Paradise Island

With each hum of the ventilator, my father looks more and more like a seahorse. The last time I saw him, he looked like a puffer fish, blown-up like a beach ball. The nurses must feel sorry for me because they call me “Oh Sweetie” and “Poor Darlin,” except for Barb, who is all business. Every day, she wears her gray hair coiled into the same no-fuss bun. The coarseness of her voice matches the ruggedness of her skin. Crater-like acne scars dot her cheeks, like her face is the moon. I imagine I’m one of those unidentified planets spinning in the ether, looking for direction. My first night at the hospital, she told me: “You need to make a decision about the life support, Bebe.”
*
Last week, in my hometown of Steel, Tennessee, my two pink-eyed lab mice skittered through a maze, tunnel to tunnel, searching for the cheese cube at the end. Once the slower, fatter mouse achieved her prize, I sat down at my small desk and tried to record journal notes. I leaned back in my chair, stared at a near-dead fly trembling in the florescent overhead light as Tom, my boyfriend, vigorously scribbled, breathing loudly, like he was watching porn.
“Esmerelda was faster to the lever this time,” he said, spittle forming at the corner of his mouth, his eyes gleaming, proud. The mice didn’t excite me. And my lab coat suffocated me like it was meant for a wisp of a scientist, composed only of logic. No matter how many times I washed it, it stiffened like it had just been starched. I’d started in the lab because my stepdad, Les Meeks, had gotten me the job. “You could do a lot worse, Bebe. Decent pay, secure, you know what to expect in a lab,” he’d told me. Now, with graduation in my rear view, I longed for something else, but I wasn’t sure what. I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing because I’d never experienced anything else. At the end of our shift, like every afternoon, Tom patted my shoulder, and asked, “Order the Chinese, Bebe?”
That evening, I snuck out for my nightly cigarette, and stared at the indigo map of sky. Tom hated the smell, and constantly reminded me of the deleterious effects on my body. It was one small thing I did for me; each inhale a decision made independent of Les and Tom, a press of the lever that ensured my own demise. As I looked up and traced constellations with my cigarette, my phone rang, and a woman yelled on the other end, “He’s not fucking moving. I don’t know what’s happening. We was smoking a little, drinking, you know, and then your dad just fell down.” As she yelled, I stared at the thin, white spikes of mouse hair on my sweater; mouse hair showed on most of my stuff, like I was turning into one. I hadn’t laid eyes on my dad in a decade, maybe longer. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to calm this stranger. I took a nervous drag off my cigarette, let the smoke curl and disappear into the air. When I didn’t answer, she sounded desperate. “You gotta come here. I can’t do this. You the daughter, ain’t you?”
*
It is strange to be alone in a new place without the mice, without Tom. The lab let me go on extended, unpaid family leave. In some ways, I feel like the cage door has been left wide open, and I can run free. In other ways, I feel like I’m on a tightrope and when I look down, I realize how far it is to the ground. Sometimes, I catch the nurses surveying me with a pity heavy as a wet wool blanket. My father is not the sunglasses-wearing, rosy-cheeked person he was the last time I saw him. When I get close to his face, he smells like ointment and sour, dirty toes. A death smell. To preoccupy myself, I check my bank account balance every twenty minutes. Last check: $145.14 and diminishing with each hospital cafeteria sandwich. The beep-beep-beep of Dad’s blood pressure monitor measures our time in seconds.
*
Paradise Island is the first building that catches my eye and the closest restaurant to the hospital. They hire me on the spot. Twenty-two, no experience, but it doesn’t matter. There aren’t a whole lot of people lined up to work there, and they need a warm body. Paradise Island is one of the only non-fast-food restaurants in Harbor, a small town on the Alabama gulf coast fossilized in the 1960s; sun-stained, broken-stilted beach houses dot a ragged, trash-laden beach. The Island—that’s what everyone calls it—is a relic from when Harbor was a popular tourist destination, before the surrounding beach towns mammothed into cities full of polished condos and high-end retail hubs. Some of the staff at the Island have been there since that time—their tanned faces like fried fish skin. Around the perimeter of the Island, the wooden toucan’s pre-recorded squawk can be heard announcing the daily drink special: “Caw, caw, try the Palmerita!” The chipped paint and green mold-stained wood panels reek of neglect and ruin.
