Angel's Breath Island

Angels Breath Island

         I probably have all the necessary machinery of an alcoholic.  After all, what could you need besides desire and cash?  Genetics helps also, but now I get ahead of myself.

         We were raised in the middle-class section of town, which of course meant that our parents were poor but lived beyond their means.  I never knew by how much until my Dad died while I was away at college and my mom and sister showed up to stay with me at the campus dorms.  My mom claimed to be coming to stay because she needed a little support and help with my sister, and I would have let her if they hadn’t come to pack me up earlier the same day for reneging on my scholarship by not maintaining my GPA above 2.5.  I could have gone to class and gotten a higher grade just for showing up.  How was I to know they were serious? 

I wasn’t having a really good time anyway and my girlfriend had told me the week before that she was pregnant and needed money for an abortion and things; none of which I had.  How could she be pregnant?  She said if I needed the answer to that I truly was lost cause.  It wasn’t being a lost cause I was worried about.  I was working hard to convince myself I just had a low sex drive; fearing of course that I was gay. 

Surely, drunk or sober, I wasn’t capable of having meaningful, productive sex with her, and unless she extracted sperm from me while I was asleep, this was somebody else’s baby.  It was too bad, I really liked her; mainly because she was the only woman I knew who could drink more than me and managed to not harass me about anything: money, sex, or the lack thereof.  I knew nothing of fetal-alcohol syndrome, so I lacked the sense to worry about that.  It would soon be a non-issue anyway; if she ever came up with the money, and I was sure she would.

         So when they carted me off campus, I had to meet my mom at the neighborhood motel.  She, my little sister and I shared a seedy room on the first floor, stewing in our own sweat while awaiting the reading of the will.  I couldn’t imagine there was much to read, especially since my dad didn’t have life insurance, a secret stash of cash, a job, or a visible means of support before he died.  He managed to let those small items lapse, though he did get up daily and leave the house, only to return late in the evening exhausted, half-shaven, inebriated, and without an appetite or desire for food or children.  Life insurance might not have paid for suicide anyway, even if it was a slow, not uniformly directional death, using a legalized substance.  He did have burial insurance though, and through some scam my mom did with the mortuary director who was a friend of my dad’s, by the time the will was in testate, we had another less-seedy place to move into.  Either a deal was made or she melted the edge of some credit card she’d recently applied for and got. 

It was my mom’s intent to squeeze every ounce of blood out of the rock that used to be my dad, even if she had to rack up debt on the dead man’s body. 

Of course, she told me he wasn’t really my dad; she wasn’t sure who was, but he stepped up willingly enough and whisked her out of college before she began to show.  She was never sure if he was rescuing her or just fleeing on his own behalf and needed a witness.  In any case, they managed to get out while the getting was good with a tank of gas and a dream.  He was my sister’s dad, though.  At least, she thought he was.  She was fairly sure.  She suggested we keep all these little secrets in the family.  I nodded in numb agreement.  I needed a drink.  My sister looked like she’d been stabbed in the gut with a blunt butter knife.  Somebody more capable than me would have to try and rescue that one.

         When the lawyer read off that my dad willed me several plots of land and a hotel on Angels Breath Island, I must admit I didn’t know how to respond.  I imagined myself a land baron on an island of coconut groves, but I had no idea where Angels Breath Island was.  I looked over to my mom to ask where this island was and did she know anything about it.  She had the oddest look on her face.  It was a cross between sheer elation and sheer terror hidden behind a frozen smile showing too much gum-line.  Maybe my dad did manage to have one solitary secret she didn’t know about or unload on him. 

I don’t think she was breathing or speaking coherently as we got up and left.  She avoided the shake of the lawyer’s outstretched hand as though it were the very hand of Satan come to smite her.  I’d understand why later.  She’d slept with him and he still didn’t assure she was taken care of in the will.  My dad had left nothing to her and since I was the eldest, he left me executor of the part that belonged to my sister.  His only request was to be buried was he was born. Even I could do that.  It didn’t take any real brains to figure out why he hadn’t left anything to my mom.  He may not have drunk as much as we thought.

         As we got off the plane several weeks later I was sure someone had made a mistake.  There was no there where we were.  The island was large enough and long enough to have an airport and one run-way, but that was about it.  If you weren’t careful you’d bump into yourself as you tried to flee.  I was sick.  My coconut plantation was gone. 

The mortician dropped us off about two blocks from the beach in front of this hotel we apparently owned.  He took my dad’s body with him for a little last minute brush-up and some refrigeration before the funeral the next week. He’d had a closed casket, unceremonious, very brief cast-off before we left.  Very few people showed up, none of which I knew. 

When we arrived at the hotel, there were six people standing out front; two wretched women and four toothless men.  None of them were dead yet, but surely, they were close.  The guys looked at my mom in this uncomfortable knowing way.  The women stared at her as if the wrong person was in the casket.  I looked at them as though maybe they had conjured her up; bunch of witches.  I knew evil when I saw it.  These women were out for blood.  I think my mom felt it also as she unconsciously pulled her recently co-opted scarf tighter around her neck and tried to mask her jugulars.  My sister just squealed and ran into the hotel crying as though she were being chased by someone.  I gathered by the way the guys stared at her underdeveloped cleavage, she imagined it would be them.  I think she went to shower or at the very least, to plaster down her rosebuds.

