Don't Date Your Brother's Best Friend

I grit my teeth. “Things are going perfectly fine at the lumberyard, Dad,” I said. “I don’t need you to check my work, I just want you to look these invoices over and see if there’s anything you want to add.”

“There’s no time to teach you everything you’d need to know,” he said, patting my hand and shaking his head with resignation.

“We’ve been over this. Ryan loves his job at the bank over in Pendleton where he lives. He isn’t going to move back here and run the yard. I’m doing just fine with it. I wanted you to have a chance to look over the paperwork ad make suggestions. That’s all. I’m not lost or helpless, I promise,” I said indignantly.

“Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do, honey, but you’re not cut out for business. You should be in school, studying your flowers,” he shook his head. “Your brother’s the one with a good head for business. It’s how it should be, he’s a man. It’s his place to take care of things when I can no longer do it myself,” he sighed.

It took everything I had in me not to shout at my father, and I bit back my mounting frustration.

“Well, Dad, the doctor said if you’d do your rehab and physical therapy, you’d be back on your feet in eight weeks, and you could go back to work part-time,” I said. “But Mavis called and said you didn’t go to therapy again today.”

“I was tired. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“If you wouldn’t stay up watching the History Channel, you’d sleep more,” I said firmly. “I mean, it’s history. It’s all in the past, you won’t miss anything new if you turn it off,” I tried to joke.

“There’s no point going down to the hospital to walk on a treadmill. It’s just a bunch of broken-down old people watching Fox News and complaining about how their knees hurt them. It’s depressing.”

“Well, okay, I can see that. How about I talk to Mavis, and see if she can change the channel to some of the Real Housewives or put on History Channel for you, liven things up?” I offered. He shook his head.

“I don’t like going, and it doesn’t make me feel better. There’s something the doctor isn’t telling me. Because it’s been six weeks, I should be almost back to normal, but I don’t feel better at all. It’s like the life got sucked out of me in that hospital.”

“Have you been taking your medicine?” I asked.

“I take it most of the time. When you loaded it in the pillbox, I took it whenever I thought of it, and I could check if I’d already had it…”

“Do you want me to load the pillbox now? I have a few minutes,” I said. I went to the medicine cabinet, got his pill bottles and the plastic seven-days pillbox I’d gotten at the pharmacy. There were still pills for three of the days, “Dad, have you reloaded this?”

“No, I’ve still got some in it from where you did it.”

“I loaded it three weeks ago. It’s about time to call in refills on these prescriptions, and you haven’t even taken a week’s worth. You know you have to take these.”

“The peach one makes me feel tired.”

“Well, you said you weren’t sleeping, maybe that would help,” I said.

“No, it just makes me groggy. I can’t take it.”

“We’ll tell the doctor at your appointment. Maybe there’s something else you can try,” I said, busily loading the pillbox and reproaching myself for ever assuming he was taking his medicine as directed. The peach pill he wouldn’t take had a big blue label on it that said ‘may cause drowsiness do not operate machinery do not consume alcohol.’ I shook my head. That was half the problem. I kept light beer in the house for Ryan when he visited, but I’d poured out all the hard liquor when I moved in. He was getting it somewhere. He was still drinking, not taking care of himself, or taking his medicines.

I was failing. I had moved home to help get him back on his feet and look after him, but I’d been busy with the lumberyard. I’d even taken a night off to see my friends when he was home, not taking his meds and not going to rehab and drinking on the sly. I made a note to dial up the social worker at the hospital for ideas and cringed at the recollection that it was Jaycee Willard who was two years ahead of me in school and would tell the whole damn town I couldn’t manage my daddy’s recovery. I screwed my eyes shut tight and pushed down the guilt. I needed help. I didn’t like admitting it, but this was more than one person could do. The truth was, my dad never really had run the lumberyard. Ray Walsh ran it as the manager till he retired down to Florida last year. My dad spent more time socializing with customers and going out for a drink or three than he ever spent in that back office reconciling invoices. I got up and poured him a cup of decaf coffee and took him his lunchtime pill and watched him swallow it.