FICTION   |   By Audrey Austin   »   

“You can’t make me do it again!” the old man shouts. 

I hear the alarm in his voice.  I see the fearful determination in watery blue eyes narrowly set above a nose that shows obvious signs of earlier breakage; a boxer’s nose but I know this man has never in all of his eighty-one years participated in the sport of pugilism.

And how do I know this?  Because I am beside myself!  Not only do I feel beside myself,  I’m outside of myself watching the too familiar unfoldment of a scene better viewed by a theatre-goer than from behind the drama playing out at my old scratched-up kitchen table.

“Sign the damn cheque!”

I prefer being detached and don’t want to return but I can’t bear to watch the old man struggle alone any longer.  Back inside my body I immediately feel the pain I had managed to escape for a brief interval, not that it doesn’t break my heart and not that it isn’t painful to see the old man being abused. But to escape the physical agony of large masculine hands clapping ears as one would a bass drum in a marching band offers some relief.

I find my voice and repeat my vow.  “No, Tom, you can’t make me do it again!”

A prisoner in my wheelchair I look up at the red-faced, balding, middle-aged man.  His long, lean body stretches over the table from where he has planted his feet on the kitchen floor directly across from me. He lifts his right hand from the table top. Like a sparrow in winter I try to puff up my body, hunch my shoulders and pull my head inward to a place of safety in order to escape the full brunt of another smack.

He surprises me this time.  He doesn’t hit me again.  Instead he turns his angry eyes away from me and looks down at the Rolex on his wrist. 

“Shit!  I have to get to work old man but when I get home tonight I want to see that signed cheque on the table!   You understand me?”

I give him my silent response.

His voice raises another octave but he’s not shouting yet. “I said do you understand me, old man?”

“You can’t make me!”  I whisper.

Whack! 

My head rolls atop my neck which suddenly feels like a slinky toy.  Grateful for the shoulder upon which my right ear rests I raise my left hand to soothe and cover the biting pain reverberating in and around my left eye.

This slanted one-eyed perspective of the perpetrator, though clear, is impossible to accept.  He looks like Tom but where is the little boy who stood in uniform with his pack and recited, “On my honour I promise to do my duty to God and the Queen; to do my best to help others whatever it costs me and to obey the Scout Law.”

I want to remember the baseball games, the picnics, the ice-fishing and the ordinary, camaraderie; the mutual trust and friendship we shared throughout Tom’s growing up years.  I want to remember these things but it’s not easy.  My ears are ringing and the stinging pain around my left eye leaves me feeling powerless. 

Yes, as I crouch in my chair, I feel helpless but at the same time I know that somehow I must bear the responsibility for what is going on in my home.  I don’t know where I went wrong but it must be my fault.  After all, I raised the boy though I swear I rarely raised my voice and I never laid a hand on him.  

 As a father my heart bursts with pride the day Tom graduates with honours from high school.  Friends can’t stop me bragging about my son’s remarkable academic achievements in university.   I didn’t even graduate from high school myself and as I stand beside his mother offering applause the day he receives his Master’s Degree it is all I can do to restrain my emotions and keep the joyful tears that fall freely from his mother’s eyes hidden behind my own.

Today I don’t feel proud to acknowledge that Tom is my son.  I thank God his mother is not here to see what is going on. The violence lurking inside his hardened heart doesn’t creep out of the closet and present itself to me until several weeks after the day of my Stella’s funeral.  I’m glad she is dead and buried.  I hope and pray she can’t see what is happening from wherever she is in her spiritual home.  If Stella were alive today the overwhelming sense of disbelief and shame would kill her.

I hear the door slam.  Tom is on his way to work and I know he won’t be back until after six this evening.  I don’t know exactly when my only son became the victim of a gambling addiction. I don’t know how or why it happened. He had everything going for him.

Soon after his graduation from university he is hired by one of the largest corporate entities in Canada, George Weston Limited.   Now before Tom started working there, the only thing I knew about Weston’s was that my mother used to buy their bread and cakes when the bread man made his daily visits  selling Weston’s wares to my childhood home.

Within ten years of his graduation Tom is one of the highly-paid top executives in the company.  Though I never know the price of the ticket I know he makes big bucks.  During these years Tom meets Alice and I will never forget how happy and proud Stella and I are on our son’s wedding day.    Tom and Alice never had any children.  I never fully understand what happened to end what I think is an idyllic  marriage.  

I do question Tom about it but all he ever said was, “Money problems.”

