The phone rang, and one glance at the caller ID told me it was her, again. I watched the phone for a little while as it rang patiently, then just before the service picked up, I took a breath and answered.
“Hello?” I queried, pretending to not know who was on the line. It was her voice that answered, though. It always was.
“Hey,” she said, that tentative tone in her voice again, as if I didn’t already know who it was. “It’s me. Got a minute?”
I tried to not sound as tired as I felt. There was something lately about the sound of her voice that drained the life out of me, and I really didn’t want to play counselor right now, but if I didn’t there was no telling what she might do. The least of evils was a depression cycle that would exhaust everything I had to drag her out of it, and the worst was something I didn’t want to contemplate. Listening, as deadly as it was to my soul, was the best option.
“What happened?” I asked, probably a bit sharper than I wanted to sound, but I don’t think she noticed. She never noticed when it was all about her.
She launched into the latest epic saga of who had done her wrong this time, and to be honest, the story was so much like all the others that I used generic responses and just barely listened. She didn’t notice, either, as long as I said the right thing at the right time, when I could wedge a word in edgewise. And, when I judged that the time was as right as it could ever be, I had to hit her, gently, with an unwanted truth.
“You know,” I said as tactfully as I could, “This isn’t exactly what your therapist meant by a ‘trial seperation’.”
She didn’t pause for a moment, which is typical when she was on a roll, and whined, “I know! But I missed you, and -“
I had to stop her there before it went too far. “I know,” I told her, “But what did you really miss, me or the sounding board?”
There was silence on the line, and I knew I went too far, but I was tired and I didn’t really think about what I was saying. This was on her therapist’s shoulders, not mine. And besides, she was in a place that could give her the support she needed. But where was my support?
“You know you need to give this a chance, don’t you?” I asked to fill the silence. “The doctor said it would be good for you to deal with your problems without me.”
There was a pregnant pause before she quietly said, “Yeah.”
“I mean,” I said, meaning to salvage the situation, “You wouldn’t want me ‘enabling’ you, or anything…right?”
Okay, that was pretty bitter, but I didn’t think she would catch on to it, not when she was trying to figure out how to turn the conversation back to herself. I could feel her brain working hard on it.
“I don’t want to make you more ‘co-dependent’, or anything,” I added to explain myself, but that, too, came out sharper than I wanted it to. “Right?”
There was another long pause before she uncertainly muttered, “No.”
I didn’t have anything else to say, so I waited for her, and after a long time, she murmured, “I should go. I love you.”
It was hard to reply to something that was said more out of habit than any real feelings, but I had to, even though I wondered if I meant it, either. “Love you, too.”
“Okay,” she muttered. She didn’t sound good, but at least she was in a place where she could be cared for, if she needed it. “Bye.”
“Bye,” I told her. When I hung up, it was an actual relief. And as worried sick as I was about the bad spiral that was going to come from that conversation, I still noticed that not once did she ask me how I was.
I was still riding pretty low on that conversation when I took myself out for some dinner. Maybe it was guilt about how badly I treated her, or worry about what she was going to do to herself because of me, but I wasn’t feeling good, at all. That’s probably why I decided to punish myself by going to Sloppy Joe’s.
The place smelled heavily of vastly abused cooking grease and that barbecue sauce that gives their sandwiches their name. It always surprises me how crowded the place usually is. It must be the cheap prices that draws them in, because it certainly isn’t the healthy nature of the food, or rather, the lack thereof. And it isn’t the ambiance, because the cafeteria at work has more class than Sloppy Joe’s, but then, the owners are probably keeping the prices low by not investing in decorations. Or sanitation.
Anyway, the place was packed again, and again, no one was in a good mood. The people in line were mostly in their own world, studying their phones with that don’t-bother-me attitude or studying the menu board with an intensity that drowned out the world around them. I’m one of the latter, but I still noticed that the people behind the counter were too busy to have any feelings at all, but I imagined they would have plenty of time for venting later on.
And then, there was that one person that either thought everyone else wanted to listen to their crappy music, too, or who didn’t care one whit that we didn’t. She was two people ahead of me, a wide, wide woman with her mask down on her second chin and the attitude that no one could tell her what to do. I tried to ignore her, and concentrated hard on the menu, but those lyrics were getting more and more obscene by the second.
“Could you turn that down, please?” the woman ahead of her asked. I thought she was being perfectly reasonable. But foul-music lady didn’t see it that way.
