Short fiction
“Come in P-Bird and Lay-Low — this is Be-Bent-Boo-Boo and The Soda-Pop Kid. We’re cruisin at 65, just past mile marker 11. All’s well in The Tinderbox, fuel level’s good, morale is high — only thing is Soda-Pop’s callin for a pit-stop. All eyes on lookout for next pull-off, with intention to do just that. Do you copy? Over and out.”
With Dad on the walkie-talkie you’d never get it straight. But he’s not the only funnyman in the truck. I’ve been known to ham it up a bit myself when I get comfortable, and boy am I comfortable in this little vignette. August 1989, just turned 7, feet up on the dash of the U-Haul, sporting new red Converse high-tops, Day-Glo jams, my Ocean Pacific muscle shirt, black and fluorescent-green shades, and sipping on A&W Root Beer through a straw. I even got spanking clean Superman undies down below.
We just crossed the state line into Ohio and we’re giddy to be rid of Pennsylvania, ’cause you never realize it, but Pennsylvania is a long-ass state and there’s nothing much to see. Probably Ohio isn’t any better — in fact, it probably looks exactly the same as Pennsylvania, but at least the license plates are different and it means we’re one more state away from Massachusetts, and one state closer to Wisconsin. We reckon that’s cause for turning up the Talking Heads and singing along, and that’s exactly what we just did. Psycho kill-ah, kess-ka-say, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa. Yeah, we’re hitting our stride right about now, like pistons firing in new oil — the cavalry’s triumphant return.
Last night I had a dream in which my dad was still alive but he knew he was going to die, which is never how it actually was. He spoke out of the blue, matter-of-factly, and said, “Really, any old thing will do.” When it hit me that he was talking about the urn that would hold his ashes, together we began to cry. We were in Dubrovnik, a place I’ve visited before and had wanted so much for him to see — a place made entirely of immaculate white marble that seems as though it’s been polished every night for thousands of years, and whose outer walls rise straight up from a shining, emerald sea. In the dream, I could sense that we’d only just arrived but that we would have to leave the following day. I hadn’t had a chance to share with him hardly anything of the city I’d loved.
Dad was a writer and a carpenter; and a dreamer.
He could be a real pain in the ass, but that’s not the story I’m telling here.
The heart wants to be okay, so drawing from the world around us the head finds ways to make it so, and this is how we move on. Of course, it’s about a hundred times more complicated than that, but so far that’s the most boiled-down sense I can make of it. It’s impossible to swallow what it truly means, at least not all in one gulp. It trickles down through you in tiny sips, both a food you despise and a medicine you need.
The walkie-talkie gurgles to life in Dad’s hand — “Roger that, Be-Bent-Boo-Boo. Saw a sign not far back for a rest stop in 5 miles, so should be comin up here any minute. All set for full stoppage, so The Kid can pee.” It’s my sister, but she’s talking like a truck driver, which believe you me, she ain’t. “Over and out.” I can picture her on the other end, giggling like a squirrel in the passenger seat of the Honda. She’s a giggler is what she is, about as far from a truck driver as you can get. Of course, Mom wouldn’t operate the walkie-talkie and drive at the same time because to her that’d be dangerous. Don’t ask me why she doesn’t seem to think it’s dangerous to eat cereal behind the wheel, ’cause I wondered that same thing every morning on the way to school and never got a satisfying answer. Skipping breakfast is a big no-no in our family, and she’s always running late, so you put those two things together and you’ve got yourself a conundrum, which Mom solves by bringing her Special K in a plastic container she balances on her lap.
“You keep drinkin that pop and you might not make it,” Dad says to me, and he might be right, so I put the A&W in the cup holder. When I gotta go, I gotta go, and as is I’m almost to the point of squeezing my wiener to help hold it in. But just then some good news comes burping out the walkie-talkie — “Rest area, half a mile. See you in the parkin lot.” I doubt we’re too far back from Mom and Layla, so it couldn’t be long. But ain’t it a pain how you can be fine one minute and then, as soon as the toilet’s in sight, all of a sudden you’re in one helluva squirmy fix? That’s what happens here, and Dad can tell so he steps on it. We pull in to the rest stop just when I think the floodgates are about to give way, and I jump out before we’re even fully parked and book it past Mom and Layla to the bathroom, just barely getting my thing outta my jams before it starts spraying. The tension drains and splatters against the wall of the urinal and I feel like a normal human being again.
