Too Close

6

Another two months passed and it was time for holiday break. Calypso was almost too enthusiastic about coming home for the holidays. She practically threw her clothes in her duffel bag. Around an hour later, she was boarding the train that headed home into the Hudson Valley. Alex and Ravi were both heading that way too, so she planned to hitch a ride home with them. All three of them sat together. Calypso was lucky enough to have the window seat. She watched stations and trees and the river blur by. The sun fell on her face, with gentle warming light. Ravi moved to one of the seats across the aisle. Looking particularly handsome, Calypso took out her camera and snapped a photo of him. Chht- the sound of the shutter. He didn't realize that she'd even taken a photo; he was much too busy staring out the window. There was a baby crying and the seats smelled horrendous. Calypso dove her nose into a neatly knit grey scarf that Ravi gave her as an early Christmas present. It smelled like linen and lilac and raspberries - it smelled like him. It was soft to the touch and it smelled smooth too. Can something smell smooth? Calypso asked herself. If it couldn't smell smooth, she didn't care. Because it did. Once they reached the station, Alex's car was waiting for them in the parking lot. Calypso sat in the backseat as they played the radio. None of them knew the songs but that didn't matter. It felt like nothing mattered - she was going to be home for 2 weeks.

Nothing mattered until everything did. As the twins dropped her off at her house, Calypso immediately knew something was off. The house was dark and seemed to be devoid of all life. She stepped into the narrow hallway where her father's room was. As she stepped closer to her father's bedroom, she could hear laborious breathing. To her horror, her father lay in bed, asleep, breathing heavily. An oxygen tank with wheels stood unused in the doorway. His lungs were working hard to keep him breathing and alive. Calypso stepped back into the hallway, too overwhelmed to stay inside the bedroom. I told myself he wasn't sick. He never told me anything about his health. Bad thoughts flooded into her head until the overall concept hit her hard:

He's dying.

Tears began streaming down her face. Calypso raced into the kitchen, worried that she may wake her sleeping father. She sat on the swivel stool at the countertop, in a dazed state. It was like she was detached from the environment, like the fact that her father was close to the end filled up too much space in her mind to connect to anything else. Calypso took off her glasses and set them beside her. The marble countertop was ice against her face as she set it down on the surface. It was reflective, even in the grey light. In it she saw her own features but saddened. Her eyebrows were crinkled upward into a point and her cheeks glinted with tears. Calypso set her head back down, ear against the counter so she didn't have to look at how scared she was. Her warm breath formed in a cloudy pool on the cold surface. It felt like she was melting into the marble, becoming colder. The tears lay beneath her head. Each droplet was meant to cast a piece of sorrow out of her mind; usually it worked but now there was too much to cry about. I need to stop. I have to stop, she scolded herself. That didn't stop the tears from coming. They continued to pour out of her eyes as she crept sorrowfully up the stairs and collapsed on her bed. Seconds- or maybe minutes, maybe hours- later, Calypso heard a sound from downstairs.

She collected herself. Pulling back her hair, adjusting her glasses, she made her way down the stairs.

"Lambkin!" her father said in a quiet, raspy voice. "You're home!".

"Yeah you were sleeping when I came in this afternoon,"

"Yeah. I need a lot of sleep these past few days," he said. "The doctors said that if I get lots of rest, I may not be as exhausted all the time."

"What's wrong with you?" Calypso asked, staring at the floor. The tiles were chilly beneath her feet sheathed with one sloth sock and one pizza one.

"Years of smoking have finally caught up . I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner hon-" he began coughing

"Dad, are you okay?"

"Yeah," he wheezed.

"So, how's work?" Calypso changed the subject, not wanting to dwell on her father's poor health.

"Good, good. I don't go to the office anymore. I just send in drafts of the buildings that I make on the computer."

"So, uh, do you have any plans for while I'm here?"

"Well, I hope you can get a Christmas tree in here. I can't leave the house completely dull and without lights this time of year".

"I'll do that tomorrow," Calypso said, grinning.

"So... You hungry yet?"

"Yeah. I'll make dinner."

They discussed school. Calypso was still doing well. She was learning about the history of photography and the class was developing their photos in the dark room. Calypso's father didn't knowledgeable about photography, but it made him happy to see his daughter excited. He was an architect; he didn't know about the angle and lighting of photographs, nor did he care. Yet he nodded his head occasionally while Calypso was ranting. Calypso knew that her dad probably didn't care much about photography, but she continued talking about her classes just to keep the subject off of her dad's health; that was what she did whenever something sad happened. When her parents divorced each other, she just distracted herself with reading; she read all of the Percy Jackson books twice those first two months. When her dog died when she was younger, Calypso would watch her father design new blueprints to keep from going into a depression. Cal, you're in college. You're nineteen years old. You're an adult now and you can't even deal with anything sad, she thought to herself. No, she corrected, this is beyond sad. This is purely depressing.