04. WRITING
–
Primogeniture
Daniel Clark had died alone. He was found wearing nothing but boxer shorts and white socks bunched around his ankles, his body pumped full of a wild assortment of street-drugs. He was found the next day when a homeless man broke a back window, crawled carefully over the shattered glass, and flicked a lighter over the pale, rigid corpse. Can’t blame him really, the homeless man. For breaking in, I mean. The house they’d found my father in had appeared empty to close observers; no lights had been on the night of his death, no strange cars on the street, no sounds worth investigating. The facade was quiet; paint chipped, windows boarded, grass growing wild. It gave every indication of long emptiness. The half-assed questioning of neighbors that followed could be summed up with an uninterested shrug. Another overdose in the ghetto was hardly worth a mention at dinner, even to the residents next door. I don’t blame them anymore than I blame the homeless man for stumbling on it all. I blame my piece of shit dad.
It took a medical examiner to confirm—in fact, document, true to god and science—what I’d known and my mother had denied for years. Blood tests had gone beyond the doubt that remained in missing Adderall prescriptions, maxed out credit cards, and pawned wedding rings. My father is a drug addict. Present tense. I buried him this morning still tainted with heroin. The residue of his vice will decay into the earth with all the same elements that make up his corpse. He is in death as he was in life—high, despite a six foot depth.
My mother is below now too, the living room built directly beneath the master bedroom. Unable to bear her sobs—her slapped in the face with reality wailing—I’d retreated upstairs. My childhood bedroom was now a catastrophe of cardboard boxes, plastic packing containers, impulse bought exercise equipment used twice before storage. So instead I had opened a door closed since the police had called, flipped the light switch, and entered my parents’ bedroom.
It’s only been a week, yet I can’t help but be reminded of the shrine bedrooms of dead children in true crime documentaries. Parents often leave the rooms untouched, exactly as they were. It’s twenty years on, their child would have been 34, but the room is just as it was in the early 90’s, complete with a Sega Genesis and box TV. As if any moment now little Johnny will wander in, fallen out of a vacuum in space-time. Except my mother had left this shrine to a 59 year old stoner. Discarded boxer shorts, men’s t-shirts, and jeans are still piled on the floor near the bed exactly where my father had shed them before crawling beneath covers next to my mother. A clear-glass bong on the end table, dark towards the base from frequent use, still contains a fresh bowl. Passed out before you could even smoke yourself down, huh? I scoff to myself. I fumble in my pocket, fish out a lighter, and pick up the bong. My inheritance.
I plop onto the bed, coughing from the stale bong water. My eyes fall on the armchair across from me, or rather, what’s on it. My father’s flannel. He’d had the horrid thing as long as I could remember. It had aged as badly as he had. The elbows were patched with close-enough-I-guess blue plaid, the shoulders torn then restitched with every color thread, whatever my mother had on hand. He only took the thing off in the summer months, short and few in Flint, Michigan. September to May he would not be seen without it; Christmas photos, birthday parties, even my fucking wedding.
It’s October.
I replace the bong on the end table, rising quickly, head swimming as the high settles on me. My eyes are fixed on the flannel as I approach, inspecting, but there’s no doubt to be had—I know that rag like the man’s thin wrinkled face. Might as well be his face staring back at me, lain across the arm of the chair. It’s folded neatly, placed with care. Did mom put it there? No, she hadn’t come upstairs since the call—she’d made my uncle fetch clothes for her. If seeing the flannel without the man was shocking, it hardly compared to its neatly folded condition. Daniel Clark would have tossed it in a heap, haphazard.
As if reaching to touch the cold skin of a corpse, I lift the flannel from the chair.
Marshal! Oh, thank god you’re not your mother, you-
I drop the flannel to the floor, my hand flies back as I stumble backwards. My heel catches the pile of clothes and I slip, trip, crash onto the carpet. I gawk at the flannel, eyes wide with terror. My heart pounds in my ears.
Better my heart than my father’s voice.
