Toni
This isn’t good.
I sit in my armchair in the den, patting Jane absently, staring at the wall.
I’ve flung my phone into the corner of the room, won’t look at it now.
This isn’t good. It hasn’t been for some time and I know it.
There’s no escaping Gabriel now, no escaping how I feel. What happened at the bar there… I shouldn’t go meet him tonight and yet, I don’t have any choice.
Papa’s words echo in my head, “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”
I go over, pick up my phone, turn on some music.
Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Jane cocks her head at me, as if she too is thinking: Why pick a song that so accurately describes how horrible I feel? Like a helpless stone rolling down a hill, picking up speed as I go, barreling toward my doom?
“Why do you listen to this crap anyway?” Carlos asks from the stairs.
I glare at him, hoping he’ll take the hint and go away.
But instead he stands there obliviously, his head swiveling ‘round the room.
“Usually I forget this place exists.”
I swallow back my: Which is why I like it so much.
“What do you want Carlos?” I ask.
After all, for the past few months that’s all our conversations have consisted of: necessities: Have you seen Papa? My phone isn’t in the kitchen, is it? When’s the next meeting?
Carlos directs his own glare at me, but then it sags.
He slumps down on the bottom stair, trying to look at me and yet, not quite able to.
His arms are folded in front of him, his good one supporting the bandaged one.
“It’s Papa,” he says, his voice suddenly a hoarse whisper, “He’s dying.”
I leap up, but he only shakes his head sadly.
“He won’t see anyone. Maria Fernanda’s up there, and he won’t see anyone.”
I sink back into the armchair, feeling like I’m going to sink into the floor, through it.
By now, I know there’s no defying Papa when he’s got his mind set on something.
Carlos and I stare at each other miserably.
There are no words now, nothing but this smothering blanket of pain there’s no escaping.
God, this is it. What I’ve been dreading, avoiding, denying for months now. Now, the day is finally here and I can’t quite believe it. All I feel is a lightheadedness, as if I’m on the pause before the roller coaster plunges down, knowing what’s coming, yet unable to quite believe it.
“Remember when he bought us those candy apples?” Carlos says suddenly, a glint in his merry eyes.
I nod.
How could I forget? On the primary school field trip, Carlos and I were the envy of every other kid there.
I see the images as Carlos recounts the events, “Remember how he bartered like mad with the street vendor?” The little bald man’s furious, eager face as he shook his fist, twisted his head, turned away, then, finally, with an averted fit of coughing, agreed to Papa’s drastically lower price.
“Then fought with our teachers to give them to us?” Miss Sternburg’s grey-bunned head erect and implacable as her thin lips repeated the “No” in terse tones.
“How he laughed in their faces, the way his mouth stretched so big and jovial? Like he wasn’t laughing just at them, but at everything, at the whole preposterousness of life itself?” Papa, his black mustache trembling with it, with the laughter that overtook all of us, Carlos and me in his arms, part of the scene yet reveling in it, not caring a whit about any of it, liking it, welcoming it, wanting it – even grateful for it, it and this father who wasn’t afraid of anything, who could overcome anything.
Anything but death.
I nod again, tears spilling down my cheeks now, hating and loving Carlos for reminding me of it, the bittersweet memory of my childhood, of my Papa. Who I’m losing this very second.
Carlos still won’t look at me, his forehead against the wall, he addresses the floor, “Well, when I saw him this morning, that’s what he looked like. I swear Toni, that’s exactly what he looked like: laughing. He’s ready.”
He exhales, wipes away a tear of his own.
“We’re not ready, but he is.”
I nod again, more tears streaming down to join the others, more memories streaming down with them.
Images flash through my mind: Papa lifting me by the waist hopping me up and down the stairs, “A jumping Toni, a jumping Toni, a jumping Toni” while I shrieked laughter; Papa laid out on his back, which I listened to his heart with a little pink stethoscope; Papa embracing me in his satin apple-sheeted bed a little over a month ago, whispering, “You’ll do a good job in charge. I love you more than you can know.”
Sorrow paralyzes me in my seat. Makes me unable to speak, move; Jane nudges my hand for more petting in vain.
I can’t tell if Carlos is still here. I’ve closed my eyes. All there is is Papa: Papa in my memories, Papa upstairs, Papa who I’m going to lose forever.
