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“Dad, can you try to look at this from my perspective?” I begged him again—why I bothered, I didn’t know.
When he was like this, the only thing he cared about was himself. And his next pill, or his next drink, or his next smoke.
He saw me as a barrier to all of his favorite things.
“Alexis, go do your shit. Nobody asked you to come here and babysit me. I was doing just fine by myself.”
I took the hair elastic off my wrist, and gathered my hair together into a ponytail. I turned around and paced the living room a couple of times.
We’d been here before.
So many times before.
Why he didn’t recognize the problem, baffled me.
I stopped and looked at him. “Can you please,” I took a deep breath, “just this one time, take my word for it? Just this once? Believe me that I know what’s wrong here? Trust me to do the right thing?” My eyes pleaded right along with my words.
“I’m,” he poured out half a glass of rye, then added in cola, “fine.” He took out a pill bottle from his front pocket and poured a couple into his hand. Then he tossed them back with his drink.
Fantastic.
Trey and I had to leave at the crack of dawn, so tonight was my last chance to get through to my dad.
So far, nothing I’d said worked, and I was ready to scream.
I tried a few more times to reason with him, until the pills kicked in and he promptly fell right to sleep.
“Dammit,” I said to myself and turned around toward the kitchen.
Once again, I wished for non-existent siblings who could help out. But, like always, none appeared.
My eyes started burning, and the tears that had been threatening to fall were finally here.
I wiped my cheeks and headed to the fridge for a bottle of water.
“Hey,” I heard Trey say from the table. I hadn’t heard him come up, and I wondered how long he’d been sitting there.
“Hey,” I said, continuing into the fridge for my water. I shut the door and unscrewed the cap from the bottle.
I drank half of it before I turned around.
“What time do we leave tomorrow?” He looked tired, even though he’d slept most of the day.
“We should leave for the airport at five,” I replied before I finished off the rest of the bottle.
“You want to stay, right?”
I tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. “I never want to be anywhere near him when he gets like this. But, he’s my dad. I have to.”
He nodded and sat back in the chair. “Yesterday was a little iffy,” he folded his hands behind his head, “he seems better today.”
My jaw dropped open. “First of all, you’ve been in bed all freaking day, so how would you know? And secondly, did you not just see him wash down pills with his rye?”
He cocked his head to the side slightly. “He’s been through a breakup. The guy’s doing his best, I’m sure. Mom sounded shaky on the phone, too.” He shrugged as though it was nothing.
“Really? And did your mom drown her sorrows in bottles of pills, booze, and weed?”
“Weed’s legal up here, Lex.”
