by Banks, R. R.
“I’m dying. How are you?”
I stand beside my father’s bedside looking down at him. His voice is raspy and weak. His skin is gray and ashy, his eyes rheumy. My dad’s never been a big guy, but the cancer has left him smaller. Almost shriveled. He’s a shell of the man he used to be.
This is the first time I’ve seen my father since I left for the Corps. I’d rotated stateside a few times but always found reasons to avoid going home. He didn’t approve of my decision to enlist, telling me that I was only joining up to avoid getting a ‘real life’. As if going through basic training and everything else I went through weren’t real life enough.
It was a pretty bitter fight, and we’d exchanged a lot of angry words. After that, we didn’t speak again. No birthday greetings, no Christmas cards – nothing but radio silence. Until I got the call that he was dying.
The timing of it all was strangely coincidental. I’d just rotated out of the Corps a couple of weeks before and was trying to figure out what my next steps were going to be, when Elisa called to let me know that my father was in the hospital.
At first, I wasn’t going to go. I mean, what was the point? It’s not like we actually liked each other. Going there to see him on his deathbed just felt hypocritical to me. I’m a lot of things – many of them not so good – but a hypocrite isn’t one of them.
It was my girlfriend Haley who convinced me I needed to go see him. To spend what little time I had left with him to mend fences if possible, and to say goodbye. She told me if I didn’t, I’d end up regretting it for the rest of my life. She talked a lot about the need for closure.
I don’t know that I buy into the whole ‘need for closure’ thing necessarily, but she wouldn’t stop pressing me about it. I like to pick my battles and not going to see my father wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on – so to speak. So, I figured the path of least resistance was to just do it and get it over with.
At the very least, I thought it would get her off my back about it. I figured I’d go see him and we’d exchange some superficial pleasantries, then offer up some wooden apologies neither of us meant so I could go about my life and he could enter his afterlife, both of us with clear consciences.
But as I stand here looking at the dried-up husk of my father, I don’t know what I’m feeling. I know I should be feeling grief – and I am, to some extent. I’m not a completely unfeeling monster. I know that’s the normal response to seeing a parent who’s in the last hours of their life. I mean, there’s a pang of sadness in my heart. I can’t deny that. But it’s a lot more complicated than that.
“I swear to God, I’m the one about to kick off and you look like the one whose time is up,” he remarks with a laugh that breaks down into a series of wet sounding coughs.
I don’t have a reply for that so instead, I shift my gaze to the floor, not able to meet his eyes. This all just feels so fucking surreal. My dad’s always been healthy. Strong and fit for his age. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink to excess, doesn’t ever do drugs, and does his best to take care of his body.
How in the hell did he get cancer? How in the hell is he lying in that bed dying, when there’s twenty junkies in an alley down the street shooting fucking bleach into their veins? It doesn’t make sense to me.
“It’s good to see you, Knox.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “Is it?”
What looks like a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, but he grunts as if in pain, and it quickly disappears. A coughing fit seizes him, and I look around, unsure what to do. Not knowing what else to do, I grab the pitcher of water and pour him a glass. Once his tortured, wet coughing stops, I help him sit up and take a drink. When he nods, I set the cup back down on the small table and help him lay down again, the extent of my nursing skills pretty well exhausted.
“You’re my son,” he croaks, his breathing a bit ragged. “Of course, I’m glad to see you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like we parted on the best of terms.”
He shrugs his shoulders slightly, even that small movement seeming to cause him some discomfort. The doctors have tried to walk me through my father’s condition, but I haven’t understood much of what they’ve tried to tell me. All I’ve understood is that he has cancer, it’s spread throughout his entire body, it’s inoperable, and he’s about to die.
“It’s been a long time, Knox,” he begins. “Don’t you think, under the circumstances, we should put the past behind us? Don’t you think it’s time?”
I open my mouth to reply, but then close it again, not entirely sure how to respond to that. Does he really think we can just put the past behind us? Just like that? Even if I want to, is it even possible? Is it even possible to just say, ‘hey, water under the bridge’, and move forward from there? Easy for him to say. He won’t have to live with the consequences of this for much longer.
“Knox, I’m asking you to put the past behind us,” he pleads.
“Does it really matter at this point?”
A small, sad grin touches his lips. “It matters to me.”
Slipping my hands into my pockets, I pace the room, letting all the thoughts spin through my head. I feel his eyes following me the entire time. The air in the room is charged with tension. It hovers over us like a thundercloud, the pressure building and building, just waiting to burst.
“Knox –”
I round on him, the anger I’ve been carrying around with me for years finally bubbling over.
“Ever since Mom died, you have made my life a living hell,” I roar. “I needed a father. I needed somebody to be there for me. To help me –”
A long breath escapes him. “I know. Knox, I know,” he admits, his voice dry and scratchy. “After your mother died – I failed you. I know I failed you.”
His eyes fill with tears, and I watch in astonishment as they roll down his cheeks. I’ve never seen my father cry. Never once. Not even at my mother’s funeral. Through it all, he remained stoic and seemed so unaffected by her loss. He got progressively tougher on me as I got older. He grew harder. Colder. More aloof. And through it all, my resentment only grew.