*
Underneath the safety of Paradise Island’s coconut-thatched roof, I become someone else. My long braids bounce on my chest as I skip, and I don’t wear underwear. A small rebellion, to feel the wind on my genitals. I remember, when I was a kid, my dad going commando on a fishing trip. At the time, it seemed wild, out of control—to have no safeguard between your privates and your clothes was animalistic. But now maybe I want to have a little more wild animal, a little less mouse in my life; it is freeing, like opening all the windows while driving too fast. Tom would be mortified if he knew I wasn’t wearing underwear, direct his focus on the germ count of my genitals or something weird like that.
At Paradise Island, I make up my own names for cocktails, like the Wind-Swept Snapper and the Drowning Daughter. I laugh all the time, which I’ve never been known to do. My days in the lab were spent listening to the hushed scratching of pencil to paper, scritch, scratch, scritch. But now, the chaotic rumblings of the restaurant are exhilarating, spirited.
On the Island, I manipulate co-workers into rolling my silverware, refilling my salt and pepper shakers, and cleaning the syrup stains from my section tables. I snarl at the bus boys, Robbie and T.J., when they don’t clear my tables quickly enough. In Steel, I hardly ever uttered an unkind word, letting them percolate in my brain, my lips a gate. I smile and lie about upselling when Todd Jarky, our general manger, asks for my numbers during weekly employee meetings. I don’t disclose to my co-workers that I’d been studying decision-making in lab mice for the past few years, the overseer of two furry creatures whose only options were food or no food, the push-pull lever to predict if they would act in their own best interest to increase the likelihood of their survival.
When I rush back from the hospital just in time for a shift, I notice Ron Randy, our assistant manager, next to the cash register, counting inventory. I watch his chiseled jaw clench, as if he is deep in thought. He stares at me, and our eyes lock. My insides buzz like a lit firecracker. I’d never been noticed by an older man, especially one so handsome, so physically different from Tom. Ron looks muscled and tan like Paul Bunyan, like he could kill a bear, build a wood cabin, and pleasure a woman in a single afternoon. I sidle up to him, trying to come up with something clever to say.
“Nice windbreaker. How do I score one?” Ugh, ugh, ugh. That is not what I wanted to say.
“Thanks. Yeah, you could absolutely have one. You’re proactive and creative, and I like that. I like creative. Used to be creative myself, man.” At this, he plucks a beaded necklace from underneath his Paradise Island windbreaker, unclasps it, and holds it out like a prize.
“You know, I bet I could get you fifty percent off,” he adds. “I can just take it off your paycheck.”
“Can I just have it for free?”
Ron stares at me, and there is quiet. Then I smile wide and laugh. “Kidding.”
*
I didn’t grow up with my father. In fact, I have no memories of my parents ever being together, though I’ve seen some dusty pictures of them that my mom buried in a wicker trunk in the attic. After they divorced, my dad moved to Nowhere, New Mexico, and Mom and I stayed in Steel. Mom married Les Meeks, a compact man with protruding teeth that peeked out from underneath a thin, broom-colored moustache. I grew up thinking and acting as though Les Meeks was my dad. Every couple of years, I would get a postcard from some city out west, some place my dad had moved to: Greetings from Bakersville! Hiya from Arizona! My mother never said much about my dad, just that he wasn’t the right fit for her, that he was an alcoholic who “couldn’t say no to anything.” I only visited him twice.
*
A week after landing on the Island, I decide to pursue Ron like a starved piranha thirsting for blood. Part of me thinks I should feel guilty, feel bad, feel something, but I don’t. Ron looks my dad’s age, like, if my dad took care of himself. And, he has this cool Earth-dad persona with shaggy brown hair and a Mudhoney T-shirt that peeks out from underneath his uniform, like if you fucked up a hundred times he would still believe in you, still want the best for you. When he smiles, a dimple as deep as a wishing well makes him look younger, eternally playful and maybe a little mischievous. He doesn’t have any kids of his own, but every time children visit the restaurant he creates pint-sized outdoor scenes with tents made of napkins and trees of knives and forks.
