On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, which was a Monday, Francisco donned a dark blue polyester suit and clasped the brown, empty suitcase that his father had gifted him the night before. His father showed him how to comb gel through his hair. His mother cooked the pair of eggs and bacon and coffee for breakfast and Francisco cleared his plate. He eyed the plain beige mug for a moment before taking it into his hand. He took one sip of it and his launched spit nearly missed the newspaper his father was reading across the table. His father gulped down the dark, bitter liquid. His mother refilled the cup thrice already. Francisco slowly raised the ceramic mug to his lips and tried again to drink it. More controlled than last time, he spit it back into the cup and set it aside. He watched his mother wipe up the coffee mess he made. His father drove him to the office of the family business with the monotonous newscaster rolling off monotonous financial reports the whole way.
The coffee went like that every morning, the work week went exactly like the coffee. It wasn’t that Francisco didn’t like the reports and the phone calls and the meetings that his father introduced him to; he desperately wanted to be successful at all of it. It was that, for some ungodly reason or another, he couldn’t. He was lost and messed everything up and at 5:00pm on Friday, his father called him into his office. Sitting across from his father, his tie loosened and shirt untucked in some places and short hair going multiple ways, no doubt from Francisco’s frustrated hand running through it every three minutes as he stared at the gibberish on the white paper, his father fired him.
Francisco let out a breath he’d been holding in all week. His father didn’t seem mad, he just told Francisco to find a different job he was good at.
That weekend Francisco went out and used part of his meager week’s pay to buy a captain’s hat. On Monday morning he put it on and looked at himself in the mirror. The hat was white with a blue brim and gold detailing where the brim began. He went down to the shipyard and they saw his hat and assumed he was the captain of Ophelia and stuck him in front of the large wooden wheel at the white helm. Francisco yelled orders that he’d seen in the movies and steered and got the ship out of the port and into the ocean successfully. Once at sea, the crew members took control, which was lucky because Francisco was not sure where it was headed, and evidently would not find out. He snoozed with his legs up in the cabin and was only woken when the ship was back where it had been just before Francisco fell asleep. He got the ship back into the port, yelling the same orders he had earlier, just in reverse. Francisco showed up every crisp morning of that salty week and left the port every easy evening, well rested.
He got so much sleep during the day that at night he was able to try his hand at writing. Francisco penciled twelve poems by Thursday morning, when he packaged up the final drafts, addressed the parcel to the local publisher, added a stamp in the right corner, and dropped it in the mail on the way to the seaport.
On Friday evening, Francisco came home with his captain’s hat under his arm and his week’s pay in his left pocket. On the dining room table was a letter addressed to him from the publisher. There was money in the envelope with the letter, which requested more poems and praised the imagery and rhythm in the ones they received. Francisco folded the letter back up and returned it to the envelope with the money, before placing the envelope in his right pocket. That evening, Francisco sat at the dinner table and told his parents. They had seen him no longer attempting the coffee at breakfast and heard him up and fumbling about when they were trying to fall asleep, but hadn’t thought to ask about his successful week until now. Francisco smiled when he spoke of how easy the sailing and the writing was and proudly placed the contents of his pockets onto the table. His parents said nothing while he spoke. When he finished, Francisco’s father had his arms crossed and a slightly frowned mouth.
“Sailing and writing? There’s no money there,” Francisco’s father said.
After a moment, Francisco stood and picked the letters up. He ripped them into halves, then quarters, then small strips, and threw the pieces away. He put the money in his pocket, picked up the captain’s hat, and walked out the door.
He walked to town and straight into the shop where he bought the hat last week. He walked around the store and finally picked up a surgeon’s cap and brought it to the front. The girl exchanged the hats no problem. He asked her where he could find some painting supplies; she sent him two shops over.
The next morning was a Saturday. Francisco sat down with his new paints and easel; he painted a beautiful picture of a captain’s view of a ship from inside the cabin with his feet up on the desk, just before a nap. From his memory, Francisco painted the array of maps and tools spread on the old wooden desk against the dark red cabin walls with the paint chipping off. Out the tiny window, Francisco could see the sea and the horizon as he drifted into his first dream of the day. He wasn’t finished until Sunday night.
Early Monday morning he carried the new cap under his arm and took his painting to the store that sold him the art supplies, which also sold pieces of art. The bored man behind the counter looked at Francisco’s plain face, sighed and said he guessed he would take a look. When they did meet the painting, his eyes rounded considerably and he began to stutter and look from Francisco to the painting and back and forth with narrowed eyes. He told Francisco he knew of the perfect buyer and to come back at the end of the week. He also asked him to bring more works.
Francisco wandered out of the store, grinning, when he remembered what was in his hands. He put the cap on and walked into the hospital, where they ushered him into the sanitized room and outfitted him in rubbery sterile from head to toe. The nurses pushed him into the operating room where a patient under anesthesia was waiting for his surgery. Francisco let the nurses do their work and when they put the scalpel in his hand and told him to cut the tumor out, he did just that. It took only a moment, and he did seven surgeries that day. On Tuesday, he did eight. On Wednesday, ten. On Thursday, six, and on Friday, eleven.
Friday evening, after a long day of scalpelling under fluorescent light, Francisco walked with tired eyes to the art shop, where a wealthy-looking lady was waiting with the man at the desk. She shook his hand, which was still rubber gloved and bloody from his last surgery. When she saw her hand all bloody she exclaimed something about the raw truth of art. The lady went on to say that what he created is exactly that, and asked when he could come up with another. Francisco thought about it and then told her that he didn’t think he had another one in him. He started to take his painting from the desk and she stopped him and offered a large sum of money for the painted canvas, more zeros than Francisco thought the town building cost the taxpayers. He laughed and shook his head and told her he’d give it to her for a tenth that. She agreed and gave him his money; he walked out and went two shops over, and attempted to return the surgeon’s cap, but the girl wouldn’t take it back. He shrugged and bought a police officer-style hat and went home with a hat under each arm.
On this Friday night’s dinner, Francisco didn’t share about his week except for putting all the money he earned from his surgeon job and from the painting on the dinner table and looked at his father, who looked at the hats he brought in and the crinkled receipt from the paint shop.
Francisco’s father said with a sigh, “Son, your mother and I thought you’d find something, you know, more respectable. Quit the arts. By the way, you didn’t go to school to become a surgeon; it’s frankly irresponsible that no one checked your credentials, you could have killed those poor patients.”
Francisco, who hadn’t thought of whether any job deserved respect or not, cocked his head in thought. Then, the last remnants of Francisco’s childhood slid down his cheeks and left his eyes wet. He gathered his green money off the table and went to his room to pack a small suitcase. His parents watched their son in awe as he walked by them, only acknowledging their presence when he placed the police cap perfectly atop his head, turned to them with an honest smile, and said, “Goodbye. I wish I could have made you proud.”
He walked out, closing the door behind him. Francisco’s parents sat at the table looking at each other in the silent house. Francisco’s plate sat untouched at the lonely end of the table. The gravy on top of the lukewarm mashed potatoes had thickened and formed a skin on the surface.