On the way out I check myself in the mirror, making my usual mirror-face, which is pretty much just a slight eyebrow raise. Dad’s is a whole different alter-ego — like, if he walked around with his mirror-face on, you’d hardly recognize him. His eyebrows go down instead of up and he does something with his nose that makes it look more pointy than it already is and he sorta puckers up his mouth so it looks like he’s sucking on a Green Apple Jolly Rancher. Probably that’s why he hates looking at pictures of himself, ’cause he’s so surprised he doesn’t look like some kinda angry ostrich after all. Why that would disappoint him, I don’t know.
In the mirror I see that I’m still wearing my shades, so I take the opportunity to pull ’em down onto the tip of my nose and look out over the top like Michael J. Fox does on the cover of some video I saw in the video store. Apparently ladies love that, looking over the top of your shades, cause it’s like you’re wanting to make eye contact but you’re still cool enough to keep the shades right where you can flip ’em back up and go mysterious again, just like that. Cool as a cucumber, I flip mine back up and head out into the sun.
Mom and Layla are sitting at a picnic table on the grassy patch out in front of where we parked, and they’ve got a bag of almonds and raisins between ’em, munching away like a coupla nerdy goats. I grab a handful and stand up on the bench of the table and look around for Dad, ’cause I know he’s off somewhere smoking a cigarette. I see him over by the edge of the woods, facing away. He doesn’t like for us to see him smoking, but I like to watch him, specially when he blows the smoke out his nose.
“Yer barn door’s open.” Layla’s still talking in her truck driver voice, trying to be like Dad, but of course she can’t keep from giggling. I look down and see my fly is yawning for the whole world, and sure enough, there’s Superman flying out fist first.
“You think you’re SO funny,” I say, zipping up. She’s lucky I got my shades on, ’cause I just flashed a nasty eye roll.
“Hey partna, I’m just tryin to help you out,” she says.
Another eye roll from me, but I ain’t even looking at her cause I’m watching Dad again. A puff of smoke goes up, then he turns around and sees me standing there on the bench. I don’t wave or anything cause that’s why I have shades — so I can watch people without them knowing I’m watching ’em. He’s done with his cigarette and rolls the filter in his fingers until the cherry falls out into the grass, where it keeps smoking for a few seconds as he walks back toward us. On the way he tosses the butt into a trash can.
“How’s your ride going, Carl?,” Mom asks me.
“It’s really fun,” I say, “we’re listening to the tape-player on full blast and singing along together,” I give her a demonstration of “Psycho Killer,” complete with head gyrations and hand moves, and she seems impressed. “And we’re so high up from the road, when I lean forward and put my head against the front window it feels like I’m flying almost. Hey, watch this.” I toss an almond up in the air and try to catch it in my mouth but I have to jump down off the bench to even have a chance and it ends up bouncing off my shades with a loud clack. Layla chortles, of course, and goes, “Nice one!”
Mom says, “Oh, that was close,” and she means it kindly. Dad walks up just then and says, “Let me try that,” so I give him an almond. He makes like he’s tossed it up way high, and we all look for it in the air but we can’t see it, so we look at him and he’s got his head back and his mouth open wide and he’s waggling around with his arms out, like for balance. He’s moving this way and that, like the nut’s still in the air and he’s still got his eye on it and he’s getting in position. Then he makes a kinda gulpy sound and closes his mouth like he just caught it and pops his head up, crunching on the almond and grinning like a chimpanzee. He takes a bow. I can’t help from laughing, and I get an urge to wrestle so I run and crash against his legs and wrap my arms around ’em to try and tackle him to the ground, but he grabs me up quick and starts going at me with tickle talons.
