Back Forever

by Karen Booth

  The man removed his sunglasses and looked at her.

  Claire held out her hand. “Dr. Stevens, I’m Claire Penman, I mean, Abby.” She shook her head. “I called you in October about my dad, Richard. Remember? I was concerned he’d been so forgetful and tired and he didn’t want me to come with him to his appointment.”

  “Claire. Oh, my. It’s nice to see you.” He then seemed to put two and two together. “Are you?” He pointed at me. “And?”

  She laughed. “Yes, I got married. This is my husband Christopher. We’re expecting in May.”

  “That is wonderful news.” He shook my hand heartily. “So nice to meet you. Truly wonderful. How old is your daughter now?”

  “Samantha’s about to turn eighteen, if you can believe that. She’s going to graduate from high school this year.”

  “Wow. Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.” Claire nodded. “You know, I wanted to thank you for seeing my dad. I was wondering if Dr. Lesley shared the information with you about his collapse and MRI a few weeks ago.”

  Dr. Stevens knocked his head to the side. “Claire, he cancelled the appointment.”

  She dropped my hand. “He what?”

  “Your dad never came to see me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I wanted to be furious with my dad for blowing off his doctor’s appointment, but Chris was quick to remind me that getting upset wouldn’t do any good now. My mom sided with Chris, imploring me to cut my dad some slack.

  I knocked on his bedroom door when we got back from the ultrasound. No answer. I knocked a second time. Again, no answer. Anger quickly changed to worry. I knocked a third time and poked my head in. There he was, flat out on the bed. My heart pounded. I stepped closer. Is he? Oh my God. He rolled on to his back and snorted before slipping back into sleep. Fucking A.

  I tiptoed to his bed and sat on the edge. Aside from the slight bit of disruption from his nap, the bedclothes were in perfect order. His entire room was like a military barracks decorated by Old Mother Hubbard, everything tidy, shipshape, all of it from another time.

  The bureau had a single black comb, the kind you get for free from the barber. His watch was there, a book about the Revolutionary War from the library, a man’s handkerchief neatly folded. Atop one of my mom’s doilies was a framed photo of my parents on their wedding day, standing at the altar of the Cathedral of St. Paul, St. Paul, MN. Newlywed Sara Abby clutched her bouquet. Richard Abby smiled like a little boy who couldn’t have been more proud that he’d lost his first tooth.

  It was getting late, close to dinnertime. If he didn’t get up, he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep tonight.

  I shook his arm. “Dad?”

  He opened his eyes. At first, it seemed as though he didn’t know who I was, which was deeply concerning, but then I noticed that he didn’t have his glasses.

  “I thought it best to wake you.” I picked up his glasses from the bedside table and gave them to him. “Chris is ordering some take-out for dinner. I thought you might be hungry.” I crossed my legs.

  He blinked and slowly sat up. “Oh, okay. That sounds great. How did the ultrasound go?”

  I rested my hand on my growing belly. “It went great, actually. We have some photos to show you.”

  “Good. I can’t wait to see the little nipper.” He carefully swung his legs off the bed and slipped his feet into his brown leather shoes. He bent over, his right hand shaking as he held the laces.

  Fuck. I can’t be mad at him. “Dad, let me help.” I knelt down on the floor in front of him.

  “You don’t have to tie my shoes.”

  “And you don’t need to wear shoes in the house at all if you don’t want to.” I took a deep breath. “I ran into Dr. Stevens at the clinic today.”

  “Oh.”

  “He told me you never came to see him.” I sat back on my heels, looking up at him.

  He avoided eye contact, brushing at his pant leg with his good hand. “Oh. That. Well, you see, I was very busy at the studio that day and I just couldn’t break away.”

  “You knew how much it meant to me that you get a check-up. I’ve been worried about you. And it turns out that I was right to worry.”

  “You know I don’t like doctors. Didn’t like them much when I was a boy and then when your mom got sick, well, I just avoid them like the plague. Those few days I spent in the hospital before Christmas were terrible.”

  “Dad, if you’d just gone to the doctor like I’d asked you to, you might not be facing this right now.” I planted my hand on the bed to pull myself back to standing.

  “I don’t think you can say that. I seriously doubt Dr. Stevens would’ve done an MRI.”

  “And you don’t know that.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed the fact that I have a tumor.” He picked at his fingernail. “Do you want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded in contrition. “I knew that I was sick.”

  I wasn’t sure of what he’d said. “You what?”

  “I knew that I was sick. I could feel it. Don’t think I wasn’t well aware of how erratic my behavior had become. I just didn’t do anything about it.”

  “But why?”

  “I told you. I hate doctors. I hate the thought of being sick.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to face it. So, I didn’t. Guess you could say I buried my head in the sand.”

  Talk about burying heads in the sand. I longed to do that very thing. “Wow. I can’t even fathom that.”

  “It’s the truth.” He ambled to the bureau, pressing a finger to the top of the wedding picture and picking up the comb to neaten his hair.

  “Dad, you realize you’re going to have to get over your fear of doctors really quick. We need to talk about this biopsy. Maybe chemotherapy and radiation if it’s cancer.”

  “I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided not to do it.”

