Blue on Blue

Originally published in Clinch Mountain Review

He would be dead within the week. It was the one thing she knew for sure as she made the turn onto the entrance ramp and headed for the interstate. Her foot pressed the pedal, it gave way moving gas from tank to carburetor to piston. The vehicle accelerated; she checked the rearview, the side mirror, the lane ahead. There was traffic—a good bit of traffic—and silently, almost unknowingly, she calculated speed and distance until the car slipped into merging traffic. Just like that she was among the masses, one of a hundred thousand drivers with a hundred thousand reasons to be headed west on this highway.

She felt herself disappear. No, that was wishful, there was far too much ahead for the simple joy of anonymity. Tasks bounced all around contained by the car but unable to organize into reasonable order. Contact the lawyer. Check the safe. Respond to the Morgans. Over this last one she had few qualms, the Morgans being insufferable, and rich, and good lord boring. The invitation itself was so overdone she ought to have declined on aesthetics alone. It was a summer barbecue for heaven’s sake, not a White House dinner. But since Margie didn’t offer email as an option (too pedestrian, you could just hear her say) that meant declining would require a telephone call and thus an explanation. Better to leave that be, for now.

Check the lease. Count the pills. Stop the mail.

A blue light whirred behind and she hit the brakes, glanced down, registered her speed. Shit, she thought. Shit, shit. On instinct an excuse formed: emergency, family, medical. At least this was sort of true. She pulled to the right lane and slowed. The siren came closer, the cruiser light whirring and her heart picking up speed with every rotation. She breathed in deep, held hard to the wheel.

Her mother came to mind. “Two hands, honey, two hands.” It’d been a refrain in those days, time and circumstance requiring that she, the teenager, be the driver. She’d become the family’s chauffeur the year her mom’s eyes failed and her dad’s license was revoked. For years she did the carting and the shuffling in that old ’75 Honey Gold Cutlass, the one with the big burn in the front seat naugahyde, the taking to and picking up from for all of them. So much fetching. So much delivering.

Closer now, closer. Blue on blue. Blue on blue on blue, then past, blowing past and her shoulders relaxed and her hands released, and they stretched.

The mountains were ahead. They rose from a flat Carolina landscape that an hour ago had swollen to hills, then up ahead lifted further into the peaks and ridges that lined the top edge of the windshield. She’d made this drive a thousand times and this was the moment she loved—her first sighting of the Blue Ridge, soft, familiar, the interstate rushing headlong toward them as if it, too, couldn’t wait to disappear among them. Her heart pulled forward, magnetic. Then the reminder, and dread.

By the time she was 16 she was the one fielding the questions. Her sisters were 8 and 11, and there was enough unrest in the household to warrant a lot of them. Some answers she provided with reasonable knowledge and insight, but most she simply made up; a bad answer, she reasoned, was better than no answer at all.

“He doesn’t mean it,” she would say.

“Then why does he do it,” Amy would respond. Then Karla, her why an echo. And this would do for the moment, even if things were not nearly that simple.

By the time she graduated high school, her life was defined by the Oldsmobile, her sisters, her daddy. He was always up early; it was as if this act in defiance proved everything okay. One Sunday she’d taken the girls to Sunday School then returned, pulling into the carport, tucking the keys in her purse as she walked through the back door. He was sitting at the table, coffee before him.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked.

“You been talking,” he said. He was rubbing his finger around the rim of his cup.

“I haven’t,” she said. She moved to walk past him. He grabbed at her shirt.

“You been speaking…untruths.”

She flipped her hair over her shoulder, a dismissal, but still he pulled at her.

“I won’t have it.” He was smoking, and a stubby Marlboro was tucked tight in the ashtray, its end red hot and wedged in the silver holder before him.

“Where’s Mom,” she said again.

His voice was thick with tar. “Ain’t my job to keep up.”

She took a fistful of fabric from her shirt’s long tail and jerked it from his grasp. Then she headed for her mother’s room.

She made her only stop at the Kingsport Quick Shop where she used the facilities then grabbed beef jerky and a small bag of Doritos. She pulled a soda from the store’s cooler, twisted off the top, then poured and watched as Diet Pepsi popped and spurted and ran through the ice in the plastic cup. It had cost an extra 35 cents but was worth it, those drink machines never having the carbonation calibrated properly. She got back in the car and pulled into the last hour of her drive.

