Ultimatum

by K. M. Walton

  Now all Dad had was vodka.

  Oscar absorbing my dad’s potential anger—shooting the messenger, kind of—could help ease the blow for me. Maybe hearing that I needed surgery and months of rehab would trigger Dad’s sympathy. He’d be so worried about me that there’d be no way he’d get that pissed.

  “Despite your selfish motivation for me dropping the bomb, Vance, I will tell Dad. But you owe me.”

  Awesome. Easier for me. He didn’t say no! There was no way he was doing this out of the kindness of his heart. “What do you want?”

  Oscar didn’t answer for a few seconds. “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Fine.” Whatever he wanted I could handle. “Why are you doing this for me?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  • • •

  Dad went to the police station first, paid the underage drinking fine of five hundred fifty dollars, found out my court date for the weed possession, picked me up from the ER, and drove me straight to the Sports Medicine Center at Jefferson in Philly. He didn’t say a single word to me. That was a first. He and I always talked. Talking with Dad was something that came easy for both of us.

  His silent treatment freaked me out so much that I couldn’t sleep during the long drive. Miles and miles whizzed by, and my stomach refused to chill out. I swear I almost puked when we hit the Walt Whitman Bridge.

  Growler offered to drive my car home, but not for, like, a while. One of the jealous dick’s friends broke his nose, so his mom wanted him to rest. His mom also said he wasn’t allowed to hang out with me anymore. She said Dad was raising me to be a wild animal. She hated me that much. I hated when adults were all high and mighty, acting like they never made a mistake when they were younger. Teenagers were wired to fuck up. Duh.

  Growler said she’d calm down after the dust settled, and he’d get her to change her mind about the no-Vance rule. How could she stop us from hanging at school? Her new rule was dumb.

  The orthopedic surgeon at Jefferson saw me so fast because he knew Dad. He lived in West Chester and came into the Blue Mountain sometimes. I didn’t recognize him, but he was a good guy, a real straight shooter. He said my knee was “mangled” and one of the nastiest unhappy triads he’d ever seen. He preferred I was admitted rather than going home. He said doing the surgery sooner rather than later would only help me in the long run with lacrosse. So he had it scheduled for the next morning.

  Dad didn’t speak to me until we were alone in the room. He shouted, “I am so angry right now I could choke you!”

  My whole body jerked, including my leg. “Ahhhh, shit.”

  “You feel that pain! You deserve it.”

  Wow, so he definitely wasn’t taking the sympathy route. He’d never yelled at me like that. I blew out a long breath and tried changing the direction of the conversation. “Good thing there’s a week of summer vacation left, right?”

  He acted like I hadn’t said a word. “You will work off the seventeen hundred dollars you owe me at the bar. Let’s get that clear.”

  “Seventeen hundred?” I yelled.

  Without looking at me he said, “Five hundred and fifty dollars for the underage drinking fine, fifty dollars in gas, thousand-dollar emergency room copay from Shore Memorial Hospital, hundred-dollar specialist copay for the guy you just saw. Seventeen hundred. Do the math.”

  There went any dough I wanted to save for college spending money. “I’ll work it off,” I said boldly.

  He shook his head. “You think you have all the answers, don’t you, Vance? Well, guess what, son. You don’t know shit.”

  I knew better than to respond. Not when he was this angry.

  Dad stared out the window, but he had more to say. “I’m canceling our trip to Jamaica. You don’t deserve it.”

  Shit. “Aw, Dad, come on.” That was my graduation present. I already told everyone about it. How embarrassing.

  “You think I’m going to waste thousands of dollars on you? After this bullshit you just pulled? And since I’m blowing your mind with bad news, I’ll keep it going. There’s no way Drexel won’t find out about this. Especially the drug charges. Your scholarship will be no more. And when that happens, know this: you’re on your own for tuition. I’ll move your college fund over to Oscar. Maybe he’ll get into Harvard or Yale or some shit. Who knows? But you will have to shoot much lower next time around.” He rubbed his neck and blew air out. “I’ve gotta get back to the bar. Anything you’d like me to pick up from home and bring back tomorrow morning?”

