Rule #9 by Sheri Duff
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My father sits with the woman from the pottery shop, Bianca, in the empty waiting room. The smell of rubbing alcohol penetrates my nose. I don’t know how Jack and I even got here. I know I didn’t drive. But I don’t remember walking in. It’s like the world stopped and turned black. Not a haze that hinders sight but complete emptiness surrounds me.
“Alicia’s in with her dad.” My father stands and hugs me. I’m still mad, but I can’t help sinking into his arms like I did when I was small, that safe place that nobody can penetrate through. My dad hasn’t hugged me like this for months. I’ve needed this. But this isn’t the way I wanted to get my daddy back.
We wait for what seems like hours. My dad paces back and forth, answering phone calls and emails on his smartphone. Jack taps on his iPod, playing some tower game. Bianca can’t stay in the room, so she kneels in the chapel on the main floor, praying with beads. I close my eyes. I can’t talk. I need to know that everything’s going to be okay.
Lily shows up with salads, sandwiches, and coffee. She tries to offer me something, anything.
“Thanks, I’m not hungry,” I say.
“Darlin’, you have to eat.” Lily pulls me up from the chair and sits with me while I force the green leaves down. She doesn’t talk. Instead, she fills the fork with food each time I set it down.
I force a quarter of it down, and then push it away. Lily stands and fluffs the pillows she brought from home. Alicia’s escorted back into the waiting room by a hospital volunteer on one side of her and a man with a white collar on the other. The priest looks young, really young. I thought all priests were old.
My mom’s Catholic. I’m actually Catholic, as far as my first communion goes. I wore the white dress and the flowered tiara to church in second grade. I ate the wafer, and I remember the sweet taste of the wine. My mom doesn’t go to church anymore, so I don’t either. I don’t know what my father does, which is strange. I should know this.
The priest smiles and talks as if nothing is wrong. “So you’re Massie?” the priest asks.
“Yes.” Great, Alicia talks to her priest about me. That can’t be good. I haven’t been very nice. He probably hates me.
“I’m Father Joe. Benny wanted to make sure you read this.” He hands me a torn piece of paper.
Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but they tell us dragons can be beaten.—G.K. Chesterton.
My own dragon lingers inside me. I’ve learned that if I open up, my dragon’s power fades. I can laugh. I can find happiness. I can let people in who will change my world and make it bright. Benny has taught me this. But when I fester and retreat, my dragon gains power. I know it’s not really Alicia and most of the time it’s not even my dad. But when my dad does bring out the worst in me, I should tell him. My dad can’t tell me. That’s my father’s dragon, his inability to communicate when things aren’t easy.
But now Benny’s dragon gains a new power, finding its way into Benny’s heart. Not the one he feels with, the heart that Benny needs to live. Benny lies in surgery and will stay on that cold operating table for the next three to six hours. We’re supposed to wait.
Jack finds a deck of Phase 10 cards in the waiting room. My dad, Alicia, Father Joe, Jack, and I gather at a round table and half-heartily play cards.
Finally, after we spend a couple of hours playing games, pacing the floor, and staring at the wall, the surgical assistant walks into the room. Alicia practically knocks over the table trying to stand up.
The woman, dressed in blue scrubs and a matching shower cap, informs Alicia, “He’s doing okay, but we have a ways to go. We’ve found three blockages.”
Alicia sinks into my father. The surgical assistant talks about grafting and blood flow. None of it makes any sense. I’d Google it, but I’m too afraid to find out.
We don’t continue the game. Instead we sit and look everywhere but at each other. My father can’t take it anymore and heads out for coffee. I’d go with him, but I can’t leave Benny.
I force Jack to leave, he needs to sleep. Alicia insists that Father Joe go as well.
Alicia and I sit alone. I don’t know what to do with this, either.
“He tries to do too much, especially for friends,” Alicia says. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. He’s always been my best guy friend.”
Is she talking about the priest? My facial expression gives me away.
“I’ve known him since second grade. He’s stood by me through everything. He always knew he’d be a priest. He tried to fight it in high school. He dated, but it never worked.”
I don’t know what to say to any of this.
“You should go home and sleep,” Alicia yawns.
“I couldn’t sleep if I tried,” I say.
“Oh, I could,” Alicia stretches her legs on the couch and closes her eyes.