Papa, who I’ll never see again.
Suddenly, I know what I have to do.
I leap up, race past Carlos who grabs at me from the stairs. His hand slips off in my momentum, my running.
I run.
I run for Papa, for myself, for one last time, to be there as he goes. To tell him I love him once more.
I pass Maria Fernanda on the staircase, and she’s saying some things, and Carlos is behind me, and he’s yelling some others – but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, these words, their words, their words that are just more hands, snatching at me, trying to keep me from my father, my Papa – who I have to see one last time.
I rip open the door – and stop.
I look upon death and the reaper, and scream.
Ms. Laurenz aims her squinty eyes at me in something of a sneer. The squint has no tears.
And behind her, half upright half sunk down, like a shoved-up scarecrow, is Papa.
Dead.
I’m too late.
“Toni,” Carlos says.
He’s in the doorway behind me.
I’m shaking, can barely get the words out, as the realization twists through my body, “This. This is why you came down.”
I wrench around to say the words to his disgusting, lying face, “Why you told me Papa didn’t want to see anyone.”
Carlos opens his mouth, closes it. Swallows his latest lies, comes up with another:
“He did say that…”
I shake my head, and he shuts up.
After all, his lie has worked his magic: got his vile snake of a mother with Papa in his last moments. Ruined Papa’s last moments so Laurenz could carry out whatever conniving plan she has on the go this time.
Ms. Laurenz throws her scarf over her shoulder, the green flashing mockery.
“Your father and I discussed—”
“Get out,” I say.
I step back. Point to the door.
She doesn’t move, continues twisting her lips.
“You should know that-”
“Get out, you despicable bitch,” I say.
I draw my gun, point it at Laurenz.
“Or I’ll make you get out.”
We stand there, eyes boring into each other. Now that I’m speaking her language she can’t stand it.
She really does look like a snake: low diamond eyes with the pinprick pupils, hollowed-out cheeks, fangs carefully tucked away until they’re needed.
The snake’s sneer grows until her eyes are so narrowed into a glare that they almost look closed, while her lips are contorted so much, it almost looks like she doesn’t have any at all.
“Toni,” Carlos says, and I turn my gun on him.
“Neither of you belong in the same room as him. Get out.”
He doesn’t move, and I cock the pistol.
He stares at me evenly. There’s no fear in his face, but there should be. Even I don’t know what I’m capable of right now.
I shift the gun to the side, shoot the stuffed cobra. It topples to the ground.
I step back. Shift the gun back to Laurenz.
“I won’t ask again.”
With one last furious look at the shot down cobra, Laurenz slithers away, her green scarf flickering behind her, taking her disgusting son in hand.
Once they’re gone, in the doorway, Maria Fernanda shakes her head, closes the door behind them.
Now it’s just me and Papa. Me and the man I failed at the last.
I stare at him, trying to get my mind to accept that it’s really my father, that he’s really gone.
But his skin is a parchment of ashy lines, his chin has patches of hair that don’t belong – this creature doesn’t even look like him. His eyes are half-open, as if he’s only deep in thought, might come to any minute.
I look at my dead father, the man I never really knew, and I collapse onto the bed at his feet, sobbing.
Time passes as waking and remembering, as a drifting in and out of consciousness and pain to unconsciousness and pain.
I dream that Papa’s alive, cursing me for leaving him with Laurenz for his final hours. I dream his corpse shakes at me an admonishing finger that turns into ash as it moves.
I dream that “Don’t make the same mistake I did” flies out of his frozen lips, that his whole body flops with the effort of the words, and yet, that his lips, his crackled lines of lips still won’t move.
I dream that Maria Fernanda comes, moves me to the chair. I dream the cobra twines around my legs, its head morphing from Ms. Laurenz to Carlos to Clarence and, when it bites me, I see it was Gabe all along.
I wake up shivering. Maria Fernanda is stroking my hair.
“My poor girl. My poor, poor girl.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were home. The Laurenz woman threatened me, made me take her to your father. Spreading mischief at the end, I’m sure.”
I throw my arms around her in a hug, our faces pressed together, our tears mingling.
And then I slump into it, the pain, and, although I am awake, I might as well not be. I can lift my head no more.