  He was just venting. He wouldn’t give my college fund to Oscar. Would he? I clenched my jaw. Maybe he would. Losing Drexel would destroy me, and it would definitely kill Dad. Hearing the news of my scholarship had made him so happy. He’d made this huge spaghetti-and-meatball dinner to celebrate. The two of us jammed to reggae and danced around the kitchen, and we didn’t even stop when stick-in-the-mud Oscar came in whining that it was too loud for him to do his math homework. Dad told him to do the homework later and come join us. Oscar threw his hands in the air and marched upstairs. Dad shrugged and turned it up, and we laughed until we couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t rob him of that happiness.

  Dad stood up and crossed his arms. “And it was real shitty of you to dump your disaster onto your brother’s shoulders. He gave himself a wicked tension headache over having to tell me about the mess you were in. I have never been more pissed off at you than right now. How could you do this to me?”

  Shit, he might never forgive me.

  “Thank God your mother isn’t here to watch your downward spiral. Saying you want to be a bartender, getting shit-faced on vodka at a dance, and now this crap. Jesus, Vance. What, are you trying to turn out like me?”

  He was bringing up Mom? That was a low, low blow. My stomach flattened with the sudden weight of her absence.

  I needed “party Dad” to show up.

  The guy who clinked my shot glass at the Blue Mountain. The guy who told me life was too short to worry about “stupid shit.” Why couldn’t he have been there? He’d understand this mistake.

  Dad’s face was practically purple, and beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. He looked me square in the eye and said, “You straight-up just ruined your entire future.”

  Oscar

  Vance shakes me awake this time. “Dad’s breathing sounds really messed up.”

  I wipe the drool from my cheek and sit up. I hear it right away. It’s thick and choppy. Almost like he’s congested. “How long has he been doing that?” I ask.

  “I’ve been awake for over an hour, but it just started. Two minutes maybe.”

  We both go to lift the sheet at the same time. I pull back. Vance raises it and squints. “Oh shit, his skin looks gray.”

  “We need Peggy.”

  Vance’s eyes bulge. “What did you just say?”

  I’m already to the door so I answer him over my shoulder. “The nurse. We need her.” He’s obviously repeating my reaction to her name. No doubt Vance is missing Mom too right now.

  Peggy isn’t at the rolling nurse’s cart so I jog down the hall. Most of the patient doors are closed, for which I’m thankful. I’m too full of my own pain to absorb anyone else’s. The top of Peggy’s head is visible as I approach the nurse’s station. She looks up.

  “My dad is breathing really weird, and his legs look awful.” I’m out of breath from my sprint down the hall.

  “Is it a rattling sound?”

  I nod.

  Peggy puts down her pen and stands. “I’ll walk back with you.”

  Vance is holding Dad’s hand when we walk in. “His fingernails are blue!” Another messy breath rattles from Dad’s lungs.

  Peggy stands at the foot of his bed. “If you haven’t said what you need to say to your dad, boys, now is the time.”

  Her words sink into my skin.
I’m so heavy.

  She asks us if we’d like to say our good-bye alone or together. My lips are made of lead. They’re too dense to move.

  Vance answers her. “Alone.”

  I walk out and head to the Common Room. Peggy says from behind, “Oscar, don’t go too far. I’d wait right here.” She points to a wall just outside Dad’s door. I turn on my heels and stand where she told me to.

  Peggy says she’ll be back. That’s all she says. She doesn’t say she’ll be back after he dies, which is what she means. She just says she’ll be back. I close my eyes and slide down the wall. I am a solid block of agony.

  I honestly don’t know how much time passes before my brother emerges and tells me it’s my turn. Minutes, hours, days? I’m sinking into the tan carpet. When I make no move to stand, Vance reaches down and helps me up. His eyes are red, his cheeks flushed. When I’m standing, he goes to walk away. I repeat what Peggy said, and he takes my spot against the wall.

