Dare (16 page)

“No, it wouldn’t have,” I agreed. “But neither was suffering through my childhood with the idea that my mother didn’t want me.”

“I’m not sure what I can say right now that will make you feel any better, Rachel,” my mother said. “What do you want from me? What do you want? Have you ever asked yourself that? You don’t want the farm. So what do you want? What would make you happy?”

But I couldn’t answer her question because I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted, whether it was the farm or something else.

“You’re trapped,” she said, draining her coffee. “I recognize that. I would recognize that anywhere, in anyone. I was like you. And then I left.”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving Dad. Not like this.”

“Rachel, say even the miraculous happens. He’s not going to be able to manage the farm anymore. Not like he did. It’ll fall to you, and I can see that you don’t want it. I don’t have to know the details or hear the reasons behind them, even if you have your reasons. I can see it. I can smell it. I can taste it. You feel trapped, and it doesn’t have to be like that.”

“We’re very different,” I said, standing up. “I have a sense of loyalty. You don’t.”

“You say loyalty, I say a brick tied to each of your ankles,” she remarked. “It’s the same thing.”

“It’s not.”

She shrugged, declining to fire anything back at me. She knew she was right, and damn it, I was afraid that I knew it, too. I didn’t need the farm and all of its problems on my shoulders right now, not when I was carrying Dad there already. I wasn’t strong enough to handle anything.

“Well, this has been nice, I guess,” I said sarcastically. “Lots of insights from your motherly advice.”

“I’ll be here when you need me,” she said, taking my untouched coffee without asking. She’d already seen in my face that I didn’t want it. She knew exactly what I wanted and didn’t want, and I didn’t have a clue.

“I don’t need you anymore,” I said. “You can go back to Vegas. Wouldn’t want you to miss a performance over Dad.”

“I’m not going anywhere until there’s some closure,” she said, taking a sip of coffee without breaking eye contact with me. “One way or another.”

I turned my back on her and left her in that motionless courtyard. Not even birds would go in there, I noticed. I made the trip back up to the intensive care unit by myself, drifting down the halls until I found myself in front of Dad’s room, Sebastian standing there, saying something to me.

“Rachel, are you okay?” He was shaking me, and I realized I’d been so overcome with disappointment at my first in-person interaction with my mother that I hadn’t even been listening to him.

“Sorry,” I said, sinking gratefully into his hug. “Thanks for staying with Dad. Have there been any changes?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Sebastian said, and I knew in that moment that there wouldn’t be. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. It was as if understanding suddenly blanketed me.

“Would you do something for me?” I asked him, leaning back from his embrace to look into his eyes.

“I would do anything for you.” I wished that were true, but I knew better. There were some things I just had to do myself, even if I didn’t want to, even if I would’ve laid it at the feet of someone else to take care of if I could have.

“Would you get the doctor for me?” I asked. “There are some things I need to discuss with him. Privately.”

“Of course.” But Sebastian stayed in front of me for a long moment, his dark eyes examining mine, before he hugged me again and left. I knew he understood what I needed to do, and that I needed to do it alone.

But before I could go to Dad, the doctor arrived. I was surprised Sebastian could compel him to come so quickly—maybe it was Sebastian’s wealth or influence or brattiness. Whatever it was, and it was probably the same thing that had compelled the man to take a late-night phone call from us, the doctor was here, his lips pursed in question.

“Can you talk to me honestly, and in terms that I can understand, about my father’s chances?” I asked him before he could ask me anything.

“Well, we don’t really put it in terms of chances,” the doctor reasoned. “What I can tell you is that your father was having a heart attack long before he collapsed in front of you. If there had been a faster response, as in, if he had called an ambulance as soon as he began experiencing symptoms, there would’ve been a better chance of him recovering.”

I remembered how gray-faced and sweaty he had been when he found me in the office. I should’ve asked how he was feeling at that point, insisted that he sit down, realized that something was wrong, but I didn’t. I was too focused on getting to the bottom of what was happening on the farm. I was too selfish to realize what was going on.

“To be fair, he might not have realized he was having a heart attack,” the doctor said, interrupting my cycle of guilt. “A heart attack can manifest itself in many different ways. He could’ve just thought he was tired, that he’d overdone it during a day of work. Anything.”

“But will he come back?” I asked. “Is there a chance that he could wake up and be all right?”

“His heart is very weak,” the doctor said. “There was too much damage dealt to it during the heart attack, and too much time passed for any sort of treatment to be beneficial. In cases like this, a transplant might work, but I don’t believe he would survive being opened up again. He almost didn’t make it when we did it the first time, to try and assess the extent of the damage.”

“So, this is it,” I said, feeling very far away from myself. “He’s not coming back.” Dad, who had been there for me my entire life, was already gone. I expected a torrent of tears to course down my face, but I felt strangely distant, like my mind and my heart and their feelings were occupying a space apart from my body. My ears buzzed with a noise that I couldn’t explain.

“Are you ready to make a decision?” the doctor asked, but I found that I had lost my ability to speak.

Dad was still there, not even the expression on his face different, the beeps the only thing keeping him alive. If it had been up to him, if things had happened naturally, maybe he would’ve preferred to slip away at home, on the farm he loved so much. But I had denied him that; I had dragged him into the city he never cared for, to suffer at the hands of machines and doctors.

I felt terrible.

I caressed his hand gently, looked into his face for any sign that he knew I was here, but there was nothing. Not even his brow was wrinkled. He was placid, as if his body was an empty vessel. The person inside had already gone on his way. Dad—or the Dad I knew, the one capable of caring deeply for me and his farm—was already dead. Maybe he’d gone ahead and vacated his body when it hit the floor there at the house. That would’ve been what he wanted. To go on his own time, there on the farm, surrounded by the things he’d loved. And I was here with him now. That was all that mattered. That things were done right now.

