There was a shout in the crowd from a gun rights supporter, and then a countershout from a gun control supporter. Before the audience could erupt, the same female reporter asked Mina with a tender smile, “How does it feel to be a hero, honey?”

  Mina’s bottom lip quivered, and before I could do anything, she burst into tears and wailed, “But I’m not a hero! I shot my daddy when I dropped the gun! I could have killed him! It’s all my fault!” That, of course, led the gun rights fanatics and gun control fanatics to immediately turn and shout at each other, and the interview ended early. That was when Dad flailed his good arm and announced that we wouldn’t do any future interviews either.

  After Dad did that, Mina was happier than I’d ever seen her, and she bounced her non-orange bouncy ball so hard she was constantly smacking the ceiling with it. Dad let her crawl onto his lap any moment she saw him sitting down—on the couch, at the kitchen table—though he drew the line when he was driving the car. Dad seemed to like all the fussing too; they even had a special handshake they did before he left for his therapy sessions. One day, while Mina was bouncing her bouncy ball, I asked her again if she wanted me to get her an orange one. She simply responded, “I hate orange,” and she didn’t say anything more.