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Broken Bottle (p.s. I got an A+!)
Walking into the house I was struck by the pungent odor of cigarette smoke and rotten flesh. Much of this was imagined, of course. Professional cleaners had come two days before my family’s arrival to eliminate the smell, but my nose must not have gotten this message. I walked through the tiled hallway into the living room, where I held my breath while noticing a square of yellow-orange rust tattooed on the carpet where a chair had once been. Immediately I knew the recliner which once occupied that void was the one he had wasted away in. Panicked by the threat of tears, I bit my cheek as hard as I could in order to remain strong in front of my mother. I didn’t look directly at her as she explained what needed to be done to pack up the house, but I knew what she looked like. Her face was strong and businesslike, her stature upright and professional, but her eyes showed a pain, just below the surface, she was trying to deny. I silently prayed my first job would be far away from this void which served as a concrete reminder of the way he died. I nodded my head when she asked me to start wrapping the dishes in the kitchen with newspaper and place them into cardboard boxes we had strapped to the top of our van before driving the 8 hours to this house.
I started to work. Jamming my headphones over my ears to help me avoid thinking, I wrapped dish after dish in pages of the South Bend Tribune. When I came to the obituary section, I set it aside. Wrapping the dishes that once belonged to my uncle in those brief paragraphs about death was too ironic. I turned my music up another notch and bit my cheek again. I was not going to cry.
The next day as I was boxing up Uncle Bob’s vinyl record collection I found a bottle of scotch that was three quarters empty. I shielded this from my aunt, knowing the effect it would have on her. As I was pouring it out in the side of the front yard, my mother gave me a knowing look and told me to throw it away in the dumpster by the street. The bottle did not break the first time I threw it in, so I dug it back out and chucked it in again, this time with all my strength. A smile spread across my face as I listened to it shatter, imagining the broken bottle would liberate us all from its contents. I then stood on my toes and peeked into the dumpster to see the real truth. Those shattered pieces were his life just before he died. He was broken; he no longer served a purpose. The contents of that bottle ravaged him until he was no more a man than those broken, jagged pieces lying alone, with the empty coke cans and banana peels to keep him company. I put my headphones back on and walked back to the menial work that would calm me. I was not going to cry.
As we walked in on that third day of packing his house, I was no longer troubled by the void his chair left, but by the emptiness the entire house now bore. Aunt Jane was sitting at the table with eyes so bloodshot she could not deny that tears had begun long before our arrival that morning. I did not hug her for fear I would lose my strength, but patted her on the shoulder and gave the most reassuring look I could muster, hoping she couldn’t see the pain behind it. I was not going to cry. “I had a talk with Bob while I was taking him home today,” she told my mother as if her conversation with her dead husband was completely natural. It was then I saw the crimson and gold urn on the counter a few feet from the table. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I went to the bathroom to collect myself. As I bent over the porcelain of the toilet, sure I was going to be sick any moment, I started thinking of Uncle Bob before the alcohol had gained control of his words, his actions, his interactions. I remembered the Uncle Bob who would give me a little chuck on the shoulder and call me ‘kiddo.’ Before he lost his job, before he spent all of his days sitting in his chair watching television and arguing with his wife about whether he’d had too much to drink that day, before he had shouted obscenities at my mother and tried to hit her when she attempted to get him some help after he had fallen on his face in a drunken stupor. I remembered him when he worked hard, when he served his country, when he cared for his wife and his family. I closed my eyes tightly and saw him there smiling and laughing, but I was not fooled. The man I saw in my head had died long before his body followed him a week before that day. The recent death of his body was symbolic of this earlier death we all avoided speaking of in the hopes he would recover, that he would come back to us as he once was. Ignoring the sting of tears, I left the bathroom and turned my headphones on. I was not going to cry.
It was New Year’s Eve,
and we had just finished packing the house and had come back to the hotel for
our final night in
Making sure my parents were asleep, I went into the bathroom and began running a bath, as hot as it would run. I sat in the corner of that bathroom, naked and hugging my own knees, letting the sound of the running water cover the sound of my sobbing. I watched the mirror steam up and I cried. I cried for my Uncle Bob. I cried for the family he hurt. I cried for the way he deteriorated in that recliner because he couldn’t stop himself from drinking anymore. I cried for my friends who had no idea the power of the liquid they were drinking. I wiped my eyes before leaving and made sure there would be no way for my mother to see how weak I had been.
“Man, I was so trashed last night,” began an enthusiastic conversation between a few friends I had made since my arrival at college. I faded their conversation out and contemplated which of them would become addicted to what they now saw as recreation. I wondered which of them would lose their job, their family, their life to the substance that was so glorified on this campus. I wondered when that bottle would be empty and they would be the broken pieces. I said a prayer for them in my mind and swallowed the tears. I was not going to cry.