Why Johnny Can’t Weep
My father drank until he was so full of it he slit his wrists one night over the toilet. He left the tap running—did he want to clean the cut or drown out his moans? My brother Daniel knocked—the sound of water flowing made him want to go. Father didn’t answer, so Daniel walked in as Dad sliced a box cutter down his other arm. For a second Daniel mistook the blood for tap water running rust.
Dad turned on him and yelled, “You, you—” as if he couldn’t remember his firstborn son’s name. “Can’t I have a moment’s peace?”
My brother froze.
Dad pointed to the door. A sheet of blood like cellophane flapped from his arm to the cold white tile floor.
“Get lost,” Dad yelled.
My brother Daniel has obeyed that command every day since Dad’s death. He tried getting lost in women but invariably got dumped. He pumped heroin in his veins in the bathroom. But it’s hard to dig a grave with a razor, needle, and spoon.
Since Dad’s death, Mother has refused to drink, not even water. She’s become the sphinx of Vegas. Money sifts in and out of her hands like sand. Her eyes glint only in that suspended moment when the ball rolls in the roulette wheel, which seems to turn in two directions at once, so fast forward it’s a blur that seems to whirl more slowly backwards. Her back stiffens at its a rattle like a desert snake the moment before the strike.
My sister Diane tries to save people. But who can be saved from themselves? Like Electra, she’s a lightning rod that attracts trouble. Those about to be struck down are drawn to her.
And me? I inhabit an underworld beneath other people’s skin. I only feel what others can’t express. My brother Daniel blacks out and forgets things. But that scene in the bathroom, I remember it as if I’d been him. Red blood cascades from my father’s veins like downward flames, flaps like fake fire-logs in reverse, I freeze. My mother’s thirst digs so deep in my throat, it hurts my heart. My sister’s bottled-up desire feels like the bottles her men empty and smash at her. I feel my brother’s empty veins ache for the heroin flame.
“Do not go quiet,” would be on our coat of arms. With crossed bleeding wrists. But as with all family trees, some stormy day a branch is gonna snap.
Last night, I watched Diane walk to the rusted bowl she used to feed a stray dog that hung around out back. He crept up. She lifted the tin pan, then slammed it on his head. The dog howled and fled. Then the mutt came back, still hoping she’d fill the dish. She hit him again, though he dodged faster, so it fell on his flank.
Then we heard sirens. Someone had called the police. They’d probably been wanting to for ages, waiting for something they could see to report—after father’s wake, we never raised the shades.
The cops came and hauled my sister off.
Afterward, I filled the dog dish and laid it down, calling the animal softly. He hunkered low, sniffing, circling.
I looked at that tin bowl full of dead meat and thought, “That is Dad’s death.” And we, like the dog, won’t take it. The bowl glinted a silver halo, though the meat drew flies. The dog lay in a hole he’d dug under the stone wall and watched, now that he knew how easily he could become the mush in the bowl, how the empty bowl could turn and crown him.
In this long quarantine, Holly Woodward saw that her problems did not in fact come from others. Her stories and poems appeared recently online in Scribble, Vestal Review, and Coffin Bell. She writes and paints in Costa Rica.