Dad was at it again.
“I miss that dog. He was friendlier than Mom, I’ll tell you that.”
“That was eighteen years ago, Dad.”
He was in the kitchen, fumbling around. A wisp in a tight flannel shirt. Not drunk, just acting fucking weird. Opening and closing cabinet doors, scratching a non-existent beard. He started fighting with the bread box. I walked into the kitchen, took my beer with me. I reached behind him and opened the bread box door. He softened yet wavered. I pushed him aside gently and grabbed the wheat bread, undid the tie.
“You want ham and cheese?”
“Will, everything that has lived in my life. It’s been alive. But now it’s…”
“Come on, man.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t apologize, Dad.”
“I know, but...it’s so weird. My memory...It goes like a wave. Sloshes around. And then it’s gone. I don’t know how else to word it.”
I waited for him to at least try while I made his sandwich. But he didn’t talk. I looked out the kitchen window ahead of me as I did. Snow. Getting darker out and we had nowhere to go. I moved back when Mom moved on. Doing my part as the loving, doting son. Because no one else would. No one else could.
“Look, I’m sure as God made little green apples that...I got a bad hand here. In life. Mom and that dog.”
“Well, then if Mom’s a bad hand, then I’m the bad fucking card, because here I am, making your sandwich.”
“Will, that’s not what I meant...I…” And I turned and there he was, scratching a non-existent beard. I almost yelled at him to rip that tight flannel shirt off. I gave him the unfinished sandwich with no plate. I sat there with my beer and watched him drop crumbs all over himself. I had a haze going.
“The dog,” he said between bites.
“Christ, who gives a fuck? Got hit by a truck. What other chapter do you want to add to that story?”
I sat there and finished my beer while I waited. My dad was always a terrible shot. In the Gulf War, he missed every target. Said he never adapted to the weight of a rifle. But fuck, does he know the weight of a bullet. Because he went for the kill and it was gorgeous.
“Well, then...what about Lauren?”
“What about her?” My voice got hard, like a fall down the steps.
He chewed. He sat stoic. “Shouldn’t you get over it, too? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“No, Dad,” I said quietly.
“To get over your wife. Who I liked more than the dog, actually.”
“Dad, shut the fuck up.”
Dad knew he fired right. He sat in the chair, slowly eating the sandwich. I thought more about Lauren and her soft skin. My eyes expanded. Dad was not thinking about soft skin. He was thinking of dog hair and death. He stuck his hand out and I saw the sandwich half taunting me.
“Want half?”
Kevin Richard White's fiction appears in Hobart, Rejection Letters, Soft Cartel and X-R-A-Y among many others. He lives in Philadelphia.