A Father and a Daughter

Brad Verne glanced over the Tribune headlines as he walked past the cappuccino machines inside the 7-11. A page of advertisements fell out of the folds of the paper, and he bent to pick it up. His baseball cap, which had been perched atop his puffy wool hat, fell next to the ads. Fuckin’ thing, he thought. He scooped his cap off the floor and went to pay for the paper, leaving the Sears section where it lay.

“Just that?” the clerk asked.

“Yeah, pal. Just that,” Brad said. He scoffed quietly. I don’t need some kid half my age trying to guilt me into picking up a fuckin’ donut. Too early for this shit.

“Fifty cents.”

Brad pulled out his wallet and flicked a tattered $1 bill on the counter. The clerk punched a button and the cash drawer slid open with a screeching chirp. Brad felt the screech in his feet, over the jingle of coins in the register. He looked to his left, out the store’s glass door.

A silver convertible fishtailed around the corner across from the store, much too fast after a night of freezing rain. The car clipped the 7-11 signpost with its back bumper. The driver overcorrected, swerved the T-top to the other side of the street, and slammed into a streetlight on the sidewalk. Brad watched the lamppost lean from the impact and buckle back. The heavy glass bulb shivered from its seat and fell, exploding like a bomb on the overhead crossbar.

The car that was now wrapped around a lamppost, horn blaring, had been sitting in his driveway the night before.

The previous morning, Brad had walked barefoot through the dining room, wearing an open robe and a pair of gray sweatpants. His daughter, Ashley, sat over a steaming bowl of oatmeal, her modest makeup and long black hair contrasting half-shut eyes and a teenaged scowl.

“ ’i, Da,” she mumbled as he walked past her into the kitchen. He grunted.

His wife, Jen, smelled like hairspray. She stood next to the stove arranging sheets of paper in a binder. She wore a white blouse and gold earrings he had given her years ago; for what he couldn’t remember.

He opened the cupboard next to her and got out a box of Pop-Tarts. He put two in the toaster and reached an arm around Jen.

“Excuse me,” he said. He lifted the pot and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Morning,” she said. She snapped the last of the papers into the binder and sat next to Ashley.

Brad stayed in the kitchen, waiting for the toaster. He heard them talking in the next room, but couldn’t make out the words. He sipped his coffee and sucked on his teeth. The toaster popped. He brought breakfast to the table and sat opposite Ashley.

“What time are you getting home today?” he asked Jen. Four-thirty, he thought to himself.

“Four-thirty,” she said. Every fuckin’ day.

They ate in silence for a while. At 7:20, Ashley got up, kissed her mother goodbye, and went down the street to wait for the bus. Every day.

“What are your plans?” Jen asked him.

“I, um, I was going to get the paper. You know, look through that,” he said. He cleared his throat. She didn’t respond.

Fifteen minutes later, Jen left. She taught music at a private school. A big black grand piano took up most of their living room. Jen played sometimes.

Brad went upstairs and changed into a white shirt with blue dress pants. He didn’t bother with a tie anymore. On his way outside he put on a heavy coat, a green wool hat, and a black Bulls cap.
His car was a full-size red Ford from the late 80’s. It looked and steered like a galley; the lanes never looked wide enough from behind the wheel. It runs well, he thought as the twenty-year-old engine turned over on the first try. The suspension creaked as he backed down the driveway. It’s just the rest of it is a piece of shit.

He could drive to the 7-11 in his sleep. The sky was a solid blanket of gray. He turned on the talk station on the radio and half-listened to the predictions of sleet later in the day. He parked in front of the store a few minutes later and bought the Tribune. A younger man standing in line looked at Brad and suppressed a smile as he left.

When Brad got home, he dropped the Tribune on the computer desk and opened it to the classifieds. Who was hiring accountants these days? Plenty of places, the paper retorted. Ok, fucker, who’s hiring fifty-one year-old accountants who’re two years unemployed? The paper didn’t answer immediately. Fuck it. He turned on the computer.

The phone rang. It was the nurse from Ashley’s high school. Ashley had a fever, needed to be picked up. Brad hung up. Figures. Back in the goddamned car; it’s always something.

Brad drove the same route he did seven years ago, when his older daughter, Cheryl, started going to high school, before the bus stopped by the Verne house. The streets were residential, lined with skeletal trees. Brad hadn’t seen Cheryl in months; he forgot how many. The community pool wasn’t far from the high school; it was closed and dry now, but was packed in the summer. Cheryl lived with some guy, Mark Daniels, who worked… somewhere. Does some shit. Cheryl and Mark were engaged to be married in the summer.

