Terminal

THREE

It was dark by the time I got home, and the lights were on in the trailer, their soft yellow glow shining out onto our scraggly crabgrass-and-dandelion yard. Our place wasn’t much; just a double-wide with shitty brown vinyl siding, and an old wooden deck that was starting to sag in the middle as the untreated lumber slowly rotted away. The trailer sat on a quarter acre lot with one anorexic tree and a prefabricated toolshed that John and Sherm helped me put together two summers ago. I’d always said that when I grew up, I wouldn’t live in a trailer—but of course, I’d been wrong.

I sat there in the darkness, smoking my cigarette down to the filter and trying to get my emotions in check. It was a struggle. Finally, I went inside.

When I walked through the door, Michelle had just finished giving T.J. a bath. She was sitting on the couch reading an Erica Spindler novel, and he was plopped down in front of the television, watching SpongeBob SquarePants and getting Goldfish cracker crumbs all over his pajamas.

“Hey, baby.” She looked up from her book. “How was your day? You’re a little late. I was starting to get worried.”

I shrugged out of my jacket and flopped down beside her.

“I went back to work after the doctor’s appointment. Worked a little overtime to make up the hours.”

“Daddy!” T.J. flew across the room and jumped in my lap, peppering me with wet, Goldfish cracker kisses.

“What’s up little man?” I ruffled his hair and hugged back, squeezing him tight. When I look back on all of this now, I think that moment with T.J. in my lap, more than anything, was the toughest. That’s the one that almost destroyed me.

I swallowed hard and forced a smile.

“Were you a good boy today?”

He nodded. “Guess what? At day care, Missy Harper said she liked me, and I told her she could be my girlfriend, but Maria is my girlfriend too.” He shoved another fistful of crackers in his mouth. His cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s.

“T.J., don’t stuff so much in your mouth,” Michelle scolded. “I thought Anna Lopez was your girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” I said, “and what about that little blond girl, Kimberly? Didn’t she like you too?”

“They’re all my girlfriends.” He grinned around a mouthful of half-chewed crackers, then jumped down from my lap.

“My little Mack Daddy is a player.” I laughed. “Like father, like son, right babe?”

Michelle punched me in the shoulder, and T.J. giggled.

“So what’d the doctor say?”

My mouth opened but nothing came out. I wanted to tell her. Believe me, I wanted to tell her more than anything in the world. I was fucking scared, and Michelle could have made it better. She wasn’t just the woman I loved. She was my best friend. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt her that way. I couldn’t bring her world crashing down. Maybe I just needed time to process it, but at that moment, I couldn’t let Michelle know.

I’ve often wondered if things would have been different if I had.

“Everything’s cool,” I lied. The words felt stuck in my throat. “Just a bug. Must have picked it up at work.”

“A bug? You’ve been sick for a couple weeks, Tommy. And you’ve lost weight too. You don’t look good.”

“I know, I know. But he said it wasn’t anything to worry about. Besides, I needed to drop a few pounds anyway. Those baggy jeans weren’t getting so baggy anymore.”

One of my Mom’s boyfriends used to say, “If you’re gonna lie, Tommy, then lie big.” That was what I did. I lied real fucking big. It was a preview of the days to come.

“Did the doctor give you a prescription?”

“Yeah.” I dug myself deeper. “But I didn’t get it filled. We ain’t got the money right now. I’ll do it next week.”

“Bullshit.”

I winced. We’d both gotten into the bad habit of cursing in front of T.J., but Michelle was worse at it than me. I glanced over at him, but he seemed oblivious, absorbed in the cartoon again.

“Not bullshit, Michelle,” I lowered my voice. “After tomorrow, I don’t get paid for another two weeks. Tomorrow’s check has to pay for the truck inspection and yours has to go to groceries and day care. The credit card payment is already late too.”

“So is the electric. It came today.”

“Shit.”

She frowned, then brightened.

“We’ve got my bingo money. You can get your prescription filled with that.”

Every Friday night, while I was drinking down at Murphy’s Place with John and Sherm, Michelle dropped T.J. off at her parents for a few hours and played bingo at the Fire Hall with her girlfriends. Most of the time she lost, but occasionally she’d win, and she kept that money in a coffee can under her side of the bed. She was saving it up to take her Mom on a bus trip to New York City, one of those day-trips to see a musical and do some shopping. She’d been squirreling the winnings away for over two years.

“No way, babe. That’s your money. I can do without the medicine for a while. I’ll just take aspirin instead.”

“You’ve been taking aspirin, and they’re not helping.”

“Aspirin are good for my heart. The commercials say so.”

“Tommy…”

“Goddamn it, Michelle, I said no!”

