By the end of that October, I was back up to drinking a handle every three days. I’d stock up every time I went out to buy my father his cases of rum, then stash my extras in the basement, concealing them in the laundry room’s darkened alcove. I didn’t want to give my father the satisfaction of knowing that I was juicing almost as heavily as he was. When I’d finish a bottle, I’d hide it in the bottom of a laundry basket full of Eli’s clothes and bring it downstairs, switching it out for a new bottle and stashing the empty in the darkened alcove. Then I’d smuggle out the empties early in the morning on trash pickup day, while my father was passed out and before Eli woke up.
On Halloween, the day my father died, I picked up Eli after school in the afternoon and took him trick or treating. After we got home and he had eaten his allowed amount of candy, we laughed together as I fended off Eli’s attacks from his inflatable red lightsaber with a hollow cardboard tube I’d found in the basement, a rocks glass of bourbon in my off hand.
Eli had generally kept his distance from Dad since our first day there. But tonight, excited over his candy and costume, he ran over to my father, who was in his customary slump on his recliner. Eli, giggling, bashed at his grandfather’s leg with his inflatable lightsaber, calling out, “I’ll never join you, Emperor!”
My dad reached down and abruptly grabbed Eli by his upper arm and pulled him in until they were face to face. “You don’t hit me with that,” he roared, spittle flying into Eli’s face.
Eli howled in pain and fear as my father’s clawlike hand dug into the soft flesh of his upper arm. He stared into my father’s scowling, ravaged face, then dropped his lightsaber and looked over at me. His eyes were wide and full of tears, his lower lip trembling. My father stared at him balefully for another moment, then let go of Eli’s arm and turned back to the television.
Eli ran over to me, sobbing. I held him tight and stroked his hair and murmured, “It’s OK, Eli. Shhh, it’s OK.” I took deep breaths to control my anger and stared over at my father. But he took no notice as he sipped his drink and stared vacantly at the television.
I managed to tamp down the cold fury that arose somewhere deep in my chest and put on a calm and even voice. “Go ahead, Eli, go upstairs, brush your teeth and get in your jammies. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Eli looked up at me with a sad smile and then padded up the stairs, his costume’s black cape billowing behind him.
As Eli retreated, my father rose unsteadily to his feet using the handles of his walker, then wheeled into the kitchen. I watched as he made another drink, the same way he always did: filling his large tumbler with ice and rum about three-quarters of the way to the top, then adding a short splash of Diet Coke on top.
I snapped at him. “Why even fucking bother with the Diet Coke. Who do you think you’re fooling at this point?”
He stopped and stared at me. Then he gave a little snort. “Fooling? Think you’re better than me, huh? Well guess what, I can hear you sneaking downstairs into the basement.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gave a nasty chortle and drew closer to me, using tentative half-steps, as if testing the ground for slick spots. He got close enough that I could smell the rum on his breath. “What do I mean? I mean I can hear you in the mornings when you sneak out your little bag of clinking bottles when you think I’m asleep.” Then he mimicked, “clinkclinkclinkclinkclink,” in a high-pitched, mocking tone.
I glared at him a moment, hoping to cow him. But his eyes were full of anger and his teeth were bared in cruel humor. I stepped back, still meeting his eyes, then turned around and went upstairs to help Eli get to bed.
After Eli was tucked in, I sat in his room a while, nursing my bourbon and replaying it all in my head. My father’s talon-like hand digging into my son’s arm. Eli’s yelp of pain. My father’s terrible grin.
I’d worked myself into a barely constrained fury by the time I finished my drink. I left Eli’s room and went back downstairs. My father was at the kitchen counter pouring yet another one of his rum drinks. He was itching for a fight just as much as I was, I could tell, from the way he thrust his tumbler under the ice maker with a loud bang; the loud thud as he slammed down his bottle of rum on the counter after his heavy pour; the angry sizzle of the soda he splashed into the drink.
I decided I wasn’t going to be bullied—if it was a fight he wanted, it would be on my terms. So I walked in close to him and put my finger in his face. “Don’t you ever fucking put your hands on Eli like that again.”
He had left his walker a few feet away. He steadied himself by putting his palm on the kitchen counter and leaning his weight on it. Then he turned to square off with me. “That boy of yours is soft,” he said. “He needs to toughen up. Or he’ll wind up weak. Like his daddy.” He had a little smile on his face as he said this, like he was having fun.
I leaned my face in closer to his. “Weak?” I laughed in his face. “You’re one to talk. Look at you. Wheeling around on that walker of yours. You piss in a fucking bucket.”
He inched in closer to me, unsteadily, until his face was just a few inches away. “Fuck you,” he yelled. “Think you’re better than me.”
“That’s right. I am better than you. Let’s see what you lost.” I started counting off on my fingers. “Mom. The family business you were forced to sell. Your gold digger of a second wife. And now your fucking legs.” I laughed again, mirthlessly.