After a few weeks of awkwardly flirting with Ron, I decide to ask him out. I write on a beverage napkin: Do you want to have a drink with me? Blink once for yes and twice for no. As soon as it happens, I regret sliding the napkin across the bar, but, somehow, it works. Ron blinks once, winks at me, and flashes that dimple that makes me want to hump him right there on the bar.
That night, I steal a bottle of tequila from the Island’s cellar and tuck it in my backpack. Behind the Paradise dumpsters, in the backseat of my Toyota Tercel, Ron and I share a joint and take tequila shots. It is so dark I can barely see the black of his eyes. In the night, all I can discern is the joint’s ember glowing red with each inhale.
“In my other life, when I was in school, I used to…” I fumble for the words, my tongue dry and heavy. “Analyze motivations.”
“Nothing misses you, man,” Ron says, and presses his palm on my inner thigh.
“I think you mean…You don’t miss anything,” I say.
“You say it way better.” He pulls my hair out of its ponytail and pets it smooth.
I stare at the hospital windows blushing in the distance, figures shuffling behind the curtains like shadowy puppets. I worry that if I can see them, they can see me. I feel open, exposed, like a melon sliced mid-section to reveal the lay of my seeds and pulp.
“You gonna stick around here, you think?” he asks.
“I used to have this whole plan mapped out and now I don’t know.”
“It’s chill here, you know.”
“I want to feel grounded for once.”
“Like being in trouble?”
“Rooted in something.”
And then, he grabs my chin and kisses my earlobe.
“Or, we don’t have to talk,” I say.
His hands dive down my jeans before I can surrender my shirt. I feel awkward and out of place, like I have tiny, furry paws. I try to concentrate on the warm, tequila burn of our tongues, but I keep thinking about how he is old enough to be my father. I unbutton his uniform, slide it off of his arms, and pull at his white undershirt. As he wrestles out of it, I see a glimmer, the faintest glimmer of a silver chest hair. I pull back. The only thing I can think about is fucking Santa Claus. Old Saint Nick. White beard, wooden shoes, red dotted cheeks, and patron saint of children everywhere. I close my eyes and try to banish the thought from my mind.
“Everything okay?” he asks, a little breathless.
“Yes, yes, everything is good. I’m good,” I lie. But in reality I am envisioning Santa topless, his man boobs and bowl full of jelly, a stark pasty white, jiggling with pleasure.
“We can stop,” he says.
Lever one: Say goodnight, close the door, and deprive myself of human connection. Lever two: Straddle his hips, thrust my naked body against his, and feed my overwhelming desire to get out of my own skin, to burrow into another life.
So, I sit on top of him while he kneads my ass. His skin is warm and his chest hair tickles. I laugh. I forget about Santa and Christmas and my dad dying or shit, dead already, and all the events leading up to landing in this weird, weird place. And I feel calm. I feel okay. And then Ron hugs me, this big bear hug, and I am a piece of spicy fried chicken in a skin burrito and I think I might cry, just for a minute.
*
Two days later, I collapse into the brown recliner in my dad’s hospital room, a prop that tries too hard to make the room look like a home. Barb looks at me. “You look like shit,” she says. She hands me a Snickers bar from her pocket before she leaves. “We still need a decision about the life support, Bebe.” I nod my head, but I don’t know what to do. The decision roils in my brain. To waste away or to die, that is the question. I can let my dad float on in a coma, his body supported by clanking, buzzing machines or I can tell Barb to turn it all off, and watch my dad sink into non-existence.
My father’s cheeks look like wizened limes. Hopeful pink and white carnations aim their expiring heads toward the window. The tube in his mouth has created a new seam that looks drawn on with a red crayon, a kid’s art project.
“You would know about hangovers, hunh?” I twist my body into the recliner and put my hand on top of his. Dry and limp. It is probably the third or fourth time that I’ve ever held my father’s hand.
“This is nice. Us sitting here. Real quality family time stuff.”
On the television, CNN announces catastrophes in a silent stream.
“I don’t have any Jim Beam. Think that’s what I saw you drinking once.” I pull a Grey Goose vodka bottle from my book bag, take a swig, and watch my arm hairs stand up. I’ve gotten into the habit of stealing so much alcohol from the Island it has become a game.