         Since we weren’t murdered in our sleep, the next morning my mom immediately marched us over to the only real estate office in town.  It was her intention to have me sell the property as quickly as possible, and I had considered it, especially after the two-hour grilling she had given my sister and me on the flight over.  But it was the sincere voiceless pleading of my sister not to sell that moved me.  I had no idea she cared.  It was after her cleansing shower the evening before that she expressed her desire to “try” and turn this place into something.  I imagined a pile of ashes, but then considering my options back in the states; namely none, I decided to “try” also.  Anyway, we could sell later.  I just couldn’t imagine to whom.

         My sister and I waited until we sat in front of the real estate agent to let Mom in on our plans.  Needless to say, she was not happy.  She walked out of the office, looked to the right and then the left, and hailed a cab to the airport.  Who knew she had a round-trip ticket?  My sister and I would have to bury my father ourselves.  It wasn’t as though we hadn’t practiced it a thousand times before.

None of the paths we choose, or perchance choose us; is easy.

         Two days after the service, I sat down with the hotel manager to try and get a handle on the finances.  Numbers were not my specialty, but I thought I should, at least, try.  It turns out my sister; the one who had three-thousand dollars hidden on her person, was a natural.  She was also the one dad trusted with his cash before he went out to drink.  She just didn’t return it all when he came to ask.  She didn’t even return most.  She figured if he knew; swell; if he didn’t, so much the better.  She’d done a good thing.  It’s not easy to find out your younger sister is smarter than you are, and more conniving.

         Over the ensuing months, I came to find where my talents lay; repairs and more repairs.  I could also sell.  I had no idea, but when I called up a few college friends and sold them on visiting, I suggested they bring a few friends.  They also brought their parent’s credit cards and gladly racked up to the limit.  For some reason, they didn’t destroy the place.  They actually helped fix it up.  I think they felt sorry for me and didn’t think the place could survive one of their parties.  I didn’t care, I was just thankful.  Of all the surprises, my ex-girlfriend supplied the best; she wasn’t pregnant and never had been.  She giggled at me and winked.  Then she rang up her parent’s credit cards to the hilt.

         After I got my sister enrolled in high school for her final year, I thought I’d seen the last of her, but lo and behold, she came to work each evening and did the books.  I was never more impressed with anyone in my whole life.  I think I even managed to say it to her.  It may have been the first compliment she’d ever received.  It may have been the first I’d ever given.

         In any case, the cash register never rang dry and the rooms stayed rented.  Who would have thought?

         Now, if I had still been drinking, the last few nights would not have been so disturbing.  I would have just figured I’d conjured up old demons of my dad, and not the real thing.  But, I was stone cold sober when I saw him.  He was much younger and he walked up front into the bar where I was working, winked at me, and headed out back.  He’d done it twice.  He stood there a few moments as if I would follow.  I just turned around to look in the mirror, figuring he’d cast no reflection, and when he did, I just stared down at the floor until I was sure he’d left.

         The next time he came, he sat down at the bar and didn’t say anything, or order anything, for that matter.  He just stared at me and smiled knowingly.  I figure he must have known I didn’t impregnate my girlfriend and she didn’t have an abortion.  My mind was such a jumble; I don’t know what I was thinking.  All I knew was I had to keep washing those glasses, otherwise I would start screaming and they would have to carry me away.  The final time I looked up from the soap suds, he was gone.  I poured myself a drink, but since I hadn’t rinsed the glass, I spontaneously choked on it, and had to pour it out.

         I finally told my sister about it and the relief on her face was palpable.  She had had the same experience and thought she was losing her marbles.  She said it was nice to know it was a familial trait and she wouldn’t have to go off to the asylum alone.  Then we laughed before we started to hyperventilate again.  We made a pact; the next one of us who saw him would speak to him.  We each hoped it would be the other.

         Of course, it was I who spoke to my dad.  It had been weeks since I last saw him and just as I was hoping it was an illusion, I turned to once again see him sitting at the bar.  Same stupid grin, but damn, he looked good.  He had that twinkle in his eyes again.  I told him so.  He said likewise about me, and the voice was the same, but compliments seemed odd.  We had idle small talk for a while until I could no longer stand it.  He then went on to explain how it was the island.  It was named Angel’s Breath, because that’s what it did; it breathed life back into the dead.  Our family had been on the island forever, but it was only when they returned that they came back to life; newer, more improved.  He was going back to the states to get Grandma and Grandpa; they’d be around later to see us, as soon as he ran into his old business partners again.  The only down side to the island was that, by custom, someone had to be sacrificed in the dead person’s stead.  Then he told me, Mom wouldn’t be coming back.  Since she’d poisoned him in his sleep, he’d felt compelled to return the favor by lacing the scarf.  And yes, I was his son.  Couldn’t I tell by the eyes?