We’ll See by Jason M. Vaughn (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) “You take your pills yet, Daddy?” The old man pauses in chewing his scrambled eggs. He is thinking. “I don’t think you took them, Daddy. I’m almost sure of it.” The old man sips his coffee, still thinking. He is frail and looks much older when he thinks, his brow crumpling into deep folds like those on a bed unmade. He’s a seventy-nine-year-old widower who lives with his daughter and her new husband; his daughter cannot have children, no matter how many husbands. When she asked him to live with them for a while, he accepted. He is an old man, after all, and forgetful; this can be dangerous when medications are involved. A bit of goading helped him finally recognize this. Also, his wife had passed on only three months before, and he had begun to dislike living alone in a home he’d shared. “But only for a little while,” he told his daughter, never intending to fully abandon or sell his house. “I’m not makin’ any promises. We’ll just try it out for a while and see.” His blue-gray eyes peer ahead now at nothing, and then he reaches mechanically for the salt. “Don’t you dare!” his daughter snaps, lightly slapping his hand. “It's no good for you,” she says. “You know it isn’t.” For a moment she watches him out of the corner of her eye, and then looks down into the newspaper in her hands. The old man lets his fork drop to the plate with a harsh clank. He puffs an irritated breath toward what’s left of his eggs, then reaches for his coffee cup without looking and brings it slowly to his pouting lips. His daughter eyes him, folding and unfolding the paper this way and that with a raucous crinkling. “Please, Daddy,” she says. “Your pills.” He drinks down the last of his coffee and says, “I read an article today in that Men’s Health magazine of your husband’s.” He points to the magazine on her side of the table, his eyes flickering suddenly with the hopefulness of a child. “Now Daddy,” his daughter says and smirks at him. Eagerly he continues: “That article talks about men who’re goin’ on ninety but still runnin’ marathons and water-skiing, healthy as forty-year-olds.” “Are you saying you wanna water-ski, Daddy?” “No, but I think I should maybe get a job again. I need to do somethin’.” “Don’t be silly,” she says. “Why would you want a job? How about a hobby instead. You could take up watercolors, or build a bird house or something like that.” “I think I should move back home, too,” he says, crossing his arms on his chest. “I appreciate you takin’ me in for a while, but I can look after myself. I’ll get one of those pill organizers to help me remember.” She seems caught somewhere between surprise and laughter, her thin-lipped mouth hanging open. “We’ll see,” she says, then looks back down at her paper. “And I’ll start exercisin’,” he continues, knocking on the table. “I wanna last.” She laughs hesitantly, her blunted fingers held to her mouth, looking at him as if waiting for a punch line. Finally she says, “It’s a little late—don’t you think, Daddy?—for you to try and be young.” She fills a small glass with orange juice and pushes it across the table. “That magazine there says it’s never too late to get in shape. And I'm not tryin’ to be young, dammit, just to last!” “Please drink this, Daddy, and take your pills. We can talk more when George gets home.” “I’ve made up my mind,” he says, staring up at his daughter. “Your George has nothin’ to do with it.” “All right, Daddy. Whatever you say. Please take your pills, though.” “I might stop takin’ them,” he says, looking away from her. “You can’t make me take them. They’re prob’ly no good for me anyways.” “Daddy.” The old man shakes his head, but says nothing. His daughter sighs dramatically. “When George gets home, we’ll get it all figured out.” She scans her newspaper but can’t seem to decide what to read. The old man looks over at the magazine again, at the muscular young man on the cover. He clenches his jaw and clears his throat, then stares long at his daughter. He notes the fine lines around her eyes, the deeper lines running across her forehead, and cannot remember what she looked like as a girl. He wants to be alone now, back in the home he used to share. He wants to cook his own food and salt the hell out of it, to have coffee all day long, instead of just in the morning, and to not be told what to do ever again until the day he dies. He hears the crackling hiss of tires over pavement as George pulls into the driveway. The truck’s door creaks open and then slams shut with a terrible clarity. He licks his dry lips, reaches for the glass of orange juice and then for the bottle of pills. He studies the bottle, clicks his fingernails on it, then flips off the cap and clears his throat again. He shakes three white pills into the palm of his hand, then licks his lips again but can’t seem to moisten them. George’s thumping footsteps are coming up the sidewalk. He’s wearin’ his boots today, the old man thinks. The front door opens. Now it closes again. George announces loudly from the front room that he is home. After a final glare toward his daughter, who seems to be reading intently now, the old man sighs miserably and slurps down his medication with an all-over puckering of his face, like a child who has tasted something sour.
|
