A Tapless Shoulder (18 page)

I sat at a
table near the rows of magazines. I felt compelled to buy one, but
my uncertainty of what I’d be interested in invariably stopped me.
It was still just my nerves telling me to do things so I could be
distracted:
get up to sit
back down, again and again, now maybe do it faster and faster until
you fall over or someone takes the chair away
. That was when I began thinking there were just
too many thoughts in my head that should have gone without
thinking.

Luckily my
insanity was finally interrupted when I heard a “Hey,” from over my
shoulder. It was my dad’s elongated greeting that nearly always
sounded somewhere between serious and joking.

“
Hey,” I replied and stood. My chair slid out from beneath
me with a strange and horrible screech as I got up. It hadn’t made
a sound when I pulled it away from the table when I’d arrived.
“But
of
course
,” I said with a smirk.
I handed him a twenty, “My treat, Dad, get whatever you want, get
something to eat if you’re hungry, I’m still good
here.”

“
Oh, hell,
that’s okay,” he said stopping beside the table.

“
No, I insist, I asked you here, but, just, it’s not about
formalities,” I began to say, but could already feel myself wanting
to cut my sentences in halves, then quarters, and on and on until I
had nothing but fractions of sounds, “
Crap
,
it doesn’t matter
, take this and, yeah, go get coffee, get some
lunch.” I waved him away, my head pointed toward the
counter.

It struck me
how him and I were so alike, possibly
too
alike; the
eventual reaction, the glint in the eyes, the air that it could all
just explode and we’d be first to laugh. He smiled warmly, took the
bill, and said, “Okay, if you insist, thank you,” and then moved
toward the counter at the pace age had graced him with. I could
take comfort in knowing my current spastic state would at least
eventually slow to that as well.

I sat back
down, watched him still making his way to the counter, and noticed
he had a bit of a lean in his walk, like maybe he’d be breaking
right at any moment, but he never did. I’d never noticed that
before and wondered if something was wrong with him. Seeing him
that way worried me even more. He was getting weaker while the pull
of time got stronger. We all were, I guess, but my strength and my
time weren’t being measured the way his were.

I realized
then without question exactly why I wanted to talk to him. It
wasn’t my worry for him that had invited him there; it was my being
inconvenienced while he tried to get over losing his wife,
my mother
. That truth hit the surface and sank through me only
to become buoyant again, but not without first letting me feel it
hit the bottom, where it left a dent, possibly for my pride to curl
up and hide in.

My head
sagged forward; couldn’t this have occurred to me
after
I’d said whatever it was I was going to say? I was positive
I would have been better off with the guilt. I moved on perfectly
well from things;
that
was why I didn’t remember them. I
shook my head, and it seemed to help.

I looked at
the aisles of books. I could remember wanting to be a writer. I
think I just liked the complete control the writer had over the
words. The bumbling and stuttering to obtain them had been removed
and just the heart of the matter remained. That was what I needed:
I should have written flash cards, prepared a nice little speech,
okay, dad, prepare to be impressed by your son who can’t do
something as simple as
have a
conversation with you
. I
laughed nervously. These were the very thoughts I’d been thinking I
shouldn’t have been thinking at all.

I would again
one day write, I thought and nodded with approval at the safety and
appropriateness of the thought. Writing was simply a dropped
passion, and there was time still to pick it back up. Maybe when I
wasn’t so tired certainly, then would be best. I had always loved
it and
would
get back into it, I even almost
promised myself. I already had a working title for my first
book,
The Great Book of
Apologies, by My Sorry Ass
.
You’re kidding, right? I wondered. I mentally slapped myself in
annoyance while my mind backpedalled erratically, adding quickly to
that thought,
yes
,
of course, by you I mean me: I’m
kidding
.

“
What is wrong with my brain?” I said, apparently louder
than any thought that was to remain inside the head should have
been. The woman at the next table quickly looked away, swallowed a
bite of muffin, and then looked down at an open book lying on her
table beside her plate. My mouth opened, but I hadn’t a clue what
to say to cancel that out and feared strange sounds would have just
made it much, much worse, so I looked away as well.
Every single one of us is crazy in
some way
, I thought, and
because I was being honest about it suddenly
I
was
crazier than most. If
she
had said
it
I’d have smiled at her and
asked, you think you’re crazy? Then I’d have started licking the
table.

I laughed,
something I thought I should
not
have done after
having just said there was something wrong with my brain. I
silenced my mouth, and thought I would try to silence my mind while
I was at it. What was taking him so long? What was he doing up
there, showing the cashier pictures of his new girlfriend… or Uncle
Donnie? I took a deep breath. I took two more. I didn’t stop
breathing but tried to slowly let go. I found some stillness, and
it was peaceful and exactly where I needed to be. Now I almost
didn’t want him to come back.
Maintain
, I
thought,
that was what I
needed to do
. Maintain and
hold the nothing in my head, let it be a bubble, but not a bubble;
that’d break with the slightest movement of my head, never mind the
dullest of distractions…
ah
crapping hell
.

It didn’t
matter; my dad was finally sitting down at the table. He very
carefully set his coffee cup down and then pressed around the
outside of the lid to make sure it was on properly.

“
What on earth took so long?” I asked lightly so it sounded
polite and like a comment, and not the end of the world. I smiled,
thinking it would help, but then realized that it probably came off
a little sudden and therefore weird.
Ugh,
act
normal,
I
thought
… be yourself –
MYSELF, holy – yes, maybe I’ll try to be myself.
I thought, sarcastically…
idiotically. I would definitely have to use that from then on too,
if I’d been stupid about something; I would claim to have just been
being an idiot sarcastically.