“Mind your business!” she told the polite woman, who flinched away from the spittle that flew out with the words.
The polite woman flushed a little, her brown skin getting slightly darker. But she remained polite. “Could you please turn that down? I don’t appreciate the lyrics.”
The wide woman flushed, too, her pallid skin pinking and the freckles that dotted her entire being growing browner. “Then, don’t listen!”
Polite woman flushed even more, and I could tell she was just barely holding it together. “I can’t help listening! Why don’t you use earphones?”
“I could ask your people that!” Freckles snapped. “They all the time blasting that jungle music around, and I got to listen to it, so you can do the same!”
“Those words are offensive!” the not-so-polite-now young woman snapped back, pointing at Freckles’ phone. “They’re talking about lynching people!”
“And I got to listen to n##### this, and n##### that all the time, too!” Freckles raved. “You don’t hear me complain!”
“I don’t like it, either!” the young man right in front of me told Freckles. “I have a lot of friends that wouldn’t appreciate that garbage, either!”
“Garbage?” Freckles foamed at the mouth. “What do you call that gangsta crap?”
“Hey!” the young man snapped. “At least that isn’t the racist crap you’re listening to!”
“Just please turn it down,” the polite woman said, sounding tired of the conversation already.
“Well, just you wait!” Freckles’s eyes blazed with insane vigor as she ignored the polite woman and fixed those crazed eyes on the young man. “We’ll see what side you’re on when the war comes -!”
I sidled forward. I didn’t mean to, but at that point, I just didn’t have any effs left to give. “Excuse me,” I gently said, reaching across the young man and plucking Freckles’ phone from her shaking fist. It was suprisingly easy, just as easy, too, when I smashed it against the counter, ending the foul stuff that Freckles called “music”. For good measure, I threw what remained of the phone to the floor and stomped the snot out of it.
“Oh,” I told the wide woman’s astonished face, “And the war was cancelled. So you’ll have to learn to live like a decent human being, or go live under a rock somewhere for the rest of your life. Got it?”
She glared, and I knew it was coming, but she got in a shot at my jaw, anyway, bowling the young man aside when she did. There wasn’t really that much force behind it, so it didn’t really hurt that much. Obviously, not as much as she thought, judging by her expression when I didn’t go down with the punch. And, since I felt justified in doing it, I decked her with a quick jab of my own.
She was sitting up, more or less, on her fat behind, rubbing her face and blubbering something about the police, but I didn’t care. A weird calm had settled around my shoulders like a comfy blanket, and I knew that nothing bad could happen to me. So, I stood over her and told her, “Now, you can either act like a civilized human being, apologize to everyone that you’ve offended, and wait patiently and quietly in line for your turn, or you can leave. The choice is yours.”
“My phone!” she squalled, and before she could throw out any more accusations and threats, I picked up the pieces that still clung to each other and held it out to her, but she gave me a nasty glare and rolled, struggling, to her feet. No one offered her any help.
“I’m calling the police!” she threatened at the top of her lungs.
“Here’s your phone, then,” I said, still offering her what was left of it.
She actually growled at me like an animal, as if that was supposed to be intimidating, and I couldn’t help it. I laughed. She didn’t like that one bit, but she obviously knew she couldn’t get to me, so with another threat to call the cops, she stormed, limping slightly, out of the restaurant.
I heard cheering, but it wasn’t for me. It was for Freckles’ departure. I turned to the stunned kid behind the counter and apologized for the mess, then handed him the broken phone, asking him if he could throw it away for me. He just nodded, his face never losing that wide-eyed expression.
I didn’t stay at Sloppy Joe’s. Somehow, I’d lost my appetite. Maybe it was the smell. And besides, I was beginning to shake all over and I didn’t know what that was all about, so I figured the best place for me to be was home. Anyway, I made some cereal and watched some TV, and only when I was going to bed did it occur to me that the situation could have been worse, and Freckles could have had a gun. She seemed like she was the type, although I don’t know where in her overly stressed spandex she could possibly have hidden a weapon. But it was over and done with, and upon reflection, I felt pretty good inside.
I wondered, as I lay there waiting to drift off, if that kid ever recovered from the shock. And that’s when the phone rang.
I stood at the end of her bed trying not to glare. Her forearms were both bandaged up pretty well, hiding the deep wounds beneath. She’d given it a pretty good try, they told me, and it was only lucky that they were watching her closely. She was under sedation, because the injuries were still pretty painful, even with what they could do for her. And it was late and she needed the rest. So did I, but I don’t think that mattered any.
