Chapter 6 

Dewey stays for several hours after and only leaves when the sun is casting orange rays across the sky signaling early evening. Gran should be home shortly and he only agrees to leave after I tell him that. He goes with the promise to return tomorrow.

His car rumbles, or should I say sputters, to life after he is secured inside of it and he drives off down the road.

I close the door and resume what I was doing before he arrived. This was essentially the same thing I was doing when he was here, except this time I’m not being encouraged to talk. The former being the better scenario of course, no matter how hard I find talking to be at times.

I watch the downward descent of the sun through the window on the far wall above the television until it plunges into darkness, not complete darkness though, there are still some remaining vestiges of light that strain to pass through the clouds.

Gran should be home any minute, though I don’t know exactly when as a nurse’s schedule can be quite unpredictable. Still, I hope she will be home soon.

I feel kind of embarrassed at my codependency. I can’t even sit at home alone for a few minutes, let alone a few hours without getting anxious.

I wasn’t always like this, yet another thing to add to my growing list of reasons why I loathe myself. Nowadays, I find myself with a hollow ache in the pit of my stomach when I’m alone. Before, I loved it. So much so it was beginning to be a little worrisome. I’m an introvert by nature, but that hasn’t changed much. That’s not the problem. The real source taps into my feelings of my dad leaving me. It’s not so much people being gone as the act of watching them leave. That’s what hurts.

I watched him go. It was in the hospital that gran works at. I was home, like any other day. It was summer after all. I was enjoying my solidarity as usual when I got a phone call. It was an unknown number. I didn’t think much of it. I don’t usually answer numbers I don’t know. So predictably, I let it ring. And it rang. And rang. Finally, when whoever it was called for the third time I decided to answer.

I wish I hadn’t.

The voice on the other end was frantic. I didn’t recognize it of course as the number would suggest. I could only understand a few words at a time as his voice—as I finally recognized it was a man whom was speaking—was choked full of tears and sorrow.

“Excuse me?” I finally got in when he took a second to breathe. “Who is this?”

The voice remained quiet for a beat. When he spoke my heart dropped, already knowing something terribly bad had happened. “Can you come to St. Vincent’s Hospital?”

“Who is this?”

He repeated himself, “Can you come to St. Vincent’s Hospital?”

“N-No. I can’t.” I could just barely drive and besides both my dad and gran were gone and so were both cars.

He took a deep breath. When he spoke again his voice was farther away like he was holding the phone away from his ear. “I can’t tell her this over the phone.”

By that time my heart was beating so hard inside of my chest that I thought I was going to pass out. “What happened?” When nothing answered I asked again, that time louder.

“Your grandma is going to come get you alright?”

“No…no ‘alright.’ What happened? You’re going to tell me what happened.” My voice was tremulous as I spoke, but I continued on. I had to know what was going on.

“Your dad…he um…he’s been in an accident.”

“What kind of an accident?” I was really getting tired of him avoiding my questions; he wouldn’t get to the point. Putting off the inevitable only made the end result worse.

“He’s at St. Vincent’s Hospital.” There he did it again. “Your grandma will be there soon to bring you here.”

“What happened to my dad?”

Again, silence.

“Can you please just tell me who this is?” This time, my voice lacked what little authority it previously held. I was tired, but most of all I was scared.

“I just spoke to her and your grandma is going to come get you. As soon as she can, I promise. Just…uh sit tight until she gets there.” And with that, he hung up the phone.

At the time, I just kept questioning who that was and what on earth told him that that would be a good idea? If something really had happened to my dad why would a stranger feel the need to tell me over the phone? But that was just it; I didn’t believe him, well not fully. I couldn’t. This all had to be one crappy joke.

Later I realized that wasn’t the case. Gran did come get me, just at the man had said. She didn’t talk though, which is very out of character for her. The whole ride was accompanied by silence. When the hospital rose up around us, I felt like I was going to throw up.

Finally, I whispered, “Gran…what happened?”

She took a deep, slow breath before looking at me. Her wrinkles were more pronounced than I ever remembered them being. The skin around her eyes was swollen. “He was driving home, but there…there was an accident.”

“What accident?” I pleaded. I was really getting tired of hearing that.

“A car accident. I assume he wasn’t paying much attention. I don’t—I don’t know why.” Her hands kept rubbing the steering wheel in front of her, the worn leather sliding beneath her fingertips. “A truck. Hit him. He…he’s in a coma.”