My dad was
smiling. “Oh,” he said with a soft chuckle, “that was my fault it
took so long. I dropped the first one. He shook his head, “Yeah, I
tried to get your attention but you were a little busy, I think
checking out a certain someone.” He nodded toward the woman next to
us. “I couldn’t tell from there but I think I would have been
staring at her too. She
is
easy on the eyes,
eh?” He nodded toward her again.
Just head-butt her
, I
thought,
she may not have
noticed all the attention yet
.

I shrugged.
“Yeah, but she probably doesn’t have a penis,” I said just above a
whisper and with my face angled away from her.

He laughed.
He should have smacked me in the mouth, but he laughed, then I
laughed and apologized.

In my head I
was thinking,
Way to address
the issues
, to which I
quickly countered,
hey, who
the hell’s side am I on?
But
this made me wonder why I would think ‘hey’ like I needed to get my
own attention, are thoughts not the
very attention
of the
heads they’re in? Hadn’t we been over this? ‘Come on people, work
with me, and, hey, we are not people, okay, stop it, with the
‘hey’
and
the addressing of us as many… um,
us
? Concentrate!
WHAT
THE
HELL
?! Okay and yelling in my own head will not make me listen
any better. I am taking you straight to the psychiatric ward at
Woodland Acres, where you can get the help you need. And,
again
, by you
I mean
me.’
I shook my head; maybe
you shook our head,
who
knew?

“
So how are you?” he asked so I would maybe
not
just stare at him.

“
Oh, I’m… okay, like, good… okay,” I said and suddenly felt
like I meant it, and even would have felt great had my thoughts
refrained from overlapping one another. It was true, it seemed by
fluke I had to come here and see him like this in order to gain
that tiniest of difference in perspective, perspective enough to
know I was fine, and would be fine, but just needed to… talk to
this man. He was my dad, and he was right there, he was
still
there
.

I smiled
broadly, “So did you seriously just throw your coffee all over the
town up there?”

He laughed.
“Yeah, you should have seen the mess, but I think they quickly
threw a few others at it after it fell.
Why the hell not
?”

I laughed and
didn’t know if I was going to stop. My dad sipped timidly at his
coffee with a gentle smile. I took a drink of my own. I felt like I
was trying to remember how to begin a conversation. “Dad,” I said,
believing that to be a good start.

“
YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FUCKING BELIEVE THIS!” Nate suddenly
appeared shouting beside our table. I wished I was still laughing.
He stared at the doors and then squatted beside the table. His head
floated above the tabletop and I wanted to shoo it away. He was
breathing like he’d been running. He looked at my dad for a moment,
then at me. “I was followed here –
someone
tailed me
here
!”

“
They should have tailed you
somewhere else
,” I
said angrily. He had startled me. I looked at him. He stared back.
I looked at my dad, and then back at Nate and wondered why and how,
and why again. “What?” I was confused. What he’d said was
transforming from something weird he’d shouted just to scare the
shit out of me to the statement it actually was. I had gone full
circle. “I don’t – someone followed you here? Or why are you here?
No, how are you here? Who followed you?”

“
I followed you,” he said. It struck me that he couldn’t
have gotten any farther from a reasonable answer than that. I
wanted to grab his head and yell,
where are you in there?
He must have sensed something not quite right in the way I
was staring at him as he quickly stood and pulled a chair over from
another table. I wanted to push it back, then, when it was too
late, I wanted to push him over, chair and all.

“
What the
fucking hell, Nate, are you talking about? That’s – you – fuckin’,”
I stopped myself. I noticed everyone at the other tables had
stopped what they were doing and were curious about what was going
on over at our table. I pretended to smile. “Nate, I just,” His
eyes were empty, apparently when he was frightened he looked like
he always did. My dad bobbed softly in his seat with laughter. As
far as he could tell it was all a joke. I was living one lifelong
interruption that dulled and erupted, and it struck him as funny. I
was alarmed by how angry I had suddenly become at the both of them.
I didn’t quite know exactly why. Maybe I knew why, but was
accustomed to reacting to more details than this.

I got up from
my seat and again the chair screeched out from beneath me. Everyone
winced. I wanted to
hurl
the chair towards the magazines or
run maybe just far enough away to
hurl
it back at Nate. I
stared down at the stupid chair for a long and overdrawn moment. I
didn’t want to hurt anyone; I knew that. I just wanted them to look
like they didn’t understand because I knew that was how I looked.
My eyes met my dad’s, he shrugged. He didn’t know what Nate was
going on about and wasn’t stirred in the slightest by it. He had
always seen Nate as a bit of a clown. Hell, he had good reason to.
I wanted to say something apologetic to him and maybe something
abrasive to Nate. Maybe telling him I’d considered throwing a chair
at him would be enough. I looked at them both. Everything seemed to
go wrong with Nate and those stupid, useless phone calls. If I said
anything, I’d have been speaking only because I expected myself to.
Maybe it’d actually have been because
they
expected me
to. That was how they were looking at me; sitting, waiting. I
usually did have something to say. Why was that? I felt certain I
wanted to be done with that too. “Fucking hell,” I muttered and
gave the chair a quick shove. I turned to go find Katie and the
boys. Nate said something loudly to my back. I kept walking. It
could join everything else I didn’t know or understand.