What

Written By: TMC

Posted on March 9, 2007

I saw my Dad for the first time in four years today. I stood in the supermarket in front of the frozen meats and he was at the end of the snack aisle, penned in behind a fleshy, red-faced woman and her cart full of sugar water and canned death. I waved to him, but he looked straight through me, as if he were trying to read the expiration date on the pork chops behind me. I rushed toward him to give him a hug and tell him I’m sorry I never hugged him enough before, and he’d better come back right away and see my new house with the dogs, and the little cave where I do my work, and the quarter-sized hole in the middle of the living room floor, and the big TV in the big living room where we can watch football together.

And if he didn’t come I would be so mad; last time he disappeared on us I wasn’t ready for it and I’m still not ready for it, no matter how many times I act like it doesn’t bother me. You promised us you were done scaring us, I said, and still he stared past me. You promised you would come home.

I wrapped my arms around him but it was like trying to hug a cloud. I stepped right through him and he stood still. An old man with a prosthetic arm gave me a cock-eyed look, then pushed through my Dad’s stomach to grab a box of Pop Tarts. I wanted to break his arm off and throw it in the trash. I wanted to shove him on the ground and scream where do you get off still being alive when you mean nothing to me and he means everything? But I didn’t want to take my eyes off of Dad. Last time I did, he snuck away.

“Jerome McDougle sucks,” I said, and I thought maybe he blinked. “I really thought he’d be good.” The last conversation we’d ever had was in the hospital during the 2003 draft. The Eagles had traded up for McDougle, the big shot defensive end from Miami. He was going to replace Hugh Douglas, the big shot defensive end who’d recently migrated south to Florida. I’d sat next to his bed and told him about the trade and the pick, and he’d smiled.

By then he’d already fallen apart, and he didn’t look so much like Dad anymore; it was like talking to a second-rate wax likeness of him. Still, the smile was the same, even if he was beardless and his teeth were stowed in a bedside container. “Think he can play?” Dad had asked.

“Definitely,” I’d said. “All those guys from Miami are awesome. Like Ray Lewis and Dan Morgan.”

“I don’t know how you kids keep up with all those names,” he’d said, fighting to keep his eyes open. “You’re a smart kid.”

“It’s easy,” I’d said, shrugging. I stood and stepped away from the bed. “The best thing about this is that linemen can help out right away. If he’s as good as they say, things’ll be different this year.” When I finished, he smiled again and closed his eyes. I’d left the room then, and he would never be lucid again. Cancer spread, chemo made things worse, and we had to let him go. In one summer, we lost Hugh Douglas and got Jerome McDougle in return, and we lost Dad and got nothing back.

But here he was again, blocking my view of the Oreos, and I needed him to know how wrong I was about McDougle. “Never did anything good,” I said. “Got maybe one sack, then he got shot, and now he’s fat and looks like Bubba from Forrest Gump.” Wait, I thought, did Forrest Gump come out when he was still alive? Sometimes, when I try talking to him at night, I forget that maybe he hasn’t been around to see everything I have. “I mean, he never did anything right. Worst pick since Jon Harris,” I added.

It occurs to me now that they’d been so desperate for a solution on the line that they took the wrong approach to fixing it, and that they did more damage than good. But I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.

“They lost the NFC Championship again,” I said, and then he definitely blinked. Dad’s borders were fuzzy, a little wavy, like any proper apparition’s would be; it looked like he was shivering. “But then they won another one after that,” I said. “Beat the Falcons.”

He didn’t say anything—maybe he wasn’t allowed to say anything, I decided later—but his eyes opened wide as if to say Really? The Falcons? “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t worry, they mostly suck too.” He laughed soundlessly, but, seeing his belly bounce and his head rear back, open-mouthed, I could still hear it.

Looked over Dad’s shoulder, I realized a teenage store employee was staring at me. I probably didn’t have much time before they sent store security to ask me stupid, demeaning questions, and to lead me away like a confused old lady.

“Have you been able to see the games at all?” I asked Dad. There was so much to tell him. McNabb’s better than ever; so is Reid even though sometimes he drives me crazy; Westbrook, the little Villanova kid, might be the team MVP; Trent Cole is ten times the player McDougle is; 4th and 26; signing TO; losing TO; Chad Lewis in the NFC Championship; the comeback against the Chiefs; my new favorite player, Sheldon Brown; this monster Shawn Andrews, you won’t even believe how big and fast this kid is, like an elephant in pads. So much had happened since he’d gone.

I wanted to say everything, but I said nothing. I stared stupidly at him and tried to decide which information was most urgent, in case we ran out of time. As I struggled to fill him in on the details of the past four years, he smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder, and I sensed then that he already knew, that he’d known all along. Maybe he just wanted to hear it from me.

© Copyright Sport Fiction • Powered by Wordpress • Using Detour theme created by Brian Gardner.