Chapter Thirty-One
I looked out at my friends from my position in the treatment chair. My contact lenses were already in and the pill was sitting in the center of my palm. I'd tried to end my life because I'd had no reason to hope I'd ever feel normal again. But that was before.
Marco's eyes met mine one last time and then his throat constricted as he swallowed his pill. I held my breath, knowing the strength it was taking him to face his past and allow us into the dark corners of his mind. It was as if he'd lost the negotiation with the SWAT team and had decided to meet them at the door to allow them entry without any of his demands having been met. He just wanted help.
Dr. Crimm's voice soothed as she lead Marco into his memories.
I heard the sound of children playing and realized that if I concentrated, I could see a small figure in the darkness on the screen. A very young Marco stood in sand, his head turning in search of something or someone.
Like plants sprouting from soil, Marco's world rose from the sand piece by piece. Walls quickly closed in on the younger version of him, containing the vision to a small classroom. Tables emerged, as well as a handful of classmates, disrupting the smooth surface of the sand and making the compact room feel crowded. A sign hung above the door, welcoming fathers to a Father's Day breakfast. Now I could see the proud men standing with their children, and the smiles on the faces of Marco's peers. What was missing was Marco's father, and the smile I imagined would be on young Marco's face if he'd been there.
Marco moved to sit at a table alone. His eyes welled with tears that never fell. While the other kids ate breakfast with the men they'd invited, Marco folded his arms on his desk and rested his head on them. Some of the fathers looked his way, clearly unsettled by his father's absence, but no one moved to help the little boy who sat alone. My heart hurt. I wanted to pull the small child into my lap and hold him. Why hadn't his father come?
As the room grew louder with talking and laughter, Marco turned his head and looked out the window. Outside was a playground with lush green grass, and a swing set sitting empty in a sandbox. The tops of the walls around him began to blow away like sand from the top of a dune, quickly disappearing as his mind pushed him to another place.
"I told you to mow the lawn!" A loud male voice yelled, causing me to jump in my chair.
"I was going to do it later," Marco answered. He was only a few years older now, no more than ten.
"You never take responsibility. How are you going to become a man if you can't put your needs aside for the sake of what's best for the family?" Marco's father asked him. The physical resemblance was uncanny. "You need to start growing up."
"Yes, sir." Marco answered. He slipped from the swing he'd been playing on, this one in the backyard of a small house. As his feet sank into the white sand beneath him, the world around us changed again.
The small feet that had previously been encased in worn sneakers now raced atop packed dirt in cleats. Marco ran full speed toward home plate, guarded by a menacing catcher. His father's voice carried above the crowd as he yelled, "Faster, Marco!" The tension in the air was so thick it made breathing difficult, and I wondered whether it was the illusion of humidity, or anxiety that pressed hard against my lungs.
Marco lunged forward, sliding across the dirt with his hands outstretched. The snap of the ball cut the air as it hit the catcher's mitt. Marco flew beneath the catcher's legs and over the base. He was safe, but the umpire couldn't see clearly from his position and called him out.
Defeated, Marco stood and headed back to the dugout. His father stood at the bottom of the stands near the entrance to the dugout. Marco didn't turn his head in his direction and his jaw was clenched so tightly it ticked. He didn't want to speak to his father or even give him the opportunity to make a comment.
"I told you," his father said with an edge of disappointment. "You need to get faster. It's like you're running through peanut butter."
"I made it. I was safe. It was a bad call," Marco said without looking at him.
"You shouldn't have left it up to the ump. If you had been keeping up on the running like I told you, then you would have been there with time to spare. You just can't take direction." His father shook his head and crossed his arms.
"Never fucking good enough," Marco said, so quietly I could barely hear him. He took a seat on the bench in the dugout and pulled his helmet off his head. I thought I'd see anger on his face, but instead he looked devastated.
"Bad call," a coach said from the other side of the fence. "You had that. Great job!"
For a second Marco's face relaxed and a small smile curled his lips. "Thanks, Coach." As soon as the man had turned away, Marco threw his helmet into a corner and closed his eyes tight. I wasn't sure if he was trying to hold in tears or rage.
