Me and Dadi

Twin Perspective | Liam Zalubas | Photography

Me and Dadi by August Van Der Werf

Simon turned the key in his doorknob lock and slowly opened the front door to his dark house. He put his right foot in the door jam and tried not to make a sound. It didn't matter. Tiny hands reached for his thighs. Sighing, he managed a weak smile as the child embraced him. Simon grunted slightly as he extended his arm to put his briefcase down. He put a hand on the child’s shoulder, and gently nudged him away so he could remove his lab coat.

When he had hung it up, he turned around and for a moment the child was gone. Simon took a deep breath. Gone for good? But then he heard the young, eager footsteps. Simon squeezed his eyes shut. This couldn’t keep happening. Not like this. When he opened his eyes, the child was holding a drawing for him to see: two choppy stick figures with smiley faces, holding hands on a sunny day. ME AND DADI, it read at the top in big messy handwriting. 

“What do you think, Daddy?” he asked.

Simon looked down from the drawing to see a pair of wide brown eyes, and body language that could only be expecting a compliment. Simon’s lip trembled a bit before he spoke.

“It’s wonderful, Anthony.”

A single tear rolled down Simon’s cheek. This is the beginning, he thought. It always is.

“Daddy?” Anthony asked, his smile suddenly gone.

“Yes?” Simon offered painfully.

By now the tears were falling freely. He wasn’t even sobbing with each one; they just fell from his eyes like rain. 

“Why does your breath kinda smell, Daddy.”

“Just a drink, buddy,” Simon replied. “For grown-ups.”

“When can I come back, Daddy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“From the hospital. It’s scary.”

“It--”

He stopped himself. It scares me too, he thought. He swallowed, then collapsed onto the floor. Anthony dropped his drawing, and followed his father.

Sprawled out on the floor, Simon opened his briefcase, and took a test tube from its holder, which held many more. He found his footing, stumbled forward, and lost his balance again. He seemed to be falling right on top of Anthony, but he hit the ground instead.

“Daddy, why are you on the floor?” asked Anthony, suddenly standing above him in a place he wasn’t before.

Using a coffee table for leverage, Simon swiped for the door knob. When he found it, he pulled himself up again. He was just able to get to the other side of the door: the stairs to the basement, and down to his lab. He closed the door behind him, muffling Anthony’s voice on the other side. Simon let himself fall down the stairs. Anthony was waiting for him at the bottom.

Simon could see the beakers on the table just a few yards away. That was all he needed to will himself up. He walked past the bulletin board on the wall, crowded with papers filled with  formulas, equations, and calculations. None of them had worked. It was time to try something new. So Simon uncorked the test tube, and poured its contents into a larger flask with a darker liquid already inside. The concoction reacted with a steamy hiss, turning brighter as the new liquid bloomed inside.

Simon’s hands stopped shaking. He had remarkable control now.

“Watcha working on, Daddy?”

“It’s a potion. To make me stronger.”

“Whoa… will you be able to pick up cars and punch through walls?” Anthony asked excitedly, playfully extending his arms and flexing his biceps.

“Better than that,” said Simon. For the first time that night, he didn’t look at his son when he was speaking to him. He took the flask, and drank its contents in a single gulp. “It’ll give me the strength to move on.”

Simon unlocked the front door and let himself stumble inside. He absentmindedly dropped his briefcase and let his lab coat fall off of him. Dinner, then bed, he thought. He couldn’t be bothered to do much more. That would take too much energy. He opened the fridge. There was still some leftover soup. By now it had turned a bit pasty, but Simon was too tired to care.

He was alone at the table until the cat, Doctor, decided to join him. He liked the cat, he had decided. He would keep it. It was nice having the company.

When he was finished eating, he left the bowl on the table and retired to the basement. He poured the concoction into the tube, up to the black line he’d drawn with a Sharpie. Ten milligrams. It didn’t need to be precise, though.

He went back upstairs, fed Doctor, and went to sleep. The dreams were finally starting to get good again.

For a while, Simon didn’t venture down to the lab. The table that once was filled with science experiments was now cleared, and the spot where Anthony once stood was now empty. Simon looked past both of these things. He looked at the bulletin board, where he kept Anthony’s drawing next to all of his equations.

Almost three months had gone by now, and the potion seemed to be working steadily, as long as he remembered to take it every day. Slowly but surely it would work its magic. It would be a while until the next phase in Simon’s life, but now it was easier to recognize that. Pretty soon, Anthony lived only in the drawing, holding hands with his father on one final, everlasting day of sun.

For the time being, that would be enough.