Last, um, my friend Sam let me come over. Sit in the sun, aim my face at the sky. Shootin’ the whatever on the porch, while he ducked under his self-made tarp tent. There was Sam striding around like a low budget television star on the set of a PBS desert planet. Wearing: khaki flop hat, cargo pants, white long sleeve t-shirt. Grizzled face streaked with sunscreen. Here and there: plywood, tropical plants, wraparound wood porch, deck
refurbishing.
Before Key West, Sam lived in Michigan. State trooper. Controlled traffic, ticketed truckers, investigated crashes, mostly. Still, real scary stuff. Sam almost died, several times. Last
whenever, Sam told me he once helped some religious nut, member of the hardcore unemployed. That guy reached for Sam’s gun. Tried to bite Sam in the cheek, nose, groin. Grabbed Sam’s gun and pointed the barrel at Sam’s stomach.
Point? Sam got end-of-life flash. Saw: five brothers, two sisters, then-wife meaning before wife, the ex-wife who took away Sam’s daughters, biological daughters. Sam saw ex-wife but mostly daughters. Point? End-of-life flash mostly daughters. Then, gun jammed. True. And Sam got gun back. Shot that guy. Didn’t want to, but had to. That’s life, Sam said, talking to me on the porch last whenever. Life’s complicated, Sam said then.
All that changed Sam. Life one, done. Life two, Key West. Trained himself as a carpenter. Livin’ off the lam. Land? Anyway, met my before wife, my ex-wife Karla at the, um, Schooner Wharf Bar. Surprising, because, well, the Schooner Wharf Bar. And because Karla is a psychoanalyst, adolescent focus. So smart and accomplished, while dark and exotic and usually not with guys like
C’mon, Glen, you are mild-mannered. That’s what people always said. My colleagues in Miami always said, Man, that Glen never said a bad word about anybody. My patients in Key West said that Glen is so smart, that Glen is brilliant, that Glen is the best board-certified hand surgeon servicing both Miami and the Lower Keys.
But those fellows. Those ungrateful fellows complained to Dr. Fanfanni that I’m Repeating That I can’t Confused
Taught those ungrateful fellows everything they know and
C’mon, Glen, don’t be sad. Remember after Stanford, running with the bulls? Remember Pamplona? Remember Geoff? Post-college? Of course you do. Crazy Geoff, hung back with the local kids, stayed close to the bulls, almost got gored.
Not me, I ran as fast as I could!
And Karla? Well everybody loves Karla. That’s what everybody says. Everybody says, Everybody loves Karla. But not like I do Did
Anyway, now Karla and Sam are married. Have been married for many years. Before I didn’t get why Karla chose him. After our divorce. I would say to myself, Whaddya want with this guy Sam? Working-class loser. Barely went to college. But I was wrong. Following my issues, Sam took me on bike rides. He went in front of me on the bike. Now he invites me over, I sit on the porch and we shoot the shit. That’s it. The breeze. He’s the only person who called.
And Sam’s good with Little Glor. Halftime. Because she’s my daughter. Mine and Karla’s kid. In high school Glor was a Model UN champion. Now, post-college, Glor is a busser. Not even a waitress. Not even dinner. Glor works brunch. I tell her, Glor, you’ll make a great lawyer. I tell her, Please, Glor, apply to law school already, stop messing around with this
gig. I tell her, Don’t worry about me.
Me: Shit luck, bad genes, forced retirement. Medical leave at fifty-eight. Early onset, the big A. Like a prodigy, a demented prodigy. Ha! The Owains could start a club, a secret society, like, Shh, don’t tell anybody. Grandpa Owain, memory gone, eighty. Pa Owain, seventy, owned his own dental practice, strolled out mid-root canal, like, Bye Shirley, have a great weekend! But, wait, Shirley said, Dr. Owain, your patient? Oh, yes, I mean
Whoa.