  Dad’s rattling breath greets me as I enter his room. I study his face, taking in every line and angle. I want to remember him clearly, even this part. The bed dips as I sit on the edge. “Dad, I want to believe that you can hear me right now. I have to believe it. I’ve been thinking about what I want to say to you, but I don’t know. I’m not sure which death I hate more, Mom’s when we had no warning, or yours when we had too long of a warning.”

  I take his hand into mine. “This is h-hard.” I stumble as the tears come. Everything shakes. My stomach. My shoulders. My head. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the son you wanted.”

  As soon as the words leave my mouth, I pause. Wait. Am I sorry?

  I shake my head with enough zest that tears fly from my cheeks.

  I am not sorry.

  I can’t let my last words to my father be untrue.

  A wave of indignation suddenly bubbles to the surface. “No, Dad, I’m really not sorry about who I am. I wish you had accepted me. I wish you had encouraged me to be the best me possible instead of constantly trying to squeeze me into your predetermined frame.”

  Wait, I scream in my head. That’s not how I want to end things either!

  “W-what will we do, Dad? What are we going to do w-without you?” I squeeze his hand. Stop asking him questions! Say something that matters! I swallow air, spit, pain.

  I blubber, “I’d give anything to have more time with you. I swear we could’ve worked stuff out. Oh God. I’m sorry I wasted the time we had. I’m sorry I wanted you to die when we first got here. But you understand why, right? I was so angry at you. I was always so mad at you.”

  I squeeze his hand.

  “I do love you.”

  I close my eyes and conjure up Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27. I need beauty. Calm. I need something peaceful right now. My thumb rubs along Dad’s pointer finger with each lift and sway of the music in my head.

  Joey and Bill said he was proud of us. He must’ve liked being a father, even my father…sometimes. The music stops, my brain goes silent, and I study him. “Why did you have such a hard time? What were you so afraid of, Dad? Was it me? Was it getting sober?”

  Just before his car accident, I remember Dad announcing at dinner that he was going to try and reel it in. He meant his drinking. Vance and I knew that. This wasn’t his first announcement. But this time felt different, like, maybe he actually meant it. I’d asked if he was going to AA—because everyone knows it’s almost unheard of to stop drinking without help—and in true Dad form, he freaked out on me. He accused me of not having faith in him. Vance joined in, agreeing with him, naturally, and I remember leaving the table about as defeated as ever.

  In the two-against-one scenario, it sucks to be the one.

  You know what else sucks? His version of reeling it in consisted of him only drinking half the bottle of vodka, not the whole thing. That scenario only lasted two nights. Then it was game on again. Cue the car accident. Cue the end.

  “We really all fell apart after we lost Mom, didn’t we? You with your vodka, Vance with his knee, and me…me with…” My voice trails off. I drop my chin. Me? I was never together. Mom’s death made me retreat more. I had always been hunched down, unresponsive, separate.

  “Oh, God, Dad. I-I—” I stutter and stop to grab a tissue. “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be alone.”

  I repeat that sentence in my head and stare at him for a while. “I-I love you, Dad. I hope you find peace.” His breathing suddenly sounds even worse so I go get Vance. We’re both past caring about crying in front of each other, which is weird because I don’t even remember him crying at Mom’s funeral. “H-he doesn’t sound good, Vance.”

  Vance follows me back in, and we each take a chair. Neither of us has any words left so we just stare at him. I grab one of Dad’s hands and Vance takes his other. An especially long and labored breath leaves his body. I wait for the next.

  It never comes.

  Vance

  Seven months ago

  Dad was right about a lot of stuff.

  He never had been angrier with me.

  My entire future was straight-up ruined.

  The shit show continued.

  Senior year started with me in a wheelchair. I wasn’t allowed to put any pressure on my knee. My surgery was a week before that. They had to graft some of my hamstring to reconstruct my ACL. Yeah, it was as effing painful as it sounded. My surgeon said he’d only seen two other knees as messed up as mine, and one was a Philadelphia Eagle. He said he was “fairly confident” that I’d play lacrosse again, just not at the level I was used to playing. He told me and Dad as if he were breaking the news of someone’s death. I guess at a sports medicine facility that kind of news is like a death.