“You still here?” a woman asked from behind me, and I turned to face one of the nurses. Her voice wasn’t familiar, so she probably wasn’t the one who called.
I didn’t know how to reply, so I just turned back to the bed. It was hard to believe anyone who looked that peaceful would do anything like that, but then I reminded myself that I’d lived with this for years, now. Even so, constantly expecting to be in this situation never really prepared me for the reality.
“She’s going to be okay, you know,” the nurse said in what I’m sure she thought was a reassuring manner. “You can go home and get some rest.”
I didn’t reply. How could I, when I was the one that put her in that bed in the first place? How could I leave, either?
“She’s in good hands,” the nurse murmured in my ear as she passed me on her way to check vitals. Her voice felt gooey and gross, and made me stiffen in disgust, but I put up with it, because it was all I deserved.
“You know,” the nurse told me as she bent over to take a pulse, “We have a pretty good cafeteria. It’s open twenty-four hours. There isn’t any hot food, yet, but there is a pretty decent cup of coffee and some donuts.” She rose and looked me square in the eye, and with a smile beneath her mask, she added, “You should check it out.”
Her eyes told me that it wasn’t just a restaurant referral. She wanted me out of the room. I didn’t have the energy to argue, so I left, telling myself that she was in better hands than mine.
I heard the yelling well before I got there. And the yeller made it very clear what he was angry about. And, by the time I got to the cafeteria, someone was still trying to reason with him.
“Sir, you need to wear a mask,” the attendent insisted, his hands lifted in a calming manner. “You can’t be in here unless -“
“You can’t make me wear one of those things!” the man loudly protested, his face as red as his trucker hat. “I ain’t no sheep! Those things carry disease! I’m not goin’ ta breathe in my own germs! I got rights! This is Ameruka!”
“Sir,” the attendent, bless his heart, was now trying to sound firm. “If you don’t put on a mask -“
“You’ll what, Snowflake?” the man demanded, hunkering into an agressive posture. He squared off with the attendent, and the latter slowly backed off uneasily. The red-hat man sneered.
“That’s what I thought!” Red-hat man growled at the attendent. “You snowflakes all think you can push us around, but you can’t! I done my research! I know it’s all a scam to take away our freedom!”
“So, you want the freedom to die, is that it?” I asked him. It probably wasnt the smartest thing to say, but I really didn’t care. I had had enough for one night.
Red-hat whirled on me and snapped, “Whud you say?”
“You want to die, don’t you?” I said. Then, before he could say anything, I added, “Well, feel free! But don’t do it here. You don’t have the freedom to take anyone else with you. So, either wear the god damn mask, or get out. It’s that simple.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” the man frothed.
“And you can’t come in here spreading disease,” I told him. “This is a hospital, but you’re going to turn it into a morgue. You here visiting someone?”
“Huh?” Red-hat grunted, probably confused by the sudden shift in topic.
“Are you here visiting someone?” I asked slower, so he could follow the words easier. “Or do you just enjoy making an ass of yourself in hospital cafeterias?”
“What’s it to you, snowflake?” Red snapped, making that menacing John Wayne move to show how tough he was.
“Well,” I told him, not at all afraid for some reason. “Imagine that someone came in here with bubonic plague and breathed all over your loved one. How would that make you feel?”
Red snarled, and balled his fists, but he didn’t say anything.
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic,” I told him. “You might not, but your loved one is going to die if anyone came in here with the disease and spread it all over the place. Wearing a mask is the easiest way to prevent that, or are you too stupid to realize that?”
He looked like he was going to hit me, and really, I wished he would. It would have served me right. I would have deserved it. In fact, I sweetened the pot for him.
“You want to talk about snowflakes?” I told him. “What about all those people who refuse to use their brain for a second and take some god damn common sense steps to at least protect themselves and their family from a deadly disease, not to mention everyone else that they come in contact with? All you do is watch those fake news channels and eat up the lies with a spoon, until your brain is so full of crap you have to turn yourself upside down to poop. If you used your brain for once, you would realize those channels are only doing it for the ratings, and they don’t care if you live or die as long as they make a profit. So, what is it going to be, Snowflake? You want to put on a mask, or are you going to leave?”
He was about to take a swing at me when security burst in and tackled him to the floor. Damn it! But as security was escorting Red out, the attendent offered me free dinner, so at least that was something. Not what I deserved, but something.
Tales of a Tired Daddy 