He broke into a predatory grin, with those still-gleaming teeth standing out of his snarled and yellowed beard. “Well look at you. You think you’re better than me? Well you’re not. You already lost your home and your wife – that’s why you’re here with me. You’re way ahead of schedule, boy.”
I felt the color drain from my face. He seemed to like what he saw, and gave me that predatory grin again.
“Face facts. You’re a no-good piece of shit drunk just like my daddy was. Just like I am.”
I stared at him, silent. My face felt hot, and I felt tears well up in my eyes, like when he used to yell at me when I was Eli’s age.
He gave a malicious, triumphant smile as he began to turn toward his walker. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder at me, adding, as if it had just come to mind, “And with a father like you, your boy will be a piece of shit drunk, too.”
He delivered those words in a mocking, sing-song tone. I felt a searing in the inner reaches of my mind, the sensation of being dissected by an expertly wielded blade. I felt myself go ice cold, then reach out for his shoulder.
#
I swear on Eli’s soul, I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I’d just meant to grab him, to wheel him around, to look in his eyes so he could see the pain he’d caused me with his words. To demand an apology.
But he was so weak, so unsteady, that instead I sent him spinning around, then sprawling face-first into the counter.
I could see it all unfolding but was powerless to stop it – my perception far faster than my ability to move. His tumbler flew out of his hand as he fell. Then I heard a sickening crunch as his face hit the counter, his mouth slightly ajar. I could hear a sound like cracking porcelain as his top front teeth smashed into the countertop. As he continued to fall, his nose met the unyielding surface, then his forehead, causing his head to rebound back with a vicious snap before his body hit the floor with a dull thud.
“Dad,” I shouted. I rushed over to his side. He was face down, moaning in pain. I rolled him over to assess the damage.
I felt a wave of nausea as I gazed down at the ruin of his face. The impact with the countertop had torn away much of his top lip, still attached to his face by a thin flap of flesh, but leaving the remains of his four upper incisors exposed. They had broken off nearly to the gumline, leaving only jagged and splintered nubs behind. His tongue was gushing blood as well; I looked up to where he’d hit the counter and saw long grooves from where his teeth had hit, each of them dabbed with a smear of blood, saliva, and tooth fragments, as well as a pink nub of his tongue that had been severed by the impact and now laid dumbly on the white counter. His bottom teeth had torn through the skin just below his bottom lip, leaving a ragged hole that gushed blood, comingled with fragments of tooth and jaw, into his matted and tangled beard. His nose was mangled as well, crumpled into his face like the accordioned remains of one of his stubbed-out cigarette butts, leaving his nostrils exposed and emitting little bubbles of blood as he struggled to breathe.
But somehow he was still alive. He made a wet gagging sound as he tried to breathe through his shattered nose and mouth, and I could hear him let out little moans of pain through his broken teeth.
I brought my face close to his. He was wheezing now, gurgling blood, and his eyes were unfocused, moving uncertainly back and forth. He began to cough up blood and shards of shattered teeth; his matted beard was now saturated with a foamy red paste that smelled of rum and coppery blood.
“It’s OK, Dad, shhh,” I told him. I leapt up from his side and began to call 911.
But then I paused.
I thought to myself: How long can this go on?
And I thought to myself: If he’s gone, I can get sober again, be a better father to Eli.
And then I thought to myself: What chance does Eli have if he’s still around?
And then, finally: This house, all for me and Eli. And whatever is left in the old man’s bank account. We could live off that for years while we figure out our next move.
So I put my phone away and I kneeled back on the floor next to my father.
I took his hand in mine. Then I tilted his head back and pinched his broken nose closed. I saw confusion, then terrified comprehension, enter his eyes. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a little spurt of blood.
I kept holding his nose shut as I tried to comfort him. “Shhh, Dad. You’re going to rest now.”
He began choking on the blood, a strangled gargling wheeze. He made that sound for several minutes, frightened eyes still staring up at me as I kept his head tilted back and his nose sealed. At one point he put his wasted hand feebly up to my face, as if to ward me off. But he was far too weak to stop me, and after a few seconds he lost strength and his arm dropped slowly to the floor as I maintained my hold on his nose.
“Time to rest now, Dad,” I told him. His limbs began to jerk spasmodically as his body consumed the last of his oxygen. But minutes passed and the spasms came less and less frequently, weaker and weaker, until he stilled entirely. He gave me one final look of unbearable fatherly love before the last of the light left his eyes, and then he laid silent, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling.
I let go of his nose, hot tears running down my face. Then I stood up and grabbed my bottle of bourbon. I took a long pull from the bottle through my sobs as I surveyed the gory scene.
And then I heard something behind me, a sharp intake of breath from the kitchen doorway.
It was Eli.
He stood there speechless, eyes and mouth wide, staring down at his grandfather’s shattered face.
Then he looked up at me as I took the bottle from my mouth.
His eyes were full of horror.
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