My eyes snap to the bong. Fuck. Oh fuck. What the hell was I thinking? Who knows what that shit was laced with. FUCK. I pull my knees to my chest, my hands to my face. My palms are clammy, my face hot and heavy from the weed and who knows what the fuck else oh my god. I slap my cheeks, shaking my head furiously. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I force my breathing slow, deep.
All right, all right. So I’m really high. I can be really high. I went to Michigan State. I’ve got this. I give my cheeks one last firm slap, nodding along to my inner pep talk, and crawl back to the flannel.
With a fist around the sleeve, Marshal quit fucking around!
“What the FUCK?” I want to scream, but it comes out as a choked sob. I’m going to panic.
Don’t panic-
What the hell is in that bong?
I can explain-
“You’re a fucking shirt!”
No. I am your father.
“Are you quoting fucking Darth Vader at me right now?” That’s it, I start crying. My mouth is so fucking dry. My tongue is sticking, cheeks rubbing against teeth. I pick up the flannel with both hands, drape it over my knees, and stare into the threadbare blue plaid. Nothing left to do but ride it out.
Listen, you’re not high, or, well, that high I mean. You think I’d bring something harder than weed into the house?
“Yes!”
Yeah, okay, fair. But seriously.
It’s dad’s voice, alright. No doubt about it. Yet it doesn’t come from outside, there’s no perception of direction, no vibration in my eardrums. It’s clear as day, stereo-speaker smooth, but it’s internal. The voice is parallel to my brain, orbiting my own stream of thought, but somehow outside of that too. It's the feeling of figuring out how a math equation works. It’s like tasting music. It's a whole new sense. Explain blue to a blind person. “What the fuck is going on?” I demand.
So, I got up to some weird shit with a voodoo woman.
Running my hands over the flannel, I smooth it over my knees. It’s rough, stained here and there—the uneven fabric makes my back remember an itch. I’m staring deeply, waiting for the plaid to start weaving, breathing, dancing as it would on acid.
You’re not on acid, Marsh. This is Marie’s doing. As long as you’re touching my shirt, you can hear me, alright? It’s part of the spell, or curse, or whatever, I don’t know. Put it on, to be safe, okay?
I obey my cotton father. Shaking off my suit jacket, I pull the flannel on over my dress-shirt and remain on the floor, cross-legged now, rocking slightly. I can feel every taste bud on my tongue against my teeth.
Thank god you found me before your mother did. How long has it been?
“A week. The funeral was this morning.”
There’s no immediate response. My eyes fix on a brown stain in the matted, off white carpet. Besides the hallucinating, I feel pretty typically stoned; my eyes are warm, glazed. My mouth begs for moisture. I can feel the faintest shift of the air on my skin—it sends a shiver down my spine.
Fuck. Only a week? I can’t, well, I couldn’t tell time really. It’s like I’ve been just… nothing, right? Like, I could think, but that was it, all my other senses were off. I thought that’s just how death was, and I was real pissed ‘bout it, but then I noticed that I could feel the shirt, my flannel. I wear it so much it didn’t stand out right away, I’m so used to it, right? But yeah, anyway, then you picked me up and WOW!
I startle at the exclamation, but it's not louder. It's...heavier? Navy blue to a blind man.
All the sudden I can like, see what you see, I can hear what you hear, and you can hear me! I can talk to you! But as soon as you dropped me I was thrown right back into the void, so, don’t do that.
“M’kay.” One of my hands is stroking the carpet, plucking up loose fuzzies and dropping them in a small pile.
Shit, you are way too high for this.
“Takes one to know one,” I snap. The high is settling, myself acclimating. I use the bed to pull myself to my feet, as something else settles now.
Rage.
I am enraged.
“You lied to me.”
My wedding was a year ago, almost to the day. October 25th. Three-quarters of that day had been the happiest of my life. My beautiful wife, Amber, draped in picture-perfect white and lace. That smile. The same gorgeous smile she’d given me when I’d proposed at our college graduation. My mother blubbered fat tears that cascaded over a proud beam. My father slumped in the plastic chair beside her, his head nodding then snapping up, suddenly awake. Our families, our friends, miscellaneous others—all of them were there for us. They came in and out the entire reception. “Congratulations!” and “How beautiful, how handsome!” Yet even her father’s firm handshake and approving nod couldn’t pull my eyes off Amber.
