The Road to Goodbye Read online

  “Hey dumbass, Dad’s coming home tomorrow.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And you know how that nurse said that it’d be nice for Dad to have a recliner when he got home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much money’ve you saved up for school?”

  “Enough that I can go half-sies on a La-Z-Boy for Dad with you.”

  “Cool. When you wanna get it?”

  “Now?”

  We didn’t know what we were looking for, other than we needed a recliner, something Dad would actually use. But, since we had no frame of reference for these kinds of things, we had no idea where to start so we started driving towards Woodfield, stopping in every store along the way that looked like it had something we might want.

  “Dude, how about that place, next to Binny’s?” I’d ask.

  “Which one?”

  “The one that’s called ‘La-Z-Boy Showroom’?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “What? That’s what it’s called.”

  As we went from store to store we started learning what we were looking for- the difference in padding, reclining mechanisms, upholstery. It was the kind of education that I don’t think either one of us ever planned on getting. But it was definitely nice to feel like I was helping out in Papo’s rehab, it made me feel less like my deal with my father the night before his surgery resulted in something less like abandonment and more like helping out.

  “Holy shit.”

  “What?” I asked, not knowing what I was doing to offend him now. I mean all I was doing was driving.

  “This tape, this shitty tape, you’re taking this with you to college right? You’re going to use it to drive your roommate crazy, right?”

  “Oh, you hadn’t noticed it was on? I’d actually forgotten because you hadn’t bitched yet.”

  “Yeah, I guess I’d tuned it out, but not this stupid song, JESUS is this terrible.”

  “Man, it’s my last few days in town…”

  “…Yeah so I’ll let you listen to it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t file a protest.”

  “OK, I’ll take that.”

  Over the past few days this particular Monaco track had become something of a refuge for me, helping take my mind off of how crazy my life had become. So it was kinda nice when Rafa started to sing a long a little.

  “That reminds me,” he said as the song ended up. “We need to stop by Best Buy today. I need to get something.”

  Since we were in the neighborhood and had pretty much decided that we had one more stop to make that day, the Sears in Woodfield, we had the time to kill so I entertained Rafa’s desire to go to Best Buy.

  When we got there he went straight for the pop/rock section and emerged a few moments later with a surprise.

  “I called Alex, this is the CD that that song of yours came off of. I’m going to buy it for you on one condition, you never listen to it with me in the car and we stop listening to that tape immediately. As a matter of fact, you cannot listen to this song until you get on the plane to Minneapolis. OK?”

  “Yeah, sure dude.”

  “OK, I love you, have a good time at college and don’t worry about us, we’re going to be fine. I was distant at the hospital because I knew I was going to be the one who was going to have to get Papo through rehab so I was conserving my strength. I know now that I should have mentioned that to you earlier, but there it is. Did I mention that I love you and I’m proud of you? Thank you for keeping the family together this week. Now let’s go pay for this thing so we can go to Sears and get dad that recliner, I think blue in like a corduroy kinda upholstery with that steel crossbeam shit they were talking about at the first store is the way to go. Should be $400 a pop, I’m glad we didn’t buy anything at Homemakers, didn’t feel right to me.”

  My brother cares, he’s just always had a rough time showing it.

  We got back in the car; I let him blare his beloved B96 with the windows down as we cruised in my father’s minivan towards Sears to get him the recliner he never knew he always wanted.

  X

  The next morning I awoke to the sound Eddie and Jobo coming from Rafa’s alarm clock down the hall.

  Hearing Rafa’s alarm put me on edge. If I wasn’t ready to go right when he was it was going to be a harbinger of a much larger problem. I know that I’ve spent a good deal of time trashing my little brother and that’s not entirely right. I love the guy, he’s a good guy, and a lot of fun to be around, but he can be pissy and not conforming to his view of life and timetable is one of the quickest ways to get him from zero to annoyed in no time. Normally, I’d be willing to stand up to him just to knock him off his pedestal, but that day wasn’t one of those days. Papo was coming home today, and I just didn’t want to leave for Willis on the heels of a shitty, shitty day with my brother.

  Papo was a completely different man from the one we’d seen in the ER a few days earlier, to say nothing of the man who came out of the OR between then and now. He wasn’t himself, not at full strength, and who knew what full strength would look like after this. But he was a decent; if more tired, facsimile of the father we knew and loved.

  When we got him home and into his new chair, which he loved, Uncle Alfonso and company packed up and headed out leaving the four of us to sit around and ponder the new world order that lay before us. Some of my dad’s buddies were picking me up in the morning to take me to Midway and after watching some TV my mom helped me pack up the few things we hadn’t shipped on Monday, and then it was time for bed.

  The next morning I got up, showered, had breakfast and kissed my family goodbye. This was it, no tearful sendoff in front of my dorm, not even one of those movie things where they watch me go down the ramp towards the plane, this being back in the day when non-ticketed passengers could meet people at the gates. Instead, I said goodbye in my living room as friends took me to the airport. True to my word, I didn’t listen to my new Monaco CD until I was safely seated in seat 3a on Vanguard flight 394.

  As it turns out my favorite song on the album isn’t “What Do You Want From Me,” but it’s a close second and a really good soundtrack to the year I was about to have.

  FIN

  …Diego Hidalgo will return in green[er].