Dad had embraced the natural things about life. It was part of his passion. He could’ve been a gardener in some other life, putting his green thumb to use in a flowerbed or a patio garden or something, but he’d chosen to dream big…to be not just a farmer, but also an organic farmer. Doing things the right way was incredibly important to him. He eschewed everything that felt unnatural to him and the operation he was trying to develop, embracing the things he knew were correct and friendly to the environment and the produce he wanted to grow—even if they weren’t the cheapest or easiest methods.

I knew in my heart—and perhaps I’d always known it, from the moment we arrived in the hospital—that Dad wouldn’t want to linger on here artificially. His body had already made the decision for him, but it was I who was hanging on. It was my selfishness that kept him here. I knew he wanted to move on.

“I have made my decision,” I said, my voice hoarse as I looked at the doctor. “He needs to do what he thinks is right, and we need to go ahead and let nature take its course. Please take the machines away.”

“All right,” the doctor said, patting me on the shoulder kindly before bringing a few nurses into the room. “Do you want me to get anyone for you?”

“No, that’s all right,” I said, smiling even though it felt like my world was dropping out from underneath me. “Dad and I have been together, just us, for ten years. I think we can do this last thing together.”

“There’s no real way of telling how long it will take, once he’s off the support,” the doctor warned me.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call someone if I need someone.”

The room emptied out, device by device, person by person, and the quiet overwhelmed me. Even without all the tubes and beeps and machines around him, Dad looked a lot smaller in that bed than he had been in real life—even if he hadn’t been a very tall man. It was his vulnerability, I was sure, but I felt an echo of what I’d felt in the office—that we had switched roles. I was the parent, the one in charge, and he was the child, the one relying on me. I had made this decision for him, and I had to trust myself that it was the best one.

I pulled a chair up to his bedside and sat in it, watching his chest rise and fall, listening to his fleeting breath, in and out of his nose. I took his hand and kissed it.

“Thank you for everything you did,” I said, choking on the words as I said them. Those words were making it real. I was saying my goodbye. “I know that you didn’t ask to be a single father. I know things were hard, and a lot of the time, that I didn’t make them easier. But I had fun. I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood. I’m going to try to save the farm for you.”

I cringed. That wasn’t the right thing to say right now. He hadn’t wanted me to do anything for the farm. He hadn’t wanted to let me shoulder any of the debts, make any of the payments, even though I had a few thousand dollars in my savings account. Maybe this wouldn’t ease him at all.

“I mean, I’m going to make things right,” I said. “One way or another.”

No, now that just sounded cryptic and worrisome. Why couldn’t I get this right? I gripped Dad’s hands and looked at his face, which had remained placid this entire time. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. I knew he was on enough medication to make him “comfortable,” whatever that entailed.

“Tell me what to say,” I begged him. “What do you need to know? Did you know that my mother and Sebastian are here? Two of your favorite people. I know. I’m sorry.”

I laid my head on the railing of the hospital bed, watching Dad’s chest rise and fall. Was there a right way to tell a parent goodbye? Were there magical words I was supposed to say?

“I just want to tell you that everything is going to be all right,” I tried again. “That I'm going to be all right. That you can go, if you want to. If it’s your time. I’m going to be just fine. I’ll follow my dreams, just like you told me you wanted me to do. And I don’t know if you’ll approve, but I think one of those dreams might be Sebastian.”

I lapsed into silence, thinking about that. I loved Sebastian. He loved me. It was a strange conclusion to come to, after everything Sebastian and I had been through, but it was the only one I had arrived at. Dad deserved to know that, even if I wasn’t sure just how many of my words were meaningful to him in his current state.

“Sebastian and I have fallen in love,” I said. “I know. Don’t freak out. I’m freaking out. I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You think he’s a jerk. I thought he was a jerk, too, and things a lot worse than that. But if you peel away all those layers, all those stinky layers, just like an onion, there’s something sweet at the heart of him. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. He’s here for me. I’m not going to be alone if you decide to go. When you decide to go.”

I wouldn’t be alone, but I wouldn’t know where I was supposed to go. Was I supposed to get the farm back on track, or was I supposed to leave? Did my dream exist in some other place? Did I need to leave to figure it out?

My mind stopped reeling for a moment, and I held my breath, afraid that I was missing something, some huge part of the equation that I hadn’t considered. Something had changed drastically, but what was it?

It was then that I realized that Dad’s chest had stilled.

He had died.

He was gone.

“I love you,” I said, my voice thickening, my vision blurring. “I love you, Dad.”

I sat there until the doctor came back in, disappeared, and reappeared with a funeral director. I wasn’t sure what I told her. I didn’t know what Dad had wanted, but cremation seemed easier, cleaner, somehow.

When the two of them left me, I looked at Dad, and it was like looking at a stranger. What life had been there was gone—truly gone. Even his face was difficult for me to recognize, and he was my own father.

I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t want to be anywhere near there.

I knew that Sebastian would be waiting for me, waiting to give me support and love, the hugs he thought I would need, whatever I asked of him. But I didn’t want him. Not now. There was only one thing I wanted, something that drove me to take the stairs down to the lobby instead of the elevator, to carry me back to that stale courtyard, where my plastic, red-headed mother still lounged, smoking one of a long chain of cigarettes that were expressly forbidden by one of the many signs in that space, the rest of the butts resting in an empty coffee mug.

We quietly regarded each other for a few long moments, daughter to mother—or, perhaps more accurately, wary stranger to apathetic stranger. I didn’t know if my mother meant well. I wasn’t sure why she was here, but I did know what I wanted right now.