Little Glor says she’s figuring out her next move, post-college. A gap year, she calls it. Mine too. Glor comes over half the week, takes me to the movies, out for sushi, we grab ice cream. So nice, I think. I want to ask, How come we never did this before? But then I remember, Glor was traveling for her activities. Me: publishing, operating. You try being a single dad and the best board-certified hand surgeon servicing both Miami and the Lower Keys. Every night, well, every night half the week, I boiled the three-cheese tortellini, compiled a green salad, here was the couscous, all the while keeping Fanfanni off my ass, and
I dated. Attractive women. Persian radiology resident. Health care executive who walked those stinky golden retrievers eight miles a day. Glor never got along with any of them. I expected her to grow out of it. I didn’t understand why she was such a Sam-fan but wouldn’t get behind any of these ladies.
Sometimes now, during our outings for sushi and ice cream, Glor looks angry. I wonder if this is a twenty-three-year-old thing? Or did I do something? God dammit Glen, I say to myself, what did you do now? Because Glor is so thin. So skinny all of a sudden. Sometimes I go, Glor, have more ice cream. Then she goes, Dad, you never used to eat ice cream, all you ate was fat-free Baked Lays and tuna from the can.
I go, Sheesh Glor. But I think, Can that be true?
Like tonight, in that noisy restaurant, I said, Eleven miles? You’re really running eleven miles, Glor, please be cautious. You remember the golden-retriever lady, Glor, don’t you?
Glor went wild, she went, Why are you bringing up Angela!
Angela is what happens if you’re not cautious, I said.
I’m my own person. I’m an adult now.
And shortly a great trial lawyer! I pointed out.
Dad, Glor said, it’s not enough to be good at something.
Sure it is! What’s better than being the best?
Making a contribution, said Glor all flat. Helping others.
See, you always were good at arguing.
To this, Glor rolled her eyes. But I caught her smiling.
Next time we go out for sushi and ice cream, I should also tell Glor, Take time to smell the roses. I have to tell Glor about running with the bulls. I should tell her about Pamplona. And Glor will say, Tell me more. Tell me more about post-college. I hope that she will ask me to expand. I don’t think she’s ever asked, which is strange because Glor is usually so quick with the questions for others.
But now I wonder, Is she afraid? Afraid that I won’t remember? Because what about my end-of-life flash. Will I have the end-of-life flash Sam had?
Memories likely key for that and
daughters.
*
In jean shorts and a pink tank-top with the phrase, Blue Heaven Bus Gal, Gloria takes the wooden front steps. Before her rises a two-story cottage where she sleeps half the week. She hears before she sees her stepfather Sam, sorting through a tangle of two-by-fours on the rightward flank of a wooden wraparound porch that he has spent the last few months refurbishing.
How’d sushi go? Sam calls, his attention fixed on the wood pile.
Depressing, Gloria says as her gaze darts to the blue front door. Where’s my mom? she asks.
On her way home, Sam replies. Her last patient went over.
Great, Gloria mutters before collapsing onto the porch, crunching her thighs to her chest. She watches as Sam roams the pockets of his cargo shorts. She is intrigued and vaguely proud of the circumstance that her stepfather wears cargo shorts without irony, for the pockets. Something valiant in his industry, the living Sam makes with his hands.
Depressing why? Sam asks, unearthing a tape measure.
Because Glen is really losing it.
This is the year Gloria has started to call her father by his first name. Glen is no longer Dad at this stage in his illness.
What happened today, Sam asks, repocketing the tool as he drops to a cross-legged position. Lay it on me.
So after dinner, Gloria says on a steadying breath, we go for ice cream and I order him the usual.
Mint chip, Sam fills in, familiar with the routine. Cup or cone?
Cone, Gloria says. I know, she preempts, risky. And when the ice cream starts to melt—uh-huh, Sam encourages—instead of using the napkins, Glen uses his tongue to, like, lick the ice cream directly off his hands.
Sam shakes his head. Glen is on a decline.
I watched him lick his own palms, Gloria stresses.
The decline is a one-way street, Sam says.
