It’s Yours
by D.T. Robbins
My son’s school calls. The nurse or principal or whoever the hell I’m talking to tells me there’s been an accident and I should come down to check it out ASAP.
I swerve my truck in and out of lanes and all over the freeway like a psychopath, hauling ass at over 100mph. People flip me off as I pass them by.
I break the glass of the front office door running in. I don’t even apologize. It’s not important. Glass can be replaced. All things can be replaced.
My son is sitting in the nurse’s office with a bag of ice over his mouth. I ask if he’s okay. He opens his mouth, shows me the gaping hole where one of his front teeth used to be. One of his “big guy” teeth. He tells me he fell at recess and knocked out his tooth. He starts crying. He says everyone is gonna laugh at him because he only has one front tooth now instead of two.
I pull out my pocket knife and get to work. I insert my knife around the gums and dig, dig, dig. There’s a lot of blood. I catch most of it in a paper towel or swallow it. Once I’ve removed my front tooth, I tell my son to tilt his head back. I slide my tooth into the spot where his tooth used to be. It fits perfectly. No wiggle.
He smiles all big and goes, “Thanks, Dad!”
I go, “You’re welcome, buddy.”
It’s 1 a.m. My son comes into my room, tells me he can’t sleep.
I go, “Why can’t you sleep?”
He shrugs, “I don’t know. Something’s wrong with my brain.”
“What part of your brain?”
He points to a place on his brain.
I point on my head in the same place he was pointing on his. “This part?”
He nods. “Yeah, that’s the part. Something’s wrong with it, and I can’t sleep. I think it’s broken.”
I open my skull and take two fingers and pull out that part of my brain. I open up his skull and take out the broken part of his brain and put my good part there instead.
I ask him, “How’s that?”
He takes a deep breath. “So much better. Thanks, Dad!”
I go, “You’re welcome, buddy.”
When he’s 13, he asks a girl out for the first time. She tells him no. She calls him ugly and stupid and a loser. The other girls make fun of him for asking the first girl out. It’s brutal. He comes home from school with his head sunk all the way down into his shoulders. There’s a dark cloud clanging thunder and throwing lighting above his head.
I go, “I’m so sorry, buddy. I know this feeling sucks. It really, really sucks. But I promise another girl wil see you for the awesome dude you are.
He goes, “She’s right, though. I’m a fucking loser.”
I go, “Give me your eye.”
“What?”
“Give me your eye.”
He takes out his eye and gives it to me.
I take out my eye and give it to him. I go, “Put that in.”
He puts it in.
I tell him to go stand in front of a mirror. I tell him to take a good, hard look at himself. I tell him that now he’ll see what I see every time I look at him. I tell him that sometimes getting the right girl is all about confidence, and you have to see yourself for who you really are to have that confidence.
He asks another girl out a few months later. This one says yes.
My doorbell rings. My son’s standing there with tears streaming down his face. He says he didn’t want to call. He says he couldn’t even bring himself to pick up the phone.
I ask him if it was his wife. If it was the cancer. If it finally took her.
He nods. He sobs.
I pull him in. Wrap my arms around him. Hug him as tight as I can.
He tells me how much it hurts. How he can hear his shattered heart jingling in his chest like coins in a pocket.
I reach inside my chest, take out my heart. Mine has a lot of cracks in it. Parts of it are superglued together. Other parts are scarred. I go, “Take mine. Use it for as long as you need.”
My son is at my bedside. He’s holding my hand. What’s left of it.
He goes, “We’re here, Dad.”
I’m too tired to talk. I smile instead. It won’t be long now.
Another voice goes, “We’re all here, Paw Paw.”
I scan the room. It’s filled with my grandkids and my great-grandkids. My great-granddaughter gets real close to my face and says, “Look, Paw Paw, recognize this?” She bears her teeth at me. She’s wearing my front tooth. “This used to be yours, right?”
I nod and go, “It looks real nice on you, baby.”
I look around the room and see myself everywhere: my teeth, muscles, hair, ears, skin, and on and on and on.
My son goes, “I’m gonna miss you so much, Dad. I’m so sorry we didn’t give you more. You gave us so much.” His head drops and he cries really hard. His wife puts her head on his back. She cries too.
I tap his hand to get him to look at me. I pull back the top of my skull and press the play button on my brain. The movie plays against the wall:
The day he was born.
The first time I held him.
His first laugh.
When learned to walk.
Throwing him in the air and catching him at the beach.
Watching him learn to ride a bike.
Baseball games.
Prom dates.
All of the WWE events that we went to.
The day he became a father.
Celebrating his college graduation.
Watching him play with my grandbabies.
All of it. All of it. All of it. All of it.
I motion for him to lean forward. I whisper in his ear, “You gave me everything, everything, everything.”
D.T. Robbins has work in Hobart, Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y, Ghost City Review, Trampset, Versification, Ellipsis, and others. Find out more at dtrobbins.com.