Silence. I hadn’t meant to snap, and I think I was just as shocked as she was. I hated the wounded look in her eyes. Immediately, I felt like an asshole. My temples began to throb, heralding the onset of another headache. My teeth hurt, and I fought back a cough, knowing there would be blood in it. I could taste it at the back of my throat.

T.J. whimpered, his cartoon forgotten, and Michelle looked wounded.

“I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry…”

She shrugged.

I got up from the couch, picked T.J. up, and gave him another squeeze.

“Daddy didn’t mean to yell,” I told him. “I just had a really bad day and I’m a little grumpy. That’s all.”

“It’s okay, Daddy,” he said, then hopped down.

“I’m sorry too,” she said, softening. “It’s sweet of you to think of me and Mom’s trip, but you need to take care of yourself, Tommy. You need to think of T. J and me. What would we do if you got really sick?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, I just shook my head. The pain exploded behind my eyes and I fought to keep from showing it. A metallic blood taste welled up in my mouth. I collapsed back onto the couch.

“You’re right,” I croaked. “I’ll pick some up tomorrow. But we’re not using your bingo money and that’s final. I’ll see if I can slide on the inspection. I can put some mud over the sticker so the cops don’t see it.”

“Will that work?”

“It has before. It’ll be okay as long as it doesn’t rain and wash the mud off.”

I got up and walked unsteadily to the kitchen, feeling Michelle’s eyes on me. She knew I didn’t feel good, but she also knew better than to keep harping on the subject. Instead, she put her book down. “T.J., it’s time for bed.”

He turned to face her, and said, “Bullshit.”

There was a brief pause. Then we both laughed, and what little tension remained in the room dissipated.

“What did you just say?”

“I don’t want to go to bed,” T.J. pouted. “I want to watch SpongeBob.”

“You’ve seen this one a million times,” Michelle said firmly. “It’s time for bed. And don’t use that word anymore.”

“What word?”

“The bad word you just said a second ago.”

“What bad word?” He was grinning now. “You and Daddy said it.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

“But why?”

Michelle rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Never mind.”

She scooped him up from the floor and carried him to me.

“Tell your father good night.”

He held his arms out. “Good night, Daddy.”

I took him from her and hugged him tight against me. He kissed my cheek and wrinkled his nose.

“My whiskers bothering you?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “but your face is wet, Daddy.”

I realized then that I’d been crying. I hadn’t known.

“Daddy’s been sweating. I worked hard today. You go on to bed now.”

I kissed him and he kissed me back again, carefully avoiding the wet patches this time. Then we did our familiar, nightly ritual.

“We boys?” I asked with a grin.

“Yeah boyyyyy, we boys!”

“Night homeboy.”

He giggled. “Night homey.”

I smiled, and gave him another kiss.

“Nighty-night. Love you, Daddy.”

“Love you too, little man. Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Michelle carried him down the hallway, leaving me alone in the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator door and paused, letting the draft of cold air wash over me. I pulled out a can of beer and shut the door. The pop of the tab sounded like a gunshot in the silence. My ears rang, and in my head, I heard Michelle asking me again what would happen to her and T.J. if I got really sick. The throbbing in my temples got worse. I put the cold can against my head; letting it numb me until I felt better, then drained it. Cheap beer had never tasted so good. I grabbed the aspirin bottle from atop the fridge, shook four out into my palm, and washed them down with another can of beer. Down the hall, Michelle was reading T.J. a bedtime story—The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. That had always been my favorite when I was a kid, and now it was T.J.’s favorite too. The only difference was that he had a mother who actually read it to him. I’d had to read mine for myself, under the blankets with a flashlight. Michelle was a good mother, and a good wife too. I loved her so damn much, and when I saw how T.J. adored her, it made me love her even more. I never cheated on her, not even once. I know that doesn’t sound like such a big thing. You’re not supposed to cheat on your wife. But trust me; in this town, everybody, and I mean everybody, is banging somebody else. Despite the odds, I never stepped out on her, and I know she didn’t fuck around on me either. I knew that I was going to marry her the first time I saw her, halfway between homeroom and Mr. Shue’s eleventh-grade English class. She had long, blond hair, blue eyes, a body that was the bomb—and a smile that seemed to glow. Sounds corny, but fuck—I’m no poet. I only know that there really is love at first sight, because I felt it then. I was living proof. Or dying proof, I guess.