And yet now, he wants to bury the hatchet? As if it’s as simple as that?
“You never cried, Dad. You never cried for Mom.”
“I thought I needed to be strong,” he tries to explain. “For you. I felt as if you needed –”
“What I needed was somebody who’d listen to me when I needed to talk. Somebody who’d give me a hug and tell me everything was going to be okay,” I tell him, my voice as cold as his usually is. “I was a kid, Dad. I needed you to be there for me.”
A sorrowful expression is etched deep onto his face, and the tears are flowing freely now. I’ve seen more emotion from my father in the last five minutes than I have in my nearly twenty-eight years on this planet. He lets out a long, rattling sigh and runs a hand over his face, trying to wipe away his tears.
“After your mother –” he pauses and lets out another long, trembling breath. “I poured all of my energy into Titan. Somewhere inside of me, I knew I was failing you. I felt that distance growing between us, but I couldn’t do anything to bridge that gap.”
I sit down on the chair beneath the window, staring at my father. It’s like I’m looking at a complete stranger. Like an alien has taken over his body and mind. This is the first time he’s ever spoken about any of this. I remain quiet, waiting for him to go on. For most of my life, I’ve wanted to hear these words from him. I’ve wanted to hear him say he failed me, that he wasn’t the father I needed.
“I’m sorry, Knox. For everything,” he cries. “I’m so sorry for not being a good father, and for being tougher on you than you probably deserved for all those years...”
His voice trails off and breaks down into another coughing fit. He lifts a trembling hand and gestures toward the cup that sits on the table beside the bed. Standing, I walk over and pour another cup of water, and help him sit up and drink it. He takes a few moments to collect himself and catch his b
reath, which is labored and ragged.
When he’s done drinking, I help him lay back and then retake my seat against the window. I watch him closely, shocked that a man who was once so hale and hardy has become little more than a pale shadow of the man he used to be.
It takes a minute, but he quiets. He’s lying incredibly still with his eyes closed. If not for the rattling wheeze in his chest, I might have thought he died. But his energy seems to be depleting quickly, and I assume he’s just fallen asleep. Slowly, he opens his eyes and they bore into mine. His gaze is as direct and piercing as it ever was and I am rooted to my spot, seemingly unable to move, every bit as much as when he turned those eyes on me as a kid.
“I just want to tell you that I’m sorry, Knox. I’m sorry for never being there for you,” he rasps. “I was so caught up in my own pain and the only way I knew how to cope was to throw myself into my work and I let you get lost along the way. That’s something I’ve always regretted, son.”
I shake my head, trying to fight off the wave of emotion threatening to swamp me. “Why now?” I demand. “After all these years, why are you only saying this now?”
A wry grin pulls one corner of his mouth upward. “When you’ve got one foot in the grave, you tend to see your priorities – and your shortcomings – much more clearly,” he croaks. “You see clearly, your biggest failures and regrets.”
I lower my head, finally able to break eye contact with him. The emotion in me is swelling unexpectedly. I’ve seen men die before, and I’ve always managed to remain pretty detached. I honestly figured this would be the same. This man is practically a stranger to me and yet, the emotions are battering me fiercely and relentlessly. I didn’t expect to feel anything, but I’m having a hard time dodging and deflecting all of the body blows hitting me at once.
“I don’t want to leave this life with this bitterness lingering between us, son,” he goes on. “I want to go to my grave knowing that at least, I tried to bridge this gap between us.”
There’s one voice in my ear whispering to me, telling me to stand up and walk out. It’s telling me to say fuck all of this, that it’s easy to make amends when you’re on your deathbed. That the hard part is trying to repair the damage you’ve wrought in your life while you’re still living it. And he failed to do that. The voice is telling me that he doesn’t deserve my time or my pity.
There’s another voice, though, telling me that no matter what bullshit has gotten in between us, he is and always will be my dad. It’s pulling up memories from my childhood and showing them to me. Even though it all went to shit after mom died, he was a good man and a good father before then. He was doting. Caring. That voice is making me recall times he taught me how to catch or played games with me. It’s making me remember that not all my memories of him are bad.
“Please, son,” he gasps. “I just want things to be right, one last time, before I go.”
Coming from someplace down deep, the tears well in my eyes and spill over. I can’t contain the flood of them as they roll down my cheeks. I get up to my feet, walking on unexpectedly shaky legs to the side of his bed.
The smile on his face is weak, but it’s there as he raises his hand. I look at it for a moment, his fingers practically bones, the skin stretched tight across the frame like old, weathered parchment. Reaching out, I take his hand and gently grip it with my own.
Silently, we look into each other’s eyes, as the tears continue to spill down our faces. No words seem necessary as the connection and bond that exists between fathers and sons is forged once again between us. It’s not as strong as it could be – as if we’d spent a lifetime building it together – but it’s something. It’s something I recognize that we both desperately need.
