Thane
5 years ago
The call from my father comes in just as I park at Ronan’s apartment complex. Dread curdles in my stomach. I only allow myself to see Ronan once a month, and I donotwant to listen to my father’s put-downs before spending naked time with my favorite person. But we’ve been waiting on test results for my mother, so I can’t chance it.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey. What’s this I hear about you starting a workout business?”
I drop my head back to the headrest, staring at the ceiling of my car. I should’ve known better than to go to Dad’s financial consultant for advice. Confidentiality has its limits, apparently.
I let out a steady breath, calming myself. “Yes, Dad. I’m affiliated with CrossFit, and I offer classes and personal training as well.”
He remains silent, but the judgment is loud and clear. I’d love to tell him that I own the land and the building. I mean, you’d think he’d be proud of me for doing that; the way Austin’s property values are going up, I’ll make more off that than I will from the training.
But I’ve learned not to fill the silence with explanations; it only feeds the beast.
“Chunk…I gave you a trust fund so you could hire a personal trainer, not become one. I understood joining the Marines, but…this? Think of the Ashford name.”
Dad likes to call me Chunk despite the rock-hard physique I honed while in the service and maintained with a punishing exercise and eating routine. He does it to remind me that I was on the heavier side as a kid. That the specter of suddenly becoming fat again is an ever-present threat to the Ashford name. In his mind, nothing is more awful than “letting oneself go.”
In my mind, nothing would be more awful than becoming my father.
“How did Mom’s appointment go?” I ask, changing the subject and immediately feeling shitty for doing so. The fact of the matter is, her memory has gotten worse. Much worse. And his foreboding, weighted silence is even worse than his sneering commentary.
My father has always been disappointed in me, but he reached a whole new level when my mother’s health started declining. She was barely fifty when we discovered her occasional confusion and violent, flailing nightmares had a likely culprit: Lewy body dementia. At least that was the doctor’s best guess, since you can’t truly diagnose it without an autopsy.
Because this is exactly where you want ambiguity.
We were lucky, I suppose—it started off slowly and we had more resources than most. She had the best care and cutting-edge medicine that money could buy, which gave her more good days than most ever get.
Eventually, though, not even the most expensive medicines could keep up with the progress of the disease. I spent more time than I’d like to admit running after my mother with a robe so she wouldn’t end up naked in the front yard following some hallucination only she could see. I rub the scar on my arm, remembering the time I startled her with a knife in her hand. By the time I signed up with the Marines, Dad had arranged for a three-nurse rotation so Mom would have supervision twenty-four hours a day.
My father’s voice is notably subdued when he finally answers. “They think it’s Alzheimer’s.”
We knew LBD meant that Alzheimer’s might decide to come out and play, too, butfuck…we still—illogically, perhaps—thought there would be more time.
My chest tightens and my first thought is that things with my father are going to get so much worse. Guilt floods my belly, knowing my first thoughts should’ve been about my mother.
“How’s she taking it?”
“Not well.”
Once we realized that her clear moments were being filled with bad information, we made the determination to keep things positive. This, however, couldn’t be kept from her.
“I’ll come over tonight, then. Want me to bring dinner?”
“We have a cook, Thane. I’ll have him set aside some celery sticks for you.”
I let out another slow breath, thankful for my training. I would genuinely take the sweltering Iraq desert and the threat of insurgent violence over my father’s barely concealed disdain. The insurgents I understood. I’ll never know what I did to my father to make him hate me so much.
I’d like to think his only redeeming quality, other than loving my mother, is he doesn’t give me shit for being gay. In my less charitable moments, I suspect his acceptance is predicated on the fact thatthe gayis now in vogue with liberal Austin’s richer circles, but even that unkind thought is met with a hit of guilt. Losing my mom by the millimeter is probably killing him right along with her.
“That’s fine. See you later,” I say, refusing to engage with his shitty commentary.
“Don’t be late. You know your mom likes to start right at six.”
“Yes, Dad.”
