8

THE GIFT

I didn’t know what time it was when Dad woke me up. It was dark out and everything seemed quiet, like it was the middle of the night.

“Did you brush your teeth before bed?” he asked, and I could smell the beer on his breath.

“No,” I said.

“Well, get up and come to the bathroom. Your mom would kill me if I didn’t make you brush your teeth,” he said.

I washed my face and the moment I stuck the toothbrush in my mouth he started talking. “I been thinkin’,” he said.

Even though I was sleepy I knew his thinkin’ was somehow going to be worse for me than for him.

“I know I wasn’t there for you for your whole life,” he started. “And I been struggling with how to make it up to you. Like what would be the greatest gift I could give you? And then just now, bingo! I was on the front porch and it came to me. I’ve been thinkin’ about these patches,” he said, holding the box of them in his hand. “I bet if you didn’t wear them you’d never know the difference.”

I spit into the sink. “You’d know the difference,” I said. “And so would I.”

“I’ve always found,” he said, sitting down on the lowered toilet seat, “that if I need to lick a problem I just tackle it cold turkey. Take my alcohol problem, for example—the last time I was arrested for DWI the judge threw me in jail and there was no booze there. None. Believe me, they didn’t give me a little old alcohol patch. Nope. It was just me and the walls and, buddy, they sent me to a work farm and in the beginning I thought I’d go bonkers. But day by day I got better. I worked like a demon under the sun in those fields, and the old poison just sweat out of me until I got a grip on myself and beat it. It was force of will!” He gave out a low whistle and made a muscle, then slapped it with his hand. “The mind is a muscle,” he said as he pointed to his head, “and determination is the exercise that keeps it tough!”

“But that was alcohol,” I said. “Mine is real medicine. A doctor gave it to me.”

“Same difference,” he said, and smirked. “A bartender gave me mine.”

“Well, what about your nicotine patch?” I shot back, and pointed to his shoulder with the yellow-eyed skull tattoo.

“You got me there,” he said, and for a moment I thought all his big ideas would pass and he’d agree with me and go to bed.

But then he said, “Look at me. I’m a hypocrite. ‘Do as I say, don’t do as I do.’ No kid would listen to a dad who is that way. I’m telling you to suck it up while I use this crutch. Well, no more.” He reached across his body and peeled the flesh-colored patch off his shoulder. “No more drugs,” he growled. He balled it up in his hands and tossed it into the toilet.

“My patch is not a drug,” I pleaded. “It’s medicine.”

“It’s a drug,” Dad insisted, and reached for me. “It’s a crutch.”

I stepped away. “It’s a help,” I replied. “I have to wear it. You don’t know what happens to me when I don’t have it.”

“What could happen to you? You’d find out that you are okay. Is that it? You’d find out that you aren’t some drug-dependent guinea pig for doctors? Joey, son,” he said, “the greatest thing I could do for you is to show you that you are a normal kid and don’t need this stuff.”

“I’m already a normal kid,” I said.

“Not with that patch on,” he said, reaching toward me again. “Normal kids don’t need medicine every day.”

I just stood there with my back to the wall and lowered my head because I knew what was coming and there was nothing I could do about it.

“I watched you pitch out there today and I don’t think there is a thing wrong with you. Nothing. I don’t think you need that medicine. Heck, giving you medicine is like giving a fish more water.”

I wanted him to stop telling me who I was when I knew better. He wanted me to be something I wasn’t, and I wanted him to be something he wasn’t. We were so far apart. And yet, even though I knew he was wrong, he was my dad, and I wanted him to be right. More than anything, I wanted him to have all the answers.

Then he reached under my shirt quick as a cat and ripped off my patch. “You are liberated,” he announced seriously. “You are your own man, in control of your own life—and free as a bird.” He held the patch between his fingers like it was a crusty scab and dropped it in the toilet. “No more patches,” he said. “You don’t need them. You’re going to be a winner without them.”

“I don’t think so,” I whispered.

“There’s no going back now,” he said. “We don’t need this stuff. Real men can tough it out. Be determined. Don’t you tell your mom,” he said. “She’ll be upset with me. But once you show her you don’t need this stuff, she’ll really respect what I’m doing here.”

Then he stood up and lifted the lid of the toilet. And one by one he took my patches out of the box and balled them up in his fist and dropped them into the bowl. I tried to reach for them but he held me back with one hand.

“You’re in my house now, buddy. You may not know it yet but the greatest gift I can give you is to take something away from you. Funny, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t funny to me. Especially when he flushed the tank and kept flushing it over and over as he dropped the patches into the swirling water, and as they spun around in that funnel I felt it was me who was spinning around and around and being flushed down a hole. I just started to cry. I didn’t jump around and bang my head on things or bounce off the walls or pitch a fit in any way. I just stood still and quietly cried. And I was thinking to myself, The next time you cry you won’t be standing still. You’ll be dancing a little crazy jig like a person being stung by a million bees. I remembered how that felt.

I looked at myself in the mirror and I still had toothpaste in my mouth and around my lips and already I looked like a mad dog.

“Now be a good boy and finish brushing,” Dad said once the last patch had disappeared. “Your mom will kill me if you get a cavity while I’m looking out for you.”

I brushed a little more, then said good night and trudged back to my bedroom. I crawled into bed and pulled Pablo up and tucked him between my shoulder and chin. I kissed him on the head and felt his whiskers tickle my lips. I kept thinking that there must be some way for me to talk Dad into changing his mind. Even though I knew the patches were down the drain, maybe we could get new ones. Maybe he could tell Mom he lost them. She’d be mad but she’d get more for me.

I wanted to get up and call her. But I could hear him crossing the living room. The refrigerator door opened and bottles rattled and clinked. A bottle hissed as its cap was twisted off, and Dad plopped back down on the sofa to watch TV.

“You shouldn’t be drinking,” I heard Grandma say. “Go to bed.”

“It’s just beer,” he replied. “If you don’t like it, you can pack your oxygen tank and hit the road.”

She didn’t say anything more and I lay in bed and all I could imagine was the worst part of me getting on a train a long ways off. That old Joey was coming to get me and I couldn’t do anything about it. Day by day he would get closer. Even if I got up and started running away, he would catch me. There was nothing to do but wait, and worry. And worry wouldn’t protect me, so I closed my eyes and told myself to sleep while I could.