“You didn’t even throw it!” I holler, now trying like all hell to scramble out of his noodly fingers, “you just put it in your mouth when we weren’t looking!”
“No siree Bob,” he says, “I’m just a master. I learned it from a sword-swallower named Akbar, when I was travelling through Mongolia with the circus in 1959.” I squirm from his grip and run back to the bench and leap up onto the table, then whip around toward him, crouched and ready for action, baring my teeth like a mountain lion.
“In 1959 you were nine years old,” Layla groans.
“Precisely,” says Dad. “I joined up when I was Carl’s age.”
I’m still a wildcat on the table, and snarl, “Seven!” when he points at me.
“Yep. Seven. I stayed on until I was ten, then the Bearded Lady said I was too big for my cage and told me to scram.”
I practically got rabies now, foaming at the mouth and all that, Layla’s letting out a big ole sigh, and Mom’s just snickering at the whole deal. I’m hamming it up like I told you I could, and so’s Dad, and Layla wishes she could keep up but she can’t, cause when I get into it I’m just too weird an act to follow, and Dad’s just too funny.
“Looks like we might need a cage for this one now,” he says, pointing at me again. I growl and slash the air with my claws.
Mom breaks it all up like a dork — says, “Hey folks, guess where we’re gonna be tomorrow?”
I mutate back into Mom’s son to say, “Duh. Wisconsin.”
“Not just Wisconsin,” she says, “but also back in our old house.”
I get a surge of joy behind my belly button at the thought of it all — sliding around in socks on the wooden floors, the smell of soil in the greenhouse, climbing the ladder up to the loft, setting kindling in the big stone fireplace, the tire swing, the vegetable garden, the path through the woods to the sauna, the crabapple tree — and I spring off the picnic table, my arms stretched out, the unbearable tartness of a crabapple twinging in the memory of my jaw muscles.
“What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when we get there?” Layla asks Mom, and I can tell by the way she says it she’s already got about five answers for when the question gets turned back to her.
“Well…,” says Mom, “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I’ll just take a walk around and see if anything’s changed.”
“Why would anything be changed?” I ask. My face is in the grass, after having landed and tumbled, that earthy tang of dirt and roots in my nose, my eyelashes and the green blades in a quivery tickling match.
“Well, because somebody else has been living there for two years,” Mom says. “I think mostly it will be the same, but there will also probably be a few things that are bit different.”
“Like what?” I say.
“Like, maybe the furniture will be re-arranged, or… they will have planted new flowers in the yard, or… there will be things they left behind, like pots and pans, or new shower curtains. Things like that.”
“The outdoor shower doesn’t have a shower curtain,” Layla pipes up, like she’s proving what she remembers.
“That’s right,” Mom nods. “I don’t think it will be all that different, but you never know. It’s best to prepare yourself.”
I watch a tiny spider crawl up a stalk of grass, up to the sharp, sunny tip where it wraps it’s spindly legs and holds, taking it all in from the summit. I address my bug buddy in a whisper — “I hope it’s not too different.”
“You wanna know what I’m going to do first?” Layla blabs. Just like I expected, here comes a numbered list she’s been tinkering with probably for weeks now, maybe months, maybe since the day we left, two years ago. Probably got it written down somewhere, with different colored pens for each thing.
“First, I’m going to go to my room, and I’m going to put Sunny on the bed and then I’m going to take everything out of my backpack and put it where it belongs, some of it on the shelf, some in the drawer in the table next to my bed, some in the dresser, some on the windowsill.” Sunny is her stuffed bear. I roll my eyes at the spider — “Oh, there’s more,” I tell it.
“Then, I’m going to put some milk in a saucer on the front porch in case any of the cats want to come back, then I’m going to see if there is any wild asparagus growing where it used to grow near the big rock, and then… then I’m going to play “Heart and Soul” on the piano, and then I’m going to help Mom organize the kitchen.”
