Who’s Going to Sing With Me?

He didn’t call her much and she didn’t pick up every time he did, but it never hurt his feelings. The sound of her voice on her outgoing message was usually enough. She’d always text, “everything ok?” when she didn’t answer and he’d always reply, “all good. Just wanted to hear your voice.”  It wasn’t much of a ritual but it seemed to scratch something for each of them, a whisper within trying to replace what had once been a howl. 

A familiar buzz alerted him as he was sitting in the shop, drinking his first cup. “All that caffeine can’t be good for you,” she had always told him as she would smugly sip her tea.

‘I gotta have it to keep up with you, dynamo,” he’d sometimes reply, wondering if she ever noticed that he started drinking less when she pointed it out and switched to heathen decaf on second and third cups of the day.  

The buzz stopped and repeated in that familiar pattern to which he was attuned and when he looked down and saw her name, he smiled for a beat and then paused before answering. This was a deviation from the game. 

“Hey,” he said. No response mixed with background noise made him think it must have been a pocket dial. The smile came back. They had always called them “boob dials” because she usually had her phone clipped a bra strap while she worked or ran and would call him two or three times a day when bending over or reaching for something at work or bounding along on a run.  “Hey, you there,” he tried again. 

“He’s sick.” He could barely hear her. 

“Your dad?”

There was silence again for a moment before he heard an amplified voice calling for a doctor in the background, “Yes,” she finally said. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.” 

He listened as her voice broke and she wept. After a bit, he heard her sniff and then take a deep breath allowing space for him to reply. “I’m so sorry.”

“He got worse so fast....I thought there’d be more time before....”

“I know. You know how he is though. He’s going to do whatever he’s going to do at his own speed. It’s a family trait apparently.”

She almost laughed and he couldn’t help but let the smile creep back onto his face. “You know he fucking loved you,” she said, “‘He always said, ‘You should’ve married that boy.’ He never could see what a shit you were sometimes.”

He didn’t respond which, in the past, would have been to piss her off or because he didn't know what to say, but now was just to give her space to breathe in the moment. Plus, they had made it to the point where they didn’t evoke that response any more. The regrets of their time together had been broken down into smaller and smaller pieces until they sat almost unnoticed in the bottom of their hearts. 

“What am I going to do,” she blurted suddenly, along with a sob. 

“You’re going to be his daughter and do exactly what he already knows you’re going to do. You’re going to hold his hand until he’s gone and hold everybody’s hand afterwards and you’re going to be the bad-ass he raised,” he said a little more sharply than he intended. 

She sniffed softly and he pictured her back straightening. “You’re right.” They both sat silently for a moment. “He told me to call you,” she said after a beat. 

“Good. I want to know. I love the guy.”

“I know you do.”

“Please let me know what I can do,”’he said. 

“I will ... Will you say something at the service? He doesn’t want a preacher.”

“As you wish,” he replied out of habit.

“Fucker,” she said, but he knew she was smiling and probably blushing at the reference. “I need to get back in there.”

“Hey. You’re going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright,” he said. 

“Do you remember sitting around listening to his old records in the room over the garage,” she asked suddenly. 

“Hell, yeah I do. That’s the first time I ever listened to Sabbath and Zeppelin. The man’s taste was exquisite.... is exquisite.” He paused, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok,” she said. “I heard War Pigs on the way over here and thought about that time he walked in on us singing it as loud as we could.  When the song got to the solo, you turned around to play your air guitar and screamed when you saw him standing in the door.”

He laughed softly, “I thought he was the angel of death who came to get us for singing that devil music. I was a little superstitious back then. Baptist upbringing and all. Then, I realized it was your dad and I freaked out a little more because I knew he could see your shirt wasn’t buttoned all the way up and I thought he was going to kill me.”

She returned  a tear-tinged laugh. “And all he did was walk in and say, ‘Awesome. Let’s do Paranoid next’ and let me button up while pretending he didn’t notice.”

“He’s a hell of a man, Sarah.”

“He brings that day up every time a Sabbath song comes on the radio. He won’t let me listen to anything but the classic rock stations when I’ve been taking him to his appointments the last few years. And every time, we sing like we did that day and it’s so loud and so funny and it makes me feel so good, like I was always going to have him.”

“Well, you always will when you hear one of those songs,” he replied. 

The phone went silent and he thought she had hung up on him as it took her so long to respond. “When he’s gone. When this is over and everything’s done....” She paused again. 

“What,” he finally asked. 

“Then, who’s going to sing with me?”

She hung up before he could answer and he sat, holding the phone in his lap, waiting for the heart beat vibration he had given her contact when he’d first realized he could do it years ago. The one he still longed to feel.