The doctor said my father had flatlined several times. I knew the word flatlined from my ex, who had flatlined three times when we were together. He had flatlined, my ex, because he was an addict, and being an addict, as it turns out, will make you flatline. After the first time, my mother, a nurse, said, He’ll never be the same. But he was the same, as it turned out, because he flatlined again. After the third time, we broke up. I’d like to say we broke up because I’d had enough, but really he broke up with me for another woman, a thinner woman, a paler woman, the veins too vivid through her face, and she eventually flatlined too, and she eventually died from this, but he did not.
He became a firefighter.
I moved to Warrensburg, Missouri.
The whole world just went on.
The doctor said my father would be a vegetable, and upon hearing this word, I imagined a plate. I imagined vegetables on this plate.
One does not want to imagine this. One wants to imagine one’s father running through a field, arms spread, something dynamic like that.
Something totally made up like that.
My father would never have run through a field.
He was mad, yes, but he was not that kind of mad. He was the other kind. He was ferocious.
And besides, what field. In Baltimore, where we all were before we all weren’t, there were no fields, just streets of nothing and more nothing, just my ex knocking on some boarded-up door, just me waiting in the car.
But here, where I was now, where I am no longer, in Warrens-burg, Missouri, there were fields.
The doctor said my name.
He said, Please.
My brother said my name.
I had a decision to make. I had a serious decision to make, because I was the older kid. Though, as stated, I was not the more serious of the two. And my serious brother, with his serious boy screaming his head off in some dark room in their serious city, was waiting for me to do the right thing.
This was years ago, and I’m telling you this because the story came to me today for no real reason, just because I happened to see a guy digging through the trash, and I was like, You again. I was like, Get out of there.
And I’m telling you this, because some have been wondering why I am the way I am.
Which is to say a mess.
Which is to say a lot of things.
I could not at first kill my father. I at first said no. I said, Not as long as he’s still breathing.
But he isn’t breathing, said the doctor. Not technically, he said.
The doctor sounded fed up. But not fed up with the limitations of science. And not with the limitations of the human body.
Meaning not fed up how I was.
A man I knew in Warrensburg, Missouri, a man I knew from the job I needed to quit, had been bitten by a brown recluse. He’d rolled over it one night in bed and got bitten in the ass. When he told me the story I laughed. I was like, Why were you naked. He was like, Wrong question. Because he was trying to tell me the bite dissolved the skin on his ass. Because he was trying to tell me that this just wasn’t right.
The technical term is necrotized.
The point is I was not always serious.
No, the point is we’re limited.
The doctor said, A machine is making him breathe.
He did not use the word machine.
I said I would have to call my mother to get her advice, and my brother said, Don’t be a dumbass, and the doctor sighed in that way that the assholes I have dated since this night sigh when they don’t get what they want.
Like the restaurant is out of chicken wings. Like the beer is flat. Like I’m trying to convince them I’m a terrible person. Like I’m already stepping into my skirt.
I’m already reaching for the doorknob, a bigger whore than they want me to be.
The sigh applies pressure to the woman. Then the woman is supposed to give them what they want.
Which is to say the woman is then supposed to perform.
Which is to say the woman is then supposed to know the subtle difference between being a woman and performing one.
I said, I’m calling our mother.
My brother said, Don’t.
I thought I could get her on the line. I didn’t know if it would work. It involved disconnecting the call. It involved dialing her number. It involved reconnecting the call, hoping everyone was still on the line.
The metaphor is unintentional.
I mean of disconnection.
There is no intentional metaphor in this story.
There is no intentional meaning in this story.
I would not subject you to intentional meaning.
I would not subject you to some grand scheme.
My mother was in Miami. Which wasn’t where she should have been. But I wasn’t where I should have been. No one was, when you think about it. I mean when you really think about it. I don’t mean anything deep about anything deep. I just mean I was confused. Yet I disconnected, pressed some buttons, and there was my mother. Then I reconnected, and there we all were.
I said, They want me to kill Dad.
My mother had left my father thirty years before. There is no reason to go into the details. Suffice it to say it was his fault, as if that wasn’t already clear.
I mean look at me. Look at my history.
I was not calling my mother because she loved my father. I was not even calling her because she was my mother. I was calling her because she was a nurse. I hoped that because she was a nurse she would tell me the right thing to do. I’m not talking morally. I’m talking medically. She knew about this. Though of course once she was wrong. Once she was dead wrong. I mean when my ex flatlined the first time. When she said, He’ll never be the same. She was, of course, dead wrong. He was one hundred percent the same. He was one hundred percent the same in every way.
Impossible, a doctor might have said.
Not impossible, I might have said.
He was a vegetable going under, a vegetable coming back.
But his heart, a doctor might have said.
I might have laughed.
I might have said something regrettable.
My mother said, What.
My brother said, Tell her.
The doctor said, He flatlined.
My mother said, You have to kill him.
She did not, of course, use these words. I don’t know why I’m being so melodramatic. She used technical terms. She said, Take him off the respirator. She said, It’s the right thing to do. She said, Trust me. She said, I need to go, though. She said, I need to get to work. She said, I’m sorry.
And because I more often than not do the wrong thing, I said fine.
A few days later, because I was older, because the decision was mine, I would donate my father’s body to science. I would do this over the phone, and the conversation would be recorded. A woman would ask me questions I had not before this heard.
Do you wish to donate the lungs.
Do you wish to donate the heart.
There were other organs one doesn’t think of.
There were other things besides organs.
The tissue was to go to the tissue bank.
The eyes were to go to the eye bank.
There were other things I can’t remember.
But it was the thought of the eyes removed from the head, the thought of the eyes going their own way, that made me cry. I don’t know why this was. I was not suddenly a believer of the soul. I was not suddenly a believer of anything. It was just think about it.
And as I cried, the woman said, It’s okay, said, Let it out, and I stopped crying and sat there, silent, and the recording went on, just recorded my breathing, the woman’s breathing, the sound of static in the phone, and minutes passed.
And I thought for some reason of a night years before, me, my father, and my brother in some fast-food place. My brother was visiting home from college, and he was sticking his French fries into his milk shake, and I said, Sick, and he said, Fuck you, and I said, Fuck you, and he said, Try it, dumbass, and I stuck a French fry into the milk shake, and it was amazing. My father was poor then, always poorer the next day, living in some shit hole, like a hostel, like a hospital, like a halfway house, and my brother said he would take him to dinner. Anywhere you want, he said. My father wanted to go to the fast-food place. He met us there. He was filthy. His shirt was missing buttons. He ordered two cheeseburgers. He ordered onion rings. He ordered an orange soda. He ate too fast. And, watching us stick French fries into the milk shake, he said, You’re both sick. But then he tried it too, and then he laughed, and then we ordered more French fries and another milk shake, and what I’m trying to say is, you should try it. What I’m trying to say is. What I’m trying to say is.