Before, he never would have done that. Before he was so proper, healthy. Remember, a surgeon’s hands performing hand surgery?
That was Glen, Sam says with an air of resignation.
Weirdly, Gloria adds, it’s, like, finally, he can enjoy things. But in a way it’s too—Gloria stops, lifts a two-by-four, lets it drop—it’s too late.
Glen had a good life. He had a good fifty-five years.
Although Gloria recognizes the truth in Sam’s statement, she doesn’t feel compensated. She doesn’t feel reassured. She holds up her index finger as she says, Not one person from the Miami hospital has come to visit him in Key West. Not one.
People have their lives. People have their PTA meetings.
People are assholes. And you know what else pisses me off?
Tell me, Sam says.
Glen’s still telling me what to do. He can’t add, he can’t calculate the math for the tip, but he’s on me to quit the restaurant.
He can’t help himself.
It’s like—Gloria pauses, struggling to make sense of her father’s fixations—he can only remember people’s jobs. What they do for work.
Your mother says that joy was never in his nature.
My mom hasn’t told me that, Gloria says, tilting her head.
Whoops.
See, they both treat me like a child. You’re the only one who speaks to me like an adult.
It’s a different relationship, Sam says.
So do you think I should go to law school?
Prosecute! is all Sam says.
Brief proclamations like this one reinforce Gloria’s suspicion that, to her, Sam will always be a mystery. Yet whatever she trusts in his optimistic ambivalence causes her to dig in, refine her question.
You think I should apply to school even if that means leaving here, leaving Glen?
You have to live your life, Sam says. We’ll take care of your dad. Plus he has Nurse Jenny.
She just turns on PBS, Gloria says with a grimace. That one show he likes.
The Desert Speaks.
He used to say MTV would rot my brain, Gloria says softly.
Behind Sam, a canvas tarp flutters in a rare breeze.
You know, I offered to kill him.
What?
You know, Sam insists. Smother him with a pillow.
No, Gloria says, baffled. I don’t know.
Last week. When he came over to sit on the porch.
What did you say, exactly?
Well, Sam starts on an inhale. First I told him about this time I almost died. Then I said we both knew where the Alzheimer’s would lead. Then I offered to help him along.
Along? Gloria repeats.
By smothering him. With the pillow.
Shit, Gloria says as her gaze rockets to the tropical shrubs. She attempts to picture her stepfather consensually smothering her biological father with a pillow. She’s not exactly sure what it means that the image she receives is both highly believable and relatively humane.
After a while she asks, And what about the police?
Sam shrugs. I’d say he suffocated in his sleep.
You think that would work?
Probably.
What’d Glen say? Gloria says.
Glen said thanks, but no thanks. He wanted to wait and see what comes.
Gloria goes quiet. She rises to her feet, moves to the lip of the porch where she grips the wood banister and peers up. Up at the sweeping sherbert-orange sky, up at the goldshot great brain. She thinks: No clouds, no plaques, nothing clogging up the great brain.
If you were him, Gloria says, would you do it? Would you end it?
By him, Gloria means Glen but also future Glor, Glor One Day, Lawyer Glor, and her mother Karla would say, Don’t put that energy out there. Where? Into the great brain. But that’s not what Sam says.
Sam says, No question I would end it.
Winner 2023 MERCY Contest: Fiction
On Bowen’s story, judge Maggie Shipstead writes, “I admired how structural and technical choices added depth and resonance to the storytelling within this brief, affecting piece. The reader peers out from the maze-like confinement of a mind in decline and then, through an adroit shift in point of view, is resituated in a larger world, on the outside looking in, which feels both like a liberation and a loss.”
Kathryn Campo Bowen is a Salvadoran American writer based in Los Angeles. In addition to winning the Sonora Review’s 2023 annual contest in fiction, her stories have been published in The Florida Review and Salt Hill. She has received support from the Community of Writers and the International Center for Writing and Translation, and she holds degrees from UC Berkeley and UC Irvine, where she earned her MFA in fiction. Presently, she is working on a novel.