…The More Things Stay the Same, Part 5

An excerpt from this serial was featured in the Late Winter 2020 Monadnock Underground print quarterly.

Almost in my driveway, I’m galvanized by a thought as completely and utterly convincing as it was irrational: they had come to get me, and they were here, hiding in the bushes, waiting for me to step out of the car so they could tackle me and take me in.

They.

But the joke’s on them now. Me become a prisoner so that Daddy doesn’t have to be one anymore? As the man once said: no prob, Bob; I’ll make a new plan, Stan. I don’t even care. Now that Daddy isn’t hurting anymore, I find there are significantly fewer things I do care about. Let them take me away. I’ll go quietly.

Aah, but that doesn’t happen.

What does happen is this: I pull into the driveway and park. Then I close my eyes, feeling that bright but cool October sun, amplified just enough by the greenhouse effect of the windshield, as it strikes and warms my face. I smile.

And, smiling, just sit there.

Thinking.

Remembering.

And then thinking some more.

What I think about are those fucking chairs, the ones like I had in school, in the first grade. On the heels of that comes the thought of my first day of school, when I was about five years old. Like today, it had been a cool, sunshiny-bright day, though in September rather than October. Like today, I had been scared and crying; like today, my little hands were so slimy with sweat that my lunch bag had slipped out of my hand.

What I remember was how Daddy had taken my hand in his and walked me across the street, from where our car was parked to the schoolyard. He had squeezed my hand and ruffled my hair, and as he kissed the top of my head in the way he usually reserved for when I said good night to him, he told me everything was going to be alright. I believed him, and though I didn’t know the word at that time, it gave me confidence.

I feel the sun leave my face, its last rays petering out as it sinks behind the trees. I think about how it felt, back at the hospital when, after he took his medicine, Daddy finally was able to take my hand. He was old, sick, and dying — just a sad shadow of the man who loved me and raised me, the man I loved. But I think he squeezed my hand just as hard — with the same authority, the same affection — as he did that day he walked me across the street to my first day of school.

Actually, I don’t think. I know.

And you know what? It gives me the same confidence. It makes me feel just as sure that everything, even this, was going to be alright, too. I believe that.

And that? That I understand all of.