B Negative (7 page)

I could reach over and take it from him, and he'd be helpless to do anything about it.

I probably should. I know he doesn't need any more.

Or do I?

He's right. What do I know? What do I know about how he feels?

I change my mind.

I'm going to sit here with my mouth shut and let him drink and let him talk until he's said everything he wants to say. It's the least I can do for him.

Chapter Nineteen

It's pitch-dark out and it's really cold. I can't stop shivering. I don't know if it's because of my cut or hunger or if it's just because I'm so frigging tired, but I feel sick. I want to go to sleep, but he's still talking.

At least he's not so mad anymore. He just sounds sad now.

He's blaming himself. The drinking. Leaving Mom alone all the time. Not telling her how much he loved her.

He actually cries for a while.

Then he swears for a while just to show he's still a tough guy and opens another beer.

“I don't know how I never figured it out.” He takes big long pauses between his words to take another puff or another gulp or just to keep his thoughts more or less straight. “Your mother's tall, so I assumed that's where you got it. She's a good-looking woman too. Too good-looking for the likes of me, that's for sure.”

He has a big long laugh about that, then has to spit at the end of it.

“And I can't play a musical instrument of course. Not like An-thon-y.”

He blows across the mouth of his beer bottle. It makes a humming sound. “The only song I know,” he says. He laughs some more, but then his face goes serious again.

“People would say, ‘Paddy's good with his hands, John, just like you.' Or ‘Paddy's got your way with a tire wrench,' and I guess I just made myself believe that was proof enough. What a frigging fool I turned out to be, eh?”

He drops his head.

“You're not a fool,” I say. “You raised me. You did what was right. You were a good father to me.”

He doesn't say anything to that, but I think I got through to him. “I love you, Dad,” I say. “I'll always love you. No matter what.”

I reach out to put my hand on his shoulder and realize why he didn't answer.

He's passed out cold.

I go down below and get a blanket from his bunk. I put it over him and throw his cigarette in the water.

I push the bottles out of the way and lie down on the deck at his feet. I want to make sure he's all right.

Hopefully we'll both be feeling better tomorrow.

Chapter Twenty

I don't know where I am. I don't know if I'm hot or cold. I don't know what's happening.

Dad is holding my phone right in front of my face.

“Paddy.” He's not angry anymore. “How does this work?”

I try to tell him but I can't figure out how to get the words from my brain to my mouth. My jaw bounces up and down like an old man's. Nothing comes out.

Dad takes my hand and puts it on the phone. “Turn it on, son. C'mon. You can do it.”

This should be easy—I know it should—but I'm like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. I have to concentrate really hard to keep the world still. I lick my lips. I focus on the phone until there's only one of them. I see the button. I press it—but the screen stays dark.

Dad grabs the phone from me. “This button? This one?” I nod or at least I think I do. He hits the button again and again. Nothing happens. His face is gray.

I know what the problem is, although I don't know how I do. Did I dream it? I shake my head.

He says, “What? What's the matter?”

I'm afraid he'll be mad. He always takes good care of his equipment. I want to explain that it was an accident, that I didn't mean to break it, that I just slipped on some seaweed, but all I manage to say is, “Wet.”

Dad swears.

I see his feet walk back and forth on the deck beside me. I want to tell him I'm going to throw up but I don't have time. My insides spill out of me.

“That's okay,” he says and wipes my face with the blanket. His face is really close to mine. He stinks of beer. His eyes are bloodshot.

“You're going to have to help me, son,” he says. “We need to get you to a hospital. Can you get up?”

He pulls me to my feet. I see the veins in his neck bulge.

After that, I'm not really sure what happens.

Chapter Twenty - One

I sort of swim in and out of reality. It's like I keep falling asleep in the middle of a movie or something. I just have little video clips of what's going on, but they don't fit together very well.

The dinghy rocking. The sweat on Dad's face. Some guy stopping on the road. People running. Bright lights.

And then the tubes. I try to pull them out of my arm. The nurse puts her hand over mine and stops me.

I don't know if she tells me then or if it's something I overheard but I know I have blood poisoning from “the wound.” That's what she keeps calling it.

Then sometime later—I don't know how long—I open my eyes and I see Mom. Her face is all puffy and wet. I suddenly understand how sick I am—but it's weird. I'm not scared. It's just sort of a fact.

I open my eyes another time and Dad's there. He's holding my hand and he doesn't let go of it even when he knows I'm awake. That doesn't seem strange either, although it clearly is.

Tara comes too. I've been dreaming about her, and when I wake up there she is, asleep beside me in the chair.

Maybe that's what finally knocks me back to life. I wake up for real this time.

I look around the room. It's sort of dark. The sun hasn't come up yet, or maybe it's just gone down, I don't know. There are flowers and balloons and cards everywhere. Dad is sitting bolt upright in a chair with his eyes closed and his mouth open.

I shift in the bed. I see someone's feet on the floor. I recognize them immediately. It's the tan. Anthony's asleep too.