Her mother’s vision loss had occurred over time, going from a little hazy to moderately impaired to, eventually, full blindness. The diagnosis was common: glaucoma. Still the source of her condition remained a secret hidden for a dozen years. “Blunt trauma to the face,” said the records, a fact that surfaced only after her mother died. That had been in 1987, and over the decades since, her father still denied it.

She spent years in therapy dealing with her own aftermath. Amy, not so much. She moved to New York just after graduation and with few qualifications had become a poet/painter/philosopher who moved borough to borough, apartment to apartment with whatever friend or moment’s significant other would take her in. It seemed a difficult way to live, all things considered, but with their mother gone, and their dad—well, with all that comprised life with their dad—she couldn’t help but feel there was a tiny air of nobility in her sister’s choice.

Karla was a different story, pregnant at 17. Then she married, then she divorced, then she took the child and moved west. Now she was the mother of four, a Texas real estate agent husband number three. This guy was a speculator who, by all indications, excelled at land deals and bastardism. Not that Karla ever said this. She didn’t, on the rare occasions that they talked. Instead, it was all about properties, clients, the weather—which being in El Paso, never seemed to change. They also talked about Amy.

There had been the one time, all those years ago, when she’d taken her sisters to a birthday sleepover then come home to find her mother gone. There was a note on the table, anchored by the ashtray, which had been both emptied and washed.

The writing was large and unsteady.

I love you girls. Take care of each other.

She picked up the slip of paper and tucked it deep in the pocket of her jeans. Then she set about making herself some supper.

It was later that night when her dad came home, stumbling around the house as if he was looking for something lost, as if something was misplaced and he couldn’t quite remember what it was. Eventually he quieted on the sofa and passed out, and she covered him with a blanket then went to bed herself. The next morning she awoke to find her mother shuffling about the kitchen making coffee. They looked at each other knowing, but neither spoke of it again.

Even with all the trips home it was odd, still, not to take the right, not to cut across at Frankie’s Tires and curve around The House of Beauty, not to drive up the hill and make the quick left turn into the short, familiar driveway. But it had been years since she’d lived there, years since the house had sold to a family from out of town. Her visits now were drive-bys, quick looks when she came to town to deal with something at the hands of her dad. Jail, outstanding debt, illegal firearms. Would you look at that, she’d notice, the old oak’s been hit by lighting, or the shutter color’s changed. Once she’d stopped just as a woman came to the front door and stepped to the porch to retrieve the afternoon paper. She waved, all she could think to do at being discovered sitting there, at being caught staring. The woman looked in discomfort, then turned, glancing back once more before returning inside.

This trip, today, was different. For once her daddy wasn’t a bad boy looking to get out of trouble. He was an old man with cancer, begging for a mercy she wasn’t sure she held.

His apartment was on the other side of town, a hellhole above a bar which would be ironic were it not so sad. She paid his rent and had since long before he’d moved there. Not that she was cheap. She wasn’t. She’d set him up in a nice little condo but he’d had problems with “fiscal management” and had been evicted. She’d come back to town for three days then, taken over his bills, set up everything to pay direct. He’d already found this place by then, moved in, stayed. He wanted to, insisting the one room plus its wobbly toilet and tin-can shower was sufficient. Perhaps there was a sense of comeuppance in him, is what she’d figured, and that one bit of humility had somewhat sadly given her hope. Still his physical state was dreadful, and when he started the chronic coughing, she wrote it off. Tests eventually revealed the cancer, lung and late stage.

She parked two blocks away. For once she was glad the steps went up from the alley; no one was about, and she carried the empty travel bag up them unnoticed. The door was unlocked, and she simply twisted the old knob to let herself in.

The room was dark, but she saw him in shadow, backlit by the tiny bits of light that fought their way through dingy window blinds. He was sitting up and this surprised her. She’d expected to find him as she had the last two times she’d arrived—horizontal, resolved. Today, he was waiting.

“You’re here,” he said.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say.

He laid back, satisfied. He used his arms to lift his legs and he extended them long to the foot of the bed. It was a move that took great effort, and she knew she should walk to him. But she did not. Instead, she went to the lamp beside the gray sofa and turned on the light. He raised his arm and covered his eyes.

