Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

  Jesus Christ is right, I feel like saying. The chaplain is kind enough to reiterate what I already know: my father was in an accident, they’re working on him right now, and not to worry. But I’m no closer to getting some answers than I was an hour before, sitting on a couch in a post-sex haze watching The Outsiders. And now I have to wait here with an aunt who’s volatile even under normal circumstances, a near-catatonic uncle, and a fucking Baptist who wants to be my best friend.

  “Mr. Fitzpatrick?”

  Five white coats enter the room. All of them doctors, I assume. All of them looking at me.

  “Yes.” I scan the room for anyone else who might claim the name. Where is Mom anyway? “I guess you can call me that.”

  “Please, Hank.” The doctor is a darker-skinned Indian, the kind you imagine having a mustache and career plan since he was like six years old. His voice carries with it that half-refined, half-cartoon accent of English imperialism. “Have a seat.”

  I sit down. Uncle Howard and Aunt Claudia take the chairs on either side of me. I wonder what the damage is. A broken leg? A broken arm? Maybe both legs? Both arms? No matter. Mom is going to come in here worried sick, and this ominous, brooding routine from the white coats sure isn’t going to help things.

  “Hank…” The doctor says my name again, looks down at his chest and then back at me. He lets my name hang there for a second. “Your father had lost too much blood. We were never able to revive him.”

  Chapter thirty-six

  Death sure is one creative son of a bitch. Four years after Reyes Syndrome killed my six-year-old girlfriend, I watched my father spoon-feed squashed peas to his seventy-five-pound, cancer-starved mother who spent her last days on this earth in the fetal position hurling expletives at the people she loved. “You’re a goddamn prick, George! Fuck you, Johnny! Get your slut of a wife out of my face, Johnny!” Nine years after that, Grandpa Fred’s seventy-four-year-old swimmer’s physique dropped dead in his kitchen the same month his internist proclaimed he’d live to be a hundred. And now, weeks after extracting a promise at Grandpa George’s grave that I would watch over him in his elderly years, my father is dead? Not just fucking dead, fucking killed.

  No. Fuck no.

  “What?” I squint and bite my lip. I clench my fingers around the oak arms of my chair. I bow my head, closing my eyes. My head is pounding. It’s quiet in the room, but to me the world is deafening.

  The Indian doctor pats me on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Hank.”

  “No!” I bolt up from my chair. I shrug off Aunt Claudia’s halfhearted attempt to either hug or restrain me, who knows which. I turn one last time to the room, staring the Indian doctor in the face. “Fuck this, and fuck you!”

  I need to get out of there. I stumble out of the waiting room, tripping over an empty wheelchair. I grab the wheelchair and lift it over my head. I throw it down the hallway. It slides to a stop just short of the receptionist’s desk.

  “Sir, please!”

  It’s the plump but sweet-looking old black nurse. I’m coated in sweat, breathing hard. The sleeve on my right arm rolled up to my elbow. The sleeve on my left pulled all the way down to my wrist. My hair is all over the place from me pulling on it, my right wrist cut and bleeding from where I grabbed the wheelchair. She calls me “sir” because she doesn’t remember my name. She calls me “sir” because the person standing in front of her bears little resemblance to the one she called “Mr. Fitzpatrick” thirty minutes ago. And yet that’s who I am. Mr. Fitzpatrick. The only one left.

  “Hank?”

  The soft voice comes at me from behind. “Hank, what’s wrong?”

  I turn to face my mother. Jeanine stands behind her, Jack latched on to her leg. Our eyes meet. Mom knows before I can even find the words.

  Mom opens her eyes. She’s sitting in a wheelchair now. I’m holding her hand.

  “How long have I been—”

  “About ten minutes,” I say. “You need to relax, Mom.”

  “P-please, Hank. Please, tell me this isn’t happening.” She stutters and gasps, like a sobbing child who’s just been sent to her room—hysterical with grief and trying to sort out why a world would leave her so alone. “I can’t live without him. I don’t want to live without him. I have no reason to live.”

  Jeanine and Jack are sitting right next to me. They hear every word. I see the tears in Jeanine’s eyes, the confusion in Jack’s. Aunt Claudia picks up on my nod and shuffles my two siblings out of the room.

