Save It For Next Time (502 hits)
Category: UberMadness! Entryno reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <deisangua.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-04-04 01:58:36 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
The man stood on the corner of the street, talking loudly at every passerby. His suit was ragged, his face unshaven, but he did not carry himself like a man who had fallen from grace. Tommy, barely five years old, watched in fascination as the man's hands waved earnestly with every confident word.
"...and it is far too easy to forget that anger is a weakness, or that love can take strength..."
Tommy reached out and pulled on the rough polyester fabric of his father's slacks. His father reached down and took the boy's hand without looking, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
"What's that man talking about?" Tommy asked him.
His father didn't answer. He was busy talking to Tommy's mother, rapid fire words dancing with importance in the air around his head. His free hand moved wildly with each phrase, reminding Tommy of the stranger on the corner, and the boy wondered if that was what smart men did when they spoke.
He tugged at the pant leg once more, and this time his father knelt down, ruffling Tommy's hair with one large hand.
"What's he..." Tommy began to ask again, twisting so that he could point backwards with his much smaller hand.
"Save it for next time okay, champ? I have to go to work, now. You take care of your mother, you hear?"
Then his father was gone, the hard heels of his working shoes thudding powerfully against the concrete as he strode away down the street.
Tommy looked up at his mother. She smiled at him, and he knew she was the most beautiful person in the world. She took the same hand that his father had been holding only a moment before and pulled him gently in the opposite direction. As they passed the corner the tattered man looked directly at Tommy, speaking as though the boy was his only audience.
"The question is: What kind of person do you want to be?"
* * *
Tommy was twelve when he came home from school to find his father's old Buick in the driveway. Its doors were wide open and the engine was running, and Tommy found this almost as odd as his father returning home from work so early. A catalogue of recent crimes ran like laughing demons through his head, from skipping music class to drowning the neighbor's garden with a hose, to the dirty magazine hidden under his mattress.
He paused, listening for sounds that might warn him he was in trouble. He heard nothing. The Buick's slightly bent hood seemed to smirk at him, as though laughing at his uncertainty. Tommy snarled back at it before edging towards the front door.
He had taken no more than a few steps when the front door flew open and his older sister Gabrielle ran out from the house. His father followed immediately, carrying something large and white in his arms. The look on his father's face was all it took to drive Tommy back a step. He had never seen the man afraid of anything, but panic had twisted those hardened features into an unfamiliar gray grimace. It took Tommy a moment to realize that the shrouded bundle his father was carrying was his mother.
"What happened?" Tommy shrieked, dropping his backpack on the ground and running forward.
"Not now, Tommy," his father snapped as he raced to the open doors of the Buick. "I need you to just stay with your sister right now."
"But what's happened to Mom?" Tommy asked as his father swiftly set his mother's limp form in the passenger seat, roughly arranging her arms and legs so that she was safely inside. As his father buckled the seatbelt over her chest she turned her head and moaned softly, and Tommy reached out to touch her.
"What's wrong with-"
"Godammit, Tommy!" his father snapped, whirling on him. "Just save it!"
Tommy stumbled backwards onto the lawn, stunned into silence. He had never heard his father swear like that.
Gabrielle put her hand on Tommy's arm as their father slammed the door shut and ran around to the driver's side. Tommy looked at her and saw that she, too, was afraid. Then she put her other hand on Tommy's shoulder and carefully turned to look him in the eyes.
"Tommy, I think Mom's real sick."
The Buick sped out of the driveway behind her, leaving only a faint cloud of blue smoke behind.
* * *
"So he just blew you off? Like he doesn't care what college you go to?"
"That's what he always does! Every time I try to talk to him he's either at work or in his study. And it doesn't matter what it is, it's always: 'Gee, Tom, I'm kinda busy right now, can we save it for next time?' It makes me so angry, the way he doesn't care!"
"I'm sure he cares. He probably doesn't know how to show it or something. My step-mother can be like that sometimes."
"But my dad doesn't know how to show anything! He's never happy, never sad, never anything! Unless he's angry, of course."
"Well, what about your mom? What'd she say?"