I couldn’t explain the grief and relief that flooded my body at the same time. I thought he was dead, so to find out he wasn’t was a relief.

“He’s not dead?”

She shook her head.

My head fell back against the seat and I let out a long breath. I know I shouldn’t have felt that way, but he wasn’t dead and that’s all I wanted to focus on.

Later, I would realize just how cruel false hope was.

Gran and I stayed with him in his hospital room for several hours. He didn’t even look that bad. There were a few scratches on his face and arms, but other than that he was relatively unscathed.

“When will he wake up?” I remember asking gran.

“Only time will tell Johanna. Comas aren’t the easiest thing to deal with. He might not ever...”

That made me pause. At that time I didn’t consider that he could still die. I thought it was fine, that he was just sleeping and he would wake up in a little while.

Of course like most of the time, I was wrong. He died 24 hours later, in that hospital bed. Right in front of me.

At that time gran wasn’t in the room, she’d gone out to get water or food or something. I didn’t much care exactly what it was when the steady beeping that monitored his heart rate began to screech. The beep elongated into a sound that would forever fill my consciousness.

Gran came back and I was forced from the room while doctors tried futilely to revive him. Gran was as useless as I was. And though she was a trained nurse, her grief clouded her professionalism and she was blubbering within minutes.

I was in the cold, harshly lit hallway where a nurse pushed me to get me out of the way. I slid down and so my butt hit the floor which was just as cold as the atmosphere around me. I sat in the same position I sat in when I was in my room, my knees were against my chest and my head was in my hands, but this time my hands were shaking. I remember wanting so badly for them to stop.

After that, I heard his brain injury was overlooked by the doctors. They knew it was there, but they didn’t know how bad it was. I remember hearing of internal bleeding and whatnot, but it didn’t matter to me; my dad was dead and that’s the only fact that I acknowledged.

Gran was no better than me. She was as frantic as I was unresponsive. We make a good team, she and I. I couldn’t blame her though, her only son had died and it broke her.

Just like it is breaking me.

Now, I’m trying to shake them away, but the thoughts of that day won’t budge. I hug my knees tighter to my chest, assuming my favorite position while trying to hide from that day.

I don’t know how or when, but eventually I sleep. It brings no refuge though. I see, in all its twisted gore, my dad’s face before it was zipped into the black body bag and carted away.

I hear screaming. At first, I suspect it to be gran as that’s what she was doing at the time. Belting a painful, bellowing scream. It looked like it hurt to make that sound.

But on closer examination, I realize that it’s me. My scream. And when I wake, my throat is raw.

I glance frantically around the room and start when I noticed gran’s stricken face right before me.

“What…” I try, but my breaths are still too frantic to control. My heart is throbbing painfully in my chest. “When did you—” I try again, but gran stops me and encourages me to take deep, slow breaths. “When did you get here?” I finally get out.

“Just now,” she responds. “I came in and heard you screaming. You nearly gave me a heart attack girl. Are you okay?”

I nod, somewhat unconvincingly so I try strengthening my claim with words, but I’m still a mess. My next words are pitiful. “I just want my dad.”

Her face crinkles with concern and I can tell she’s holding back tears. I’m not though. No tears threaten to fall. The turmoil I feel inside does not show on my face.

Gran tries to hold in her emotions, tries to stay strong for me, but her voice wavers when she whispers, “I miss him too.”

We are quiet for a moment as I imagine her thinking of something to say, sifting through her brain to find the right words.

“Johanna,” she begins. She’s the only one that calls me that. “I’m not going to tell you things are going to be alright because that would be a lie.” I’m not sure how this is supposed to make me feel better. “But,” she continues. “It will get easier.” It’s hard to see how things could, but I nod along like I agree anyway.

“Don’t do that,” I startle at her change in tone. Where she was once calm and teary-eyed, she now seems frustrated. “I know you better than you think I do. You’re lying. It’s as simple as that. I wish you would for once, tell me the truth. Please.”

And there is that guilt again.

I look into her eyes, muddy brown and searching.

When I speak, it is barely audible, “I wish I could’ve done something. If only…if only I was there in the car with him, and then maybe I could’ve—”

“What?” She asks and repeating it is so much worse.

“You couldn’t have done anything. If you were with him, you would’ve gotten hurt too. And I don’t know what I would have done with you being gone too. I need you little girl. No matter how much you may not see it, I do. I’m hurting too, but having you lessens it. Without you, I wouldn’t know where I’d be right now.”