Of course, she’d hated me at first. She thought I was an immature jackass, and to her credit, she was right. But I persisted. It took me two months just to get her to agree to go out on a date with me. We went to the movies, then to the diner. Afterward we drove up to The Hill in my Toyota (the same car that was repossessed a few years ago when we fell behind on the payments). That was the first time I ever made love. I’m not talking about fucking. I’d had sex with plenty of girls by then. No, this was something different. Neither of us were virgins (in this town, if you don’t lose your virginity by the time you’re fourteen, you might as well become a priest or a nun) but we were both nervous. I wanted it to be good for her—I mean really good. She didn’t orgasm, I think because we were both so self-conscious. I figured that I’d blown it, but she said she didn’t care, and sure enough, we went out again the next night. And the night after that. And the night after that. And we never stopped.

Unlike most of our classmates, we didn’t get married right out of high school. By the time we’d graduated, I had decided that I wanted to go into the military, college not being an option. For me, going to college would have been like somebody saying, “Hey Tommy, would you like a trip to Mars?” So the military was really the only way to go. Figured I could do four years and get money for college that way. I drove to York and talked to the recruiters, and ended up deciding on the Marines, but two piss tests that showed positive for marijuana later, I was back on the street looking for a job.

When I was young, I’d always sworn that I would never be like my father, that I wouldn’t be a slave to that dirty foundry all of my life. Even if my old man hadn’t been a total fuck-up, the foundry would still have screwed up our lives. Growing up, John’s dad had been really cool, and the foundry still affected their family. His dad had worked seven days a week shift work, and was never home, not even on Christmas Day. He busted his ass for his family, a family that he never got to spend time with, and died of a heart attack three years ago, seven years away from retirement.

I wasn’t going to go out like that. I promised myself that I wouldn’t. I’d move, go to York or Harrisburg or maybe even Baltimore, and find a real job. Just leave this town and never look back. But Michelle was there, and so was John, and so was everything else I knew. Like most people, I ended up staying. I guess I never really had a choice. I wonder if anybody in this town ever does.

I wonder now if things would have turned out the way they did had I left. The bank robbery and what happened with Benjy and the others. But I guess it doesn’t matter. If I had to do it all over again, I’d stay, even knowing what I know now. Michelle was worth it. She and T.J. were worth everything. They were the only two things that mattered.

After getting turned down by the Marines, I started out bagging groceries, but that didn’t last long. Eventually, like it or not, I got a job at the foundry, because it was either that or work part-time at the bowling alley or one of the convenience stores or fast-food joints—or collect unemployment. Michelle and I moved in together, living in a tiny second-floor apartment over the hardware store. Six months later, we got married. Her parents lent us the money for a down payment on the trailer and John and Sherm helped us move in. We bought a big-screen TV we couldn’t afford, Michelle got a job at the Minit-Mart, I picked up some extra shifts at the foundry, T.J. came along, we got deeper in debt, the trailer depreciated in value like all trailers do, and everything was right with the world.

Then I got cancer. End of story. Fade to black…

I wondered what Michelle’s life would have been like if we hadn’t hooked up. Would she have gone to New York and become an editor for some big publishing house? Or maybe moved to Philadelphia and opened some bookstore-coffeehouse-type thing? She loved to read, and I know she would have been good at something like that. Instead, she’d settled for T.J. and me; picked this run-down trailer over a fancy apartment looking out over Times Square. She’d chosen us and she’d chosen this town, and I loved her for it.

I heard her in the bedroom, reading. She was just getting to the good part.

“And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack! From outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.”

You need to think of T.J. and me. What would we do if you got really sick?

Heard the tree fall…

The pain came barreling back then, crashing through my head so fast that I almost screamed. My stomach churned. I lurched into the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before the convulsions began. I turned on the exhaust fan so that Michelle wouldn’t hear me, and collapsed in front of the toilet.

I was choking. I couldn’t breathe, and my vision blurred. This wasn’t like before. Something pink and black and solid rushed up from inside me and splashed into the bowl, leaving a trail in the water.

What the fuck?

I’d just thrown up a piece of myself.

I knelt in front of the toilet for a very long time and just stared at the debris. I’d never been more scared in all my life than I was at that moment.

When I came out, after gargling with half a bottle of mouthwash, Michelle was back sitting on the sofa, engrossed in her book.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just another headache is all. It’ll go away.”

“You were in there for a long time.”

“I had to take a monster shit. You don’t want to go in there for at least an hour. Better not light up a cigarette either!”

“Tommy,” she gasped, smiling, “you’re horrible!”

“Hey”—I smiled back—“you asked.”

We sat there for a while and she told me about her day. Irritating customers buying lottery tickets and paying for cigarettes in loose pennies and her manager’s latest personal crisis and the joke of the day that the potato chip delivery guy had told them. The most boring shit in the world, and usually I tuned it out, but not then. Not this time. I wanted to listen, wanted to hear it all. Wanted to know every detail. Wanted her to know that I loved her and that I was really interested in what she had to say.

