Mercy

Perched in the white wooden rocking chair in the corner of Billie Joe’s room, I shuddered as I cleared my throat to speak. I’d spent a fair amount of time dry heaving into the kitchen sink while waiting for a piece of bread to finish toasting before I returned to him, and attempting to vomit up the emptiness in my stomach proved to be an excruciatingly futile task. I felt the urge to gag again as I watched my potential father nibble on his buttered toast, but I managed to keep myself from doing so in fear of antagonizing my already inflamed throat. My eyelids contracted to narrow slits during my angry observation, and I wondered if he was intentionally taking a gratuitous amount of time to finish his inadequate meal, prolonging the inevitable stream of questions which would follow once the last of his toast was on its way to cuddle with the Aspirin before they both met a dreadful death of disintegration by stomach acid. He must have known that I was all but foaming at the mouth to ask him something considering how his psychic link with me had been restored, yet he was adamant about taking his sweet fucking time to eat his toast. Each bite was nearly microscopic, dainty even, and at once he reminded me of a woman eating while in the company of others, too self-conscious to allow her seemingly insatiable hunger devour the rations in front of her.

In the seconds after the comparison struck me, I inwardly thought he had become the true Fairy in the room.

I heard the bastard chuckling to himself before he set the last bit of toast next to the glass of water on the bedside table, and his amusement merely heightened the sour feelings stirring inside me. There was nothing even remotely comical about how repulsed I was by him. For all I knew, he was my father, yet I had unwittingly sucked him off in that godforsaken hospital because I actually pitied him. Even worse, that sordid old fuck let me do it. I gagged once more in spite of myself as Billie Joe craned his neck to look at me, his eyes alight with fascination at how violently I’d recoiled at my own loss of control, but as his curious stare was met with my pained grimace, the inquisitive glimmer in his eyes dimmed considerably. His fists clenched while he mentally prepared himself for whatever I had to launch his way, waiting for the one question we both knew would irreversibly drive a wedge between us no matter what the outcome would be.

I folded my hands in my lap and broke the visual connection with Billie Joe to stare down at my interlaced fingers, frowning deeply. I was ashamed by what I was about to ask, and the terror I felt towards what his response would be only amplified my shame. I was a coward, a prospective instigator and definite victim of a peculiar brand of incest, yet the idea of verbalizing such things made our situation even filthier. I wanted to keep it bottled up until he died, leaving me to bury the secret along with his remains, but I had to know.

Then again, if he ultimately came around to telling me he was my father, I probably would have killed myself.

“Billie Joe,” I started, clearing my throat yet again regardless of the discomfort it would ensue. “Are you my father?”

He blinked. He shifted uneasily in his bed, coughed, and blinked again. His face drained of color as his own version of humiliation manifested itself deep within his core and spread like poison throughout his body, rendering him a slave to his own guilt. It sickened me how long he sat there, silent, with his teeth fervently gnawing at his bottom lip. His breathing had increased to that of a near panic attack, and each chunk he violently bit of out his lip added to the dread welling inside me. His nonverbal response to my interrogation was all the answer I needed, and when the old bastard finally opened his mouth to speak, I already knew what was to come.

At that point, it appeared as if I’d be drowning myself in the fucking bathtub later that night.

“Fairy, I, uh…I need you to understand somethin’ ‘fore I answer…” he spluttered, but I immediately cut him off. My own panic compelled a vast amount of respiratory distress to flare up, nearly worse than that of Billie Joe’s, and I found myself panting like an undersexed dog.

“You are my dad, aren’t you?!” I shrieked, stumbling to my feet at once. I wanted to strangle him right then and there, but the pathetic ass played the pity card by shamelessly weeping in front of me. If I had been about to advance on Billie Joe before he’d commenced in his pitiable blubbering, I sure as hell wasn’t going to after the tears had started to fall. I was reluctant to admit the plan was ingenious on his part.

“Look, she adopted you! There ain’t no blood relations b’tween you ‘n’ your momma!” he babbled, yet he continued to skirt around a definite answer.