She’s so damn pleased with herself she can barely hold it together. I lift my head from the grass and see her bumping up and down on the bench, humming “Heart and Soul,” and bobbing her head like a parakeet.
My turn now. “The first thing I’m gonna do is get Dad to give me underdogs on the tire swing, then I’m gonna build a fort under the stairs with the couch pillows.”
“Oh really?!” Dad says from above me. “What if that’s not the first thing I want to do?”
“Yeah, Carl! Did you ever think of that?” Layla squawks, and I’ve half a mind to get up and give her a nuggie where she sits, but I don’t.
“Aw, please, Dad?” I beg, even though I know he’s only playing.
“I don’t know, Bubba. Seems a bit selfish, doesn’t it?”
Then Mom gets him — “Not when you enjoy it as much as he does.”
Dad fakes a gripe — “No! It’s hard work on my old back, pushing this grown boy up into the air like that. Plus, he’s probably ‘bout five, maybe six, times the size he was when I last underdogged him on that swing, and I ain’t gettin any younger either! Heck, Layla’d be better suited for the job than I am! She’s stronger than me and you put together!”
We’re all laughing now, including Dad, who scoops me up off the ground and swings me over his shoulder and then turns his head and gives me a zerbert on my giggling belly, buzzing against my skin like a wild trombone player.
A friend of mine claims she can tell from looking at a person, or at least being around them for five minutes, whether or not they’ve lost a parent. She divides the world into two types of people. Those who have, and those who have not.
Another friend said that between the child and the void there’s only the parents. To lose a parent is to have one’s whole existence cast in doubt. We never lose that fear, he said — not if we’re responsible people. I’ve often wondered what he meant by “responsible.”
Back in the U-Haul Dad lets me put ‘er in gear, tells me to pull down on the steering wheel gearshift until I see the little line hit the ‘R’. He backs out of the parking spot and says, “Now to ‘D’, Captain! Quick, man! This is our chance to take the lead! The womenfolk have been ahead all day!” I get it right first try and Dad lets out a Whoopee! and I piggyback onto it with a battlecry yawp as we tear out and leave the girls sucking on diesel fumes.
We buried some of Dad’s ashes in a round wooden box. It was from a set of three different colored boxes that nested inside of each other — red; yellow; blue. It was the yellow box; the middle box; the one that both contained and was contained. He and Mom had brought them back from a trip to Spain, years ago. They were simple and colorful and they had always sat in our living room, on the bottom shelf of a side table; unassuming; stacked each on top of the other. The red and the blue are still there.
It used to sneak up on me, the fact that he’s gone. I’d think to tell him something, to suggest a book, to show him a story I was working on, then be slapped by the reality. I was used to going long periods of time without seeing him, so my brain must’ve been tricking itself into thinking it was just one of those times.
Scarier, is what happens now. As I’m getting accustomed to his absence, it can shock me to realize that the opposite was ever true — that he was alive. Only three Christmases ago we were all together. The photos are hard to believe — him sitting there in the puffy chair in the living room, like it’s totally normal. I’m beginning to have a hard time picturing his face, his voice, without resorting to established cues in my memory; certain photos, specific things he used to say in certain ways. Writing about him helps though. But in my reconstruction, am I forming a new version? Once someone dies, their myth begins.
The driveway was long and straight, and Dad drove the U-Haul slowly, almost like he wanted to draw out the pleasure. The house looked a little different, but still like its same unchangeable self, like a sibling you haven’t seen in awhile. It had dark brown wooden siding, with a wrap-around porch and an arched kitchen window that looked out, like a face, to the field across the driveway. Atop a slight rise, nestled into a forest’s edge, the house gave the impression it was sitting in its favorite spot. Dad had built it pretty much by himself, with the help of some friends. “Home sweet home,” he said.
Once the truck came to a stop, I bolted out — up the front steps and straight to the side yard, to the tire swing. I jumped into the black rubbery scoop, it’s smell impossibly familiar. Dad came up around the house, smiling like a bear that just happened upon some honeycombs.
