Final Final Way

Photo by Kawai So on Unsplash

I usually don’t like writing about you-know-who because he is so pervasive in our daily lives, a roadkill umbrella looming over all of us, the rot of him and his disciples invading every part of everything as he carries out his mission to destroy all he can while somehow calling it great. There’s some kind of balance between being aware of the daily horrors and raising hell when we can, while also not letting him ruin us mentally moment by moment. I didn’t find that balance in his first term and I haven’t found it here and now. It feels like he has been our overlord for a decade and there’s still a long way to go. We need our escapes. And for me reading and writing is one of them, a quick trapdoor where I can turn off my brain for short stretches. So it feels like a kind of sadomasochism to write about him in here, but he recently posted an AI video of Barack Obama getting arrested by the FBI in the Oval Office and caged in a prison cell. In the video Trump looks on gleefully and the background music “YMCA” by the Village People, a choice the breaks my brain a little. His trolling is the least objectionable thing about him, obviously. There are too many real things he does to real living breathing people to get too worked up about bullshit like this. But we all know he really would love to arrest all the former presidents, and it doesn’t seem impossible or laughable anymore when he amuses himself with posts like this. If you woke up tomorrow and saw that he’d actually done it, well, you’d probably nod and be all like, “Yeah this tracks.” Anyway, I wrote a short story about this in the twentieth issue of Barrelhouse in 2019. The story felt a little more absurd than plausible when I wrote it back then. Now it feels more plausible than absurd. It is dark and kind of funny and, ultimately, is about the anxiety of not being able to be present in the lives of our children. And it’s about not being able to protect them as we head into the near future that will, as we all know, prove to be more dystopian than we can wrap our heads around at the moment. So here is, a story from then about what I imagined now might be like. Thanks, buddies.

Final Final Way

Whenever I look in the mirror I see Barack Obama looking back at me. That's why I avoid mirrors. But whenever I see my daughter, I see my old face — the one I had when I was her age, way before all this.

My daughter walks up to me right now as I smoke a cigarette near my car. Her daughter is right behind her, tugging at her mother's back pockets like she might climb up her legs and slide her tiny feet into the denim pouches. "Carry me," she keeps saying, because she is afraid of the surveillance blimp. The blimp is so white and catches so much sunlight during the day that it looks like we have a second star shining above the city. It floated into our skies a week after all the former presidents went into hiding. They haven't found Obama yet. I smash out my cigarette and wave the smoke away from my girls' faces. My daughter looks up at the blimp and says, "Why do you think it's here?"

"I don't know," I say. But I know exactly why. It has drifted above our neighborhood because the Facial Recognition Eye has been reading me as a 91% match of the former president. Despite the beard. Despite the glasses and the contact lenses and the Sox cap I never take off. Despite never looking up. It has seen my reflection somehow, or reflections of reflections.

I moved into the same apartment complex as my daughter a few years after Obama left office. Apt. 44 was available when I was making my choice, but I leased #51 instead because I hate irony, and because it was closer to my daughter anyway. Three doors down from hers.

My daughter doesn’t know she’s my daughter. She thinks I'm an old man with PTSD and a government disability pension who is harmless enough to get her daughter off the school bus and babysit for two hours every day until she gets home from work. All of which is true enough.

Rumor is Obama and his family are somewhere up north. Everyone thinks he will be smuggled across the border and given asylum. The current president is threatening military action if that happens. There are also rumors that they are closing in on him somewhere in the southwest. And of course there’s the rumor he’s here in the city still, hiding in plain sight. My daughter says, "I think he's in some real trouble if they're sending high tech balloons after him." When she says this I can't tell if she's being serious or sarcastic.

Several months ago my daughter came over to pick up her daughter from my apartment. I asked if she wanted to stay for a bit to watch the basketball game on T.V. “Playoffs,” I said. She said no, that baby girl had to practice her math because there was a test coming up. "You can just tell me no if you want. You can just tell me that your boyfriend is coming over instead. It's cool. I'm not your dad -- ain't like I can boss you around, ask you why you’re giving that joker another chance.” I wanted to say more, was tempted to point out that any man who pushes a woman around when he's arguing with her will eventually do more than that. But I didn’t need to say more. She already knew that. Pointing it out would’ve only pissed her off more. That protective fatherly instinct is hard to suppress even if you’ve never really been there for her. My daughter said, “Again, I’ll remind you to mind your fucking business, please, thank you.” At least she was polite.

I don't think the Obamas are up north or in the southwest. They’re not here either. Don't know where they are, but I do know that there are a lot of people out there like me. Not former Federal Doppelgangers, per say, I was the only one the administration had, but there are still hundreds of people in this country who know what to do if the president were to need to disappear for a few days. Or weeks.

