night, I heard muffled fighting behind their bedroom door, then the sound of a slap and Mom crying.
At my next swimming lesson, terror filled me to the point I puked in the pool. Fortunately, Mom took me to that lesson.
I never went back.
I never learned how to swim. I can count on one hand with fingers to spare the number of times I’ve been in a pool or lake or other body of water since then. I rarely go in hot tubs, either. I’ve been plagued with nightmares about drowning for most of my life as a result.
Somehow, I manage to resist the urge to punch him in the face. “You motherfucker. I suspected you pushed me over.”
His thin lips curve slightly in the grim ghost of a cruel smile I know all too well. “I was hoping you’d drown. You were too close to the surface for me to say I couldn’t find you.” A dry cough weakly rattles free and I don’t bother offering him water. “I couldn’t risk killing both of you then. Was going to drown your mother. But she wouldn’t take off her life jacket.”
Another cough rasps from him as I sit there, frozen to the depths of my soul. “Life insurance on both of you.” The Reaper’s smile returns. “I never wanted kids. She refused to get an abortion and told everyone she was pregnant before I could make her do it.”
Pain in my free hand, the one not holding my phone, breaks through. Only then do I realize I’ve clenched my fist so hard my nails have gouged half-moons in my palm.
Shaking it open, I return his smile. “Last laugh’s on you then, isn’t it, you old fucker?” I sit back and swipe out of the picture. “No legacy, no grandchildren to carry on your name. Just a queer son who will literally piss all over your name and reputation the second you take your last breath.”
I savor his dark glare. “You’ll burn in Hell.”
Yes, I actually snort. “I’ll meet you there, then. See, I ditched the cult mentality back in high school. I’m not even sure there is a God. If there is, I suspect someone like yourself won’t make it to Heaven no matter how much money you’ve paid to the church. Your soul is dark and moldy, rotted clean through. Frankly, any Heaven that would take your soul is a place I’d rather not be, thank you very much.”
On that note, his breathing grows raspy and shallow, prompting me to grab the tube delivering oxygen to the cannula in his nose. I fold the tubing over, tightly pinching it. I also hold it up so he can see what I’ve done.
“Want me to pinch off the morphine drip, too, you old fuck?”
I lean in close again. “By the way, I never slept with Olivia. She ran a scam on you and on her parents. She never wanted kids, either. All she wanted was to escape her parents’ thumbs on her life. She wanted freedom and an education, which her sisters never got to enjoy. I told her before the wedding that I couldn’t ‘perform,’ blamed it on an injury I said you didn’t know about. She still went through with it.” I smile. “That means a woman and your gay son played you and your shitty friend, motherfucker. Like goddamned violins. She’ll get her trust, and I’ll get yours.”
He licks his lips and tries to speak but only air and wordless sounds make it out.
Twenty minutes later, he’s finally gone. By the time the nurse softly knocks on the door and sticks her head in, I’ve pulled a reasonable facsimile of a grieving son’s expression into place.
Meaning I’ve managed to stop smiling.
She walks over to the silenced monitors and switches them off. Using her stethoscope, she listens for a heartbeat.
I slump back in my chair, barely able to contain my joy.
Before, that might have at least evoked a twinge of guilt within me, but not now.
Not after he confessed yet more sins to me.
I am glad I got to purge myself to him before he died. I’m glad the last thing he heard from me was how he got played.
No, I’m not sure anymore there is a Heaven or Hell. Maybe I’ve been living in Hell and now I have a chance to feel some semblance of if not Heaven, at least a more peaceful Purgatory where I don’t have to feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder.
I’m no