The blowing sand was now a tornado, whipping past us so fast it was hard to see through. I could hear words his father had said as Marco replayed them in his head: You need to try harder. What's the matter with you? Are you stupid? I'm not going to help you if you aren't going to try. Get over here and do what I say. You're such a pussy. You're going to get your ass kicked if you can't stick up for yourself. I'm trying to help you. Get out of here—can't you see I'm talking to your mom?
When the sand finally settled, Marco was sitting on a couch with his father. His eyes were sunken in and his hair hung longer over his eyes. A flash of silver glinted from a piercing in his lip and the colorful ink of a tattoo peeked out from beneath his sleeve. He looked like a different boy than the one lying next to me.
"I need you to listen to me," his father told him.
Marco gave him his attention, but his body language suggested he was not there of his own accord.
"This deployment is going to be longer than the last one. You're older now. I need you to be the man of the house. You know what I do for your mom. Please help me do those things while I'm gone." His father's voice was different now, pleading. He knew he needed Marco's help.
"Dad, she can pump her own gas," Marco said, exasperated. "I can't keep up with my schoolwork and practice and do all the stuff you do for her. That's crazy. And I don't know shit about paying your bills and handling the big things. You never taught me."
"You never listened!" His father shouted. He ran a hand over his head. I wondered if Marco knew he did that when he was frustrated, too. "Marco, I know we disagree a lot, but I need your help."
"Fine. Whatever. Just leave a list and I'll do what you tell me to. Can't promise I'll do it good enough for you, though. Can't seem to figure out how to do that and I'm sick of trying." Marco stood up and tucked his hands into his pockets. "Are we done?"
His father stood up, too. It looked as if he wanted to say something else. He stared at Marco for a minute, taking in a deep breath as I held mine, waiting for his next words. Already the walls around them were beginning to blow away with the wind. Sand was kicking up around them at hurricane speed and yet they stood in the middle, as if in the eye of a storm, and faced each other.
"I love you, Marco. I may not have been the best at showing it, but everything I do is to make sure you have a good life. I just want you to be successful and happy. I hope one day you can see that."
Marco let his father's words settle in his mind before he spoke. "I just wanted you to like me. I wanted to look at you and see that I wasn't a box you had to check to make Mom happy. I wanted you to want me." Marco lifted his chin slightly and squared his shoulders. The move made him stand taller than his father. He'd grown up, just like his father had asked him to. I wondered if his father noticed.
Marco took the papers his father had in his hand and held them up. "I'll do this for you because I've always been listening. You've been wrong all these years, Dad. I'm not stupid, or lazy or weak or a pussy. I'm exactly what you've made me. I do what is asked of me and what my family needs. I don't complain. I follow orders and I'm dependable."
His father nodded, relief and agreement clear in the features of his face.
Marco tucked the papers into his back pocket and added, "I'm your son. And sometimes when you were focused on making me into who you thought I should be, you didn't realize you were making me into something more, too. I'm empathetic because you taught me what it's like to feel like shit about myself all the time, and what other people might feel inside when they aren't perfect, either. I'm careful with my words because you taught me what it feels like to be on the receiving end of so many carelessly chosen ones. I'm strong because you broke me until I hated everyone as much as I hated myself, and that could only be worked out with fists and fights." Marco looked away from his father's eyes, gathering his thoughts as the sand grew thicker in the space around them, building up on the ground until their feet were buried, and rising toward their knees.
"I'm working on being proud," Marco said. "It's the hardest thing I've had to learn to do without a father—" A huff of air passed his lips as he laughed without humor. "—or maybe in spite of one." His eyes were now back on their target, looking into the ones that matched his own. "I've had to find a way to accept myself and be okay with who I am because I know I'll never get that from you."
"Marco," his father started. The sand was now up to their waists and the walls of their living room were gone.
"Goodbye, Dad. I'll do this for you while you're gone, but when you come back I'm leaving. It's time I figure out who I want to be instead of who you want me to be."
The darkness gave way to a blistering hot sun. The sand fell and formed walls of molded dirt and rocks. Marco's world was now the desert and his body was that of his father. He was tucked behind a wall and they were taking fire. The Marine next to him was calling in their location over the radio.
