and then there were two
this is where i wanted it to stop, so i could have the muggy air and the cigarette smoke, the sound of serge gainsbourg on linda's stereo and the endless, empty atlanta highway spilling out in front of us. this moment was what i wanted to take with me, before i even understood that what i had been wanting all along was just that- just a moment, just one, that existed only between us.
our great aunt mimi had just died so we, art and i, had flown into atlanta from different parts of california. it took me days to decide if i was going to come or not, even though i knew he would. it didnt make sense for me to fly across the country for less than 24 hours, since it was the week of finals and i wasnt that close to her anyway. but art...these things affected art more than me, and as he said to me, his words dripping with tears, she was the last one besides us. everyone else who shared our last name, at least everyone that either one us had ever met, was already dead. our father, the only parent we had in common; our grandmother, oma. we never knew our grandfather, and there were no aunts, no uncles, cousins. just art and i left, just the two of us.
for such a small family we didnt know each other very well. we had grown up with our respective mothers, seeing each other only on holidays, keeping an awkward but friendly space between us like we both really wanted to be brother and sister, but niether one knew how. the most brotherly thing i could remember him doing happened when i was five and he was about 16. our dad and my mom had rented a house at the beach for the four of us, and i was sitting on the couch watching tv. art plopped on the opposite end of the couch and stuck his feet in my face, saying coldfeetcoldfeetcoldfeet over and over. i tried to laugh, because it was funny, but i was stunned, speechless. something about it was so intimate; even at five years old i could tell that it was supposed to be normal, it was a stab at normal, but was essentially just wrong.
after our father died when i was fifteen we talked more. we talked and art would cry. we talked and art would romanticize him, like he was a tragic hero, when all i wanted to believe was that he was a sad man with a drinking problem. art had so few memories of him, since dad and art's mom divorced when he was a toddler. he forgot that i had a decade more experiences with dad, that i lived through being tucked in my him, riding on his shoulders, and all the parts of detox- the tremors, the hallucinations, the pounds that dropped off him. he forgot that i lived through the bathrobe days, the lay-z-boy days, the days when he wouldnt move from that chair. at a restaurant in atlanta over christmas, when art and i were visiting oma and aunt mimi, "american pie" came on the radio and i said, almost as an aside to myself, that the song will never not remind me of dad. art asked why and it surprised me for a second before i realized that art wasnt there when dad played it for me on the turntable and i stood on his loafers and we danced around the living room. he wasnt there when dad told me that i should just sing it to myself when i couldnt sleep.
so i went to the funeral for art, because funerals are really for the living, and there were becoming less and less people with whom i shared blood. with whom i shared square fingertips and an insatiable need to travel. he picked me up from the MARTA station and we went to linda's house. linda, a short, pear shaped woman in her mid-fifties, was the executor of our father's estate and the women he was living with after he and my mother divorced until he died. she had no children and it was evident that nothing, absolutely nothing, made her happier than having us both there, getting to be the "adult" friend to us that she didnt think our mother's could ever be. she offered us scotch as soon as we walked in the door and wanted us to be comfy comfy comfy! she wanted to chat, she wanted to have real conversations about drugs and sex and fears about the future. she wanted to be validated that she was the cool one, she was the one whose adivce we sought. i had held the deepest grudge for her since the first day i met her, when she said that she thougt my mother was a lot like hers "a real classy lady who can be a big bitch." but over the years, after staying at her house when i was visiting the old ladies and after seeing how much she did for our atrophying family, i had begun to appreciate her, maybe even like her a bit. art was more mature about it, but art never had to miss his eigth grade dance to go visit dad at her house, trapped inside a purple bedroom because conversation with the two of them was simply too devastating to endure.
so we drank scotch with her at eleven o clock at night, the night before we buried our last living relative next to the tombstone that bore our father's name. we chatted, we made her happy. and then she turned in, and art and i stayed up for one more drink. we talked about school and his wife and how he never wants to have kids and how i do, eventually. we talked about travelling and me moving to new york after graduation and we talked about books and how much we long for that sentence that satisfies you, those combinations of words that evoke a feeling in you that is unparalleled, that makes you close your eyes and just say yes! thats it! thats all i needed! he asked me if i had a smoke and i was pissed off that i didnt. i wanted to, to impress him or to have something equating to coolness that i could share with him. he hadnt smoked in years, well, he said, except for the night before his wedding, and anyway that was only a drag.