  I narrowed my focus on his reflection in the mirror. “Not do what?”

  “No biopsy. No anything. I don’t want to become an invalid or lose the ability to speak. I don’t want to become a burden. I certainly don’t want to go through what your mother did with chemotherapy.”

  The burden speech was a given with my dad. He hated having to depend on anyone for anything. “Dad, they’ve made a lot of advances in cancer treatment in the last seventeen years, and we don’t even know if it is cancer. It might be benign.”

  He turned. “I hear what you’re saying, but it doesn’t matter to me. It really doesn’t. You know, part of me was relieved when we found out about the tumor.”

  “Relieved?”

  He sighed. “At least I knew what was wrong.”

  “See? There you go.” I threw up my hands. “The miracle of modern medicine. I’m telling you, Dad, they’ve made a lot of advancements in two decades. It doesn’t have to be the same for you as it was for Mom.”

  “Hold on a minute.” His eyes blazed with fiery conviction. “I’m not going to risk living out my days in a hospital. That’s no way to go. You know, your mother told me dozens of times that if she could’ve had anything, it would’ve been to be able to just live what was left of her life. Stay busy. Have a purpose. Enjoy her family.”

  My heart pounded. Of course my mom hadn’t been happy at the end, miserable in a hospital bed. It’d never occurred to me that she’d had a choice in any of it, and perhaps it hadn’t occurred to her either until it was too late.

  He sat next to me on the bed and patted my knee. “If there was any good in your mother leaving us, it’s that it gave me a better understanding of this situation.” He shook his head. “More than anything, Jellybean, you need to understand that in my eyes, this isn’t all bad. If nothing else, it takes me one step closer. I’m happy for that.”

  “Closer to what?”

  “Closer to being with your mom again.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  February came with a bitter wind and snow flurries, but I tri
ed to remain positive. At least it wasn’t January. January had been a crazy mess.

  Not cold—in fact, January had been unseasonably warm, enough so that the backhoes were at the house starting the hole for the pool. I watched out the kitchen window above the sink, working on my third cup of coffee. Funny, but I thought I would’ve been nothing but excited about breaking ground, but with Claire on modified bed rest due to more spotting, and Richard living on borrowed time, the gray morning matched much of the immediate future.

  I cycled through thoughts much as the yellow machinery dug away. The man operating the digger worked methodically, with purpose, knowing exactly what to do. I almost envied him, having a life where you show up for work, do exactly what is expected of you—in this case, dig a hole. At the end of the day, you have a perfectly serviceable spot for some wealthy bastard to put in a pool, and you go home to your wife and kids, put up your feet, have a pint, go to sleep and start it all over the next day.

  The reality was that I’d never survive such an existence. As weary as the drama made me, there was always some part of me that craved the excitement of change, even uncertainty, although the kind of uncertainty hanging over us was the kind we all fear.

  My phone buzzed with a text. I took another sip of coffee, peering down at my phone on the granite counter. Any update? I hit the power switch to blacken the screen. Graham. It’s bloody six in the morning on the West Coast. What is he doing up?

  Graham was becoming the thorn in my side, constantly niggling me about every last detail. I’d agreed that we should record a new album. If that went well and if we found a new record label, I had agreed that I would do some limited touring. Limited. Only the US for now, perhaps a European festival, and I’d need at least two days off a week to fly home to be with Claire and the baby.

  But first, the recording—the band had agreed that doing it at my new studio was the best option. We wouldn’t have to record on anyone’s schedule but our own, on anyone’s dime at all except perhaps mine, since I at least had to keep the lights on. The advantage for me was that I’d have something newsworthy around which to announce the new studio and I wouldn’t have to be away from Claire.

  The studio was yet to be completed and there was no strict timetable—not a situation Graham favored. Once he had his mind set on something, he wanted to know the what, why, where, and when as soon as possible. Preferably yesterday. With Richard noticeably declining while ignoring his physical state, I could give Graham and the rest of the band everything but a definite when. “We’re very close to finishing,” was the best I could offer.

  “Up and at ‘em, I see.” Richard shuffled into the kitchen.

  It’s after nine. “I am.” He’d always been the first one up in the morning, now it was me, mostly because I rarely slept. Imagine my dismay the first time I awoke to a perfectly quiet house and realized I did not yet know how to operate our new coffeemaker. “They’re out there digging the hole.” I nodded in the direction of the backyard.

  “That’s good news.” Richard had taken a seat at the kitchen table and was scanning the newspaper headlines. The ruffling sound of the newsprint told me exactly how much his right hand was trembling. I didn’t even have to look. “You need me to go out there? Make sure they’re following those lines they marked in the dirt?”

  I set my mug in the sink and got out a clean one for Richard. “They seem to have it well in hand, but I’ll let you know if anything changes.” I brought him his coffee and took a seat at the table. “We have a long day ahead of us. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  The insult and surprise on his face was as if I’d asked if he remembered what his name was. “You and Claire act as if I’m incapable of doing things. I am fine. I feel great this morning.”

