Herr Director!
Story published in Adelaide Literary Magazine.
Jim lost track of how many times he had to circle the labyrinthine airport before seeing them. He pulled the car alongside the curb, ignoring the blaring horn behind him, and flipped on the emergency lights. His son David slouched tragically between two rolling suitcases with a forest green scarf snug around his neck and wiry glasses that sat precariously on his face. Jim felt a hearty swell of joy upon seeing his son after all this time.
“Davie, over here!” Jim said as he hurried toward him, smiling generously.
“David, Dad. My name’s David.”
Jim shook David’s hand and turned to embrace David’s wife, Alison. She hugged him weakly and presented their son Martin.
“Hey, kiddo, how are you holding up?” Jim asked.
Martin shrugged and retreated back into the cool shadow of his mother. Jim hoped he would have more luck with the older grandson Lucas who, beyond the tight berth of his parents, kicked at a dirty clump of snow.
“How about you, young man?” Jim said to Lucas, this time with a bit less enthusiasm.
Lucas trotted over in a puffy red and green jacket that made him look like a walking Christmas tree ornament. Jim wasn’t sure to hug him or shake his hand, so he patted him gently on the back.
“You’re gonna see a lot more than that while you’re here,” Jim said, nodding at the patch of ash-colored snow.
Jim had invited David and his family to visit him for an early Christmas. One small step toward restoring the tatters of a father-son relationship, at least that’s how Jim’s sponsor Gil phrased it. Just two days ago, in fact, Jim had received his one-year token for sobriety at an AA meeting, where he had shared the story of his final night out as a drunk, when he had jaunted up the unsalted steps to his townhouse, slipped backward and cracked his head clean open. On the cold ice, he had felt his neck grow warm as the inky purple spread behind him like wings. Jim had recited the tale of his near-death fall so many times in meetings that he knew exactly when to slow the leaky cadence of his voice. When to let a stray pause usher the wonderful silence of attention. When to shift the moderate, reflexive laughter into white-faced gravitas. And, finally, when to knot the whole thing together: And splitting my skull on ice was my proverbial wake up call, he would say, smiling. Bloodied, face skyward, it was at that moment I realized that if I didn’t stop then the drink would eventually knock down the door of my life and consume me, bone and all.
For twenty-seven years drinking and working had been Jim’s primary loves. As a salesman for Caterpillar he spent more time sleeping between starchy sheets in aggressively air-conditioned hotel rooms than in his own bed. As his wife Linda prepared meat sauce for their son David, Jim might be regaling a table of bullish suits in a steakhouse. As Linda wiped vomit from David’s chin after a sleepless night of food poisoning, he might be waking up, his head a screaming siren, alongside the puttied nakedness of a stranger. His drinking meant he only watched David grow up in the corner of his eye with iced aluminum clutched in his hand. Despite this domestic truancy, he came fully alive on the road. It was after a day locked in a fluorescent tomb or touring a factory, slapping the cold ass of a compactor like prized game, when he really went to work. The dinners, happy hours, lounge outings. Filled with drink, he could provide an endless torrent of jokes and popcorn-worthy anecdotes. Those around him liked the way they felt in his bleary gaze and in return, they—his audience—agreed to long-term contracts worth thousands and thousands of dollars. Eventually, though, he ran out of lies to tell his wife to distract her from the betrayals, the truth no longer a plaything for him to mold. She grew tired of hearing that work-induced absence equated to fatherly sacrifice. That his drinking wasn’t anything other than drinking. Now, here he was: sixteen years divorced and retired, left with nothing but the commitment to not doing something—the commitment to not drinking. Recovery was now his only family, his only work.
Continue reading this story in Adelaide Literary Magazine.