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For months, I dreaded listening to my messages.
Almost exactly four years ago, I lived in an apartment just down the road from where I live now. I could hear coyotes in the night.
The distinct smell of cow shit wafted through my open windows.
I lived next to the University of Arizona agricultural center. In the middle of a city, they had horses, cattle, bales of hay, and the exquisite smells to prove it.
I moved from a farm in Montana, for this?
Change is not my greatest attribute.
Baby steps.
Every evening I would come home from class, tired, ready to relax and do as little as possible. And, this strategy would have worked too, save for these disturbing phone messages I would get.
At first, I thought they were simply a wrong number. However, they grew more frequent and increasingly desperate.
They came from an older woman. Someone who worked at a hospital. She kept calling for someone named “Barry” whose father was in the hospital for some sort of treatment for some sort of disease. I cannot recall her name.
Let us call her “Margaret” for the sake of this story.
At first Margaret would call and leave a message like this: “Barry, your father is in the hospital still, he is not doing so well, I think you should come visit him.”
Sad, right?
It touched me, yet, I figured she just has a wrong number and will rectify it quickly enough.
Nope.
Soon enough she was leaving more urgent messages. “Barry, please, PLEASE, come see your father.”
This progressed.
“Barry, this is Margaret, your father has taken a turn for the worse, it is not looking so good, you really need to come down here and be with him.”
Margaret pleaded with Barry, her whole heart and soul, just to get him to visit his father.
Except this was not Barry’s phone number. It was mine. And, last time I checked, I was not Barry.
Nor was I ever home to answer the phone and tell Margaret this.
These messages haunted me.
I remember thinking that Margaret was such a loving, dedicated woman to take care of a dying old man like that. What a beautiful person! Barry. Fucking Barry. Oh, I could not stand that prick. I did not know him but how I wished I could get five minutes alone in a room with Barry and knock some sense in him.
Barry was my Osama bin Laden.
Never did a more vile creature exist in the history of the world then this ungrateful bastard who refused to go visit his dying father. I had this impression that Barry was some rich, privileged snot, whose father slaved his whole life for. Spoiled him rotten. Paid for college. Bought him nice vehicles. Then once Barry took his expensive college education and got a high paying job, well, he became too good for his family.
Then again maybe Barry was the victim here. Suppose his dad was an awful tyrant, faced with his own mortality desperately trying to atone for his significant sins. Maybe he abused Barry. His wife and other children were long gone, and only good old Barry was around for him to mind fuck now.
This confused me even more.
Imagine how it messed with Margaret.
There were times when I hoped she would call when I was home. I imagined myself pretending to be Barry. Thinking that his father was too far gone to notice any different, I would show up at the hospital giving both he and Margaret some peace.
All the nurses would love me. Smile at me. Think: “Gosh, Barry is so sweet to his dying father, so nice to us, I wish I had a son like Barry.” Except Barry would be me.
Or I would be Barry.
I dreamed of the funeral. A few people would show up. The nurses. Margaret. A stray family member who had not seen me/Barry since childhood. Margaret would weep bitterly. I would hold her. Comfort her. Say: “It is ok, Margaret, Dad is in a better place now.”
“He feels no pain anymore.”
Margaret, the woman who watched my/Barry’s father wither into nothing, would find odd comfort in this. In Barry’s kindness.
We would promise to stay in touch. Reveling over how great a man my father was.
I consider that I never would find out this man’s name.
Still, we would forge a bond, father, fake son and the loving caregiver.
This would never come to pass.
One night, I was home watching television. The phone rang. It was Margaret. Briefly I closed my eyes. ]
The hospital.
Margaret.
My dying pretend father.
A casket.
Her voice trembled on the phone. Tinged, aching with sadness. “Barry?” she asked.
This was my chance. To go through with all of this. To give these people some peace. I could be Barry. I would be Barry.
“Barry?”
She paused. Waiting. Hoping. Needing me to be Barry.
My heart nearly stopped.
“Oh, I think you have the wrong number.”
More silence.
I worried about Margaret in those moments. As if she were a great artist who found out her life’s work was just lost in a fire. Here she had been calling someone, pleading with them for months, now only to find out the whole time she had the wrong number.
She took this remarkably well, though. She gave a curt acknowledgement, said goodbye and was gone. All business.
I did not know what to think.
I did not know why I never said anything more. I could not go through with the deception. Even for the sake of my dear friend Margaret, nor for the father I loved but was not mine. I could not even do it to spite that reprehensible son of a bitch, Barry.
In the end, I was not him. I could not be Barry.
And, hopefully, I never will be.
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