  “Okay.” I studied his face as he returned to his reading. It was impossible to know what he was thinking half of the time. I was still shocked he’d refused to seek any treatment, and then again, I wasn’t. There was unquestionably a dignity in living life on his terms. “I’ll need to run back to the house a few times to check on Claire, bring her lunch.”

  “Not a problem. I can handle things on my own just fine.”

  That was the tricky part—as far as Richard was concerned, he was still in charge of the project, but at this point, it was too much for him to deal with. He got tired, sometimes confused. That meant I had to do his work and make him think that he was in charge, asking questions I already knew the answer to so that he could consult his clipboard and tell me what was what. He frequently gave me the wrong answer.

  We arrived at the studio a half-hour later. The up-fit of the space was essentially finished. There was still some trim carpentry to do, but we had walls with paint—a light gray, and soundproofing. There were doors and lighting and carpet. The reception area was turning out remarkably well with the help of a local interior designer and the band lounge was even cooler—a ridiculously large flat-screen TV, massive black leather couches, plenty of places to put up your feet.

  The first wave of equipment was on-site, with more to come today. I’d hired some local musicians to help me load in and install some of the more basic gear, and a local engineer would be coming tomorrow to assemble the guts of the mixing board, which had been delivered in about eighty different boxes. The main board unit alone was a behemoth, over twelve feet long, having arrived in the largest crate I’d ever seen. It also weighed a ton.

  “We need to be careful here guys.” Richard watched as two of the other guys and I proceeded with the massive crate atop two four-wheeled freight dollies. “This is a very expensive piece of equipment. Take that corner before you go down the hall very carefully.” He may have been on the decline, but he had no problem barking orders.

  I saw the problem the instant we turned the corner in the extra-wide, main hall. “Richard, there’s no way this is going to make it through the door into the control room. The angle is all wrong.”

  He came up behind me, peering over the top of his glasses. “What in the world?” He scratched his head, flipped through the pages of the all-mighty clipboard.

  “It’s not going to fit.” I slumped back against the wall. Fuck.

  “This can’t be right.”

  “Look on the specs. Where was the door supposed to go?” I grabbed a metal tape measure from the floor, unrolled a few inches and handed the loose end to one of the guys.

  “Six feet, six inches,” Richard answered.

  “I’m telling you, they put the door in the wrong place.” I watched as my helper reached the doorway with the end of the tape measure, then looked down to read our fate. “Seven feet, six inches.” My stomach sank as the metal tape recoiled.

  “That’s not possible.” Richard took the loose end of the tape measure and walked backward to the door, as if the empirical data might change if he was handling things.

  “I’m telling you. It’s not going to fit.” Again, the numbers told the story. “Seven feet, six inches.”

  “Darn it all.” Richard let his end of the tape measure go and it snapped against my thumb, slicing into it.

  “Fuck.”

  “Oh, good lord. Chris, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” The cut was a thin, pink line with some redness around it. “I think it’s just a nick.” Blood oozed. “Or not. I need a tissue or a paper towel or something.” I clamped my mouth over the tender skin between my thumb and index finger.

  “Get him some toilet paper,” Richard snapped. He again flipped through the pages of the damn clipboard.

  “I don’t understand. The framers must have made a mistake when they roughed in the opening for the door.”

  My hand throbbed. “You were supposed to be double-checking their work. We talked about this one detail dozens of times.”

  “I know that, Chris. I thought we were good to go. I must’ve missed something.” He scratched his temple, flipping back and forth between two pieces of paper. His hand shook, making the paper rattle.

&nbs
p; One of the guys came rushing up with a roll of toilet paper, shoving it in my good hand.

  “Thanks.” I unrolled the tissue, pressing it against the cut, which stung like hell. Shit. “We can’t send the board back. We waited three months for the thing. It’s one of the best you can buy. We’re going to have to tear out the door and move it a foot closer to the corner. Hell, move it two feet to be safe.”

  Richard slumped down into a folding chair. “I am so sorry.”

  “Guys,” I said, to our helpers. “Why don’t you knock off early for lunch?” I reached into my wallet with my good hand and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “Here, my treat. The place down the block has a great beer list.” They started for the door. “Try to be back by one.”

  The room was dead quiet. Richard was visibly shaken.

  I crouched down next to him and placed my hand on his knee. “Rich, look. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a problem. We fix it. End of story.”

  “This is going to delay us by at least a week. There’s electrical in that wall. Then we have to get the framers, the drywall guys back out, the painters.”

  “Yep. And those guys all need the work. It’s not a big deal. We’ll get it done.”

  “You’ll have to reschedule the engineer for the board assembly.”

  My to-do list was now officially a sore subject. “I’ll talk to him. Don’t worry.”

  “You’ve got your band mates waiting on you.”

  “They’re big boys. They can wait.” Graham is going to give birth to a litter of kittens.

  “I really messed up. I can’t believe I let this happen.” Any light in his eyes was gone—the gross disappointment he held for himself was plain.

  Bright side. Where’s the bright side? “Think of it this way. It’s more time for us to work on this project together. You know, going out to lunch, guy time. That’s not all bad, is it?”

  He smiled, only one corner of his mouth going up. “You’re a hell of a guy, Chris.” His lower lip trembled slightly. “You’re like a son to me, you know.”