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I got him up an hour before the appointment and still had to hurry him to get him in the car. He grumbled. He didn’t need to see the doctor, he needed to get back to the lumberyard ‘before it went under.’ I pasted a smile on my face and encouraged him to hurry. The lumberyard was not going under. It was doing better with me in charge than it had since before the manager retired.
Maybe when he was younger or sober, my dad had a head for business, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at him now. He had on a pair of green pants. I have no idea where on earth he got them. My mom and I had always gotten him work pants and khakis. These were not a muted olive drab, but a real Christmas green pair of trousers. He had a striped sweater on with it. It wasn’t really cold enough for a sweater, but once he was finally dressed, I didn’t say a word that might slow us down. I didn’t want to argue about his clothes and miss the appointment. Even though I was going out to the hospital with a man who looked like he was auditioning to play Thrift Store Dad on a sitcom from the eighties.
Waiting in lobby was nerve-wracking. I hadn’t gone with him because my dad wasn’t incoherent or incapable of doing the appointment alone. I was there to make sure he didn’t lie to the doctor and end up endangering his life. Because I knew he’d say that he wasn’t drinking alcohol, that he was exercising every day, that he never missed his meds and that the bitch at rehab lied if she said he didn’t show up. Never mind that the ‘bitch’ from rehab had sent the shuttle bus for him repeatedly and he’d refused to go. He’d claimed he didn’t sleep well, or the weather was bad or his back hurt from last time he went.
I intended to ask about community programs for alcoholism. Ways I could support him in his effort to get healthy. A counselor he could talk to. Some way to make him want to try. I bit back tears just thinking about how awful the appointment was going to be. He’d argue with me. He’d tell me that it wasn’t my business to contradict him. The doctor would know I had failed at taking care of him. My dad would think I’d betrayed him by telling the doctor the truth. Nothing in me wanted to do this. I wanted to go hide in the ladies’ room and pretend I had diarrhea to avoid going. But I was a grown woman with responsibilities.
If my mama were there, she’d tell me to pull myself together and put on a pretty smile. Nobody was gonna buy mud pies from somebody who frowned all day. I gave a half-smile at the memory, but it hurt so much wanting her there with me. And then there was the truth—wanting her there beside me instead of him. It didn’t matter what a good daughter I pretended to be. I left college. I moved home, took over the lumberyard, cleaned the house, cooked the meals, managed his meds. But deep down, I wished she was still here. He had to know that. Anyone who looked at me had to know that. I had no business trying to stand in her place and struggle with things she could’ve cleared up in thirty seconds. I had to face that fact. That I wasn’t a good and loving daughter who gave up everything to try and help her sick dad. I was an ungrateful one, one who would’ve traded him in half a second to have her back. Because life wasn’t fair, and the person I was closest to was gone, but he was still here, not even trying to take care of himself or anything else. I resented the hell out of him even on a good day. Because even if he quit drinking and being lazy and self-indulgent right now, he’d never replace my mama. He’d never be able to live up to what I’d lost when she died. He wasn’t worth a lick on his best day, and we all knew it. For some godforsaken reason, my mother had married him and raised two kids with him. One of them turned out to be a more successful version of Dad, and the other was me—a fake version of her. One with duty but no loyalty, with self-righteousness instead of generosity. She had deserved better than all of us.
My dad patted my arm. I wiped my messy face. I’d been crying in the waiting room, just so I’d look as crazy as possible, I guess when I saw the doctor. I dug out a tissue and blew my nose. The nurse called us again, and we went back. I tried to peek at his blood pressure numbers, scanned my notes for trends in his BP monitoring at home. I sat as quiet as I could during the exam. Before I could get to my questions, the doctor cleared her throat.
