“If only we had the money,” her voice was drenched in sarcasm and I could almost feel the roll of her eyes tickling the side of my neck. I neglected the sound of her voice again, stabbed another lump of egg and swallowed it without chewing. Pushing the plate away with one hand, I grabbed my laptop bag with the other and stood up to leave. I kissed her on the cheek, didn’t say anything, and I left through garage door. I made a point to make my way down the driveway as far away from the sickening pavement cracks as possible. I shoved ear buds into my ears and pressed play on my nearly deceased iPod, blocking out the high-pitched birdsongs that filled the air.
I take the same route to work every day. I walk seven blocks down to 15th, turn on Bradley, walk a block to Finch, and eventually I run into the 34-story building that was once the root of my father’s pride.
The only decent thing about the walk to Downey & Sons is the cheap taco stand on Bradley that always smells like frying pan oil and seasoned ground beef. My dad would take me there every Sunday after church when I was growing up, and now I can buy three tacos for 5 dollars and it’s the only place I’ve ever managed to get myself to go on my lunch break. The more I work, the less of a lunch break I allow myself, and the less I’m able to stomach anything that’s not overly-caffeinated coffee or strong whiskey. So now I eat one, throw away two, and walk back to my windowless office on the 31st floor where I monotonously sift through court cases and crunch numbers until my eyes water and my head pounds.
I’ve learned to ignore the life that happens outside of my overflowing bank account: the 30 pounds I’ve seemed to misplace somewhere between the walk to work and the one taco I eat at 12:30, my wife of seven years who I’ve not had sex with or even had a real conversation in over six months, and the apathy toward existence that’s filling my lungs like black smoke. It’s but a little comforting to remind myself I’m clinging to the successful future of this business and having that fill my wallet to its breaking point.
On that day at lunch, I repeated the cycle. I dished out a 5-dollar bill, wrapped it over my business card, and handed it to the new guy working behind the window. He was missing a few teeth and wore a white apron stained with grease and melted cheese. At first glance, the jackass I try to bury hated him on instinct. He took a brief look at my business card before smirking and visibly tossing it into the trash can beside him. He handed me my paper cradle of faux Mexican food with a deplorable look on his face and I turned away from what I had written off as a lethargic employee of a shithole job.
An uneasy feeling filled my stomach and surfaced in my chest and I decided I didn’t want anything but whiskey so I binned the tacos and walked to the liquor store.
On my way back I nestled a paper bag of liquor between my arm and my side with the importance one might assign to an infant. I saw the taco stand worker laughing with a customer, revealing the sparse insides of his brown mouth, and I grimaced before sneaking another swig of Jack Daniel’s. I looked down at the sidewalk as I walked and I noticed cracks that looked like near implants of the ones I’d seen in my driveway. Repulsed and irritable I looked ahead of me, only to see another unmotivated man scrounging through a trash can, stuffing his face with what I presumed to be the lunch I had disposed of 5 minutes earlier.
I’m a 5-foot-9-inch man who weighs no more than 140 pounds soaking wet and the four or five liberal mouthfuls of whiskey I’d already downed were enough to uncover the bigot inside of me. I laughed loudly in the homeless man’s direction.
“Get a job,” I snarled. It was out of character but it fed the hatred within me and it felt wildly invigorating. The man turned to me, his wrinkled face squinting into the sunlight over my shoulder. He had a piece of shredded lettuce hanging from the coarse white hair of his beard and I silently wished he’d lash out on me.
“Young man?” he started. By this point I had already started down the sidewalk in the direction of the law firm. I heard him chuckle. I heard a lady’s voice say something about me that was probably true, and I heard his response, louder, as if he wanted me to hear.
“It’s fine,” he told the female voice. “I know him. He’s just miserable.
No one had ever pegged me accurately, or at least had the nerve to say it within earshot. I whipped around, causing the corner of my laptop bag to slam against my knee. Had I not been whiskey-infused I might’ve flinched but instead I continued walking toward the man and the young woman, who now had her back turned, surely fishing through her purse for a couple bucks to help the sorry old guy.
“What was that?” I asked the man, stepping close enough for him to smell the whiskey on my breath. He smiled at me and I furrowed my brow even harder. Imaginably, my skinny frame and disheveled brown hair isn’t enough to intimidate even the scrawniest of homeless men.
“You’re the owner of Downey & Sons, yeah?” he asked me. He took another bite of the food he’d gathered from the trash and remained calm as I huffed whiskey and coffee into his face.
“Looks like you’re the miserable one,” I said, my attempts at being aggressive proving mediocre. I was tired, tipsy, and I just wanted to get back to my office so I could down half the bottle in isolation.
“Your father was a good man,” he said. I wanted to hit him or yell at him but my arms were paralyzed and my throat was wrapping around itself. I didn’t want to hear a stranger talking about my dad. I didn’t want to hear anyone talking about my dad.
“He got me a job, at your firm. I was the janitor for a while,” he said. He smiled coyly. “Then after he…passed,” he paused, “you fired me.”
“I don’t remember you,” I resisted. “Don’t talk about my fucking dad.” I kicked at a piece of rolled up paper he had littered beneath me in his forge through the trash. The woman, who I’d forgotten was there, was staring at me with a 20-dollar bill clenched in her hand. I apologized to her as I walked off and she mumbled something else I probably deserved to hear but blocked out anyway. I drank at least four more shots on the walk back and stumbled into my office 20 minutes later than I had planned. For the first time since I took over the business six years ago, I didn’t finish my tasks for the day. For the first time since I took over the business six years ago, I didn’t care.