"My mom wants me to get into a good college, of course. But my dad's the one who knows about these things, and I don't know anything about it."
"That sucks."
"And the drugs, they don't keep her awake a lot. She drifts."
"You'll figure it out, Tommy. I mean, I only got a good reply back from one place. You have me totally beat. And you can always call your sister. She's been through this."
"I know, I shouldn't be complaining. It could always be worse. He just pisses me off. Wants to tell me what to do, but then won't ever listen to me. I shouldn't even care what he thinks anymore."
"That sounds really screwed up."
"It is. I swear to God I will never be like him."
* * *
Kate reached over and took the small cigar from Tommy's lips with a playful sneer. He opened his mouth to protest, but she gave him a quick kiss before he could say anything.
"Those things are nasty," she told him.
"Maybe, but it's not like I bought it. Chris gave it to me when I told him about us. It's a tradition or something."
She laughed softly, and he smiled at her, admiring the way her mouth moved in the light. He loved it when Kate smiled, and he loved it that she hadn't stopped smiling since he had proposed to her. His gaze drifted down the curve of her neck and shoulders, and then over the gentle swell of her breast. He barely noticed it when she snapped the cigar in half and tossed it into the yellow trash can near his desk.
"I think a cigar's only for when you're having a baby, dummy," she snickered, leaning back on him.
"Are you sure?" he asked, blinking in surprise.
"No."
They both laughed then, and fell back onto the bed together. Tommy held his new fiancée close to his chest, enjoying the feel of her warmth against his side. After a long, comfortable moment she rolled over, lying halfway on top of him.
"What did your parents say?" she asked curiously.
"I don't know. I haven't told them yet."
"You haven't? Why not?"
"I don't think my father would care," Tommy muttered, waving his hand as if to swat away an invisible fly. The bitterness in his voice embarrassed him, and he leaned back to let his eyes explore the landscape of the ceiling above him. "Maybe I'll save it for the next time my family gets together."
Kate grew quiet, and after a minute Tommy began to feel submerged by her silence. He sighed heavily and twisted his neck so that he could look at her face.
She wasn't smiling anymore.
* * *
Tommy was running. Running like hell was chasing him, dodging past nurses and wheelchairs, and slowing only when he had to read the signs. The same plea ran over and over through his head, sometimes stopping at his lips to be uttered in a desperate moan.
"Please don't let me be too late."
But he was. When he got to the intensive care ward, Gabrielle's swollen and red-rimmed eyes told Tommy everything he needed to know. His mother was dead, and he was not going to have the chance to say good bye.
"S-She's still in 406."
It was all his sister could bring herself to say, but it was enough. He nodded quickly and began moving toward Room 406.
He saw his father the moment he entered the hall. The older man was moving towards the waiting room stiffly, like a man who had just walked away from a terrible car wreck, but Tommy could not bear to look at him for long. The two men had not spoken to each other in months, and Tommy found it frightening that his absence didn't seem to matter any longer.
As he passed his father, however, the older man attempted to reach out and take him by the arm. Tommy jerked to the side and kept walking. He could feel a deep and outraged anger building like a storm in his chest.
"Tommy," his father called after him, "Please, I really need to talk to you."
The desperation in his father's voice was so clear that Tommy stopped immediately. A flash flood of rage shot up his spine, and he shuddered violently. There had never been a more perfect moment to say what he wanted to say.
Save it for next time.
Tommy slowly turned around. His father stood quietly a few feet in front of him, his face pale and his posture shattered. Tommy had once thought of him as the strongest person in the world, but now he looked smaller than he had ever seen him, weak and lonely and somehow afraid. A million miles lay in the two steps between them, but from that vast distance he could finally see that his father was no more than a man.
The taste of those five venomous words swelled behind Tommy's lips, but before he spoke an unexpected thought passed through his mind like a shooting star, its source and destination both unknown. This was not the person he wanted to be.
Standing there before tattered specter of his father, Tommy did not know what to do. So he simply lowered his head in a nod and said:
"Okay."
And for the first time in his life, Tommy saw his father cry.
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