The Fianal Final

There was no way this would turn out well. That much is all too clear.

It’s the floorboard squeaking in a dark, empty house. The engine quitting on a deserted highway. The oxygen mask falling from the overhead. It’s the doctor closing the door softly, pulling a chair closer, rubbing tired eyes and taking a long, deep breath. There’s nothing about all this that says it’s going to turn out well. It’s the letter you have to sign for, from the IRS. The request that you “stick around” after the meeting’s over. The silence when you enter a crowded room. The laughter when you leave. The phone that rings and rings and rings from downstairs in the middle of the night. The lie you told you can’t exactly remember. It’s the Dorsal fin twenty feet away, fifteen feet, ten feet, five…

It’s explaining to your twenty-one year old daughter things you can’t explain to yourself. It’s the wanting to go over once more what no one has the stomach to listen to, ever again.

It’s a boyfriend with long, greasy hair you’ve never met standing in the doorway of a house you’ve never visited.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Pops. What can I say?”

“Look, Tarzan, I don’t know what your name is-“

“It doesn’t matter what my name is. Pam doesn’t want to see you, okay?”

“I just want—“

“Okay?”

“I just want to—“

“Okay?”

“No! It fucking is not okay! I came a long way to see my daughter and I want to see her. I want ten minutes alone with her!”

He takes up the whole doorway, this boy-man. He is thinner than you and out-weighs you. His small eyes seem to find you sadly amusing. He begins to close the door and you push back hard. Then you’re inside, how you got there you can’t say, but you’re in, and it smell like cat litter. Fuck-head is as shocked as you are by your entrance, and his ego is hurt. A fat, little bald guy named Pops does not push a fuck-head named Tarzan around. Pops knows it, Tarzan knows it, and everything about the latter says that he is now no longer amused.

It looks like lesson-time for old pops. And here’s when you know that this is not going to turn out so good, and you do the only thing left;

“Pam! Pam! Honey, please! Pamelaaa! I just want to talk--”

Tarzan gives a two-armed push and off you go, back-peddling like a Bugs Bunny cartoon character. You land flat on the brick walkway and you lay there. You don’t move. The front door slams shut in final defeat, or victory, depending on which side you’re on.

You lay there on the cold bricks telling yourself you knew it. You knew it. Boy oh boy, did you know it! You don’t move, you don’t open your eyes, you just lay still. It’s dark and getting darker. The door opens gingerly and closes hard. An hour goes by, maybe two, and you hear nervous voices behind the door, and then Tarzan’s voice saying to cut the crap and get the hell off his bricks.

You don’t move.

Even after a big bucket of water is poured over you John Wayne style, you don’t move. This really is all you can do, just lie there.

“Stop it, Danny! He’s bleeding!”
“He’s not bleeding!”
“What diya’ call that?”
“You told me you didn’t want to see him ever again, Pam!”
“I didn’t tell you to hurt him, you ass-hole!”

A distant siren slowing becomes not so distant. Then there are new voices, male voices, steady voices, and things are happening with red swirling lights and then sharp, white lights, pointed lights, and radios are sputtering. Your eyelids are peeled back and let go and peeled back again. You’re being lifted. You’re lifted and tilted and jostled and tilted some more and then laid flat on something soft and wonderful and there is the delightful thump-thump of unmistakable ambulance doors and someone little and soft is holding your cold hand, squeezing it like a rapid heart-beat, and maybe…maybe, just maybe, you have a chance to pull this one off after all.

--715 words--