Shuttered (Fiction)

A father, his son, and his closed shop

I wrote this piece for a writing challenge I was doing, I wasn’t even thinking about masculine discourse when I wrote it, or my father. It’s just the first story that came to mind. However I wonder through this what our responsibility to get out the true emotions of the fathers of your life. And how much my dad are close and yet it surprises me when he shows me raw emotion.

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My father was wiping away his tears as he closed the store for the last time. I went to hold his arms and wipe his tears. It’s not the same, you don’t understand he says to me. And instead of inviting me into his emotions he furrows his brows and tells me we need to go meet my brother.

I’m used to my father’s emotional blockades. I saw him cry exactly two other times. Once when my grandfather died, a man he only greeted with a handshake. The other time being when his small soccer team from his small hometown won a trophy.

I can also tell you the times he didn’t cry. He didn’t cry when I got married, he didn’t cry when my brother graduated with honors, he didn’t cry when he had to downsize to an apartment, and most egregiously he didn’t cry when my mother, his wife, died.

She had a stroke. We stopped life saving measures, she was dying. We stood beside her body as the nurses unplugged machines around her. I distinctly remember a sharp cold, when her eyes started flickering. And my tears couldn’t stop. My eyes shooting out the memories of my childhood. Her leftover stew, singing The Backstreet Boys in her broken English. Rocking my baby boy, whispering a song only my son could hear.

My brother’s tears followed. My fathers’ did not. I was confused by it. I resent him for it.

But today, as he locked the door for the las time, he cried in small gasps, constantly wiping his eyes, ashamed of the wetness streaming to his cheeks. He brushes off my attempt of comfort and walks ahead.

My brother waiting at Don Franco’s sees my father and tries to give him a hug in celebration.

What is there to celebrate? He asks as he also pushes him away. My brother apologizes and tries to explain that his store is a success. That it created a great life for us, and in a plea to his own values of hard work, tells him that I know how much him and our mom put into that store.

Then why should we close it, he says to us as he wags his finger, in the beginning of a lecture. A gesture I know too well. My brother tries again to tell him that his business will be fine. The rent was too high in that building, and the landlord was ripping us off, just because a Chipotle opened in the block. My brother forgets his head when he says that it’s time for him to rest.

Offended, my father asks us both what we know about rest. More importantly what do we know about him? He just wanted to be left alone, and now he doesn’t have that. Of course, him being alone is exactly what we fear, and I am now getting annoyed at him, because my father is not a dumb man, and that we have been worried about him ever since mom died. I reminded him again, if he didn’t notice, that I made it a point to visit him at all times and bring him food, a drink, and then talk to him about retirement and he continued to ignore me.

Even worse, I told him that he never cared about people coming into that store anymore, and all he would do is lower his crossword puzzle and no one would buy anything. We talked many times about the store, and he knew we were not going to keep the store open.

I started to eat the pasta that my brother ordered beforehand and reminded him of the happy times we used to have, or he used to feel, even though he hated his feelings. Of how he would greet every person coming in with a smile. Of how he would get bread from baker Tom until he shuttered his doors. The sound of the words Baker Tom made my dad chuckle.

My father would spend an uncomfortable amount of time explaining the meticulous process in which those products were made to anyone who asked. As a kicker he would proudly take out a picture of my mother as a young woman from his wallet. Acting like she was a starlet from the 60’s he would say look that’s who designs them.

I told him all of this, and he just shook his head. I pressed on, told him that this is for the best, the landscape of the neighbourhood has changed. Parnacci’s Breads is now a 7-Eleven, the bodega is a bank. Surely, he was not a dumb person and saw that he was next. But he just kept repeating the words that it was all lost, gone.

Maybe I was being selfish, I was worried that he would die in that store. I didn’t consider that maybe that’s what he would want.

I worry I’m going to lose him again. I lost him once before. It was at mom’s funeral. He wanted little part of it; didn’t want to say anything to the hundreds of people who were there in sorrow. He resisted, and I insisted. His speech was a mess, short and bitter. Embarrassed, he lashed out at both of us and stopped talking to us for months afterwards. It was a slow process to get him back. That’s why I stopped at the store regularly. It was for him, but it was for me too.

I loved my mother, and I know he did too. The store became hers as much as his. He was happy to just exist beside her glow.

I admitted this to him that our life has not been the same since she died. Finally, this broke his silent brooding. In anger he says he lost a partner, his wife. I told him he was being selfish. We lost a mother too, and me and my brother were worried we were going to lose a father too.

My brother nodded. From the outside after mom died he seemed like he kept it together, but I know he didn’t get a chance for comfort. I never talked to him about it, I’m just assuming because that’s how I felt.

My father kept repeating that she is lost and started crying. Nearing her death my father stood by my mother. I remember staring at him, as he grabbed and caressed her hand, gently taking off her wedding ring. Symbolic closure, I thought at the time, I was wrong about that. It just delayed his suffering.

At his tears I didn’t feel relief, I felt anger. I reminded him that it’s the first time I have seen him show any tears about mom.

His defenses shattered, waving his hands, apologizing, pleading at his sons. I don’t think he was apologizing to us.

My dad pulls out his necklace under his shirt, her ring attached to it. He says I miss her everyday. If I lose the store, I lose her.

In a more parent-like manner I say that his stubbornness could’ve lost us. I know he meant to keep her memory alive, but we’re here still, and we’re still family. We need to do this together. We need to remember and move on. And I say this by grabbing his hands who is holding on to the ring.

My brother repeated the gesture as all our hands hold on to the ring. A gesture we as a family have never done.