About a year after I first met her, my daughter sat across her kitchen table from me. She and her daughter shared a piece of chocolate cake I’d made. I asked her about her folks. About her dad. She shrugged at the topic. It had been years since she'd been truly sad about me. Now I was an afterthought. My daughter fed her daughter a bite off her own fork and said, “He died a long time ago. We don't know exactly what happened. I mean, there was foul play and all that. My mom used to think that he was mixed up in some kind of love triangle. She thought some jealous husband caught up to him and…” She made a gun out of her hand and fired it at me.

"That's sad."

"I guess."

"You guess?"

"I mean, I was little.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Yeah. If I think about it, probably.” She stared at me and I held my palm out to her as though she might lay the story into my hands. “Well, he called Mom and said his boss was keeping him late. He asked if she would put his dinner plate in the fridge. Never came home." This was the last conversation I would ever have with my wife. I've thought about this conversation every day for the last fourteen years. “I do remember exactly what we had for dinner that night. Like when I say exactly, I mean exactly: cod fish sticks, french fries, peas, and chocolate cake for dessert. Like this.” She fed her daughter another bite. “Is it stupid that I remember it like that?"

"How could it be stupid?"

"I hated fish sticks. I whined about it, asked her why couldn't she make something I liked, since I was pretty much the only person gonna be eating. Mom never ate much. It was just the two of us at dinnertime whenever dad couldn't make it home. My brother had been dead for almost three years by then."

"Your brother?" I said. It felt like a real question. I hadn't thought about him in years.

"Leukemia," she said.

"That's terrible."

"It was hard on my mom."

"I'll bet," I said. I wiped at the corners of my eyes. "I can only imagine.”

"Mom kept calling him that night. He wasn't answering. I remember asking her if everything was all right. She said yeah, go to bed, all that, and then later that night some cops showed up."

"Cops?"

"Said they found his car. Engine was still running. Later we’d find out there was some blood on the floorboard. Not much, but some. His cell phone was on the dash. Bunch of missed calls. Never found him."

I shook my head and said, "Your mom. What’s she like?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I don't really talk to her much."

"Why not?" I said. She only looked at me. “Is it because of him? You don't talk to your own mother because of your boyfriend? Because of that man?"

She whispered her answer after she sent her daughter over to the television. "Everyone tells me to get out of this relationship, but what am I supposed to do? Let her grow up without a father?"

Six years ago my daughter and her boyfriend were living in a rented a house a few blocks from here. There had been an argument. Another woman. A confrontation. Evidence. Cell phone video. She chased after him when he swiped the cell phone from her hand, ran along the curb, saying, “Oh hell no!" to him like she was some kind of pro wrestler. She hadn't told him yet that she was actually pregnant with his actual child. She kicked the car door when he got down inside. She punched him in the ear through the open window, spat at him. Then my daughter reached inside for the cell phone, for the evidence, saying that she was going to blast it all over Facebook. He took off when she was waist deep into the driver's side window. She fell out. The car went over her arm. Broke it in four places. Could have been her head that broke in four places. The surgery scar on her bicep was one of the first things I asked her about when we crossed paths at the apartment complex just after my granddaughter was born. "That's a nasty scar," I said. "How'd that happen?"

She said something I’ll never forget. She said, “Fear."

The blimp has drifted down even closer. Like a lantern hanging from the ceiling. Like I could reach up and touch it, scrape my fingernails against it. Like maybe someone has called in a tip.

My daughter walks up the steps this afternoon and stands outside my door for a long time before knocking. I am playing checkers with my granddaughter; I ask my daughter if she wants to come in while we finish this last game. She says maybe for just a minute.

When she sits next to me her face is so close that I can feel her breaths against my shoulder. I wonder if she can see the small pieces of my old face under my beard, if she can see the acne scars that always had to be covered with make-up when I made those few appearances as the president back in the day. Does she notice the scar on my eyelid, just below my eyebrow, where her mother scratched me once as we fought beside our daughter in the kitchen of our old apartment? It was a fight that left all three of us in tears, mine rinsing down my cheeks in red paths as the salty drops from my eyes merged with the blood leaking from my brow and fell to the floor like water turning to wine, like some kind of backwards miracle. Did she see this scar that I can always spot in the mirror, a tiny smile grinning at me like it really knows who I really am, a scar that the plastic surgeons didn't bother to fix because not even they saw it.

The sleeves of my white shirt are turned up just enough. The very bottom of my tattoo shows -- not enough so that she can see what it is of, exactly, but the blue ink juts down like veiny puzzle pieces covered by my sleeve like a stage curtain. I can feel her straining to see through the white of my shirt, to clarify the shadows of ink against my brown skin. It feels like she might even say my name, but instead she points at the game board and says, "You shouldn't let her win. You're not doing her any favors by coddling her."

"I'm not letting her do anything," I say. "She's smart."

Then my daughter says, "What is that?"

"What's what?"

"Your tattoo. What’s it of?"

"It's just something I got when my oldest kid was born."

"You never told me you had kids."