"we could go get some," i said, my face flushing a bit from the scotch.
"yeah, how far away is that mobil? its just up the road, right?"
"i think so. we could walk."
"lets just take the car," he said, suddenly whispering. "linda wont mind, i saw her put the keys on the coffee table."
"ok then lets do it," i said as i stood up and slipped on my flip flops. i was already wearing my pjamas but didnt care. it actually made it better, it made it feel more like high school; it enforced the fact that it really was the middle of the night and this was an adventure, something unplanned and exciting.
we got in linda's lexus and rolled down the windows. it was april in atlanta so it felt fresh but still warm; the air still had a weight to it like you would expect it to in the south. we drove up west conway to the mobil. he left the car running and i stayed in the passenger side. before he had gotten in, i stuck my head out of the window and said, "dunhills!" he rolled his eyes but nodded. that made me smile.
he didnt say anything once he got back in the car. he handed me the pack of dunhills and i unwrapped them, put two in my mouth and lit them both. i handed him one and rolled the window up halfway, because we were getting on the freeway. he had brought his i-pod with him and plugged it in to the tape deck. he scrolled through the songs and said, "just listen to this." and i did.
and i didnt know then that the moment i wanted to keep would be followed by a bunch i didnt really want at all- the moment at the cemetery, when art, linda and i and a bunch of old ladies walked, in the gray drizzling rain, to the burial site to find our fathers grave marker covered in red georgia mud. the moment when art got down on his knees, planting them, letting them dive into the wet dirt, and began to clean away the mounds of mud with his bear hands. the moment when the funeral director asked him to stop, but he kept on. the moment when one of the little old ladies gave him her white hankerchief, and he kept on wiping away the earth, wiping each letter of a name that no longer existed, a name that, to him, hardly ever did.
but none of those moments had happened yet. none of them had crowded the vast, lonely expanse of the 400 freeway. none of them had muddled the sound of serge gainsbourg's french, whimsical words.
as i handed him the second cigarette after he asked for it, i said, above the ukaleles and the children's voices making up the harmony,
"i feel like your enabler."
and without taking his eyes off the road, he took the cigarette from my outstreched arm and said,
"back at 'cha, kid."
our great aunt mimi had just died so we, art and i, had flown into atlanta from different parts of california. it took me days to decide if i was going to come or not, even though i knew he would. it didnt make sense for me to fly across the country for less than 24 hours, since it was the week of finals and i wasnt that close to her anyway. but art...these things affected art more than me, and as he said to me, his words dripping with tears, she was the last one besides us. everyone else who shared our last name, at least everyone that either one us had ever met, was already dead. our father, the only parent we had in common; our grandmother, oma. we never knew our grandfather, and there were no aunts, no uncles, cousins. just art and i left, just the two of us.
for such a small family we didnt know each other very well. we had grown up with our respective mothers, seeing each other only on holidays, keeping an awkward but friendly space between us like we both really wanted to be brother and sister, but niether one knew how. the most brotherly thing i could remember him doing happened when i was five and he was about 16. our dad and my mom had rented a house at the beach for the four of us, and i was sitting on the couch watching tv. art plopped on the opposite end of the couch and stuck his feet in my face, saying coldfeetcoldfeetcoldfeet over and over. i tried to laugh, because it was funny, but i was stunned, speechless. something about it was so intimate; even at five years old i could tell that it was supposed to be normal, it was a stab at normal, but was essentially just wrong.
after our father died when i was fifteen we talked more. we talked and art would cry. we talked and art would romanticize him, like he was a tragic hero, when all i wanted to believe was that he was a sad man with a drinking problem. art had so few memories of him, since dad and art's mom divorced when he was a toddler. he forgot that i had a decade more experiences with dad, that i lived through being tucked in my him, riding on his shoulders, and all the parts of detox- the tremors, the hallucinations, the pounds that dropped off him. he forgot that i lived through the bathrobe days, the lay-z-boy days, the days when he wouldnt move from that chair. at a restaurant in atlanta over christmas, when art and i were visiting oma and aunt mimi, "american pie" came on the radio and i said, almost as an aside to myself, that the song will never not remind me of dad. art asked why and it surprised me for a second before i realized that art wasnt there when dad played it for me on the turntable and i stood on his loafers and we danced around the living room. he wasnt there when dad told me that i should just sing it to myself when i couldnt sleep.
