His wife of nine years, Sally, shares
his mother's name and her penchant for cask wine and artificial meat sticks she
calls “Tony’s”. David has never asked why they were called Tony’s and, as such,
has never understood the nickname given to these meat sticks that his wife
devours by the kilo.
Most nights, when David returns from
the roads, he receives a brief embrace followed by a stern order to fetch more
wine, or if he’s flush, a bottle of brandy.
Sally was too young to drink so much,
David thought. And it wasn’t even her reflection, or father, that was dying.
Like his father, David only bore one
child, a son. Michael, unlike his father and grandfather, was born without the
bulbous forehead and was not yet in possession of the anxious eyes.
But, as repetition would have it,
David’s son was a keen diver, just as he had been.
"Watch me, Daddy, watch
me", Michael would plead from the 2m board. But David exercised his parental
right to ignore his son's request, and never watched Michael enter the water
from a great height.
And not that any of this is relevant,
but it wasn't long before, like his father, David began to die inside.
So, staring into his reflection,
David smiled. He took the apple juice from the hospital tray, peeled back its
lid and savoured its sweetness. Then he read aloud a birthday card that sat
next to some dehydrated flowers and lingered on the final sentence: “Happy
Birthday to the father just like me”.
David knew this would be the last
chance he got to say goodbye to that straight back and taught face. Levering
himself from the vinyl chair, he planted his first and final kiss on his father’s
bulbous forehead.
And with that, with his reflection
dying beside him, David forced open a window and looked down on the emergency
department's entrance below.
If only his father could have seen
how perfectly flat he'd fallen.