Ashley stood with her backpack at her feet, leaning against a large, graffiti-covered rock in front of the high school’s main doors. Brad drove through the bus lane and stopped near her. She came to the car and got in. She doesn’t look sick, he thought.

“Hi, kid,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”

“Headache.”

He pulled away. “Are you gonna puke?”

“No, it’s my head, not my stomach.”

He flicked the turn signal.

“I think I just need to lie down,” she said, rubbing her nose.

“You’re not just goldbrickin’, are you?”

“No.” She looked out the window and was silent for the rest of the drive.

She got out of the car before he even shut the engine off and let herself inside the house. He followed her inside and heard her footsteps climbing the stairs. He shut the door and sat in front of the computer to open his resume` file. The house was quiet except for the sounds of Ashley in her room, opening and closing drawers. Brad deleted a word, retyped it. He changed the order of his references, changed them back. Presently, Ashley’s room was quiet.

Probably just tired, wants to sleep the day away, he thought. Maybe not. He got up and went to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice. He went upstairs as quietly as he could, glancing at the pictures of Ashley, Jen, Cheryl and himself framed on the wall. The picture at the top of the stairs must have been fifteen years old— almost as old as my fuckin’ car. Jen’s hair was long in that picture; she cradled baby Ashley in one arm and was reading to Cheryl on the couch. It wasn’t a formal portrait; Brad remembered snapping it himself. He slowly turned the knob on Ashley’s door. She lay in her bed with her back to him, covered past her ear with a quilt. He cleared a space on her cluttered brown desk and left the glass of juice for her to find when she got up.
As Brad was walking downstairs he saw, through the tan-curtained window, a silver Honda slow in front of the house. It turned into the driveway and parked behind his car; a tiny silver stopper blocking in his red hunk of metal. Sonuvabitch, what now?

The front door opened. A short woman, a head shorter than he, kicked off her black shoes next to the coat rack and flicked her dark brown hair over her ear. She looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

“Hi, Dad. Is Mom home?” she asked.

“No, she’s at work. Hi yourself.”

She crossed the room and hugged him tightly. He put one arm around her and patted her on the back. Cheryl always was overboard with hello, goodbye, he thought. He had been about to shake her hand, but she was too quick.

“Mark yelled at me,” she said into his shoulder. He could feel his shirt getting wet.

“Hm? Wh-”

“This morning-- He—he--” she said. She went on, but Brad couldn’t make out the words. So he stroked her head and made shushing noises.

“Here, sit down,” he said, leading her to the couch.

“I don’t know why I’m crying!” she said. Her mascara was running. “I just had to get out; Mom would understand.”

“Do you want some orange juice?” he asked, already standing up. Cheryl chuckled through her tears and nodded. He went to the fridge and poured a glass. He looked at the magnetic calendar on the door and sucked at his teeth. He brought a roll of paper towels to the couch along with the juice; his shirt was wet enough already. There goes the afternoon.

Cheryl spent the rest of the day and night. That evening, Brad went upstairs to tidy Cheryl’s old room. As he was moving a box of back issues of Sports Illustrated under the bed, Jen tapped on the door. When he looked up, she shook her head and led him down the hall to Ashley’s room. They peered into the dark room together, and Brad could see the outline of his oldest daughter lying on piled blankets on Ashley’s floor. I bought her a nice mattress, good pillows, and five months later she leaves them here to live with that Daniels guy, he thought, shaking his head. Then when she visits, she doesn’t even use them. He sighed. Jen smiled and shut the door wordlessly. Standing in the hall, Brad swore to himself. Motherfu-, she’s still blocking me in.

Cheryl had taken her Honda to drive back to Mark’s place the next morning. Brad thought the car looked like a smashed pop can, dented in the side, with the top crushed in. The horn sounded like an air-raid siren.

“Jesus Christ, you see that?” said the clerk.

Brad shouldered the door open and ran across the parking lot, leaving his copy of the Tribune on the store counter. Cheryl slumped against her seatbelt behind a spider webbed window. Bits of glass from the fallen lamp light had sprayed all the way to the opposite sidewalk. He ran across the street, forcing a passing pickup to brake. The driver pulled to the curb and said something. Brad shouted his daughter’s name through the broken window. She didn’t move. Her face shone crystal-white and bright red. Her hair, he noticed, was as prim as it was when she left the house. Her nose was flatter than it should be. A pillow slowly deflated in her lap. He tried the car door, but it didn’t open. The canvas roof stretched over the T-frame was shredded; bits of it hung near Cheryl’s face like streamers. He shouted her name again.