The phone rang, interrupting her story of what happened when the lottery ticket machine broke down. We both looked at it.

“It’s probably my mom,” she groaned.

I reached for the phone. “She’s going to wake T.J. up, calling this late.”

“I know. I’ve told her.”

I picked it up on the third ring, and said “Hello?”

There was a pause, followed by an electronic whir, and then a nasal, female voice that I didn’t recognize.

“Hello?” I said again.

“Hello, may I please speak with Mr. Thomas O’Brien?”

“Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested. Put us on your Do Not Call list.”

“I’m not selling anything, sir.”

“Then why are you calling?”

“Are you Mr. Thomas O’Brien?”

I sighed, exasperated.

“Yes. Now who the hell are you?”

“Mr. O’Brien, I’m calling from Gulf Financial Credit Services, in regards to your Visa account.”

“I don’t have a credit card with Gulf Financial.”

“Yes, I know that, sir. We’re a collection agency, and we’re handling your account on behalf of Visa. Are you aware that your account has exceeded the credit limit and is currently past due?”

“Well no shit, Sherlock. That’s why we haven’t been using it.”

“When do you plan on making a payment, Mr. O’Brien?”

“When do you plan on getting a real job?” I countered. “Don’t call here again, you bitch!”

I slammed the phone down, and immediately felt better. Fucking around with telemarketers. There’s nothing like it in the whole world.

“Who was that?” Michelle asked.

“A bill collector.”

“Which one?”

“The credit card.” I sighed. “Guess they want their money too, just like the insurance company and the phone company.”

“Well, they’ll just have to wait. We need to pay the electric company with your next check in two weeks. Like I said before, they sent us a shutoff notice. And don’t forget, we’re behind on the mortgage.”

“But we need that to pay for the phone. Guess I won’t get the medicine after all—and don’t start on me about it!”

“But you have to.”

“I don’t see how. Jesus, I wish we’d hit the lottery!”

“It’s okay, Tommy,” she soothed. “We’ll get by. We’ll figure something out. We always do. T.J. and I can always count on you.”

She stood up and wrapped her arms around me. When she hugged me, I almost sobbed. Instead, I hugged her back and bit my lip, fighting to keep my emotions in check.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whispered into her ear. “I really do, Michelle. I want you to know that.”

She pulled back, giving me a puzzled look.

“What’s wrong, Tommy?”

I shrugged, fighting back the tears.

“I don’t know. Long-ass day, is all. Long, long day…”

“You’re tired. Let’s go to bed, baby.”

I nodded. My face was buried in her hair, and it smelled so good. I took a deep breath, inhaling her scent.

Holding hands, we walked down the hall, undressed, and slipped beneath the covers. The cool sheets felt good on my skin. We cuddled in the glow of the television. Within minutes, Michelle was breathing softly, sound asleep. I was always amazed at how easily she could fall asleep. I watched her for a long time, the rise and fall of her breasts, the way her forehead wrinkled up as she dreamed. This was when she was most beautiful.

I smiled, content.

Then I remembered I was dying. The fact popped back into my head from out of nowhere. Most people don’t think about dying, especially at the age of twenty-five. The cop walking his beat isn’t dwelling on it, even though he knows that there’s a chance it could happen to him every night. The drunken driver isn’t pondering the ramifications right before he flies through the windshield and becomes a bloody skid mark on the road. For people like that, death happens quickly. It may be there in the back of their head, knowing that it could happen, but they aren’t thinking about it at every second.

What about the everyday schmuck? Do they think about dying when they get up in the morning, take their shower, and spill coffee on themselves during their commute? Do they dwell on it while the boss is hollering at them? Fuck no. Of course not. Human beings don’t walk around thinking about death because we don’t really believe that it’s going to happen to us. Sure, we know that it will happen eventually. Maybe sometimes we even stop and consider for a moment that it could be today. But we don’t know for sure. We’re never one hundred percent positive. Let me tell you, when you know for sure that it’s going to happen, and that it will happen soon, you can’t think about anything else. I tried to, though. I tried to change the subject with myself. I thought about our debt, and how much we owed, and I wondered how the hell we’d ever get out of it. Wondered how Michelle and T.J. would survive it after I was dead. Would they be forced into bankruptcy and living on the street? I watched her sleeping and thought about T.J. and the Lorax and the sound of the axe cutting down the last Truffula tree. The very last one. And after it was gone, everything in the Lorax’s forest had turned to shit. I knew I had to do something, but at that point I wasn’t sure what. The volume on the television was turned down low, so it wouldn’t wake T.J. up. There was a cop show on, and in it, three guys were robbing a bank.

I fell asleep watching it. It looked pretty easy on TV.

I wondered if it was that easy in real life.