Catharsis

FOUR

I thought going back to work at Woodland Estates would help get my mind off the fact that Dad is dead. What the heck was I thinking? Everything reminds me of him and I want so badly to puke up the grief and feel better about life. Alcohol and insomnia have permeated the past three weeks since the seizure. I don't even think I have the energy to throw up right now.

Swiveling back and forth on an office chair, I tap my pen on the wooden desk, chin resting on the heel of my palm. Slogging through the early morning was rough and by now the lunch hour has passed. The stack of paperwork is still just as big as it was when I came in at 6 a.m.

On a Monday, I was sent home from the hospital. Sent back to remind myself over and over that Dad isn't home with Mom. He's not having a usual work day at Pioneer Chevy. He's not going to come visit. He's dead. I was too exhausted to stay up til it was dark outside. Just as soon as the crickets reached their highest pitch and dusk drew across the sky, I stumbled upstairs and crumpled up on the bed.

Someone laid there that night, pulling the sheets into a tangle, with sweat slicking his forehead. Eyelids twitching as he tossed and turned restlessly. But I was far away in a nightmare world. When I woke up I couldn't recall the images, but I felt the terror and I rushed to the bathroom to puke it up. Four in the morning and Sammy was still at work on the night shift. So, I called my mother, resolving to keep talk of my physical state off the table. Just the sound of her voice was enough to calm me down to sleep away the rest of the night.

It didn't matter that I couldn't remember the dream that night. It came to me the next night, and the next. His dead face in the waning twilight, long shadows stretching eerily across the room, across his pale, gray skin. I saw it again and again until a week passed and I walked into that chapel for the funeral, and I walked across the cemetery lawn to that grave.

Another week and I was invited to Sammy's parent's house in Wausau for dinner. I sat there hoping nobody would bring up my dead father. They didn't have to. Sammy's dad turned on ESPN after dinner, then he sat on the couch and put his arm around her. Immediately I was taken to the countless memories of Dad and I watching soccer.

"This is how it's done, A. Watch this," Dad pointed to the TV. "Watch...keep watching..." I was watching, leaning close to the screen where little players zipped around on a green background. I wasn't sure what I was looking for until one of the players sent the ball sailing and into the net.

"BOOM! Did you see that power shot?" Dad pumped a fist in the air. "Hoo! Yeah, baby!"

I smiled, and watched him burst with pure joy, bouncing up and down on the couch as the players on the screen cheered and wiped their sweaty faces with their shirts.

"Remember what we were talking about, A? Hit the center with your laces, dead on. Lock the ankle."

Sammy left her dad to sit by me on the love seat. She held my hand and kissed it all evening until I thought my skin might chap, but I wasn't mentally there. My face showed it and has shown it ever since. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't actively avoiding my own reflection. My oval face that lacks all masculine squareness, narrow dark brown eyes, darker than I remember, staring vacantly, a straight nose with an odd inward slope, and I can't stand the sight of any of it.

Sammy noticed, too. She kept insisting that I stay home and ride out the grief, but when she realized it wasn't working, she changed her tactic.

"You can go to work now, Aaron. It might do you some good. You don't want another seizure do you?" That's what she said last night before she left for the nursing home on yet another night shift.

"Hey. Genius." A voice breaks through the fog rolling around in my brain.

I whirl around. Jonah is at the coffee machine pouring the hot black liquid into the tall metallic-red thermos that he brings from home. Eyes pressing me for something, he shrugs his shoulders. I'm not sure what he wants.