Until my father collapsed, spit dripping down his chin as he slipped from his chair to the floor of the reception hall. To his credit, he’d managed to keep himself conscious until after Amber and my’s first dance. My uncle and father-in-law took an arm each and dragged Daniel Clark to his feet, helping him stumble along to the kitchen of the reception hall where the caterers were packing up to leave. I brushed off Amber’s concern, elbowed through the crowd, ignored relatives’ attempts to catch me in conversation.
The kitchen was still hot, though only a handful of staff remained to pack up. My father-in-law approached, gripped my shoulder tightly with a sympathetic sigh, then returned to the party. The music and chatter heightened with the opening of the door only to be immediately muffled again by its slam. My uncle, Avi, had found a chair for my father and stood over him, tilting a plastic water bottle over my father’s mouth.
“What happened?” I asked, rushing to Avi’s side. My concern is half-assed, overshadowed by embarrassment, disappointment.
“He passed out, I-”
“Get the fuck out, Avi,” my father snapped.
My uncle glared down at him, then looked to me for instruction. I nodded, taking the water bottle from his hand. “I’ve got it from here,” I assured him. Reluctantly, he exited the kitchen.
Music, chatter, slam.
“I’m only going to ask you this once,” I said, screwing the cap back on the water bottle and placing it on the counter. “Are you high?”
My father scowled, appalled. His brow furrowed over his dark brown eyes, eyes that matched mine in every way besides the wrinkles at the corners. A seam in the shoulder of his flannel had popped again, giving a peak of a white t-shirt underneath. His graying hair was greasy with sweat, strands clung to his skin. His hands tightened on the plastic seat of the chair, knuckles whitening. “How dare you even ask me that. It’s your fucking wedding.”
Missing Adderall prescriptions, maxed out credit cards, pawned wedding rings.
“I won’t be angry if you are.” I did my best to speak calmly, soothingly. My heart was heavy; it sat lower in my chest than it belonged. “I just need to know, dad,” I pleaded. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you. But I can’t help you if you keep fucking lying to me.”
“I. Am not. Fucking. High.” He sneered the last word, poisonous. “I’m not a fucking junkie.”
That wasn’t the first time I’d tried to get the truth out of him, but it was the last. I tucked him in a cab and spent the rest of the night dodging the questions of gossiping witnesses. When I returned to my wife’s side, her smile was sad. “Are you okay?” She whispered through a slim hand cupped around my ear.
We were slipping back towards our table, faking smiles at friends and relatives as they hovered near. It’s fucking impossible to get privacy at a wedding when you’re the happy couple. I thought bitterly. I pulled Amber close, my arm around her shoulder, and whispered my reply, “It’s true. He’s fucking high. I knew it. I knew it. And he just lied through his fucking teeth about it, he—”
“Shhh,” She spun herself under my arm, wrapped hers around me, squeezed me hard. “We’ll bitch and rave about him when we’re drunk in Hawaii. Come back to me now.”
The photographer got a snapshot of Amber then—of her rising on her toes to plant a reassuring kiss on my cheek.
I hate that fucking picture.
After the funeral I called her an Uber, promising to be home by midnight. She’d fought me at first—we had one of those whispered arguments in the parking lot, stopping mid-sentence every time someone walked too close then jumping right back at it.
“It’s my job to be here for you,” Amber had insisted. She gave me the same small, sad smile from the wedding. She was pitying me.
“You’ll be there for me, at home, tonight.” When it would be just the two of us, my head on her chest and her hands in my hair, in the dark and warmth of our bedroom—where she couldn’t sit there absorbing all the dysfunction my family was infested by, comparing them to her picket fence perfect parents.
I don’t want anyone’s fucking pity, I didn’t do anything. He did.