I want to ask him why, when he is earning such a high income, he has money problems but Stella tells me I am best to mind my own business and stay out of it.  That’s exactly what I do.

Within a year or two of Tom’s divorce from Alice he begins coming around the house wanting to borrow money from me.  I do okay throughout the years working at the steel plant.  I never make big bucks like my son but the union takes care of its own.  My wife works as a clerk typist in the same steel plant.  Together we do okay.  Stella and I buy this nice little house and I am always able to drive a good car.  It is not always easy but we live carefully and save the money that carries Tom throughout his years away from home getting that fine education. 

Everything changes for Stella and me when I get sick.  The doctor calls it peripheral artery disease; something I’d never heard of before but this is what I have and I’m told it is in my legs.  When I ask the doctor for an explanation he tells me a more common name for the disease is hardening of the arteries; the same arteries that are supposed to supply blood to my legs and feet.

When I start to notice the symptoms I don’t pay a lot of attention because I think the  achiness in my legs and the discomfort in my feet is just a result of standing on the concrete floor in the steel plant day in and day out for many long years.  I don’t know then that my addiction to tobacco is putting me at a higher risk and when the doctor diagnoses high blood pressure I just put that down to the stress of working long hours to pay off the mortgage and keep the house running because by this time in my life Stella is already very sick and no longer able to work.

They tell me Stella has lung cancer.  In less than a year from the time of her diagnosis the Good Lord takes Stella home.

I live in my little house alone after that.  I miss my wife.  At night when I lay alone in my bed I have painful cramps in my legs that keep me awake so that in the morning I always feel groggy when I set off for work.  The doctor tells me to quit smoking but to me, it is like the only pleasure I have in life.  I don’t pay any attention to his advice until I begin to develop painful, black, non-bleeding ulcers on my feet.  Then the doctor tells me if I don’t stop smoking I could lose my legs one day. 

Guess that’s what I needed to hear because, although it isn’t easy, I quit smoking and haven’t had a cigarette since.  I try to take care of my feet the way the doctor explained that I should and though I don’t consciously try to lose weight, once I lose my Stella, the pounds start dropping off me.  I never did know how to cook a decent meal.  Doctor tells me my cholesterol is off the scales and that I should be eating healthy on a regular basis.  I never tell him my suppers consist of Hungry Man Dinners or Big Macs most nights.

The doctor prescribes pain meds and meds to lower my cholesterol and meds to prevent blood from forming clots in my arteries.  He is trying to be my best friend but after Stella’s death I don’t have the same interest in life as I did when we were together.  It isn’t intentional  but in many ways I become my worst enemy following an unhealthy lifestyle and I am losing more and more time off work.  At last I have no choice but to give up working and go on disability.  

I develop ugly open sores on my lower legs and the day comes when the doctor tells me my only option is surgery.  I am going to lose both legs and be confined to a wheelchair.

These are very stressful years with the death of my wife; my son’s divorce and the amputation of my legs.  I don’t think my life can get any worse than it is.

Throughout all this time my son, Tom, visits me.  And at first I welcome him with open arms. They are real visits where we sit together, have a beer, and talk about whatever comes into our heads to talk about. 

But in time this changes too.   It seems Tom is always short of money.  “It’s the high cost of lawyers for this divorce,” he explains in the beginning.   To me, that is understandable and I don’t object to giving him a few dollars whenever I can. I don’t find that too big a challenge during the years I am working at the steel plant and bringing home a good pay cheque.  I am mortgage-free by the time I am forced to quit work and go onto disability so I can manage financially and I feel I can afford to lend him a few dollars here and there whenever he asks.

I miss my Stella and I miss my buddies at work.  I feel trapped in my chair and I’m becoming something I never thought I could be; a lonely old man.  For this reason I feel I really need Tom’s visits and if they cost me a few bucks so be it. Just having his company makes the expense acceptable.  Guess you could say I am buying his time.

But in the last few years Tom’s requests are becoming more like demands.  

I say to him, “Tom, your divorce is long over and paid for.  You’ve got nobody to look after but yourself.  You’ve got a good, high paying job and here you are asking your old man for money.  What’s the story?  What’s going on, son?”

That’s when Tom breaks down.  He sits at my old scratched up kitchen table and bawls his eyes out like he is a little kid or an old woman.  “What’s the matter, Tom?  Tell me what’s happening to upset you this way.”

That’s when he confesses to me.  He tells me all about his trips to casinos, the private card games, the horses, and all the bets on all the sports games. 