Or maybe he's not. This game we used to play when he first moved in with Mom comes back to me. He'd be holding a bag of candies. He'd pretend to fall asleep and I'd sneak up to steal them. I'd just get my little hand on the bag—then he'd jump up screaming. He'd chase me all around the house until he caught me, but by then he'd be too “tired” to eat the candies himself. He'd end up giving them to me.

Anthony scratches his arm in his sleep, and another memory materializes in my head. I'm sitting on his lap. He's holding down the chords so I can strum the strings. It hits me that the person lying on the floor now is the same person who did that then. I hadn't made that connection before.

I touch Tara's arm and she jumps awake.

I say, “I'm thirsty.” Her eyes smile as if I just told her I won the lottery. She runs out into the hall.

Dad and Anthony are both up in a second and crowding around the bed. They're smiling but they both look like they're not sure they're allowed to.

In a minute, Tara's back with the nurse.

“Which one of you is the father?” she says.

Dad and Anthony both say, “I am.”

Chapter Twenty - Two

When I get out of the hospital, Mom tries to talk to me about it. She stands in the kitchen doorway, wringing her hands and blinking back tears.

“I didn't know,” she says. “I mean, I didn't know for sure. It could have been either of them.”

Just the way she holds her shoulders, I can see how ashamed she is.

“I didn't know what to do. I knew how much your father—I mean, John— needed me, and I knew how much he loved you.”

Her words come out one at a time, as if they're ashamed too.

“So I tried to make it work. But John and I really weren't suited for each other…You can see that, Paddy, can't you? We split up for a while, and then Anthony came back to town and, well, that was that. I loved Anthony. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to have a husband who was here and talked to me and was interested in the same type of things I was.”

I promised myself in the hospital I wasn't going to get mad. I was just going to listen. I was just going to try and understand.

“When did you know he was my father?”

“I didn't. Not really. As you got older and taller, I started to wonder. But I just put it out of my mind.”

Okay. I sort of understand doing that. “But how could you let him pay for me all those years? It doesn't seem fair.”

“What else could I do? I couldn't turn down child support payments. John's a proud man. He'd never have let me do it unless I told him why— and that would have broken his heart.”

She covers her face with her hands, but when she looks up she's almost pulled herself together.

“Maybe I was a coward. I don't know. But I was right about how much he loves you.” She shakes her head. “I don't know how he managed to do it, but he got you off that boat and to the hospital all by himself. He stayed there every night and cried like a baby until you were better.

“He loves you,” she says again. “And you know what else? Anthony does too. I know you don't see eye to eye these days. But you forget. You did get along when you were little. He read to you. He goofed around with you. He taught you to play guitar. He tried his best. And you know he had a hard act to follow trying to compete with…”

She stops and figures out what to say.

“…with your dad. John's always going to be your dad, Paddy. And Anthony, I guess, will always be Anthony. That's just the way things are.”

She reaches for my hand.

“I'm sorry this turned out the way it did. I really am. I'm sorry I put everybody through so much—but I don't regret it. I got you as a result and your dad did too. I hope you'll be able to look back some day and think you were lucky. You have two fathers who love you. They both gave you a lot and…”

She starts to cry. I don't know what she was going to say, but I don't need to. I hug her. She sobs for a while, and then she realizes that I'm crying too and we both start to laugh.

“Oops, sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

Mom pulls away from me and wipes her face. “No, no, Tara. Come in! I was just going to get dinner started. We're having steak.”

I put my arm around Tara. I don't even try to hide my tears. Neither of us is embarrassed by that kind of thing anymore.

A taxi pulls into the driveway. Mom looks out the window. “Oh, good, John's here. Paddy, will you call Anthony and the kids?”

I take a breath and I'm hit again by how weird this is, how hard this is going to be, how much we're all going to have to forgive or forget or maybe just ignore. For a second it almost paralyzes me.

Then I hear the doorbell ring and Olivia and Marlon screaming, “Papa John!” and the creak of Anthony getting off his yoga mat—and I'm okay again. Something tells me we'll be able to work it out.

We just have to be positive.

Vicki Grant left her career in advertising and television to write her first novel.
B Negative
is her sixth book, following
Comeback
and
Nine Doors
. Vicki's books have gone on to win many awards, including the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her family. More information is available at
www.vickigrant.com
.

    Titles in the Series

orca soundings

B Negative

Vicki Grant

Back

Norah McClintock

Bang

Norah McClintock

Battle of the Bands

K.L. Denman

Big Guy

Robin Stevenson

Blue Moon

Marilyn Halvorson

Breathless

Pam Withers

Bull Rider

Marilyn Halvorson

Bull's Eye

Sarah N. Harvey

Cellular

Ellen Schwartz

Charmed

Carrie Mac

Chill

Colin Frizzell

Comeback

Vicki Grant

Crush

Carrie Mac

The Darwin Expedition

Diane Tullson

Dead-End Job

Vicki Grant

Death Wind

William Bell

Down

Norah McClintock

Exit Point