My father wants you to know, today he fell in a black hole. My father wants you to know this black hole began at approximately 4am. “I projectile vomited, in the cat’s bathroom,” he tells me. “That is also how the cat prefers to start her day,” I say. “I know,” he tells me before going to urgent care, before being sent to primary care, before staging a sit-in on a blue vinyl waiting room chair. I look for sick fathers in fairytales. “This isn’t a follow-up to an ER appointment he says, It’s a follow-up to TWO ER appointments.” The receptionists turn into mice. The receptionists think twice about calling security and then say in their best wolf voice, “We’re sorry sir, your doctor is on sabbatical.”

“Lucky doctor,” I say. In La Belle et la Bête, a widowed merchant has a bucket of kids. My father only has two. The youngest of which is not named Beauty, but I guess that wasn’t up to me. The merchant sets sail on a business trip and promises his children the gifts of their dreams. When he asks Beauty what she wants she says, “For you to return home safely, and clean your C-PAP.” He shakes his head and she says, “Okay, I will settle for a rose, but it better be hydroponic.” My father gives up the blue vinyl chair and goes to Harbor Freight for some machine part or knick-nack or brick-a-brick he doesn’t need. The merchant’s ship gets lost at sea. My father’s truck dies in the in the driveway of Harbor Freight. People yell and scream in 80 degrees because in coastal California 80 degrees is hell. My father calls a tow truck that says it will be there in three hours. The merchant's boat lands near a craggy castle. Inside the castle, he’s greeted by a feast and proceeds to eat. Inside the Harbor Freight, my father asks 5 guys and one woman to help push his F150. He buys two orange cones for less than ten dollars and marks his car so the tow truck can find him.

The merchant falls asleep and, in the morning, sees a garden of well-kept roses, and thinks, “I better take this to my daughter!” The tow truck calls and says, “Another three hours, but just leave the key inside the gas door and go home.” The merchant picks a rose because fathers in fairytales have never been taught the word “consequence”. The key falls through the gas door into the truck’s interior. The merchant considers plucking a second and third rose because when you talk your daughter into demanding a gift from you the answer is to always bring her more of what she didn’t really want in the first place. A beast storms out of the castle and attacks the merchant for plucking his rose. My father looks for an hour for the key through a hole. He throws down a penny to hear where it’s gone. “I can’t hear out of my right ear,” he tells me. “I’m growing stalactites, stalagmites, really whatever else you want to put in there.” The beast imprisons the merchant in the castle then agrees to set him free in exchange for one of his daughters. The merchant obliges because fathers in fairytales are always ready to trade their daughters. My father drops a penny in a hole in the gas door and somehow finds the key.

Beauty arrives at the castle. The tow truck arrives in the Harbor Freight parking lot. “I’m going to need to wait for a flatbed,” the driver says, “It’s gonna be three more hours.” The beast asks Beauty to marry him. She politely declines. The mouse receptionist calls and says, “We can get you in to see someone tomorrow.” My father shakes his head. “I have dialysis on Thursdays, haven’t we gone over this?” The Beast asks again and again and says he will die alone without Beauty. “Listen, Hair Face, she says, No means no! We’ve been over this.” But she loves living in the lavish castle, and the Beast gives her a ring that lets her return home to see her bucket of sisters whenever she likes. After a while, she begins to think about the Beast dying alone and Beauty is just too kind to let even a man with too much hair on his face die miserably alone. “Okay,” the mouse receptionist says. “We can get you in on Friday.” So, my father says, “Your mother can go yell at them, I am done.” The tow truck never arrives to pull the f150 across the parking lot to the auto repair shop. “Why couldn’t the 5 guys just push it across the parking lot?” I asked. “In 80 degrees? Can you imagine?” He says like I’m crazy. Beauty too, thinks she’s crazy when she finds the beast near death on the floor. “I didn’t have enough money for the bus, but it is free today.” My father says. “It took three buses. I sat with a guy from dialysis who’s headed to New York because he’s rekindled things with his high school sweetheart.” Beauty fetches water for the Beast. I pray my father drank water when he finally arrived home. Beauty agrees to marry him. She loves him, after all. Beauty learns, that like my father, the Beast lost his father at a very young age. The Beast was taken by a fairy and when he refused to love her, she turned him into a beast. Only in true love despite ugliness, could the curse be broken. “Ya know, I just had to laugh,” my father says. “Ya never thought to call a neighbor?” I say. “Nope. Never occurred.” The Beauty and the Beast marry. “I’m just gonna wash this pan now,” my father says, “so your mother doesn’t yell at me.”