“I graduated last year. Got my degree and everything. I was working in a lab for a while. And now I work in a restaurant, like you did, I think.”
The ventilator pumps, clicks, and hums.
“We can change the channel if you want.”
The vodka burns my throat, and I cough. I think about those movies where someone dies, and the montage of memories ensues—the two characters’ scenes together like photos on a clothesline. I keep trying to do that, to hang that clothesline in my head, but all I can come up with is the one actual memory of my dad and I sharing a funnel cake at the state fair when he lived in Oklahoma. It was the first time I saw him after my parents’ divorce. The cake tasted like stale grease and sweet vanilla. And the goats, pigs, and chickens on display smelled so much like old shit that we both mimed puking faces. He placed his hand on the small of my back and ushered me towards the Tilt-a-Whirl, and I thought maybe this is what it’s like to have a real dad. But when we got to the ride’s entrance, he spent the hour in line talking to the blonde woman behind us. He asked her more questions about her life than he’d ever asked of me.
“I have a crush, sort of. I mean I like someone. He’s older. So, I don’t know if I would ever see him, like, long term.”
I look down at the floor.
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” I swallow.
“I don’t know how to describe him except that he’s really calm and understanding. He’s fun and funny, I think. He drinks. Probably too much, you know. He never gets mean. Never. He just makes me feel safe and good. You know what I mean?”
A knot hardens in the back of my throat, and I laugh. At the absurdity of sitting in my father’s hospital room, waiting for him to wake up and acknowledge my presence. Waiting for a response. I think about the time in high school I played Cordelia in King Lear. The dutiful Cordelia who was shunned because she wouldn’t declare her love for her father.
One of the balloons in the room pops, a loud noise rings and startles me.
“Okay, then, you want to watch Wheel of Fortune or Family Feud? … All right, all right, have it your way. We’ll watch Wheel.”
*
Two years ago, after my mother’s funeral, I sat across from my stepdad in their living room. Boxes full of my mother’s belongings covered the beige carpet.
The grandfather clock tick-tick-ticked as we sat and stared at the cardboard wave of books and clothes and sheets that smelled faintly of my mother, like cinnamon, lavender soap, and almonds.
“That’s all the stuff you requested, Bebe.” Les sighed as he stared at the quivering trees outside.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. I held a crumpled tissue to my nose, red and raw from blowing it, feeling still like someone had gutted me from the back, a wound I couldn’t tend to.
“Things will be okay here,” he said. He patted the butter-colored sofa, and added, “Nothing to worry on about.” With both hands, he smoothed his thin, perfectly combed mouse-brown hair, and then laid his hands on his plain khaki trousers.
I’d wanted him to show emotion, a wild and passionate smashing of plates or a loud, aching weeping, so deep he hiccupped, and snot covered his mouth, to honor my mother with his ugliness. I wanted him to feel what I felt so that I could know that we were built from the same stuff, but he didn’t. Maybe, after being with my father, my mother wanted someone safe, quiet, and steady, someone who wouldn’t break her.
I haven’t talked to Les much since the funeral. Everything seems forced and awkward between us. But I guess he will be the only kind-of parent I have once my dad is gone. Once I’m an orphan.
*
The next day, on the way out of the hospital, I meander into the gift shop. I root around the store with the intention of getting some small trinket for dad, and I end up in the T-shirt aisle with two neon-colored options: Number One Daughter, and Number One Dad. I grab at an oversized, electric blue Number One Dad T-shirt and pull it on over my tank top. The shirt overwhelms my frame and hangs off me like I am a child.
I walk towards the checkout, and I put too much cash on the counter.
“What’s he in for?” the cashier asks.
“I’m not ready yet,” I snap, and grab a bag of peanut M&Ms from the shelf and put it on the counter.
The cashier looks down, and mumbles, “Oh, sorry.”
I turn my head to see Barb pass by in the hallway, and she looks at the T-shirt, then right at me, pinches her lips, shakes her head, and turns her face away. Like she feels sorry for me, or maybe she’s embarrassed for me. The tag rubs my neck, and itches, and I want to rip it off, tear it up.
