Silver Linings

After I left Rob’s I stuffed the toothbrush and book into my bag. I walked the two miles to my parent’s house, needing the time to think. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what had attracted me to him in the first place. He was a crass, pompous ass lately, the kind of man who would sell you out for the right price.

I tried to remember him as he was, the sweet, caring man I shared a cab with one rainy night three years earlier. I tried to think of him as my best friend, the man who’d take me out to celebrate the milestones in my life; My birthdays, the first job out of college, the promotion I worked so hard to get. But it was no use. My heart ached as if I had just lost a loved one. I wasn’t completely sure why. It’s not as if I hadn’t known about his wandering ways. He WAS in a relationship when I met him, so I suppose that should have been a clue. And if things weren’t bad enough, she’s the woman he constantly cheated on me with. I was definitely batting a thousand on this one.

I was a block away from my parents when the rain started that night. I suppose I should have run the rest of the way, but instead I slowed down. I didn’t want to walk into my parents’ house looking as if I had been crying, at least not over him.

I walked in the door and found that I had still made good time. I was maybe 5 minutes late. Not too shabby, all things considered. I looked at myself in the hall mirror. My brown eyes were red and bloodshot from crying and my normally red hair was hanging limply, brown form the rainwater. I shoved a lock behind my ear knowing it would frizz later. I glared at myself with contempt, hating myself for letting anyone do this to me, before I went in to see my father.

Dad knew something was wrong the second he saw my face. After the amount of times I came home after a date and cried on his shoulder after being dumped, usually for some other girl who was more willing to put out, I guess I was pretty obvious.

Patty on the other hand was blissfully ignorant. Patty was my stepmother. Dad met her about 10 years ago. They dated for a while, 5 years actually, before they got hitched. In fact the wedding was a week after my high school graduation! Talk about steeling the spotlight!

It’s not that Patty is a bad person; it’s just that I didn’t like having to compete with her for my father’s attention. She had a son of her own, Mark was his name, but I had only met him that one time at the wedding and I was so wrapped up in being offended that I couldn’t travel to Europe with my best friend Samantha that I never really even saw him.

My father hugged me tighter than usual and a tear squeezed out into his shirt. There wasn’t much small talk as we sat down to dinner. It was basically the usual. Mark’s children were going to school soon. Mark’s children had fought over the television. When Patty said Mark’s youngest was caught playing ‘Doctor’ with some girl at the park I tuned her out and concentrated on the perfectly cooked brisket in front of me. I pushed the food around my plate with my fork, wishing I felt like eating. My father makes damn good brisket.

After dinner Dad asked Patty if she could get started on the dishes and took me into the living room.

“So, what’s wrong, Ladybug?” His gravelly voice rang in my ears, taking me back to when I’d come home from school, pretty much the same way. I could always tell that he knew what was going on, but he asked anyways. He sat down in the recliner facing the couch where I sat down and proceeded to collapse in a useless mess.

I took a moment to just feel the emptiness I felt inside before I started to tell him what had happened. When I was done he came and stood beside me and rubbed my head gently. He had barely touched me when there was a crash of dishes in the kitchen.

The whole world slowed to a crawl as we both got up and ran to see if Patty had hurt herself. When we saw her lying there in a heap on the floor I went straight to the phone and called 911.

When I turned back towards her I saw the broken plate on the floor. It appeared at first glance to be covered in blood but when I looked closer it was only the Ketchup Patty routinely put on everything.

When the Paramedics arrived they had to pull dad off of Patty’s prone form. They felt for her pulse and started CPR right away. They got her heart going weekly and took her into the ambulance. I grabbed the keys from Dad’s numb fingers and ran to his car as he got into the back with Patty. I drove behind the ambulance the whole way to the hospital and parked in Visitor’s Parking.

When I finally caught up with Dad he was in the waiting room pacing nervously, the completed paperwork on the coffee table in front of him. As my father looked up at me I saw the expression on his face. It was the same one he wore after Mom’s accident.

Mom had been an adventurous soul, the kind of person who you’d look at and say “Where does she get the energy?” She went hiking, skiing, whitewater rafting, but her favorite thing in the world was mountain climbing. When I was 8 we had gone to Arizona to visit some family who just happened to live near Pusch Ridge. She had it in her head that she could reach the top the hard way, and she very well might have. The problem lay in her equipment. Her pick and spikes were in tip-top condition, but her rope was her lucky rope. She hadn’t taken as good care of it as she should have and as she got about halfway up the steepest slope her rope caught on a sharp rock. She had tried in vain to dislodge it and as she did the rock sawed through the already frail rope. She didn’t fall all that far, maybe about 100 feet, but that was all it took.

The doctors had said that she had hit a rock on the ground when she fell and that it had snapped her spine at the 2nd vertebrae. She had never had a chance.

I snapped out of my memory as I realized he had worn that look when the doctor had given him the bad news. I collapsed in the seat knowing what the words on the tip of his tongue were.

I found out later that Patty had had an aneurism; there was literally nothing we could have done. Dad sat down next to me and put his head down on my shoulder and did something I have never seen him do before or since.

As I held my father in my arms like a little child, he wept.