  Mom sobs on my shoulder. I sit back and hold my arms out. I grab her shoulders, like I’m steadying someone in a drunken stupor. “Mom, I don’t want to ever hear you say those things again.”

  “But it’s true, Hank.”

  “I said ‘never!’”

  I shake her. Where is this coming from? This isn’t me talking, is it?

  “You want reasons to live?” I say. “What about me? What about Jeanine? What about Jack?”

  Like a beleaguered field general rallying the troops, I throw all I have left at her. I invoke her children a couple more times, Dad’s memory, Grandpa Fred’s memory. But if she counters, I’m finished. My strength is fading. If she tells me to shut up, I’ll shut up. If she asks me to kill her, I’ll kill her. Watching her in this kind of pain is the hard part. Ending the pain would be the easy thing to do.

  Ten minutes pass in silence. Mom rests her head in the crook of my neck. “Hank.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re the man of the family now.”

  Mom has an annoying tendency to recount embarrassing family moments out loud in public places. Over a deep-fried onion, she’ll recount a story you’ve heard about a hundred times, because all she wants to do is amuse that couple in matching sweater vests in the booth behind you eating imitation crab dip. “You’re the man of the family now”? This over-the-top cliché strikes me in much the same way. Mom looks past me as she says it, as if there’s an unseen audience listening to her. Cliché or not, it’s not what I expected to hear, nor a sentiment I’m prepared to embrace.

  And that’s when Uncle Mitch walks into the room.

  He sits down beside my mother, wraps his arm around her. “I came as soon as I heard, Debbie.”

  “What am I gonna do, Mitch? What am I gonna do?”

  “We’ll get through this. I promise.”

  “‘We’ll get through this?’” I say. “Fuck you, Mitch!”

  Aunt Claudia sticks her head in the room. “Jeanine and Jack want to see their mother.”

  I scowl at Mitch and then turn to Aunt Claudia, a mixture of fear and anger in my voice. I point at her. “Keep Jack out of this goddamn room!”

  The Indian doctor returns. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick…Hank.”

  Mom nods to me. I guess I’m doing all the talking. “Yes, doctor.”

  “You can see him now.”

  “Can I ask a favor?” I ask.

  “Certainly,” the doctor says.

  “Just me and my mother.” I pull Uncle Mitch off my mother and push him against the wall. “Get this man the fuck out of here, or I’ll have security throw him out.”

  “What are you doing?” Mom asks. “Mitch was your father’s brother!”

  I ignore her and turn to the Indian doctor. “Doctor, you will note in my father’s medical records that he’s an only child. Mitch is not family, period.”

  “But Hank,” Mom says.

  “Mom, don’t fight me on this.”

  Mom apologies to Mitch as security escorts him outside. I don’t even look at him. We walk down a corridor of white walls dotted with wheelchairs and gurneys, some occupied, most not. Hospital personnel scurry between rooms in their blue scrubs and white coats.

  “Here we are.” The doctor pushes open a set of double doors to our right marked trauma center in stenciled letters.

  We enter the
trauma center. I notice an immediate change in the smell. As you plunge deeper into hospitals, they become acute and unmistakable in their redolence: bad cafeteria food, antiseptic cleansers, urine, feces, flowery old women’s perfume. But this room is different. The odor is metallic, like the smell of your hands after you stuff them in a jar of pennies. The smell of blood.

  My earliest memory of blood was when I was six years old. Dad tried to install a screen door by himself. I handed him the wood chisel right before he sliced a three-inch gash in his groin. He passed out in Mom’s car, a brown 1980 Datsun B210 Delux Wagon, before we even got out of the driveway. By the time we got to the hospital, the blood soaked through his shorts and shirt all the way up to his navel. Mom cried.

  But it was nothing like this.

  Dad lies on a gurney five feet in front of us, a utility sink to his left and a red plastic container labeled biohazard to his right. Black articulated arms ending in lights extend from the ceiling above him like spider’s appendages. Various wheeled contraptions with tubes sprouting out of them stand watch over him, as if to say, “We’re sorry, but we fought the good fight.”

