I turned back to the room at the sound of renewed cheers and laughter. Already free of the dividend-hounds and futures-foxes within, I had no desire to re-endanger myself by rejoining their midst and further submitting my sanity for their approval. Instead, I turned back around and, using the phone call for justification, I practically ran from the meeting’s anteroom.
I dialed the number back and turned down a hallway leading to the more secluded of my two offices, the one I used for actually getting work done, while the other was reserved for entertaining clients, lawyers, and investors. As Andy’s ringing line clicked open, I was surprised to hear, not his voice, but that of our middle brother.
“Ryan?”
“Andy, wh... Hollis? Why’re you using Andy’s phone?”
The silence that followed was strange, but not alarmingly so. I pulled the phone from my ear to diagnose whether it remained connected. Finding it to be a live line, I tried speaking again.
“Hello? Hollis? …Andy? Hello… Can you hear me?”
“Ryan. It’s Hollis.”
“Hey, Hollis. Listen, I’m kind of in the middle of something important here. Can this wait till later? … Hollis? Hello? … Wait, what time is it there? Christ, it’s just now seven here. What couldn’t wait that you had to call at five in the morning there?”
A response was slow in coming, and I almost hung up the phone with an even blend of annoyance and confusion.
“Ryan. You need to come home.”
“Wh-What? Are you kidding? Hollis, I can’t just leave whenever I want. I have a company to run here. Come on, man, you know that.”
To my bewilderment, he just repeated himself, and I was beginning to wonder if Hollis was still sleeping one off from the night before and that he was calling me while still half-drunk and asleep. Before I could conclude one way or the other, his voice again crackled through the phone. I would not have guessed it possible, but his next words were even more incomprehensible to me than his last.
“It’s Mom, Ryan. She’s sick, really sick. We’ve been leaving you voicemails for over a week.”
“Yeah, I know, I got the messages. I’ve been meaning to call back and tell her I hope she starts feeling better… you know, that I’m thinking of her and everything. Things are just a little hectic here right now. We’re buying out this other company, and, Hollis, you would not believe what it’s like dealing with the army of lawyers this deal is taking. If you could see…”
“Ryan, shut up for a second. You need to come home. Today. Mom, she…”
I stopped halfway into my darkened office, frozen with the sudden realization that it wasn’t just another phone call. Hollis sighed heavily, and I could tell he was exhausted.
“Ryan, the doctors don’t think she’s going to make it through the night. They can’t control the infection; they’re afraid if they give her any more treatments for the cancer that it’ll kill her.”
“What… What are you talking about? Hollis? What…”
“Her body is shutting down, Ryan. There’s nothing they can do. If you want to say goodbye, which I know you do, now is your only chance.”
My knees, rubberized and useless, unexpectedly rebelled against the ability to hold me up. They buckled, dropping me into a sprawling lean against my desk as if they’d been on a six-month sabbatical in zero-g orbit.
“Ryan, are you still there? Talk to me, bro.”
In an instant, I could feel my whole life crumbling beneath me. It wasn’t a shock. It was more like I was running from something for as long as I could remember, and my brother’s words made me look back, only to realize that, despite all my efforts, I was no farther than where I started.
“Ryan! Goddammit, say something!” His voice grew distant, and I vaguely recognized that he was next speaking to someone else. “I think he passed out. No, I don’t even know who I would call. It took us eight days to even get him to pick up.”
I could just make out another voice following Hollis’s. The sound stirred up memories that I had long repressed. The voice, so familiar, yet one I hadn’t heard in almost a decade, belonged to my father. It sobered me immediately.
“I… I’m here, Hollis. I’m sorry, I just… I had no idea it was this bad. I just talked to her…”
I tried to come up with the right time since I spoke to my mother, but, as I searched my memory for the number of weeks, I continued my silence, realizing that the answer would be measured in more than a couple of months - at least six, maybe more. When my mind tried to recall the time before that, my self-derision kicked in. Without instruction, my subconscious made an effort to bury the answer, but my inner conscience wanted judgment, not mercy.
A year. I talked to her at Christmas… and the last time I heard her voice before that was Christmas Eve the year before.
The voices on the other end of the phone became muddled in their own conversation again, but I could just comprehend the words. “I don’t know. He’s mumbling and isn’t making any sense… Dad, stop. That isn’t going to help… Because she’s his mom, too. That’s why. Besides, you know she would want him here.”
I felt my chest, fought back the thought that I was going to be sick, and finally shook my head clear.
“Hollis.”
“Not now, Dad… Yes, Ryan? You there?”
“I’m here, Hollis. I’m on my way. I’m getting on a plane, and I’ll call you once I know when I’ll get there. Uh… shit. Do you need anything? What can I do? I can… I don’t know. What else should I do?”
It didn’t process at the time, but I later realized how strange such questions would’ve seemed to my brother. For years, indeed, for the rest of my life, I would wonder if I truly was in a state of shock… or if I really was that foolish and arrogant to think that I could somehow do something in the face of death.
“Ryan, take a deep breath. You don’t need to do anything. Just get here in one piece. Okay? And soon.”
“Got it. I’ll call you when I’m in the air.”
“Okay, Ryan.”
“And Hollis?”
“Yeah?”
I hesitated but let my heart say what it needed to.
“I’m sorry, man.”
His reply was instant. “I know.”
Forty minutes later, I was anxiously confined to a seat, alone, on the company jet. As the craft accelerated off the runway and climbed above the New York skyline, I found myself fidgeting, sweating, and restless.
The small private plane leveled off, heading west. At that moment, I realized what my hands were doing: Without meaning to, I had worked my watch off my wrist and was feeling its metal links one by one in a continuous circle. I saw this and stopped turning it.
I angled the underside of the timepiece to hit the thin ray of light streaming through the plane’s portal windows.
The inscription engraved into the metal casing might as well have been etched into my bones, but somehow it was comforting to see them then.
Until The Sun Burns Away.
I took a deep, steadying breath and slipped the reminder of Harley back on my wrist. For a moment, I wondered if she would be there, back home in South Dakota. Still, my imagination soon returned to my mother, trying to picture what condition I’d find her in, and thoughts of having to face my father.