Dishes

By Lori Scharf

This is pulled from a short story I wrote last year. This is still the first draft, and the story doesn’t have an ending yet, but here it is.

***

Pop and I are washing dishes. He washes while I dry. Peg is out, so Anna sits in her playpen, cooing every now and then as she chews the ear of the stuffed bear. Besides Anna’s various noises, Pop and I sit in companionable silence as the dishes are passed through our careful hands, clanking together every now and then. 

Suddenly, Anna begins to cry. Softly at first, but in no time it’s a full-on wail. 

And just like that, I’m frozen. 

I know I need to find her need and address it, but I can’t move. The cries are transporting me back to that wrecked car. My hands begin to shake. My breathing grows heavy. I’m hyperventilating.

Pop glances at me, then dries his hands on a towel and walks across the room to pick up the crying baby. Anna quiets down almost immediately as Pop carries her down the hall to her nursery. 

I turn back to the sink, fighting tears. What kind of father can’t deal with his own daughter crying? Crying is a completely normal thing for babies to do, yet it sends me into a spiral almost every time. 

Anna’s cries start back up from the back of the house and I grit my teeth, fighting off images. My mind is a warzone, a battle between normality and all my brokeness. I scrub dishes with much more force than necessary, as if my sponge is a sword and I a knight, fighting off the monsters that haunt my mind. 

Minutes later Pop returns, and it’s only then that I notice the crying has stopped. He sees that I have usurped his position as dishwasher and wordlessly begins to carefully dry the dishes that I have just scrubbed almost to oblivion. 

“It was just a dirty diaper.” Pop says nonchalantly as he stacks plates. “I changed her, then put her to bed. She was pretty tuckered out.”

I nod, scoffing softly. “Pretty pathetic, isn’t it? A dad who can’t change a diaper because he’s too scared of a baby crying?” I scrub the pan I’m holding with all my might, hoping to release at least some of my frustration. 

Pop carefully catches and stills my hands, confiscating the spotless pot and placing a new, actually dirty one in the water in front of me. 

“Rory, it’s alright. It really is. You can’t help what happened to you, or the effects it had. You are doing the best you can, and that’s already more than a lot of fathers. Peg and I are here to help you make sure Anna is taken care of, even when you can’t do it yourself.”

I shake my head. “Emily was the one with all the parental instincts, you know. When she told me she was pregnant, I knew she would be a great mom and that I could learn by example. Now… now I don’t know what to do.” The pot I’m cleaning has stew burned to the bottom, practically superglued to the metal. This usually takes forever to scrape off, but thanks to my aggressive sponge usage, the charcoaled food is disappearing in record time. “How am I supposed to do this, Pop? I’m not ready for this! I can’t do it the way she did! I just.. I can’t!” The pot clatters to the bottom of the sink as I strangle the sponge in an attempt to stifle the tears that are pricking at the backs of my eyes. 

“Ready? Rory, I doubt any parent is ever ‘ready’. I certainly wasn’t. Not for Peg, and certainly not for you. But even so, you have to do the best you can. No one is perfect, the same goes for parents. The most important thing is that you try, and stick around even when it’s tough.”

“I… I just don’t get it, Pop. You went through plenty of tough stuff. How did you do it? How did you keep going?”

“I almost didn’t. That night when I found you breaking into my garage, I was going to give up. Quit battling Miranda for Peg’s custody, sell the rig, and run away from all my broken dreams. Then, I found you. You taught me there was more to life than my own problems and bitterness. You taught me how to love again.”

Well, that did in my attempts to keep back the tears. I use the cuff of my flannel shirt to dry my face, the dishes now all but forgotten. “How? How did you have the strength to open up your heart again? I’ve tried, Pop, I have! But my heart is so broken and twisted that I- I just can’t anymore.”

Pop considers me for a moment with a gaze somewhere between grief and pitty. “Son, there’s one thing I had that you don’t.”

I already know what’s coming. I can feel my walls of resentment coming up already.

“God.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes, turning back towards the sink. “Yeah, well, God and I aren’t exactly on the best terms.”

“Rory, listen. God ha-”

“No, Pop!” The resentment is gone, replaced by burning anger. I whirl away from the sink to face him. “You don’t get to talk to me about God right now! You don’t get to tell me that He has a plan, or that He hasn’t turned His back on me, or whatever!”

 I’m sobbing, boiling with anger. I’ve never yelled at Pop like this before. It feels wrong, but I can’t stop. “I asked God, pleaded with Him every moment Emily was in the hospital! I begged Him to spare her, to please, please, please let my wife live! But He didn’t hear me! He left me there, hung up the phone, and turned His back.” 

I can’t even look at Pop anymore. I turn to the sink, bracing my arms on edge and squeezing til my knuckles turn white. 

After a moment of silence, Pop speaks, his voice tinged with emotion. “God hasn’t turned His back on you, Son, He hasn’t even hung up the phone. He’s still on the other end, waiting for you to pick up the phone again. You’re the one who gave up. The moment Emily died, you chose to walk away instead of letting Him show you His bigger plan. I… I don’t know why he took Emily away from you. I’m sad, even angry for the pain this has caused you. But I also know God wants to help you through this. All you have to do is pick up the phone.”

Pop’s footsteps fade away down the hall, then there’s a sharp click as the door eases shut.