*
On the way home, because I am lonely and maybe a little scared, I search my contacts for a number I haven’t dialed in forever. I count five rings before I consider hanging up.
“This is Dakota. What can I do you for?” Dakota is one of my dad’s ex-girlfriends, the only one I really got to know.
“It’s me, Bebe. Remember, Jerry’s daughter?” I scratch the back of my neck where the T-shirt tag irritates my skin.
“Oh, my God. Bebe. Shit in a bucket, what are you up to?”
“I’m at the hospital right now. I’m here with Dad.”
“Mercy. Is he okay?”
“No, he’s not. He’s on machines. He’s in his own room. He had a heart attack, and then he had surgery, and it didn’t go well. He’s going to die.” I realize Dakota is the first person that I’ve talked to about my father besides the nurses, whose job it is to talk about people like my dad to people like me. To waste away or to die, that is the question.
“What can I do, honey? Tell me what I can do.”
“I just wanted to talk to someone who knew him.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus in Heaven, honey. I’m so sorry. I think I know what you’re asking and I’m sorry. I can’t come out there. I just can’t. I’ve got people coming to my house in one hour. I’ve deveined three pounds of shrimp.”
“I just want some advice.”
“Sweet girl, you’re going to be okay. I got to be with my daddy when he passed. Got a chance to let go of all that mess…Your old man, Bebe…. We’ve all screwed up.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a smart girl, Bebe.”
“What if I make the wrong decision?”
“You are going to be a-l-l right.”
“Remember the snapper? Do you think we should’ve put it back?”
I wait for her to say something, but all I can hear is the clink-clink of kitchen utensils, and the shhhhh sound of running water. And then she yells at a dog for barking too loudly.
Silence, and then I think I might cry, and I don’t want her to hear it.
“Dakota, I gotta go. Thanks for talking.”
*
Back on the Island, I assume the persona of happy, carefree server. Not falling apart. Not orphan. Not alcohol thief. Not father killer. At the employee meeting, in the back of Paradise Island, Todd Jarky hands us all a glossy flier with NEW on the upper left hand corner and the words ZESTY TAQUITOS written on the top.
That’s when I notice that Ron is missing. I look around at the staff, but both the wait staff and the kitchen guys avoid eye contact with me. It is unlike him to be late. A tray of taquitos is passed around, everyone biting off the same one. Thinking of everyone’s saliva layered on the taquitos makes me nauseous. My heartbeat quickens.
When the taquitos reach me, I put my palm up and shake my head. “No thanks,” I say.
“There a problem, Bebe?” Todd asks.
“Allergic to coconut,” I lie.
Todd coughs. “One more thing, gang.” He adds, “We’ve had to let one of our leadership staff members go this afternoon. It was brought to my attention that this person was stealing from the Island. Stole over five hundred dollars in alcohol. We are a family here, and we can’t have the head of our family stealing and lying to us.”
Everyone’s eyes focus on me. Most people know that Ron and I both stole alcohol, and maybe they think I ratted him out. Or maybe they know Ron covered for me. The restaurant friends I’d made start to dissipate into thin air in my mind. I should’ve worn underwear; I feel exposed. I imagine myself alone forever, unable to maintain relationships. A satellite with no planets to orbit. My thoughts overflow, drown my logic, I have trouble breathing. Lever one: Don’t make eye contact with Todd and hope he doesn’t question me. Lever two: Tell Todd the truth, lose my job, and end up homeless, orphaned, and starving. These are the times when you need a parent to guide you.
*
By the time I arrive at the hospital, I’m having a full-on panic attack. I realize the weight of my decisions over the past few weeks, how much I’ve stolen, lied to people who trusted me. I clutch my Number One Dad T-shirt in my palm. I gasp for breath, the backs of my knees sweat, and my heart jumps in my chest. My cell phone blinks red. It blinks red again. And again. I miss Todd’s call. I nearly pass out. For sure, I will be fired for running out on my shift, but could I go to jail if my thievery is found out? My jail mates Dice and JoJo might teach me how to make sweet and spicy jambalaya and how to protect myself when someone tries to assault me with a brick. Sweat drenches my forehead. My hair feels wet. My body sways back and forth. I think of my father, whose body is lying on the top floor. My father, who couldn’t say no to anything. He made worse decisions. Maybe it is written into my DNA—the fuckup gene. He never made an effort to get to know me, to understand me. So what, if anything, do I owe him?