  Mom runs to him. I stand behind her. Dad is wrapped like a mummy, from his neck to his feet in bright white sheets. He looks so peaceful. His eyes closed. His mouth frozen in a small permanent near-grin, his straight lips turned up at the corners—the signature Fitzpatrick smirk. It’s the closest semblance of a frown we Fitzpatrick men can manage. I can almost pretend Dad is asleep, until we’re cautioned by the Indian doctor not to touch him anywhere below his chest.

  No. Fuck no.

  Mom strokes Dad’s hair. “John, my dear John.” She kisses his cheek, again and again. I’m in shock. The seconds, the minutes are interminable. My head hurts. I’m not here. This isn’t my father. This isn’t happening.

  “Hank.” Mom reaches her hand out to me. She slides down to give me some room alongside my father.

  I look at my mother. She smiles but not a good smile. It’s one of those awful, lips-trembling smiles. The only expression your body can think of to convey unimaginable grief. I lean down until my forehead is resting on Dad’s cheek. I raise my head. I notice a trickle of dried blood in Dad’s ear.

  The blood makes it real for me. My tears come. Uncontrollable. Vicious. I am here. This is my father. This is happening.

  I press my cheek against his. He’s still warm. I wrap my right arm around his head and run my fingers through his hair. I raise my left hand to his lips. “Hey Hank,” Dad said to me before I went back to school on Sunday night, “you think you’ll ever be too old to get a hug and kiss from your Dad?” I don’t even remember what I said. Did I let him hug me? Did I let him kiss me? Did I tell him I loved him? Why wasn’t I at least there on the other side of the phone to say, “Yes, Dad, I’d love to go to the Stanford game with you!”

  My fingers linger above his mouth, hoping for the breath that will never come. I look to Dad’s eyes, waiting for them to open. In that brief moment, I see my future laid bare before me. Hollow. Empty.

  I touch his cheek with my own again. He’s getting colder. Can’t they give him more blankets? Something to keep him warm?

  More blankets. That’s all he needs. More blankets.

  Chapter thirty-seven

  Mom wants today to be a celebration of Dad’s life. In her words, “None of that dark, Catholic purgatory bullshit.” She invited the Ridge Spirit Band to the funeral. Propped on the balcony of St. Isadore Roman Catholic Church, they are about two-thirds through a thirty-minute pre-funeral set of New Age jazz that’s more ridiculous than celebratory. The doors to the back of the church are open wide. We’re sitting with the window down in the limousine. I hear the music. As bad as it sounds—we’re talking Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” sandwiched in between Al Jarreau’s not-so-greatest hits—Dad would have loved it.

  I sit with my family, waiting for the hearse parked in front of us to unload the man of the hour. I pull out a stainless steel hip flask and sneak a quick sip of Rumple Minze. I’m going with a hundred-proof peppermint schnapps instead of the more predictable whiskey. The schnapps is stronger and will get me to where I want to go a whole lot faster. Also, if people smell my breath they might mistake my drunkenness for good oral hygiene.

  Eight pallbearers stand at the back of the hearse. Uncle Mitch is one of them. I’m giving him today, for Dad. They slide Dad out and carry him from the hearse through the back doors of the church. The chortling of the hearse’s diesel engine gives way to the sound of feet shuffling across hard pavement in soles too sad to pick them up. A cold October breeze sends eight bad neckties snaking around each of the pallbearers’ heads. They deposit Dad onto a dolly and wheel him inside the church.

  We follow Dad into St. Isadore, crowding in with the rest of the funeral procession into the church’s small vestibule. The music grows louder. A small basin of holy water stands to my left near the door. I dip my fingers in it and cross myself. I reach up and brush back my hair, which is ambivalent about whether to frame my face or cover it. I pull on the collar of my starched shirt. The collar is tight, too tight, thanks to my slight double chin. That’s the Irish in me, the genetic trait passed down through Fitzpatrick men that ensures any extra weight must first show up in your face.

  My suit is ashen black and oversized, borrowed from Dad’s closet. It smells like him, an earthy aroma of tanned leather that for a moment overshadows today with yesterday. Dad was heavier and taller than me. It’s all my seventy-inch, 190-pound frame can do to fill the suit. Safety pins at the cuffs and hems fool everyone into thinking it’s mine. We move forward into the main sanctuary, an enormous entourage preceding us. Three altar boys dressed in white robes walk at the front carrying a cross, a leather-bound book, and a gold censer of incense. Three priests follow the altar boys. Two of the priests are wearing all white, one wearing a violet stole, the traditional color for Advent, Lent, and burying people. Two of the priests are bald, and all three are wearing glasses.