  Even though Dad and I knew my scholarship was in jeopardy, we never talked about it. I didn’t mind, believe me. Looking at his face and seeing disappointment would’ve shredded me.

  When I started rehab, it hurt so bad that I cried in the bathroom. In the stall, I decided I had to play lacrosse for Drexel. I had to make Dad proud again. Six months was all I had left to work as hard as I could to get my life back.

  My lawyer (yes, I had to get a lawyer) had my court date for the weed possession pushed back till the end of September on account of my surgery. He swore my penalty would be reasonable since it was my first offense. He thought I’d get drug counseling and a six-month probation. We’d have to wait and see.

  I usually went straight home at the end of the school day, and since Growler’s mom wasn’t letting him hang with me yet, Oscar had to drive me. But now that rehab had started, he had to drop me off there, and it was all the way over near the mall.

  “Is the front seat back as far as it will go?” I asked Oscar as I crutched my way to the car. The full-time crutch use was new. I was glad I didn’t have to sit in that wheelchair anymore.

  “You’ve asked me that every day, and the answer remains the same. Yes.”

  “Whatever, dude. If you had to deal with this shit all day, you’d ask too.”

  He huffed and mouthed, “Whatever.”

  I refused his offers of help into or out of the car. I did let him carry my backpack though. It was pretty tricky crutching around with it, and I almost took a spill the first day on them. Some teacher caught me just as I was about to go down. He insisted I let Oscar carry the backpack. So I did.

  “I’ve got a considerable amount of homework tonight so I’d like to get you to rehab quickly,” Oscar said. He took my crutches and laid them across the backseat.

  “Don’t speed. You just got your license a month ago.”

  He gave me a look. “I waited till I was seventeen, remember? And I’m not you.”

  As we pulled into a parking space, Oscar said, “You still owe me for breaking the news to Dad.”

  “I’m not in the mood to negotiate.” I opened the door and gingerly got my leg
s out. Oscar was right there with my crutches.

  “Who said anything about negotiation? I’m simply reminding you. I still haven’t decided what I want from you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ll wait on pins and needles.” With as much speed as I could muster, I crutched away.

  “Dad’s coming to get you,” he shouted after me.

  I gave an A-OK without turning around and went inside.

  Oscar

  “Oh my God. Did he just die?” Vance asks.

  I hover my hand over Dad’s mouth. Nothing. There is nothing.

  “Do you feel anything?” he asks.

  “N-no,” I choke. Unstoppable tears dump onto my cheeks.

  Vance crumbles into the chair behind him and buries his head in his hands. His sobs are deep and choppy. He repeats, “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  I don’t want to release my father’s hand. It feels exactly like it did a moment ago, when he was alive. How can that be? I’m so sorry for wishing you dead, Dad! What kind of an asshole son am I?

  Dad’s head has dipped down, and I don’t like it. When I go to “rearrange his melon” Vance shrieks, “What are you doing? Stop! Stop! Don’t touch him!”

  I’m so startled that I drop Dad’s hand, and his arm flops out to the side. It’s dangling over the edge. There’s a knock on the door, and Jacque Beaufort walks in. Vance yells, “Not now!”

  This scene has obviously freaked her out because she recoils, apologizes, and runs out.

  Peggy is suddenly at Vance’s side, but she takes a step back. He is in a full-on rage. His face is purple, he keeps punching the seat of the chair, and he’s actually growling. She lets him carry on for a good two minutes before trying to calm him down. “Vance? Vance!” she shouts. He freezes mid-punch and lifts his eyes. “You can either try to calm yourself down, or I can call down to Thomas and he can help you calm down.” Peggy turns to me. “Thomas is six-five and three hundred pounds.”

  Vance releases his fist and falls on his knees. He sobs into his elbow. Peggy sits in the chair and talks softly to him. I reach over and straighten my father’s head. His skin is noticeably cooler. He is really, really gone. My stomach lurches. I need out of this room.