“Haven’t seen them in a long time. They don’t want to see me.” It’s as close to the truth as anything I can think of.

"That's sad," she says. I tell her it's why I'm trying to be such a good neighbor to her; I tell her she reminds me of my own daughter. “I'm trying to make up for some of the shit I've done in my life.” My daughter starts to say something but her phone chimes out as if it can hear us. She holds it up just below her chin and looks at me after she reads the text.

"What is it?"

"News notification," she says. A lie. "It says they arrested Obama's son-in-law." They must be getting close. My daughter tells her daughter to get her things together, says they need to get going. I ask where they’re going but she ignores me.

I sit there as they move toward the door, watching my daughter, her skin dark like her mother's, and my granddaughter, her skin the color of sand like mine, a shade closer to the white skin of her own father. That's when I see the bruises. They are high up on her arms like she has been grabbed, like she has been tossed. I follow the two of them down the steps to help them inside the car. My daughter lifts her daughter into the seat and hands her the coloring book I bought for her at the drugstore. She closes the door and says, "I know."

"You know what?" I say.

She tells me she is waiting for the right timing. She says this is the first time he’s gotten rough with her; she says she won’t let it happen again. “The only way to make sure of that is to leave him,” I say.

“And go where?” she says. “With what money? It isn’t so easy.”

"Yes it is," I say. "You just leave. It's the easiest thing ever." Then she says she might kill him. She says she’s thought through how to get away with it. She says she’ll do it while he’s sleeping, make it look like someone robbed his place. “Holy shit,” I say. “You’re serious.” She says, “It’s one thing for him to pick fights with me. I can fight back — hit, kick, bite. Scrap. But he ain’t touching her ever again.” When she drives away I can see her eyes looking at me from inside the tiny sliver of her rear view mirror. It’s like looking at my own eyes.

As I tug at the ends of my beard hair to cut it away, I wonder if Obama has grown hair over his face like this, if maybe he sees me when he looks in the mirror. When the hair is short enough I lather the shaving cream over my face, pull the razor down over my cheeks, over my chin and neck. I leave the mustache for a moment before I fully become him again, before I step into my old life. Those old responsibilities.

He wrote me a note once. Since we were never supposed to be within thirty miles of each other he never got to thank me for my public service, for the sacrifice I made, the family I walked away from. He said he also knew a few things about all that. He said any president has been successful if they don't have to call upon the men like me to do our jobs. I wish I could write him a note today, tell him some things too. Tell him thanks for giving me a chance to do what I’m about to do.

When I’m done shaving I rinse the bright white dye from my hair. And there it is. Black, ashen, like warm charcoal. I button my shirt, tie my tie. The suit coat still fits. I reach in the breast pocket and take out the old note from the president. I read it one more time before I burn it. I crease my slacks and slip into my dress shoes before I press both thumbs against the tiny implant that still exists beneath my Adam's apple. I speak to the mirror. “Good evening,” I say, and I smile when I hear that Voiceover still works even after all these years. I look in the mirror and tell him good luck.

Her boyfriend comes out of the Sears. The parking lot of this store is where he has been picking up the product he hustles. I'm parked next to his car, my seat reclined. The surveillance blimp saw me from the moment I stepped out of my front door and now it hovers right above my car, like it might drop a bomb on me. There will be agents soon to lay eyes on me, to corroborate the camera's alerts from overhead. There will be confusion amongst them. Chaos. I am the origin of everything.

I hold the gun against him when he opens the driver's side door. He hasn't heard me walk up behind him. His body stiffens like he knows what this feels like. For a moment I think of pulling the trigger. For a moment I try to pull the trigger. To drop him right here, to force him out of my daughter's life in some final final way. I squeeze the gun with every finger except the one that counts. Press the barrel harder into him. "Get in," I say. He does. I slide into the seat behind him, tell him to drive. As he pulls away I lean my head out the window and look up at the blimp. I look up until I know the software will tell them they're getting another 99.9997% match.

My granddaughter's father sees me in the rear view. He says, “What the fuck?” I tell him I need his help. That I need him to drive me east. "Drive as far as you can as fast as you can," I say. This might give the president a day; might give him a week. I can't say exactly. But it will give him more time to get out, to get away, to gather his family, to help them keep moving. They will interrogate my daughter's boyfriend. He will be out of her life long enough for her to do something. If she wants to. She will not be able to reach him the entire time. Maybe she will think he left. Maybe experience will tell her men who leave don’t ever come back. She will find the money I left for her, and the note, and the advice for how to disappear.

I tell him to keep his eyes straight ahead as we speed toward the highway, past the apartment complex. Both our daughters are there. They are walking up the steps. She puts the keys into the lock, twists it, and before she steps inside she looks at the door down the balcony from hers. I crane my neck to watch what she does next, as the road bends and the speed takes us away. She taps her fingernails against her glass windows of my empty room. I can almost hear her asking if I'm home.