The pickup driver, a big man with ham hands, appeared next to him. He put a boot against the Honda’s back wheel and wrenched the door open. Brad heard excited talking far in the distance; the world had gone quiet for him. He knelt next to Cheryl and touched her limp arm. She’s so small, he thought. She’s not old enough to drive, why’d she do this? He held her shoulder with one hand and cradled her head with the other, gently putting her head against the headrest. Leaning forward like that will cramp your neck, baby. She had a nosebleed. Kids’ makeup, these red jewels they put on their eyes, is really getting out of hand. Take those crystals off your eyes, kid. He moved a shaky hand toward her face. A thick, flannel-wrapped arm stopped his hand.

“The ambulance is on its way,” said a set of coffee-stained teeth.

But she’s my kid. I can take care of my own daughter, asshole. Brad nodded. “I’m staying with her,” he said.

“Don’t move her. Sit here. Hold her hand.”

Brad did. The pavement was damp and soaked through the seat of his pants.

The paramedics arrived in a circus of flashing lights and wailing sounds. They wore blue shirts and looked quite calm. One of them lifted Brad to his feet and walked with him to the curb next to the Honda while others huddled around the car. I’m glad you’re here, he thought. She’s not faking today; she really needs help, I think.

A crowd had gathered around the wreck. Police cars parked crossways on the street to block off traffic. The clerk from inside, the one who’d called 911, brought Brad a cup of something warm. He didn’t drink it, but held it in both hands. The paramedics had Cheryl on a stretcher with a clear plastic mask over her face and a plastic tube in her arm.

“I-- want to go with,” Brad said. “I’m her dad. I want to ride with her,” he told the men in blue. They let him climb into the back of the ambulance, and lifted Cheryl’s stretcher in after him. Then they drove.

Brad held his daughter’s hand while the paramedics fussed over her. They took her blood pressure, Brad knew what that looked like, and attached beeping machines to her arms and face. Her face. Her face was red and swollen on one side, where those stupid looking jewels were. The men in blue used scissors to cut open her shirt when one of the machines started whining instead of beeping. Brad watched the men’s eyes.

He didn’t know how long they drove. When the ambulance stopped, the paramedics threw the doors open and wheeled Cheryl’s stretcher through several pairs of automatic doors. A wooly-haired nurse stopped him at the third set of doors.

“You can’t go in there, sir. Patients and doctors only,” she said.

“That’s my daughter!”

“I know. But she needs you to wait here so the doctors can fix her up,” the nurse said. She took Brad’s elbow with a soft hand and led him to a chair in an adjacent room. Brad looked around the room. It had soft lighting, unlike the fluorescent glare of the hospital hallway. There was a television hanging from the ceiling, tuned to a news channel. In the center of the room was a short table with some wood-and-plastic toys for little kids. The chairs were big and soft and lined the room’s walls. A beige-upholstered couch sat opposite the muted TV. It was a room made for long waits.
“Is there anyone you need to call?” the nurse asked. Brad noticed he was the only one without a hospital tag in the room.

“My, uh, my wife. Jen. She’s at-- I need to tell her,” he said.

“Ok, hun. Ok, here, come with me; we’ll give her a call.”

Jen and Ashley arrived some time later. They were both in tears. The wooly-haired nurse, Toni, put them in the same room as Brad. Brad held them on the couch as they cried into his shoulders, and he looked at the TV. His mind was blank. Jen paced the room, whispering prayers to herself. Occasionally she went to the nurse’s desk, and came back each time with fresh tears in her eyes. They have a never-ending supply of those, Brad thought. No news. None for hours.

Late in the afternoon, a bald doctor with rimless glasses introduced himself as Timothy Fischer. “Cheryl is stable. We're still working, but she’ll pull through,” she said.

“Thank God!” said Jen.

“So she’s ok?” asked Ashley.

The look on Timathy’s face dried Brad’s mouth. He sucked on his teeth as she spoke. “She has shards of glass in both eyes. They’re not terminal, but there may be permanent damage to her vision."

Ashley started crying again. Jen put a hand to her chest and head like she had been stabbed.

Timothy continued in a soft voice. “We're doing the best we can. Cheryl needs you folks to be strong for her right now. Get some food. Keep your strength up.

Toni appeared at Timothy's side. "I promise I’ll call as soon as I hear anything new. Ashley, honey, you have a cell phone right? Let me have the number so I can call,” she said.