*
The summer I was thirteen, my dad sent a postcard with a smiling sun and a sandy beach, and I begged my mother to let me visit him. When I called, he agreed to let me tag along on a deep-sea fishing trip. The waves were larger, less frothy, and more commanding in the middle of the ocean than at the shore. Dad was a pro, but I’d never been fishing before. The sky was a parfait of blues and greens that melted into the sea. Everything was damp and wore tiny drops of condensation. It was just me, him, Dakota, and a crew on board. Two of the other passengers had gotten seasick on the boat and Dad was pissed off, but really, I think he was more upset he hadn’t caught anything, and he wouldn’t get drunk until he did.
I held my rod while I listened to Taylor Swift on my headphones, stared at the waves, and daydreamed. Then, there was a pull on the other side of the line. It hurt more than anything. The end of the rod dug into my thigh.
“Whoa. Whoa. I got something,” I screamed. My dad dropped his line, stood behind me, and placed his hands on top of mine.
“You can do it. Just pull. Pull harder. Use your thighs,” he yelled. The fish struggled against the line as I pulled, hard. My hands clasped the handle under my father’s hands, the spool unthreaded, and I heaved against the weight of the fish, not yet visible on the surface of the water. My arms ached. I imagined I was hauling at the weight of the ocean, reining it in. Once we pulled the large red snapper in, my dad tightened his grip on my shoulder, and we held the fish up together, laughing and sweating.
*
That night, I collapse into the recliner and pull my knees into my chest. I put my hand on top of my father’s. It is cold and damp. The ventilator hums and clicks.
“I’m going to go back home soon,” I say, pulling at his palm and burying it between my two hands.
I fall into the recliner, try to hide in the padding and soft cushioning. I need to call Todd, but I don’t. Instead, I call Ron.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Got fired,” he says.
“I know that. What happened?”
“I covered for you.”
“Thank you. Thanks. Are you in trouble at all?” I want him to tell me he is all right, that he is okay, that he cares about me.
“Todd’s not gonna press charges.”
“That’s great.”
“But it’s over, man.”
“The job?” I ask, but I mean to say, us?
“Time to move on, Bebe. I’ve spent too many years at the Island, just hanging out.”
“That’s it?”
“Got another call coming in. Call you later, man.”
*
It is late when I wake up, and I realize I am soon-to-be-orphaned, alone. In the background, the ventilator drones on. I look at my father before searching the hallways for a snack machine. My neck aches from sleeping in the recliner all night. I can barely turn my head to the left. Stumbling down the bright white hallway, I reach the visitor’s lounge where a Kenny Loggins song about islands and being the only one for someone else streams into the room. I stare at the snack machine. Lever one: M&Ms. Sugar. Prolonged death. Lever two: plain peanuts. Salty, survival food. I push for the second choice.
When I return to my dad’s room, Barb is waiting for me.
“How you holding up?” she asks.
I stare at her, breathe in the heavy Lysol scent of the room. I’m unsure what I feel.
“It’s time, Bebe.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wait so long.”
*
That night, the hum and click and pause and hum and click and pause expire slowly. I’ve never been so exhausted but unable to sleep. I stare at my father’s hands. The expiration is not abrupt. It is not like the movies at all. It is quiet. I fold into the recliner and try to think about the good in my father, the one I know from a few small moments in my childhood. At the state fair he won me a blue rabbit with buck teeth by shooting a water gun at a moving target about a hundred times; he wouldn’t give up until he’d given me a prize. The time I caught the big snapper, and it struggled on the boat. Its body flipped, turned, and twisted. The sunlight flickered on its pink and silver skin. The boat dipped and the waves spilled onto the front deck, covering it with a thin layer of water and white froth. The snapper’s gills protracted and contracted once more. Red rivulets lined its mouth, agape. And the motion subsided slowly, ever so slowly.
Photo by https://unsplash.com/@theinnervizion?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=ref…