by ADAM SHAW
When I was a kid, Dad would come home from work sweat-soaked at the neck and armpits, his skin a glistening leather punctuated by smears of grime. In his left hand was a fountain pop, sixteen ounces on a good day, thirty-two on a rough one, which he sipped after sinking into his recliner. He’d tell me that he loves Diet Coke, and I’d picture him embracing it, if you love it so much why don’t you marry it, trying to wrap his arms around it only for it to cascade over his forearms and down the front of his shirt, take with it the dirt and sweat and muck he’d built up over the day. He didn’t explain, though, just closed his eyes, raised the foam cup to his mouth, wiggled it around until the straw grazed his lips, and sipped.
Mom died in 2019. Dad called to break the news, and I stopped on my way over to get him a pop, thirty-two ounces. He was in the recliner when I arrived, cheeks splotched red, eyes glossed, the occasional choke of a sob coming up from underneath his gray-streaked beard. I handed him the Diet Coke before I hugged him or even said hello, expressed my condolences. He took it in a trembling hand, raised it to his lips, sipped, exhaled. It would become our routine; I’d fill a foam cup at the gas station, cap it with a lid and pierce the plastic with a straw, watch him drink as we looked at pictures of her, shared memories, watched television. He’d chew the ice at first but stopped, then sometimes left the pop unfinished altogether. By the time I visited next, the cup would be gone.
I drove to Dad’s place not long after his dementia reached a fever pitch, put him in a home, and I spent my afternoon huffing into armloads of boxes as I marched from the moving truck to the house and back again. After I pulled down the door on my load, clanked and locked it into place according to the arrows decaled onto the bumper, I drove to the frozen custard stand down the road, the one with thick blue and white stripes on its patio, employees in aprons, a neon sign of a cone being dipped. It wasn’t a decision but a compulsion in the way food and drink are, a thoughtless trick of the mind like a kid’s surprise at a quarter being pulled out from behind his ear.
The girl behind the counter smiled, asked me how I was doing, and I ordered a Diet Coke, a thirty-two ouncer. I pictured past versions of her, kids with Motorola RAZRs smiling at sunburnt workers shuffling in with slumped shoulders, sagging eyes. She handed me my Diet Coke, and I lumbered to a table, closed my eyes, disappeared into the blackness until my lips found the thin plastic of the straw. I sipped, focused on the carbonation traveling along the inside of my mouth, tingling my tongue and the narrow spaces between my teeth. It made me picture the tiny legs of spiders dancing.
I swallowed when the girl called to me, opened my eyes to the tilted heads of the other customers, a silent what the fuck? in their wrinkled brows, shifting glances. She reminded me that I hadn’t paid, that it was $2.32 for the Diet Coke. I scooted out of my chair, trudged around a couple waiting to order, and set a few bucks on the counter, muttered an apology. I didn’t look up at anyone but felt their looks, the heaviness that had filled the air between us. I went out to the truck, stuffed the drink into the cupholder. I drove home without taking another sip.
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ADAM SHAW lives with his wife and daughter in Louisville, Kentucky and holds an MFA in fiction writing from Concordia University, St. Paul. He is the author of the novel The Jackals, and his short fiction and essays on relationships, pop culture, and nostalgia have appeared in Taco Bell Quarterly, Across the Margin, Sledgehammer Lit, and elsewhere. He can be found online at theshawspot.com.
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REVOLUTION JOHN 