The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

“I’m here now, ain’t I?  Now tell me what’s going on.  Why are you in here like this?  Someone told me you were sick.”

“I am sick.  I’ve been sick since you were born, boy.  Been sick ever since I got myself tied down to your father.”

“No, I mean real sick.  Actual sick.”

The room went dead silent except for the sound of her breathing and, before too long, the sound of his father breathing behind him.  He didn’t need an answer then.  He could smell it.  He could smell it on both of them.  It was the same kind of smell you got if you went on vacation without remembering to clean out the fridge, only to return to molding, rotting food that should have been thrown out long ago. 

That was what it was to be in this smoldering apartment with his parents, these people he hardly knew and didn’t really like.  Years of living through better chemistry had taken its toll and all of the poison they had put into their bodies, the tobacco and pills and liquor, had eaten them up from the inside out.

They were dying, slowly and very painfully, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.  Why had he come here?  What had been the point?  If he was supposed to have some kind of come to Jesus moment where he forgave them their sins and they all three hugged it out while the music poured down on them from the heavens, well, that just wasn’t going to happen. 

Them killing themselves over a period of years was their decision, not his.  As far as Tyler was concerned, this latest tragedy didn’t absolve all of their sins.  It didn’t change much of anything.  He just wished that he had figured that out before he walked through their front door.

“What’s it to you, boy?  Fu*k do you care how sick she may be?  You ain’t got no business being here.  Nobody asking you to show your face.”

“Why you gotta talk to him that way?  He’s my son, right?  You don’t need to talk him out the door right after he walks through it.  Don’t I deserve to see my son?”

“Jesus, woman, don’t you ever get tired of listening to your own bullsh*t?  You haven’t cared two sh*ts about him since the day he was born.  No point in messing with his head now, is there?”

“Just shut your mouth, will ya?  Lemme talk to my son!”

Tyler’s dad rushed forward, much faster than Tyler ever would have anticipated.  Drunk, sick, and aging poorly wasn’t enough to slow him down, apparently.  He almost knocked Tyler over, although only due to the element of surprise (or at least Tyler very much hoped that was the only advantage the old man had at this point), and smacked his wife square across the jaw. 

She let out a little wail of surprise and pain, her head moved violently to one side and blood splattered across the plastic she insisted on using to cover the back of the cheap couch.  Maybe that was why, Tyler thought distractedly to himself.  Maybe she was aiming to keep the blood off of the couch.

“Whoa! What the fu*k, old man? There’s no need for that.  You don’t gotta hurt her.”

“And what makes you think you can tell me what to say in my own house?”

“Just-you don’t have to rough her up.  What’s the point if she’s already sick as it is?”

“Don’t gotta be a point.  It’s none of your business, now is it?”

Tyler knew they could go round and round on this point for hours, days if he let them, and he just couldn’t have that.  He leaned towards his mom, kissed her quickly on the forehead and tried not to flinch when she reached out to touch the side of his face.  Her hands were hot, clammy, and the sweat made him feel like he might just be sick, too. 

He backed away quickly, like he had been burned just by her touch, and tried to get his breathing under control.  He could feel himself losing control of it, letting anxiety get the better of him.  As his mother liked to tell it, he had been a baby with an unusual amount of anxiety, always crying and clinging to his mama’s side. 

Some of his first memories were of her saying that sort of thing and it had, to put it bluntly, pissed him right off.  He had fought to train that out of himself.  He had fought to be the apathetic man he had become and there was no way in hell that he was going to let himself get sucked right back into the whole thing.

“You know what?  I gotta go, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have come.  This was a mistake.  I gotta go, gotta go meet Caleb someplace.”

“Wait!”

Tyler stopped, his back still to his parents, his face set in a mask of complete indifference.  The tone in his mom’s voice had changed now.  He knew that tone.  He had heard it used on many people, his father and him not the least of them.  She wanted something and seeing that playing sweet and sickly hadn’t provided her with the avenue to discuss it that she was looking for, she was ready to switch her tactics.

That was good.  As unpleasant as she was when she got like this, Tyler understood this version of his mother.  The mask was off and he could see that raw, writhing underbelly of her true, black being.

“What is it, ma?  What do you want?”

“Can’t you turn around and look at me when I’m talking to you?”

“Let the boy go, will you?  I told you, I don’t want nothing he’s got.”

“What I’ve got?  What’re you talking about with that?”

“Just look at me, Tyler.”

Tyler turned and saw that his father had found a little bottle from somewhere, full of deathly looking dark liquid he was sipping as if his life depended on it.  Good.  That was a good plan.  Keep on drinking old man, see what road it took you down.  And there was his mother, blood still on her face, with a shrewd, calculating look on her face.  He was dealing with her now.  His father was tired of being involved.