Page 19 of Just Enough

“I am going home to tell him…and to pack my things.”

My stomach dropped. “Right now?”

“Do you want to move with me?”

Her question surprised me because I never thought I’d hear her ask me that. And the weaker part of me wanted to grasp the opportunity so that I didn’t have to see what Mom’s leaving would do to Dad.

“We both can’t abandon him,” was my answer. I could never do that to him. I was already sweating and jittery about what would happen next.

I just knew I’d stay with him.

Mom had told me to go to Katie’s if I hadn’t wanted to be there when she told him and watch as she packed up and left our home, but I went home anyway. I sat on the porch and cried and as I waited for the yelling to start, I realized twenty was probably too old to be bothered by what was happening.

But I cried anyway. And when Mom loaded up her car and left after giving me a hug, I was still stunned that there was no yelling at all. Once her car faded in the distance, I decided to be brave and stepped inside.

Dad was sitting in his recliner, the same place he was always at. He sipped on a beer and his eyes were focused heavily on the screen… This was worse than not yelling or doing anything. He wasn’t even reacting.

I didn’t even know how to approach him or if I even should at all. I finally took a seat on the couch. “Dad?” I asked.

“You stayed?” he asked, finally looking over at me.

I nodded. “What are we gonna do?” I waited forever for him to reply. “I can help with the bills.”

“My check will cover everything,” he grunted, clearly uncomfortable that I even offered.

“Dad.” He looked at me once again. “Are you okay?”

“I’m an alcoholic who just lost his wife. I’ll be fine after a few more beers.”

I didn’t know how to answer that. “You don’t have to be an alcoholic.”

“I’ve been one this long, I don’t plan on changing. If it kills me, it kills me.”

His attitude rubbed me the wrong way because like always, I was left out and I wasn’t thought of. “You could try to stop,” I snapped. “You could have tried to love harder, you could have tried to have been a better husband and father, but as you are, you’re a shell. Can you blame Mom for leaving?”

He was just as surprised at my outburst as I was. I never yelled at them. I never had a reason to. We never talked enough to argue.

Because I hated myself for saying those things to him right after Mom leaving, I ran upstairs and distanced myself from the problem.

______

The following week to come would be a blur because every day felt the same. Dad was passed out when I got off work every day, and when I was off, I stayed home and watched him look down at himself almost in disgust as well as glaring at the TV and recliner he rested in everyday.

I made meals and managed to get food down him, but he wasn’t open to conversation and I hated that it relieved me. I didn’t know how to make him better. Icouldn’tmake him better. He had to want it, but by the volumes of beer he was consuming, he didn’t want it. He only wanted to be numb.

On a whim before class one morning, I took out his beer in the fridge and hid it in my room. I didn’t even know why. I watched him do this my whole life, but suddenly I felt the weight of it pressing down on me like I was him, and it was killing me just like it was him. This house was dark, darker than ever before. The walls were quiet and empty, and my dad filled his belly with more alcohol than he did food.

When I got home from the college that day, he had new beer in the fridge because I went upstairs to my room and found what I stashed away in my room.

I went back downstairs to confront him about it. “You weren’t drinking when you drove, were you?”

“How could I when I had none to drink?” he asked me. That was true, and I sighed in relief.

“Dad…” Only when he looked over at me, I couldn’t form the right words. Once more, I didn’t know how to help him. I needed the perfect words.

Because the wrong ones could do more damage.

So, I left my feelings unsaid.

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