I spent my life so wrapped up in my own pain and anger, that I never really stopped to consider what my mother’s death did to him. Never stopped to think about his own pain and grief. All I could ever see and focus on was how I felt and what I wasn’t getting from him.
I see now how selfish I’ve been all these years. No, I’m not absolving him of everything. But the point is that I bear some of the responsibility for the chasm that’s existed between us for so long. I see that now. I understand it.
The revelation is profound, and it rocks me to my core – but, there it is. I never took my father’s own feelings into account. I bear some of the burden for this rift as well.
I know it’s a simple realization that probably any five-year old can make. But for the first time in my adult life, I can actually see through the anger that’s been a constant for me. A constant ever since my mom died, anyway. For the first time, I can see my father’s suffering. I can see his pain and his grief.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to be able to see it, and I can’t help but feel a lance of guilt pierce my heart. He’d changed after mom died. He was never there for me, and he was harder on me than I think I deserved at times. And I resented him for it. But rather than see it as a symptom of his own grief, as his own cry for understanding, I hardened my heart to him.
It hurts me deeper now, knowing that these realizations are coming when it’s too late to truly mend fences. I can’t say all of my old bitterness and resentment is suddenly now gone, but I can say for the first time in my life, I am willing to work through them with him. I’m willing to do what it takes to repair the breach in our relationship.
But it’s already too late.
My dad looks into my eyes intently. “Do you know why I was so opposed to you joining the Corps?”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to leave,” he says, his voice starting to fade. “I wanted you to stay and I wanted us to get through this all. I wanted us to be a family, Knox. The kind of family we were before your mother died. Things weren’t always bad. I mean, we had some good times, didn’t we?”
I nod as fresh tears stain my cheeks. “Yeah, Dad. We had some good times.”
He nods and tightens his grip on my hand for a moment, but I can feel his strength fading as fast as his voice is. There’s a beatific smile on his face – the kind of smile I haven’t seen from him since my mom was alive. It’s as if his heart is finally at peace.
“I’m proud of you, Knox,” he tells me. “I’m proud of seeing the man you’ve become.”
He closes his eyes, but that smile doesn’t slip from his lips as he dies. The sound that comes roaring out of my throat doesn’t seem human. I grip his hand tighter, trying to will him back to life. I pour all of my energy into him, trying to compel him to open his eyes and give me a little more time with him.
I stand by his bedside, holding onto his hand as it grows cold, and sob for the first time since my mother died.
Felicity
Present Day…
“And he walks off alone, into the darkness of the night, with the rain pouring down over him, and the air as cold as his heart…”
I close the book and the applause from the crowd sounds like thunder. I smile and feel the heat flaring in my cheeks as I stand at the lectern, a wave of self-consciousness washing over me. I’ve never been a great public speaker – I’ve always communicated and expressed myself better through the written word.
But this – being in the eye of the public – is part of my world now, and I have got to get used to it.
I still can’t believe it’s happening. I remember wanting to be a professional writer when I was a kid. It’s been my lifelong dream and it’s finally coming true. I steal a glance over at Maura and flash her a wide smile. She’s standing between a few tall bookshelves to the side, smiling and giving me a thumbs up sign.
They say that with writing, you’re going to hear the word no, and you’re going to hear it a lot. That much has proven to be true over the course of my burgeoning career. But they also say it only takes one ‘yes’, to jump start your career.
Maura is my one ‘yes’.
She says she saw something in me from the very start of things. I’d submitted a few
sample chapters of my first book, and she’d been blown away by it, she said. I remember it was the day after I’d submitted them that she touched base. I was completely taken aback, since I didn’t figure to hear back from her one way or the other for weeks. I mean, the publishing house she works for is one of the more prestigious and reputable houses around. Submitting my work to her was something I did as a lark, really. I figured that I should at least try to aim high, right?
But the very next day, I got a voicemail from her, telling me she wanted more of my work and that she was genuinely interested in me. I almost fainted right then and there.
And ever since the day I signed on with her, Maura has been busting her butt to get my name out there and put me on the map. Public readings, Q&A sessions, interviews with magazines – she’s even trying to get me some time on television. That’s harder, since I’m not exactly a household name or anything. But she says that if I get as big as she believes I can, they will be clamoring to get me on their talk show.
Of course, being who I am, I’m aiming high and am dreaming of one day being one of Oprah’s book club recommendations. Why not? Why sell myself short? The worst that can happen is I don’t make Oprah’s list. At least I’ll know I tried shooting for the stars.
Some people are afraid to aim too high. The sting of not making it is too bitter for some people to deal with. Fortunately for me, I was born with a thick skin – which is imperative if you want to make it as a writer.
“Okay, so it’s time for a little Q&A,” I announce. “If anybody’s interested, feel free to step up and ask a question.”
This is the part of this dog-and-pony show that always makes me the most nervous. Usually, most of the questions are pretty standard, and I can give a rote answer. But once in a while, somebody asks something I’m not prepared for and I’m caught flat-footed. I’m not the most spontaneous person ever, and when I’m nervous, I tend to ramble on.
Like I said, I’m better with the written, rather than the spoken, word.