  Father Iggy and Father Fisher Kelly could pass as brothers. Both a couple inches over six feet tall, both middle-aged, and both sporting tanned and proudly bald heads. For years these two have jostled for Dad’s extra Notre Dame season ticket.

  Prior to his transfer up to St. Ambrose, “Father Fish” was a longtime fixture in the Fitzpatrick household. He was the priest who baptized your little brother. The priest you invited over for dinner Sunday nights to the envy of the rest of the parish. The priest who in the summer skipped homilies and said, “Please remain standing,” because he knew even blind faith had no patience for ninety degrees and 90 percent humidity. The priest who’d hug you before he crossed you. The priest who your dad looked to as a brother. The priest in the middle of a week of mandatory bed rest prior to back surgery when he heard one of his dearest friends had been killed. The priest who, during the waning hours of your father’s wake, stumbled over his faith.

  “John Fitzpatrick was the greatest, most faith-filled man I ever knew,” Father Fish said to me last night, sitting in a chair opposite my father’s open casket. He’d been crying off and on throughout the day, and he made no excuse for his grief. “In my years of serving the Lord, I’ve had a lot of things test my faith, but I can’t make sense of this one.” He stood almost the entire day, teeth clenched. I could tell the pain was killing him.

  Fuck me. I’m proud of myself, downright exultant, if I can just cut down the masturbating to once a day. And here Dad is inspiring crippled priests to mourn his passing, question their faith, and envy his piety.

  Bringing up the rear of the clerical procession is Father Liam Attenbird. Father Liam is the pastor of St. Isadore, hence the stole, and Father Fish’s underappreciated successor. He’s the shortest one of the priestly bunch, but with a full head of hair and eyeglasses that are thin-rimmed and more stylish than his peers’. I’ve met Father Liam once or twice and can’t say much about him, other than he looks yo
ung and women whisper behind his back that he’s too handsome to be a priest.

  My father is next. He appears as a seven-foot long coffin of red, hand-rubbed African mahogany. I picked the coffin out because Mom couldn’t. She could barely sign the check. The same went for the design of the tombstone. I drew it up on a piece of spiral notebook paper in her bed, right after she passed out halfway into her sixth vodka gimlet.

  Jeanine and I follow behind our father. Mom wobbles almost drunkenly between us, bobbing her head, tripping over her own feet. I hold tight to Mom’s arm, bearing the weight of this day for her as best I can. Jeanine walks behind us with Jack.

  Jack is the one I’m worried about, and not because of the ridiculous mustard-yellow, button-down sweater Mom made him wear today. He is our small miracle, the result of Mom and Dad telling the medical establishment—and their eldest son—to go fuck themselves. I guess you’re allowed one miracle per family. After that, the lamb’s blood on your front door just fades away.

  I look over my shoulder to see Jeanine and Jack, and behind them Aunt Claudia, Uncle Howard, and Aunt Ophelia. Jack stands as he did in the emergency room—latched around Jeanine’s leg, unsure of a world that had been so simple to him three days ago. People say I look like Dad, and I do. But Mom has at least a small stake in my genetic makeup, from my fuller lips and more rounded head to my big, almost-feminine eyes, complete with exaggerated curling eyelashes. Jack on the other hand carries no trace of my mother. He’s all Dad—the dark brown hair, the thin lips, the square head, the smaller eyes. He cried once. It was this morning at the funeral home. We had just closed Dad’s casket for the last time. Everybody was crying. I think Jack felt left out.

  I refuse to let Jack be left out. I’ll remind him every day about the flip-flop sound of Dad’s sandaled feet in the summer. Dirt and earthworms under his nails after he baited you a hook. His laugh. His awful jokes that made you laugh. The scratchy feel of his face against yours when he’d forget to shave for a couple days. English Leather cologne. That particular smile he reserved for his sons. His limitless capacity to forgive. I cannot let Jack forget any of this. My memories, the memories of my mother and my sister, will always be of a living husband, of a living father. Barring our diligence, Jack’s will be of a dead one.