After that day I start my own investigation and I learn about an organization something like Alcoholics Anonymous but called Gamblers Anonymous.  

Tom actually thanks me for my help at that time. I give him all the information I have gathered and he says, “I promise, Dad, I’ll go to the meetings. But in the meantime can you loan me five hundred.  I’m way short of my apartment rental and facing eviction.

As I write him the cheque for five hundred dollars, I say, “Tom, with your Mother gone this house is too big for an old guy like me. Why not give up your apartment, move in here with me.  I can manage the rent and that will give you some extra to get your gambling debts paid off.”

“Thanks, Dad,” he exclaims.

And that is how it came to be that Tom lives with me in my house.  How did it come to be that the loving son went from saying, thanks Dad to demanding, sign the damn cheque?   I don’t know.  It is a gradual process leading up to today where I sit in my wheelchair nursing my injured ears and doing my best to soothe the pain in my left eye.

I know I need help.  I know I have my legal rights.  This is still my house, bought and paid for.  The little money I have is my money and it is hard enough to support myself on a disability cheque never mind putting food on the table for Tom who never brings a penny into the house.  Taking!  Always wanting, demanding and always getting what he wants.  Always I end up signing the damn cheque.

Today I know this has to stop.  In the first place I’m running out of money. My bank account is almost running on empty.   In the second place I am sick to death of being my son’s punching bag.

I have only a few hours before Tom’s return to my place.  I make up my mind.  I had told him, “You can’t make me do it again!”   This time I mean exactly what I have said.  Clapping my ears the way he did today is the last straw! 

I wheel myself to the phone and get busy making some appointments.  I make an appointment at the local community legal clinic.  I talk on the phone with our town’s Senior Issues Officer and after talking to him I put in a call to a locksmith. Within an hour he is there putting new locks on my doors. 

Although I hate to let anyone in on the shame I feel I know it is time to stop keeping what the Senior Issues Officer calls elder abuse a secret.  So I call one of my work buddies.  Bill lives only a few blocks away.  It isn’t easy to talk about what is going on but I’ve known Bill for a lot of years. I confide in him and he doesn’t mock me.  He doesn’t tell me I’ve been stupid.  He doesn’t ask me why I’ve put up with that kind of shit!  He doesn’t hang up on me.  What he does say is, “I’m on my way over.”

Within twenty minutes Bill is knocking on my door.  He is a widower too, living alone, and on this day he looks at my bruised eye and says, “I’ve brought my suitcase.  Where’s the guest room?  I’m planning to stay for a while.

When Tom arrives home this evening he is greeted at the door by two police officers.  He is charged with elder abuse.  

Tom is not receptive or cooperative with the arresting officers.  He tries to punch one of the cops.  Just before they cuff him Tom lifts his right hand and raising his middle finger he spits at me.

My heart is broken.  My son, the brilliant achiever and my reason for living, is giving me the finger.  I don’t want to see it.  Instead I remember my young son in his Boy Scout uniform giving me the three-fingered Scout sign and promising, I will do my best to help others, whatever it costs me.

It is not an easy thing to call the police on your own son but it is finally something I know I have to do.  I recognize that for too many years I enabled his addiction.  In the beginning I refuse but in the end I always relent and write out a cheque when he demands I give him money.  I don’t like to admit the fact that I am afraid of my son.  I am grateful that from somewhere I find courage and on this day I refuse to allow one more day of my life to be ruled by fear. 

My name is Andrew.  I’m an old man and I haven’t accomplished a whole lot with my life.  But I always worked hard to the best of my ability and I provided a stable, caring home for my wife, Stella, and my son, Tom.  

For several years since the death of my wife I allowed myself to become an enabler and a victim. On that life-changing day, at last, I stood up for myself.  I can look at my face in a mirror now and feel like a man again.  I stood up and I said no.  I meant what I said and this is my achievement.

• Audrey Austin is founder and secretary of Elliot Lake Writers’ Workshop.  In addition to publication of poems by White Mountain Publishing and short stories by Wynterblue Publishing Canada, over the past three years she has worked hard to create and have published four books. Sara, a Canadian Saga and Reawakening are novels. Sara is now also available as an E-book through Amazon.com Audrey has also published an anthology of short stories titled The Silent Star plus a dozen and, in addition, a self-help manual titled Keeping it Simple. Audrey writes regularly for CommuterLit.com and is a contributing writer for Suite101.com. She is currently working on her third novel titled Ellen and the Hummingtree. To learn more about Audrey and her books, visit her blog.