so i went to the funeral for art, because funerals are really for the living, and there were becoming less and less people with whom i shared blood. with whom i shared square fingertips and an insatiable need to travel. he picked me up from the MARTA station and we went to linda's house. linda, a short, pear shaped woman in her mid-fifties, was the executor of our father's estate and the women he was living with after he and my mother divorced until he died. she had no children and it was evident that nothing, absolutely nothing, made her happier than having us both there, getting to be the "adult" friend to us that she didnt think our mother's could ever be. she offered us scotch as soon as we walked in the door and wanted us to be comfy comfy comfy! she wanted to chat, she wanted to have real conversations about drugs and sex and fears about the future. she wanted to be validated that she was the cool one, she was the one whose adivce we sought. i had held the deepest grudge for her since the first day i met her, when she said that she thougt my mother was a lot like hers "a real classy lady who can be a big bitch." but over the years, after staying at her house when i was visiting the old ladies and after seeing how much she did for our atrophying family, i had begun to appreciate her, maybe even like her a bit. art was more mature about it, but art never had to miss his eigth grade dance to go visit dad at her house, trapped inside a purple bedroom because conversation with the two of them was simply too devastating to endure.
so we drank scotch with her at eleven o clock at night, the night before we buried our last living relative next to the tombstone that bore our father's name. we chatted, we made her happy. and then she turned in, and art and i stayed up for one more drink. we talked about school and his wife and how he never wants to have kids and how i do, eventually. we talked about travelling and me moving to new york after graduation and we talked about books and how much we long for that sentence that satisfies you, those combinations of words that evoke a feeling in you that is unparalleled, that makes you close your eyes and just say yes! thats it! thats all i needed! he asked me if i had a smoke and i was pissed off that i didnt. i wanted to, to impress him or to have something equating to coolness that i could share with him. he hadnt smoked in years, well, he said, except for the night before his wedding, and anyway that was only a drag.
"we could go get some," i said, my face flushing a bit from the scotch.
"yeah, how far away is that mobil? its just up the road, right?"
"i think so. we could walk."
"lets just take the car," he said, suddenly whispering. "linda wont mind, i saw her put the keys on the coffee table."
"ok then lets do it," i said as i stood up and slipped on my flip flops. i was already wearing my pjamas but didnt care. it actually made it better, it made it feel more like high school; it enforced the fact that it really was the middle of the night and this was an adventure, something unplanned and exciting.
we got in linda's lexus and rolled down the windows. it was april in atlanta so it felt fresh but still warm; the air still had a weight to it like you would expect it to in the south. we drove up west conway to the mobil. he left the car running and i stayed in the passenger side. before he had gotten in, i stuck my head out of the window and said, "dunhills!" he rolled his eyes but nodded. that made me smile.
he didnt say anything once he got back in the car. he handed me the pack of dunhills and i unwrapped them, put two in my mouth and lit them both. i handed him one and rolled the window up halfway, because we were getting on the freeway. he had brought his i-pod with him and plugged it in to the tape deck. he scrolled through the songs and said, "just listen to this." and i did.
and i didnt know then that the moment i wanted to keep would be followed by a bunch i didnt really want at all- the moment at the cemetery, when art, linda and i and a bunch of old ladies walked, in the gray drizzling rain, to the burial site to find our fathers grave marker covered in red georgia mud. the moment when art got down on his knees, planting them, letting them dive into the wet dirt, and began to clean away the mounds of mud with his bear hands. the moment when the funeral director asked him to stop, but he kept on. the moment when one of the little old ladies gave him her white hankerchief, and he kept on wiping away the earth, wiping each letter of a name that no longer existed, a name that, to him, hardly ever did.
but none of those moments had happened yet. none of them had crowded the vast, lonely expanse of the 400 freeway. none of them had muddled the sound of serge gainsbourg's french, whimsical words.
as i handed him the second cigarette after he asked for it, i said, above the ukaleles and the children's voices making up the harmony,
"i feel like your enabler."
and without taking his eyes off the road, he took the cigarette from my outstreched arm and said,
"back at 'cha, kid."
posted by Jessica Baxter | 10:17 PM
|
1 comments