She saw the pills on his bedside. Tarceva, she knew. She’d paid for the things—a fortune in itself—and she picked up the bottle, opened it, counted them out. They were all there.

“Said I wasn’t taking them,” he said.

He’d foregone treatment. He didn’t have insurance, didn’t want her to pay, didn’t have the will for surgery or radiation or chemotherapy. The pain had elevated quickly, and for a while he relied on weed and alcohol in ever growing quantities. The evidence was all around her now, and it heartened and disgusted her both.

“Get to the safe,” he said. He didn’t open his eyes. “You know the combination.”

She did. R44, L17, R83. He’d sent it in a letter two months ago, along with the instruction to bring a suitcase into which she could put the contents. These, he didn’t bother describing.

“Go on now.”

Go on now. Go on now. Go on now.

How many times had she heard this, her daddy at a distance, taking in a long draw of a short smoke. He’d nod his head in conviction. She was six, straddling a bike and terrified to peddle; at eight, edge of a diving board, unable to swim; at twelve a diversion, a flirt, while he pilfered and stole.

Right, then left, then right and CLICK, the metal door opened.

“Pull it out. All of it. I want it out of here.”

She unzipped the duffle, opened wide its mouth beside her. She reached into the safe.

• A photograph, framed, of the three girls. Easter Sunday, stair-stepped heights, dresses in pink, blue and yellow.
• Another photograph, this one loose and worn. She looked closer. It was him and her mother, god they were young. Had they really been that young? He was leaning against a car, two-door, slung low and sporty. His arms were crossed, his grin—and eyes—directed fully toward her. She was mid-laugh but shy, hand in her hair holding back curls that were tousled.
• A black pouch with a drawstring. The thing was heavy; she put it in her lap and loosened the knot. From inside she pulled a thick, gold Rolex; a chunky man’s ring with a large, rough-cut diamond; a fat gold-link chain with a big dangling cross.
• A plain pine box with a simple latch and tassel.

“What is this, Dad?” She held out the container, and she turned to face him.

He didn’t look to see what she was referring to. “Stuff I collected. Over the years.”

“This. I mean this.”

He gave a quick glance, then recovered his eyes. He didn’t answer.

“You’re such a bastard,” she said. It was breathy and bitter, worn as the bed he lay on. How she’d begged; how she’d pleaded with him to let her be the one to handle her mother’s arrangements. He hadn’t allowed it. And neither she nor her sisters had ever known there was a cremation.

She set the urn gentle to the side. Then she turned back to the lockbox, wanting to just be done. She reached deep and found something tucked far in the back—canvas, a money bag. It was heavy.

She unzipped. Inside were bundles, bundles of hundred-dollar bills, and she pulled one out—each band indicating $10,000. Holy christ there were 25, maybe 30 of these, a quarter million dollars in the least. He coughed, and his hand went to his chest, and the cough grew deep and she heard the pain there. “Take it,” he said. “It’s yours, free and clear.”

“But where did you…”

His hand waved, dismissive.

She waited.

“Go on now. Can’t leave it here.”

She opened the duffle; she put the pouch and bag inside. She zipped it, then stood. The photos she carried to his bedside and propped them there. Then she returned to the safe, closed it, and twisted the dial.

“Now for what you brought me.”

She heard relief from him in the mention, and by the time she’d collected the pills there was his waiting palm. It was trembling, and she wondered how, and if, he’d be able to get them to his mouth.

“Dad, I—” she started.

He shook his outstretched hand, a demand, and she obliged. “Don’t come back,” he said. “Lawyer’ll call to say everything’s been taken care of.” There was a bottle by the sink, and he pointed and she brought it to him. “Now get.” His tone was eager, dismissive, and she shook her head yes but did not move.

“Go on now.”

The walkaway felt a thousand miles. When her hand touched the knob, she stopped. She could stay. She should stay. She turned and saw her daddy tilt the bottle, and as he gulped, brown liquor ran loose down his gray, stubbled chin.

She lifted the bag and snugged it tight across her shoulder. Then with her mother cradled safe at her chest, she stepped to the stoop, closed the door, and headed down the stairs.