I look at him, but he is not looking at me. His eyes are focused on the six small faces that stare back at him: his wife Maria, four daughters—Diana, Isabelle, Estela, Jacqueline— and a newborn son, Enrique. I know their names well. He has written them in his letters just as many times as he has written,
I am sorry.
But now I hear him say it and his voice is filled with sorrow and I decide that his brimming red eyes are not from rum, vodka, or tequila, but from the salty tears that streak his face.
His wife falls to his feet, wailing and hanging on to his ankles. Her hair is straight and black and for some reason reminds me of the tire marks her husband’s truck left in the street at the bottom of the Dip. And then I think of Malcolm; this man left him there too.
She drops to the floor, screaming and crying. The children follow and they fight to embrace him. Some cling to his waist, others grab hold of his neck. The smaller ones lose out and have to settle for his legs and ankles.
They sob in unison,
“O Dios mío! Por favor!”
He cries with them and his words are a sorrowful mixture of Spanish and English that says he’s sorry and that it was just a small bottle,
Es pequeño.
But they still take him away to serve his three-to-five though not less than two.
Hy-Lo drinks small bottles too, I think to myself, and we all get up to leave.
* * *
The lights went off and then on again in our apartment, and what little connection Delia and I had left disappeared with the sudden darkness.
She grabbed up her pack of cigarettes, wiped at the salty tracks beneath her eyes, and pulled herself up from the couch, stepping over my feet, careful not to touch me as she moved slowly past me and toward her bedroom.
I
went to him that night even as the temperature dropped below zero and the streets went slick with black ice. The weather report called for snow, sleet, and freezing rain. But I went anyway, like some sick junkie needing a fix.
I ran most of the way after jumping off the bus, cutting between moving cars and dashing out against the light, running like something was chasing me.
I’ve got a death wish, but it’s not mine and I need to cancel the request I put in when I was five, so I run like a madwoman through the streets and nearly knock down an elderly couple. I trip over a dog, but I get up and keep going until my chest feels like it will bust open and my heart threatens to give up on me.
I can’t stop because I need to see the bottoms of his feet, because he can’t answer my questions about the wind so I need to see his feet. I need to know for myself that it’s true.
It’s late when I finally get there and visiting hours have been over since eight. I make it past the guard because he’s too wrapped up in the conversation he’s having with the big-breasted nurse. She has long wavy hair and his eyes never leave her chest or the glossy strands that bounce around her face as she laughs at his corny jokes. His eyes never leave her, not for a moment, so he never sees me sneak past and up the stairs.
I take the steps in twos and by the second landing I’m taking them in threes.
“Miss!” I hear someone scream out at my back when I make it to Hy-Lo’s floor. “Miss, visiting hours are over!” The voice screams without even considering the sleeping patients or the scared and dying ones who can’t take loud noises or things that scream and go bump in the night.
I don’t stop, I just keep moving until I come to the doorway of his room. I don’t stop until I’m sitting down next to his bed, so close now that I can hear the very faint sound of his breathing and see the slight rise and fall of his chest.
I remove my hat, scarf, and gloves, take off my jacket, and after a moment or two, I pull off my sweatshirt and sit there in my faded jeans and a thin blue T-shirt with tiny pink bears dancing across my chest. I don’t shiver at all; in fact there are small beads of sweat on my arms, across my forehead, and forming on the space above my lip. There’s warmth moving through and around me.
I move closer still and my knees knock into the steel leg of the cabinet that holds all of his monitors; the red and green lights blink spastic for a second at the impact and then hold steady again.
“Daddy,” I whisper in his ear and place my hand on his cheek. The skin is soft there, soft like a newborn’s. “Daddy,” I say again and run my hand over his forehead.
He doesn’t look as bad as he did all of these weeks I’ve been coming. He’s got some color in his cheeks and he looks like he just might open his eyes and sit up. That scares the shit out of me because I know the suffering is over for him, the pain has left his body and his life is about to follow.
There’s not much time left, so I lean in and tell him, “I know why you were who you were. It’s the same reason why I am who I am.”
I don’t really understand it myself, and some small part of me begs me to reconsider my forgiveness. But I don’t look at it as forgiving, I look at it as a fresh coat of paint, and then I hear the voice inside me say:
You’ve got to let go in order to move
forward.
Even so, I look at him hard trying to see the animal that lurked inside of him for so many years. I strain and twist my head this way and that to see if it has hidden itself in the folds of skin. But there is no beast there, just Hyman Lowe, the father I would never know.
I see a shadow cross the wall and I know the end is near. “Daddy,” I say again and take his hand in mine and try to pull him away from God’s grip. I want so much to take back those times I wished him dead. “Daddy,” I hear myself cry and I can’t believe my face is wet and I can’t believe it hurts so bad inside. “Daddy!” I’m screaming now, because his hand is going cold in mine and the movement in his chest is slowing down.
Dianne found us beneath the steady stream of blue and white morning light that filtered through the window. My head resting on his chest, his arm thrown across my back.
I was sleeping, he was gone.
“Kenzie, Kenzie,” she called softly and shook me.
I looked up at her and smiled. Dianne smiled back, but her smile was sad.
“Kenzie …” she started and then stopped to compose herself. She ran her hands across the clean white of her uniform and glanced out the window toward the sky before looking back at me and beginning again. “Kenzie … your dad … he’s … gone.”
I knew that he was. I watched him slip away. I saw him take his last breath and felt his hand squeeze my shoulder goodbye.
My eyes filled with tears and I straightened myself up and looked down into the sallow face of what Hy-Lo’s soul had left behind.
“I need to see his feet,” I said.
“What?” Dianne responded as she wiped at her eyes.
“I need to see his feet,” I said again.
Dianne undid the sheet and pulled it up to reveal Hy-Lo’s feet. They were black and shriveled; the soles were yellow and covered with large star-shaped scars.
I sighed and wiped at the fresh tears that formed in my eyes.
“Do you need more time?” Dianne asked.
“No, no,” I said and shook my head.
She slowly covered his feet and then pulled the sheet up over his face. “I’m sorry, Kenzie.” She put her hand gently on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry too,” I said and felt the hole near my heart shrink. “I’m sorry for both of us,” I said and looked out into the warm December day.