photo by Jane Bell Goldstein
The Icon
A flash fiction piece excerpted from a novel in progress
by Sarah Broderick
“Get your hands off me!” Jack’s father swings his good arm, catching Jack in the mouth.
Jack’s lip swells where his canine tooth jutted against the soft flesh, but unlike the other punches over the last two months, this one would hardly be noticed. His father had mostly missed this time. “I’m not trying to hurt you, you, you . . . .” He had wanted to call him ‘Da’ but resisted, maybe couldn’t any longer. “I am your son. Jack. It’s Jack. You have to stay in bed.” Jack’s mind aches from this constant battle.
Since the stroke, his father has become a shadow of what he had been, often delirious and always hostile. Jack has no idea who his father imagines he is, whether he sees him as a figment of the past, an amalgamation of those who had done him wrong, or as a magnified version of all the fear he, the father, had planted in him, the son, over all those miserable years. Whoever Jack is, he is someone terrible to his father, a ghastly vehement specter.
Jack bends to pick his father from the floor.
Wide-eyed and trembling, his father presses himself against the dresser. Its legs scraping against the floorboards, the little statue of Saint Joseph, his father’s mother’s heirloom kept beside him since his boyhood days, falls onto its side with a clunk. “Stay away from me!”
He shakes his father’s shoulders. “Stop it!” The softened teeth bump in the old head, and, beneath his grip the shoulders that were once broad, the type of shoulders that loom in doorways and fill entire front seats of family cars, are as insubstantial as boiled chicken bones. “I’m taking care of you.”
His father winces.
Jack loosens his hold. “Settle.”
The arm that still works spins again, connecting with the bridge of Jack’s nose, and his father curls in on himself and laughs and laughs and laughs. “I got you. I got you you-sonuvabitch.”
Jack blinks back the pain spreading across his eyes. It smarts more than when he was little and his father’s temper taught its painful lessons. Maybe the hurt is easier to withstand when the person who hurts you knows who you are, when he hurts you because you are part him.
“You sure did,” Jack says, bear-hugging the man who had once been his father and tossing him onto the bed. He wrestles the man’s wild arms and legs, pinning them beneath the quilt. “Be glad I didn’t lock you up with the rest of the loonies. I have better things to do with my days than play nurse.” He slams the sweat-dampened bedcovers underneath the lumpy mattress, running his hands along the edge until he has sealed the man into his blanket cocoon. He watches him wriggle and squirm. “Behave yourself.”
His eyes locked onto Jack, the man stills, but his slow, heavy breaths fill the room with the stale, hot smell of too much beef broth and constant fever, the crunching sound of his lungs at the end of each expulsion.
“Oh, you’re mad?” Jack crosses his arms, and a warm, liquidy thing like melted baking chocolate in a pan coats Jack’s heart with a sudden, horrible joy. He lifts up on his toes and pokes at his own chest. “I’m in charge here.”
Before he closes the door to sit downstairs and listen for the man to try to leave again, Jack uprights the fallen statue, creamy with age, back at its post.
Jack’s lip swells where his canine tooth jutted against the soft flesh, but unlike the other punches over the last two months, this one would hardly be noticed. His father had mostly missed this time. “I’m not trying to hurt you, you, you . . . .” He had wanted to call him ‘Da’ but resisted, maybe couldn’t any longer. “I am your son. Jack. It’s Jack. You have to stay in bed.” Jack’s mind aches from this constant battle.
Since the stroke, his father has become a shadow of what he had been, often delirious and always hostile. Jack has no idea who his father imagines he is, whether he sees him as a figment of the past, an amalgamation of those who had done him wrong, or as a magnified version of all the fear he, the father, had planted in him, the son, over all those miserable years. Whoever Jack is, he is someone terrible to his father, a ghastly vehement specter.
Jack bends to pick his father from the floor.
Wide-eyed and trembling, his father presses himself against the dresser. Its legs scraping against the floorboards, the little statue of Saint Joseph, his father’s mother’s heirloom kept beside him since his boyhood days, falls onto its side with a clunk. “Stay away from me!”
He shakes his father’s shoulders. “Stop it!” The softened teeth bump in the old head, and, beneath his grip the shoulders that were once broad, the type of shoulders that loom in doorways and fill entire front seats of family cars, are as insubstantial as boiled chicken bones. “I’m taking care of you.”
His father winces.
Jack loosens his hold. “Settle.”
The arm that still works spins again, connecting with the bridge of Jack’s nose, and his father curls in on himself and laughs and laughs and laughs. “I got you. I got you you-sonuvabitch.”
Jack blinks back the pain spreading across his eyes. It smarts more than when he was little and his father’s temper taught its painful lessons. Maybe the hurt is easier to withstand when the person who hurts you knows who you are, when he hurts you because you are part him.
“You sure did,” Jack says, bear-hugging the man who had once been his father and tossing him onto the bed. He wrestles the man’s wild arms and legs, pinning them beneath the quilt. “Be glad I didn’t lock you up with the rest of the loonies. I have better things to do with my days than play nurse.” He slams the sweat-dampened bedcovers underneath the lumpy mattress, running his hands along the edge until he has sealed the man into his blanket cocoon. He watches him wriggle and squirm. “Behave yourself.”
His eyes locked onto Jack, the man stills, but his slow, heavy breaths fill the room with the stale, hot smell of too much beef broth and constant fever, the crunching sound of his lungs at the end of each expulsion.
“Oh, you’re mad?” Jack crosses his arms, and a warm, liquidy thing like melted baking chocolate in a pan coats Jack’s heart with a sudden, horrible joy. He lifts up on his toes and pokes at his own chest. “I’m in charge here.”
Before he closes the door to sit downstairs and listen for the man to try to leave again, Jack uprights the fallen statue, creamy with age, back at its post.