The screen flashed with images of a Marine in dress blues pulling up outside a house, sitting on a couch, and talking with Marco's mother. It lit up with calls to Marco's phone and messages sent from multiple military sources. Thick documents and hushed conversations at a funeral. Then we were back behind the wall again.
"They're coming over that hill. If we aren't at the rally point we can't evac." A young Marine pulled on Marco's father. It was then that I could see the blood seeping through his cammies and soaking into the dirt beneath him.
"Copland, you need to move out." Marco, with his father's voice, yelled to another Marine, who was leaning with his back against the wall, holding his rifle in one hand and a worn wallet-sized picture in his other. It was tattered and creased from being tucked into his helmet.
"We're going to die," Copland replied. "I didn't even get to hold him." He ran his thumb over the image of a newborn baby. "I just wrote him this shitty letter he'll get if I don't come back." He tucked the photo into his chest pocket. "That's so fucked up. I hope he'll understand I did this for him." He rolled over onto his stomach and positioned his gun down range again, back in battle mode as if the idea of dying and not going home to the son he'd never met was only allowed two minutes of grieving time.
Marco's father alternated between watching his companion and returning sporadic fire at the men making their way up the hill. "I have a picture of Marco in my front pocket," he told Copland. "He's the thing I'm most proud of. I remember the day I first held him. You can't miss that."
The sand was on the move again, blowing low through the hallucination like an eerie reminder that time was fleeting, even in this imagined world. Marco's father fired a few more rounds and then returned to the conversation. "I've missed a lot being away over the years, but the times I was with him were some of the best of my life. His first T-ball game, the year he won the science fair with a project we did together, our summers at the lake, and even just a bike ride to the store for candy or the few minutes we hung out in the yard when we'd barbeque burgers for dinner."
"You're lucky you got that time," Copland said.
"Let's move out," another Marine shouted when the gunfire stopped momentarily at the base of the hill. "If we can get over that next peak we should be covered the rest of the way to the rally point."
The sand blew over the Marines, Marco's grip on his hallucination beginning to loosen as the wind began to carry it away once more. His father held his hand out to the Marine beside him. "Give me your ammo and get your ass on that chopper."
The Marine paused, unsure of what he should do. "We need to get you out of here to get that wound treated." There was the sound of a helicopter in the distance and he broke eye contact with Marco's father to search for it in the sky.
Marco's father grabbed the ammo and set it on the ground next to him. "I'll stay back and hold them off while you guys get to the next point. When you get there, you can hold them off while I come to you." I had zero years of military experience, but even I could see that he was proposing a suicide mission for himself. He was bleeding out and they were outnumbered. If he had to try to get to the next point alone, he'd be killed for sure.
"I'm not leaving you here. No man left behind." The Marine reached for his ammo.
In a very serious voice Marco's father told him, "We both know we aren't all going to make it out of here. I've had my time. I've held my boy and I've watched him become an adult. I've lived my life and had my family. No father should die before he holds his son. Leave me here. I'm going to slow us down and then your son will have only a flag and a letter to remember you by."
The Marines behind them were already moving up to the next spot. Marco's father looked out over the desert and the rocky hill he would die on. The world in the distance was already disappearing. His time was coming to an end and I felt my heart breaking as I watched the last few minutes of his life.
"Thank you. I won't take a minute of it for granted." The Marine pulled one more magazine of ammo from his gear and shoved it over to Marco's father. "Kill those motherfuckers."
"Tell my boy I loved him," his father said as his finger squeezed the trigger and the bullets flew from the weapon into the swirling sand that was swallowing up the scene.
The sand was not a firm handle to hold onto, and the walls that contained his vision were only illusions created with it. I could see how this story ended and I wanted nothing more than to be there for Marco when that moment played out. I gripped my chair, knowing I was about to see the exact moment Marco's life was changed forever.
The Marines moved quickly up the hill as his father held off the men below. When he reloaded the rifle, he checked behind himself and saw that they'd all made it safely to the next position. He pushed up onto his feet and slowly made his way toward the Marines, clearly a fighter to the very end. I couldn't see where the bullet came from that entered his skull beneath his helmet before he made it any farther. The churning sand erased the enemy and then the world went black.
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