Heart racing even faster still, I shot back, “But you’re not denying it!”

The old man let out an emphatic sob and choked back the second which threatened to force its way out of his larynx, and he swiftly made to erase the moisture from his cheeks, but the minute his hands fell back down at his sides, two new trails of tears meandered their way down his visibly crestfallen visage. He sniffled, and the new disturbance resonating within his nostrils made it clear that if he didn’t stop the waterworks soon, his breathing would become virtually impossible. I considered grabbing a tissue from the bathroom for him, but I was far too livid to give a rat’s ass whether or not the snot would pour from his nose. If anything, he could use his fucking blankets as tissues.

“No, I ain’t denyin’ it ‘cause it’s partially true, God help me…” he whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut tight and thrusting his head down to rest in his hands. He wouldn’t be situated like that for long with how difficult it would be for him to breathe, and part of me hoped he didn’t have the sense to lift his head up so he would drown in his own snot and tears.

“How the fuck can that be partially true? Either we have the same DNA or we don’t, Old Man. There’s nothing partial about that,” I snapped, beginning to pace about his room out of pure anxiety. I regretted the choice in motion at once as my foot collided with a shattered fragment of Billie’s desecrated electric guitar. Muttering a string of profanities under my breath, I withdrew and collapsed back into the rocking chair. The groan it made as my weight stressed its antique wooden frame sent a chill coursing throughout my body. It sounded far too similar to the groan of a rocking chair left behind in an apartment I would most likely never return to.

Sniffling heavily, he replied, “I s’pose it don’t mean nothin’ now that you’re an adult, but it’s documented somewhere that, under the name Frankie Wright, I’m your legal guardian. So yeah, I’m partially a father to you.”

“Then where the hell were you when that woman was abusing me?!”

My screams echoed throughout not only the bedroom, but the entire house. It was as if the very walls themselves were amplifying my distress towards Billie’s seemingly blatant neglect. He remained mute until the very last repetition dissipated into the air, and once that occurred, he lifted his head to look me dead in the eye. I was silently dissatisfied by his sudden refusal to suffocate himself in his own grief.

“I was runnin’ from ‘er. Me ‘n’ Frankie tried to fool ‘er into believin’ I was dead, but she knew I ain’t. She knew I done took our boys ‘way from her, ‘n’ she wasn’t gonna stop ‘til she found us,” he murmured reflectively.

“Frankie knew you were going to kill him?” I demanded, abruptly growing furious with a certain devious little spirit who only managed to temporarily win my trust because I assumed the poor bastard had been murdered. With the notion of assisted suicide thrown onto the table, however, I could no longer sympathize with the condemned teenager. He very well could have been more than aware of his impending death, and if that was the case, Billie Joe certainly wasn’t quite the monster I initially presumed he was.

“Yeah,” the old man croaked. “Me killin’ ‘im was his idea.”

“But wait, I still don’t understand how I fit into all this-” I stammered, but Billie interrupted me mid-ramble.

“It won’t make sense ‘less I tell it from the beginnin,’ Fairy. You really up for that?” he sighed, sniffling one last time as he reached for his glass of water. He took a generous swig, never once taking his eyes off me, before setting it down once more.

I inhaled deeply and held my breath for a moment, noticing how calm I’d become in a matter of minutes. I’d learned that Billie Joe wasn’t my biological father, he was never conspiring with the woman Frankie called Adie but against her, and it was never Billie’s intentions to kill his teenage lover. He had been coerced into it in hopes of getting his sons away from their mother.

I had a pretty damn good idea why.

Exhaling, I inched towards the bed and sat next to the puzzling old man, tentatively taking his hand in mine. He didn’t flinch as if he’d been burned. Contrarily, he tightened his grip and pulled me closer to him. I did not protest.

“I’m ready if you are,” I assured him, wiping the last of his tears away with the pad of my thumb.

Billie Joe grinned and pressed his lips affectionately against my cheek before informing me, “Shit, I been waitin’ thirty years to have this conversation with you.”