Her words, which are meant to reassure me, do nothing but place and unwanted pressure on my shoulders. I can’t be good for her. I just can’t. But I wish I could.

My frustration, however misplaced, is mounting. I’m not asking for her to reassure me and tell me that there was nothing I could do because I know it isn’t true. Is it? At this point she just needs to listen. I tell her that and she settles into silence as I continue. “I wanted to be able to do something. To be able to help. I didn’t want to just stand idly by watching him die!” I’m desperate for her to understand.

“No! No I don’t understand Johanna!” She insists just as furiously. “You are a sixteen-year-old that you watched your father die in front of you!” She states it bluntly. I clench my blanket tighter in my fists. “And to think that you could have done more, that you would’ve been expected to is preposterous!” Tears are falling openly down her cheeks now, falling in the grooves of each of her wrinkles. “If you say that, then I must be terrible. I’m a nurse and I couldn’t do anything.”

I shake my head, avoiding her gaze.

“I’m trying,” she begins, this time her voice is much softer. “I’m trying so damn hard Johanna and I pray it will get easier. I really do.” With that, she stands and makes her way toward the stairs. “Come find me if you want to talk, but I can’t do this right now.” I can hear every step she takes up the creaky staircase. I wish I could get away from me too.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I know there is no one there to hear me.

Chapter 7

I revert back to the useless lump under my comforter that I’d been surrounding the first days since it happened. I have nothing better to do anyway. So why not?

Dewey comes by; just as he’d promised, but even still I don’t open the door. It’s just like after the funeral, but the mystery is gone and now I have no inclination to open the door.

Even moving to open it seems as impossible an idea to fathom as flying.

“She’s depressed.” I hear gran tell Dewey through the paper-thin walls. She must have stayed home, afraid I was going to off myself or something. What she doesn’t understand is: How could I do that when the most physical activity I’ve participated in—and desire to participate in, might I add—is turning over in bed.

There are murmurs from downstairs, but I no longer make any effort to try to make them out.

Eventually, I hear footsteps coming up the stairs and I am not surprised when the door opens, I am surprised, however, to see Dewey step in, no knocking this time. I’m not sure why he knocked in the first place actually; I didn’t lock my door today.

“Hey,” he says and I let out some sound resembling a grunt in response.

I watch him, his hair stands on end and his hands are buried deeply in the pockets of his worn black jeans.

He looks like he’s searching for a place to sit. His eyes flit across the expanse of my room before settling on the edge of my bed a second before he sits there.

“You know Jo,” He says after he settles. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand about you.” I frown, but otherwise don’t respond. “But what I do know,” he continues. “Is that it’s stupid to ask how you’re doing. I already know that. So I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to talk. I want to tell you about a story I’ve been writing. It’s about a boy and his mother.”

Dewey goes on to weave a tapestry with only his words. I’m amazed, really, that he possesses this much talent at such a young age. The boy in his story is eight years old. His mother is, for lack of a better word, mean.

“He would hide in the closet whenever she got home,” Dewey continues. “She…abuses him.” My heart constricts with his words. I don’t know how a mother could ever do that to her own child.

“One time, when she was really angry, angrier than she usually is, she…she um started tearing the house apart looking for him. When he got the chance though, he crawled out of the bathroom window. She didn’t even hear the window open or close. And he’s not particularly stealthy, but she was too enraptured in her own anger to notice.” At that, he laughs ruefully. A laugh that has always made me uncomfortable because the happiness that is supposed to be the underlying layer of it is not present. Instead, it is replaced by sadness. The laugh is humorless, lacking all the joy it should possess.

“He wandered to his neighbor’s house. He was in search of a place where his mom couldn’t find him. But he wasn’t the smartest kid on the block so instead of ringing the doorbell, or trying to go in the front door in general, he decides to climb through the neighbor’s window.”

“Really?” I ask. The surprise on his face at hearing my response is unmistakable. But the look is gone just as fast as it came.

He cocks a smile, “Like I said, he’s not the smartest.”

I snort before mumbling, “Clearly.”

“Anyway, when he got through the window he kind of fell to the floor…hurt his arm,” he rubs his arm subconsciously as he speaks.

“His neighbor heard the noises he was making and grabbed a shotgun,” He pantomimes holding a gun. “You know, one of those rifles people hunt with?” I nodded. “He thought someone was breaking in and he was trying to protect himself,” he shrugs. “So he runs into the room that the boy climbed into, gun in hand and yells ‘Who the hell is that? Who’s in my house?’” He imitates a deep voice, one that might belong to a big, burly man. “And he—please excuse my language—scares the shit out of the little boy.”

