I stagger up the drive. The ground is uneven, and my vision is blurred from sweat dripping in my eyes and stinging. Dad’s sitting on the porch in his wheelchair, staring at all the people who are trampling the corn. From here, they look like ants in an ant farm. Big destructive ants. Already the perfect curve of the outside of the knot is flattened on one side. There are vans parked everywhere. Our Joe is charging the reporters and gawkers fifty dollars a day to park on the field. There’s a kid in some kind of uniform down there showing people which spot is theirs. Joe’ll be able to build a bigger house. A waterslide. A spa. Redemption.
Except he won’t.
Tanis is in my head. Tanis is in me. Crooked in my heart. She says, “Our Joe will get what’s coming to him.”
Which is what?
“I guess you better give me a hand with the shower,” Dad goes. “Bad enough that I’m ‘elderly,’ I don’t need to stink too.” He nods at a pile of newspapers on the floor. I pick up the top one and skim it. I read: Elderly renter, Tom Pratt, and his son Dex… Dad is older than a lot of other parents around here. This is the kind of town where you have your kids when you’re eighteen because there isn’t anything else to do. Dad was forty-three when I was born. He had another wife before Mom. He had a whole other family.
I’ve left that part out on purpose.
Dad has two other sons. He hasn’t spoken to them in twenty years. I wonder just how much of a lousy father you have to be before your kids don’t talk to you for twenty years.
He is a shitty father.
But he’s still my dad. He’s just an old man in a wheelchair. Life 1: Dad 0.
I can’t hate him, and believe me, I’ve tried.
“I’ll shower you,” I go. “No problem.” I shed my hoodie and shoes and grab hold of his chair. I release the brake and push him inside, then down the hall to the bathroom. Then I go back and lock the front door. We never lock our door, so the lock itself is almost impossible to turn.
We never have before now, that is.
“This is shit,” Dad says. “Bullshit. Wonder how he did it.”
“He who?” I say.
“Our Joe,” he says.
“Maybe he didn’t,” I say. “Don’t you think maybe…?”
Dad laughs. “Yeah, right. This is real life, Dex. Not a movie.”
“Right,” I say. My brain storms, the electricity dripping down my back and jolting me upright.
I turn on the taps and the water blasts out too hot, so I wait because that’s all I can do. Eventually it regulates, sort of. Almost. And then I strip off and help Dad with his clothes. “This is Gary’s job,” I want to say. But I don’t. He’s my goddamn dad.
I step into the steam and half-carry him with me to his shower seat and strap him in. He washes himself, I just stand there, waiting for him to need me again. The water is too hot. It’s scalding. He doesn’t complain. I can’t help but see that his body hair is gray. The skin on his abdomen hangs like an old man’s. There is more loose skin on his arm that moves like a sleeve, like he’s wearing someone else’s body and it’s slightly too big. I shudder. Look away. The hot water feels good on my skin. I’m cold and can’t seem to get warm. This is as close as I’ve been in days. The shower drowns out all the noise.
There’s a lot of noise.
We finish up and I find him some clean clothes, which he struggles into while I pretend not to watch, standing by in case he falls. It happens sometimes. On top of being partially paralyzed, he has an inner-ear injury that makes him off-balance. I try to avert my eyes while still watching. Out the back window, there is no evidence of the chaos out front. It looks like it always looks.
I breathe in and out. I try not to think about the air and how it tasted and smelled. How real it was.
It was real.
“Dad,” I start.
But he interrupts me. “And here we go,” he says. “Cops.”
I follow his gaze out the window. Coming through the swathe of blackberries and other shrubbery that marks the end of Our Joe’s property is the RCMP.
“I won’t let them in, Dad,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
“Just get me back into my chair,” he says. “I’ll deal with it. Shut your mouth.”
“Fine,” I go. “Fine.” I hoist him off the edge of his bed and shove him into the chair hard enough that if he could feel his legs, it probably would have hurt. But he can’t feel them, so who cares, right?
“Hey,” he says, a warning in his voice.
“What?” I go.
“Careful,” he says. His words are sharp and clear. Something is different.
“Did you take your pills?” I say.
“None of your business,” he says. “Now get out of my way, I’ll take care of this. I knew it was coming. I’m not as dumb as I look.”
The knock on the door is loud. I sit down on Dad’s unmade bed. Sometimes I hate him. I want him to pay. I want him to pay. I wanted him to pay. And I said, “I don’t care what happens to me, but he can pay.” I said that. It was a hot day. The ground was cracked and dry. The lake had shrunk back into itself so it was more of a pond, but we still swam in it. For someone who hates water, I sure spend a lot of time in it.
I hate my dad.
I don’t hate my dad.
What did I do?
There are cops.
I stand up and start stripping off the sheets. My arms and legs move mechanically, Transformer smooth. I put on the new sheets, pulling each one tight. I can hear men’s voices in the front hall, but I can’t make out what they are saying.
Then I hear my dad, loud and clear, “Do I need a lawyer for this? You say the word, and I’ll call my guy. I don’t like where this is going.”
“We have to talk to him, sir,” a voice says. Then my name is called, loudly. “Dexter Pratt,” says the voice. “Don’t make us come in and get you.”
I finish tucking in the last sheet and I make a decision, because I don’t hate my dad but I do hate myself. I’ll take the heat. Man up. That’s what Dad used to always say when I cried as a kid, a goddamn kid who fell off my bike and bled from my knees and elbows, road burn on my legs. Man up, goddamn it.
But I can’t.
What Our Joe did was unforgiveable, and he will pay. Suddenly, I have clarity. Too much clarity. Like the house itself is humming a perfect high C and all around me the glass shatters, and behind all the glass, I see it. Our Joe has to pay for Tanis, but when I compared my dad and Our Joe, at the lake, looking at the cracked ground, I said, “Dad’s just as bad, and the whole fucking house is full of…”
And I said, “Foster care would be better.”
And I said, “Fuck him and fuck him and fuck Our Joe and fuck you.”
What I meant was, “Sorry.”
But it came out wrong. How do I explain? I want to explain. I have to explain. I smooth the sheet again and again and pull it tighter, and then I rip it off and lift it again, and it billows up and flattens, and in that second I forget why I hated my dad so much anyway.
I look at myself in the mirror, like I’m checking with myself to see if it’s okay. I look like I haven’t slept in a week. Self-consciously, I pat my tufty hair into some semblance of order and square my shoulders. I take a deep breath and step into the front hall.
I am not me, I remind myself. I am just some kid playing me on tv.
This is not real.