Nicky Bradbury’s hair had grown out by then. It was no longer the “proper,” tidy combover his husband had made him get for their wedding. Though his life now was a far cry from the frazzled, frantic, alley cat days of his adolescence, his appearance had nearly come full-circle— from heavy metal locks and short shorts, to tasteful “grown-up” hair and collared shirts, and back. It made his son, Thomas, worried. This was not the version of his dad he wanted his fiancee’s parents to meet.
Arriving at his father’s apartment, Thomas found the man struggling into a pair of skinny jeans he’d had for twenty years, and wearing a muscle tank with an obscene slogan scrawled upon it with fabric paint. Averting his eyes until his father’s undies were no longer showing, Thomas ordered Nicky to go put on a different shirt, preferably with no words or images on it at all.
The restaurant where they were meant to meet up with Alana and her parents was not particularly fancy, but Thomas had dressed business-casual anyway, perhaps in an attempt to compensate for his father, or to distance himself from him. As they approached the establishment, Thomas attempted to explain the rules of engagement.
“Please, don’t say anything weird, or shocking, on purpose. Don’t play games, don’t try to test anyone. You’re not… vetting them. They’re vetting you, you understand? Like… I don’t need you to be best friends. I just need you to not hate each other, long enough so that we can invite all of you to the wedding, without it being a total catastrophe, and then after that you don’t ever have to see each other again. You understand?”
Nicky took a deep breath, and stared at the outside of the restaurant with apprehension. “Do you think I should pretend to be mute?” His cold Cockney accent sat in the humid Charleston evening air, starkly contrasting with his son’s sweaty Southern drawl.
Thomas scoffed. “Is it really so hard to just be normal?” His voice, and his eyebrows, were getting higher by the second. “For like an hour?” Nicky looked away. Thomas sighed, and dropped his register. “Listen… Just try to be nice. Worst case scenario… we have a shitty wedding. Big woof. You don’t have to have a panic attack. Just, please, try to be nice.”
The Plumbers greeted the Bradburys with smiles and handshakes, and all was very pleasant, even as Thomas’s heart was pounding and Nicky’s breath was shallow. Upon being introduced to Alana— the fabled Alana, how I’ve heard so much about you!— Nicky leaned close to her and stage-whispered for all to hear, “You know you can do better than him, right?” Thomas cringed, but the joke-as-compliment was generally well-received, so he elected to tolerate it. So it went for most of Nicky’s utterances…
…which were met with faint, polite laughter, and just-slightly-uncomfortable glances exchanged, throughout the evening. Topics that ran the risk of triggering a Nicky Bradbury Rant Of Terror And Profanity(TM) were deftly avoided by a “Don’t even ask me about that, I’ll go crazy and Thomas will die of embarrassment” from Nicky, or a “HOW ABOUT WE CHANGE THE SUBJECT” from Thomas. The conversation, expertly steered, stayed mostly in the realm of Engineering Problems Encountered In The Manufacturing Of Milk Cartons And Related Packaging Items, Mr. Plumber’s area of expertise.
Nicky was about halfway done with his food when he began to slow his intake, pick absently at the food with his fork, and eventually, slowly and deliberately, put down his fork, gazing with serenity down at the plate. He began to hear static, as the sounds around him slowly became muffled and soft. He felt a sensation in his chest as if he had to yawn, his breath slow but small, unwilling to lift his head and open his jaw. Thomas was the first to notice his father seemed unusually pensive.
“Daddy? You alright?” Thomas worried that any deviation from his father’s status quo would lead down the road to unpredictable, disruptive behavior, which could range from pitiful tears of fatherly regret to table-flipping, omnidirectional, demented rage.
Nicky lifted his head to look upon his progeny, expressionless. He saw the 29-year-old, bespectacled face that was really in front of him, eyebrows furrowed— but he also saw the younger Thomases he had once known. Their faces appeared before him, obscuring the oldest’s, one morphing into the next, getting younger and younger until there was baby Thomas, as he was on the very first day he’d met him. The disembodied infant face gurgled and laughed. He’d always been a happy baby. If Nicky had had control of his own face in that moment, perhaps he would have smiled. There you are, my little happy baby. Where have you been all this time?
Thomas waved his hand in front of Nicky’s face, and continued to talk at him with increasing worry, but this was of no concern to Nicky. The static in his head grew louder, and soon, even sweet baby Thomas’s fat, beautiful face was obscured, as Nicky’s vision began to blur, and the edges of his field of vision became covered in green, purple, and black pinpoints, crackling like static, appearing and bursting like minuscule supernovas. Within sixty seconds, the crackling pinpoints grew like vines, interlacing and covering all, closing the curtains on Nicky’s world. He smelled hurt, like his trachea was burnt from cold air. He heard only his own breathing. He saw only the screensaver of nothingness.
Later that night, at the hospital, a doctor informed Thomas that his father had passed away from asphyxiation, caused by a stroke. It was then that Thomas cracked. As he cried and rocked in his seat, holding his shocked fiancee’s hand, he suddenly stopped, and began to laugh. “I guess it really was that hard for him to be normal. He tried, and look, his head exploded.”