Copacetic by James Mulhern

The word of the day is copacetic.

I see my brother and me packing suitcases for our trip.

In the frame of the doorway my father stands.

“Everything copacetic?” he says.

One time I asked him where he learned that word.

“As a Marine,” and he told me about his service in the Korean War.

“It was tough,” he said.

In the end, I visited him at the hospital.

“Have some jello.” I held a spoon with a wobble of red before his face.

“Don’t want it.”

“You’ve got to eat, Dad.”

“I’m not hungry.” He pushed it away.

I sat by him from morning until shadows crossed his face.

Mostly he slept. Sometimes he asked what time it was.

I left at nine. The nurse called.

“Your father’s agitated. He wants to leave. Talking about a trip.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

I stand in the doorway of his hospital room. He’s at the window,

wearing the blue bathrobe my sister gave him.

“It brings out your eyes,” she told him.

“Everything copacetic?” I say.

He turns and looks.

“It was tough,” he says.

I guide him to the bed and sleep in the chair beside him.

When I wake, I find that he has gone.

James Mulhern’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in literary journals over one hundred times. In 2015, Mr. Mulhern was awarded a writing fellowship to Oxford University. That same year, a story was longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize. In 2017, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His recent novel, Give Them Unquiet Dreams, is a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2019.

Originally published in Impspired Literary Magazine