I left work early and surreptitiously drank the rest of the fifth out of a coffee thermos on the trek home. I don’t remember much but I remember thinking of my father and wanting to cry.
I had forgotten it was her day off when I collapsed onto the couch and lost my ability to hold it in any longer. She was saying my name but my ears were clogged with the sound of my own sobs. I couldn’t see, but soon I felt her arms around me and heard the gentle sound of her shushing me and reminding me to breathe. I think she helped me to bed and I think she fell asleep beside me before 6:00. I think I realized then that she and my father and the homeless man were one and the same, and so much better than me.
For the first time since I took over the business six years ago, I called my secretary the next morning and told her I was sick and couldn’t come to work.
I rolled out of bed with a swollen tongue that tasted repugnantly like whiskey and the worst headache I’d felt to date. I dragged myself into my bathroom and saw a Post-it Note pressed on the mirror, right where the reflection of my quivering lips would’ve been. She was gone indefinitely, spending x amount of time at her brother’s house. Up until that moment I’d convinced myself it wasn’t possible, but now it was real and I’d already cried all I could manage the night before. I ripped the pink paper into shreds and skipped my shower, managing this time to walk a straight line down the middle of the dying heart monitor lines in my driveway.
I got in my car and drove too fast, honking too much. I was blinded by emotion and not entirely certain of my destination but knew if I ended at the bottom of the lake somewhere I wouldn’t miss myself too much. Two hours later I ended up kneeling at the base of my father’s gravestone, hugging my knees and wishing life into the ground below me where I knew his decaying body lie.
That night I slept alone. Drunk again, and haunted by nightmares of her, my father, and the homeless stranger, I woke up in two-hour increments and screamed into my pillow every time.
I skipped work for the rest of that week, lied to my secretary and convinced her I had some sort of stomach bug. On Thursday, I went to Bradley. It was the first day that week I’d been sober before 3:00, and with a semi-clear head I decided to make amends with the one person available to make amends with.
He was there, sitting by the same trashcan, wearing the same black t-shirt and smiling the same cheeky grin. He sat on a blue and gray blanket, and next to him was a grocery bag, bursting at the seams with some sort of dark fabric. Before I made my presence known, I walked to the taco stand and gave the guy 5 dollars in return for three chicken tacos. I set them by the grocery bag and he stared up at me, smiling the same smile he’d been smiling since the first day I saw him.
“You again?” he said, taking a taco from the container. He held one in my direction.
“I’m okay,” I said. “They’re for you.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Why are you here?”
“You’re the only person I owe an apology that I can actually bring myself to contact,” I managed to say. I looked over his shoulder in the way I did with her when I couldn’t bare to look her in the eyes. He didn’t say anything.
“What’s this bag for?” I asked him, nudging the plastic bag with the tip of my shoe.
“It’s my suit,” he said, his smile widening. “I wear it to job interviews.”
My hands felt clammy and my previously clear head was fogging with regret. I made over a million dollars a year and this homeless stranger who ate tacos out of trashcans had a smile bigger than mine and a significantly better quality of life.
I fought back tears that were stinging my eyes behind my sunglasses and I looked at the ground again in an attempt to regain my composure. There were cracks in the pavement, and they reminded me of the lines on a heart monitor. But this time, they didn’t look like that of someone who was dying.
“Have those lines always been there?” I asked him, pointing at the lines I knew must’ve been the same ones I’d seen a week earlier.
“Ever since I’ve been here,” he said nonchalantly. “Damn sidewalk needs to be worked on.”
I looked at him.
“I’m sure you’re dad is proud of you,” he said. I didn’t know why he knew exactly what to say and I didn’t what to say. For the next hour and a half he told me stories about how my dad would buy him tacos from the taco stand every day on his lunch break, and how, when he knew he was dying, he would tell him stories about me. Stories about how great I would turn out to be, and how much good I would do for the company. How good of a husband I’d be. A father. A friend.
The man’s stories were filling my head and my heart with too many of the things I’d refused to think about for the past six years.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Miles,” he said.
“Miles?” I started. “Thank you.” I paused, turned away from him and then looked back. “I’ve gotta do something, but…” I pulled out my business card, “come in tomorrow and you can have your job back.”
I stood up and hailed a cab, something I hadn’t done in six years.
“3072 Brittany Court,” I told the cab driver.
“Sir, you know that’s a 34-mile drive?”
“3072 Brittany Court,” I repeated. My fingers were twitching and my palms were sweating, but I didn’t take my eyes off of the wallet-sized photo of her that I held in my hand.
When I arrived at the two-story Victorian style home with the perfectly mowed lawn and the rusting basketball goal standing in the driveway, I gave the driver his money, including a generous tip, and told him thanks. I walked to the door of her brother’s house and my hand froze on the doorbell. Tears welled in my eyes and I saw her through the window before I even mustered up the courage to press the button.
“What are you doing here?” She had opened the door and she stood in front of me, wearing sweatpants and an oversized striped t-shirt. She wasn’t wearing makeup and her hair was pulled on top of her head with wisps of blonde framing her face. She looked as beautiful as the first time I saw her.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say. And I told her I loved her for the first time in six years.
JMS
Where Love Heals 