Page 13 of Cascade

I turn to the doctor and say, “I am not a physician—but I’m a Penn-educated CMN. My father is an alcoholic.”

The doctor squints, looking back and forth between me and my father. “Mr. Whittaker, is this accurate? How many drinks would you say you consume in a one-week period?”

My father grumbles and shoves his arm through his frayed sweatshirt. “Like I said. Ten to twelve.”

Exasperated, I touch the doctor’s arm. “He’s not being truthful. He has ten to twelve on an afternoon—”

“Opal, enough with the lies! She exaggerates about everything,” he says to the doctor. He turns his glassy eyes to me. “I’ve told you a thousand times to mind your business!”

“It is my business when you pass out and light our house on fire because your cigarette falls out of your mouth and torches the couch.”

“That’s not how that happened. You remember it wrong because you were a damn teenager. Probably out of your mind on sex and drugs!”

I am about to rage back at him, about to pull my hair by the roots and scream while the doctor looks on in confused horror, when I hear a cough as Archer settles into the doctor’s spinning stool. “So, Mr. Whittaker, how many private clubs would you say you go to and sign the book?”

My father’s jaw works side to side and I see something shift in his eyes. Something akin to respect. “You know, the membership book,” Archer continues. My father nods. He scratches at his chin and, talking to Archer now—not the doctor—he says, “Four.”

Archer nods and leans back against the wall, his hands clasped casually behind his head. “Four, ok, so you probably have—what? One or two each time you go in? What’s a beer cost at the Elks Lodge these days? Two bucks?”

“C’mon,” my father says.

Archer leans forward. “What? Three bones for a Beast Light?”

My father laughs. “Buck-85, or five for a pitcher.”

Archer nods. “I’m a math guy. I’d go for the pitcher myself. So you’re signing the book at 4 places. You do any of those punch hole things I hear about from the Acorns? Those things where you can win a giant tub of cheese balls or peanut butter?”

My father’s face lights up again and he laughs, smacking his hand off the exam table. “Won six dozen packs of Captain’s Wafers down the Willow Tree,” he says, looking pleased.

Archer grins. He looks pensive, scratches his own chin. “So we’re probably looking at 5 pitchers on a slow week. Seem fair?”

My father nods. Then he scowls at the doctor. “Could have asked in a way that made better sense,” he says. The doctor is scribbling notes furiously.

“So,” I say, arms crossed, anger oozing from my pores. “As I said, my father is an alcoholic and his alkaline phosphatase is always elevated. But if you feel a scan is warranted to rule anything out…”

Now it’s the doctor’s turn to sigh and he shakes his head. “Well, his lungs sounded clear. But like you said, his blood panel…”

I close my eyes and count to five, open them and feel the tension sink from my shoulders into my gut, where I’ll carry it around for a few weeks, I’m sure. “He can be very charming and deceptive when he’s in a hurry to get somewhere.”

The doctor nods.

“Are we all set here?”

“I believe we are. Mr. Whittaker, I’ll see you back in three months just to check in.”

I start to leave the room as they talk, unwilling to hear anymore. Unwilling to subject myself to any vulnerability of my father’s. For too many years my own feelings and reactions were labeled as worries, as not minding my business. Even the slightest bit of abnormality in his own routine warranted a full panel of friends for moral support, a keg, and days spent cleaning up the aftermath.

I hear my father holler after me, “Not even gonna say goodbye? Typical.”

I close myself in the bathroom in the hall, splash cold water on my face and lean against the mirror. I had almost let myself hope he did have cancer, that I might finally be rid of the burden of having to care for him, or about him anyway. And then the shame of those feelings starts to battle with the fear and anxiety I felt earlier. I let it pulse through me for just a minute, before I stuff it all back down inside.

I breathe deeply in and then out through my nose, and head back into the hallway, where I plan to ask Archer Crawford to forget he ever met me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Archer

OPAL’S FATHER SQUINTS at me as he ties his ratty sneakers and prepares to leave the doctor’s office. “What’d you say your name was again?” Not knowing what else to do with his follow-up orders, the doctor had handed them to me. When I slide them back to Mr. Whittaker, he throws them on the floor and steps on them as we walk out of the room.

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