“I’ll go find a blanket.” My father returns to the room, holding two coffees and a cup of ice water. He sets them down on the table. “Natalie wrote on your cup,” he says. Then he leaves in search of blankets.
I pick up the paper cup covered with grade-school-like decorations. Natalie has drawn a sun with a smiley face. The clouds also have faces that blow the wind around in circles all over the cup. The wind doubles as words. “We love you!!!” they say. Flowers with the same faces as the sun crowd the bottom of the cup in bold colors.
I can see it now. Natalie probably forced my father to take a seat and eat a pastry while she decorated the cup using the crayons set aside for kids. My dad probably tried to sneak out of there, but Natalie would’ve insisted he needed a break and fixed him a coffee in a ceramic mug, forcing him to drink his cup there.
“Natalie sure likes to talk.” My dad comes back into the room. He covers Alicia with the plain white blanket he retrieved from the nurses. Alicia doesn’t budge.
“I know you’re mad at me and I’m sorry,” he says. He doesn’t look at me. He brushes Alicia’s hair out of her face. Then he glances at me.
I stare at him but say nothing.
“What?” he asks.
“Who are you? And what did you do with my father?” I ask.
“Hey, I’m not that bad.” He stands and straightens up the mess on the table.
“You are too,” Alicia speaks in a clear voice. She opens her eyes, pulls herself up, and grabs her coffee. She takes her caffeine and the blanket. “I’m going for a walk.” She kisses my dad on the cheek before leaving the room.
“Okay, so let me have it,” my dad says. He turns to me and crosses his arms.
“Have what?”`
“Tell me why you’re so mad at me.” He knows, but he can’t admit it on his own. He needs help. He knows what he’s done. The problem is that if I tell him the truth, he’ll pout like a small child. But I don’t care anymore. I’m sick of the dragon breathing fire within me. Just because he can’t release his dragon doesn’t mean I can’t release mine. “You cheated on mom.” I glare at him.
“That was two years ago,” he says. He’s looking at me but not really. His eyes are focused on something past me.
“And that makes it okay?”
“I’ve already tried to apologize to your mom.” He turns away and looks out the window, which has a lovely view of the hall.
“And me?” I walk closer and look out with him. Then I turn to him. He needs to look at me. He needs to see what all of this has done to me.
“It wasn’t about you,” he says, fidgeting with his jacket. Then he turns and walks back to the table.
“Oh, okay. You walked out on me, too. You stopped talking to me, and you let that woman keep you away from me.”
“You weren’t very nice to her.” He turns and looks at me now like he has found a hole in my offensive line that his defense can break.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I needed to be nice to trash.”
“Massie.” If he could look me in the eye and use this tone, I would bend.
“Forget it.” I grab my cup of coffee only because Natalie had created a masterpiece on it, and I walk out of the waiting room.
Not thinking, I take the elevator down to the lobby. I hate elevators. I’m scared the doors will shut and never open. When the door does shut, I bounce back and forth. I tell myself to breathe. “In and out, Massie. Take deep breaths in and out.”
When the door opens I barrel out right into Vianna’s dad and the queen of the stepmonsters, Wendy. “Excuse you,” she says.
I don’t stop. Doesn’t she know that you need to move out of the way so that people can get off the elevator before she can get on?
“At least tell us,” she says, barely making eye contact.
“Are you talking to me?” I look around the room. I can’t believe she’s acting all concerned. She doesn’t even know Benny. And she’s not friends with my father. The only reason they all know each other is because my friends’ parents used to hang out all the time.
Vianna’s dad moves away to answer his phone. That gives Wendy the privacy she needs to explode. “You girls and your attitudes. Your dad’s ready to kill himself over your pathetic mood swings but you don’t care about that, do you?”
I stand with my feet glued to the ground.
“Peter can’t stop worrying that Natalie wants Annabelle dead. And Steve’s devastated that his daughter is giving up on her dream to become a doctor to attend some school in Nebraska to piss him off. I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you all had formed some club to kill your fathers.” She stops talking only because she notices her husband returning. She plasters a phony worried look across her face.
Vianna’s dad walks up still looking down at his phone, “What room is he in?”
“She wouldn’t tell me,” Wendy says.
“214.” I stomp off. Can this day get any worse?