I’ve lost myself in his tale. He’s grabbed my attention and refuses to let go. He’s holding on, as if, for dear life itself.

“But when the neighbor realized who he was pointing his gun at—the currently tear soaked boy from next-door—he lowered it. He said ‘What are you doing here Dewey?’”

He waits for my reaction and I do indeed sit up in my bed, where I had previously been laying down. “What?”

He sucks in a deep breath before nodding.

“Then what happened?”

“I told him, ‘Mommy’s being mean again.’ That wasn’t the first time I’d run out of the house when my mother went off on one of her tears, but it was the first time I did something as stupid as that.”

He swallows thickly then his gaze, which had previously been fixated on me, turns to the floor. “She um…she had problems with drugs or s-something. She was rarely in a good mood. But sometimes…sometimes she would be and I remember being so happy when she was. I always felt like it was my fault whenever she got angry. Like I did something to make her mad at me. But there was really nothing I could do…I think the fact that she had to come home to me—that she was burdened with a child she never wanted—is what really pissed her off so much.”

He pauses to take a breath and wipe frustratingly at the tears that have started to trickle out of his red rimmed eyes.

“So she hit you because she didn’t want you?” I ask, already knowing the answer, but the silence is so deafening—only punctuated by his occasional sniffles—that I feel inclined to fill it. “That doesn’t sound very fair,” I say after a few moments because he doesn’t answer my question.

“No it doesn’t. But that didn’t matter much to her. The reason I was so scared that time is because the night before she punched me square in my face and gave me the worst black eye of my life because I went in her room without asking when she wasn’t home. I knocked over a little jewelry box and little bags full of white powder fell out,” He shakes his head before continuing. “Well one of the bags busted and I wasn’t so good at using the broom because it was taller than me. Long story short, she found out when she got home and ran straight for me. Maybe that’s why I was acting so stupid…brain damage or something,” he rubs absently at his head.

“You can’t possibly think that,” I tell him with all the sincerity I can muster.

“But I do. If I had of just stayed out of her way then maybe…maybe she’d have wanted me. I could have—”

I stopped him right there with an insistent squeeze of his wrist. “Are you serious? How could you think that?”

“Living eight years with a mother that hates you kind of makes your mind wander.”

I wish I could placate him in some way, tell him that his mother didn’t hate him, that no mother could ever hate her child. But I can’t. I didn’t know her. I can’t help him. I’m worthless.

What a pair we are. Sad and lonely. Well, maybe not lonely, I do have gran and he has—

“What about your dad? Where was he?”

“My dad ran off a long time ago.”

“What?” Now I’m really confused.

He notices. “No wait.” He takes a deep breath. I’m expecting some big explanation and that’s exactly what I get. He says, “You know the neighbor I told you about?” I nodded. “Well… he’s my father. My adopted father, that is.”

My eyes widen.

“Yeah, I know,” he replies. “It was a long process, but he did it because for one he always liked me—or so he claimed,” he chuckled at this. “And also because he knew I couldn’t live there anymore.”

“So he just adopted you? Just like that?” I asked unbelieving.

“Don’t underestimate the kindness of people.”

“It’s just hard to believe is all. It seems so simple.”

“It wasn’t. Trying to get my mother to relinquish her custody took months.”

“Why was she trying to keep you?”

“My guess is stubbornness was a key factor. But I really don’t know. Just it was… probably something selfish.”

“Oh.”

He smiles ruefully. “Yeah, but, the good news is I’m out of there. I haven’t seen her in eight years and I don’t plan to.”

I’ve run out of things to say so I just stare at him with hopefully an understanding—not pitying—look.

“My dad…my adoptive father…he’s a really good guy. I mean really good.” He says quietly, almost reverently.

“Well I can guess that much,” I reply tersely before checking my tone. “If he did all you said…how couldn’t he be good? I don’t know anyone who would do that for someone.” I continue, this time much softer.

“What about your dad?” He eyes me warily when he says this.

I shrugged. “What about him?”

“What was he like?”

My first instinct at his line of questioning is to bristle, maybe try to steer the conversation in a different direction, but I don’t. Instead I say, “He was the best person I’ve ever known.” My answer is still cryptic, but it’s better than not saying anything at all.

“I know the feeling.”

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