“Thank you,” Jen said. Ashley wrote her cell phone number on a piece of yellow prescription paper and handed it to Toni.

The Verne’s climbed in Jen’s blue sedan and drove to a Wendy’s. None of them ate much. Brad always thought Wendy’s French fries tasted like eggs. They probably use the same oil all day, he thought. Cheryl had noticed the taste the first time Brad took her to Wendy’s. Daddy, she said in her four-year-old voice, what are fries made from? Potatoes, kid. This one’s egg, she held out a half eaten fry, bigger than any of her fingers. He remembered that. Wendy’s fries always tasted like eggs to him after that.

Brad and Jen held hands in the front seat on the way back to the hospital. Ashley took her cell phone outside while Brad and his wife waited on the waiting room couch. They waited a long time. Ashley came back inside, hair wetted down from the drizzle that had started at sundown. She had been crying, Brad could tell, and when she sat next to her mother, she cried again. An endless supply, he thought.

Eventually, his wife and daughter fell asleep in each others arms on the couch. Brad couldn’t sleep. He watched Toni gather a bag and a coat from behind the nurse’s desk. She poked her head in the room where Brad waited and whispered, “I’ll pray for her,” and then left. A different nurse, younger, and not as kind looking, replaced her.

The hospital didn’t sleep. People came in on stretchers a few times, attended by a swarm of paramedics and doctors with charts. Brad shook his head. Doctors don’t fall asleep during procedures, he assured himself. Not when you’re working on someone’s eyes. They train them for that sort of thing, staying awake, he thought.

He must have dozed though. Timothy touched his shoulder in the early hours of the morning. The doctor had shopping bags under his eyes.

“Brad, we have your daughter stable, and she’s resting now,” he said. “We- is that your family? You should wake them.”

Brad touched Jen’s face lightly and her eyes opened instantly. She whispered Ashley’s name, and his daughter started and was alert.

Timothy took a deep breath. “We’ve done all we can for Cheryl’s eyes. The glass penetrated deeply, and there’s severe damage to both her corneas. Damage that is, I’m sorry, irreparable.”

Ashley sat up straight. “Wait, wait- what’s that mean. Cheryl’s- that means she’s-“

“Blind. Yes,” said Timothy. He sat on the table next to the couch and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Now, we’ve already put her on the donor list. The optic nerve is uninjured, and there’s a good possibility that once we find a donor, she’ll be able to see again.”

“How, uh, how long will that be?” Brad asked.

“Well, it’s hard to tell, exactly,” said Timothy. “Five, maybe seven years?”

Jen let out one choking sob.

Cheryl had said she wanted lavender flowers at her wedding. Lavender is like purple, thought Brad. Pretty purple flowers, all over the churchyard in summer. It would be beautiful. They would dance, the two of them, and then he’d give her away to that Daniels guy.

Brad started to say something, but his throat was tight. Timothy was talking now to Jen, and Jen was saying something back. Brad was looking at the rainbow colored beads in a wood and wire maze on the floor.

He tried to imagine what it would be like for Mark Daniels, with a bright new bride, knowing she’d never know what he looked like in a wedding tuxedo. He couldn’t do it, not really. He imagined Cheryl walking down the aisle, holding his, Brad’s, arm. Walking in darkness, with only the hushed whispers of her father describing how gorgeous her wedding day was.

Brad cleared his throat. “What-” his voice cracked. He saw Ashley looking at him. Ashley with her long black hair, mussed on one side from sleeping on the couch. He cleared his throat again. “What if- what does it take to be a donor?” he asked Timothy.

Timothy looked through his glasses for a long time into Brad’s eyes. He nodded, once, and almost imperceptibly. “Basically… just matching blood and protein types,” he said.

Brad looked at Ashley again. She understood. She caught onto things quickly. Jen still looked perplexed. Brad coughed twice and sucked on his teeth. “So, um, would- would I pretty much, uh, match?”

Jen wasn’t confused anymore.

Timothy covered his nose and mouth with his hands. He looked straight at Brad and blew out a breath. He dropped his hands to his knees and said, “Most likely.”

Brad put his hand on his wife’s leg and felt it trembling. He looked into her eyes, brimming with fresh tears. Where do they get so many? he thought. He looked past Jen, at Ashley, whose hair was still sticking out to one side. He smiled a half-smile. I saw them grow up. I saw my wedding. She should too, he thought. He stood up. Timothy stood with him.

“Alright, Doc. Where do I sign up?”