I’m so fucking pissed.
I’m fucking enraged.
“You fucking lied to me,” I hiss into the empty room.
I did.
“Why?” I’ve refound my ability to yell. I’m pacing across the room, from the bed to the chair to the dresser of aged, chipped wood. My eyes are still heavy, my mouth still aired, but that’s underneath this new heat. If my father had any sort of physical form, I’d be stalking it down, backing it into a corner.
He’s already in a corner; he’s trapped in the shirt on my back. I tear at a loose thread on the sleeve, hoping it causes him pain.
Because I was ashamed. I am ashamed. And… I’m a coward. There’s a pause. I can picture him sighing, running a skinny hand through unkempt hair. I really didn’t think of myself as an addict until you were born.
The shock of this sentence stills my feet. “You’ve been high my entire life?”
I, well…. Yeah. To varying degrees…. But yeah.
The rage is twisting, fusing with something else. I open my mouth, close it, open again, repeat. The high and the anger and the void in my chest from burying my father are latched to the back of my mind, dragging my thoughts to slow-churning butter.
Look, I imagine a sigh, a sorrowful shake of my father’s head, I know you must be pissed, but I can explain everything on the way.
“The way?”
To Marie’s, the voodoo lady. She’s our only hope of straightening this out.
My stomach gurgles and the thought of a road trip fast food pit stop teases my baked brain. Fine, “fuck it,” I say. Patting myself down for my keys, phone, wallet, I nod to the empty room on my way out.
Mom has passed out on the sofa across from the stairs. I glance around for my uncle, but it’s just my Mom here, alone. She’s curled in a ball, still wearing the black dress she’d worn to the funeral, a knit throw sagging to the floor near her feet. Gently as I can, I pick up the blanket, careful not to wake her as I tuck it around her shoulders.
I should be here for her, but she’s drawing some of the rage too.
How fucking blind she was.
Avi had figured it out before any of us. He’d noticed my father’s long disappearances to the restroom or the car during family gatherings, strung together the stories of financial mishaps my mother confided in him, recognized the toll the drugs were taking in rapidly graying my father’s brown hair, thinning his face, darkening the circles around his eyes.
“He’s a fucking drug addict, Anne,” he’d said. My mother and uncle were sitting on the front porch of my childhood home, passing a cigarette between them. I’d just slipped out of my car, arriving to pick up the wedding presents Mom had held onto while Amber and I enjoyed a Hawaiian honeymoon.
My mother shot Avi a warning glare as I approached, stepping into earshot, but he continued, “Jesus Christ, you think the kid doesn’t know? The man nearly ruined his fucking wedding.”
My stomach sank. There it was, the salt in the wound, still raw and leaking.
Mom’s nose scrunched, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not saying he didn’t make an ass out of himself, but he just drank too much, he-”
“Oh, come the fuck on!” Avi threw his hands up, exacerbated.
I didn’t understand why he still bothered trying to convince her. My mother just shook her head, ash blonde curls bouncing around her, a physical manifestation of the denial she let fog her perception. A stubborn control freak, an office manager from hell—she’d ruled my childhood with an iron thumb. Ruled her marriage, family finances, her entire mental universe.
Her mental universe.
Which required denial of anything that broke the illusion of perfect order. Denial that my father was who he was. When he was fired from the bar for ringing in food under the table and pocketing the cash, my mother ate up his story about the owner being a neo-nazi and firing him for our Jewish heritage. The taxi company, the cashier gigs, that odd stint as a maintenance worker at Seven Lakes State Park—she chewed out the management of all of them with venom. She spit fury between swigs of the sympathy beers she’d bring home for my father. It was one of the few times they really got along, when from the outside it looked like they had the ideal marriage—they were on the same side, in it together.
My mother had always looked the other way. Always shut her eyes tight. Anything to avoid admitting she was wrong—that perfect Anne could make the mistake of marrying an addict. My dad’s tall tales of monstrous managers were further from reality, but closer to her fantasy—so she fit them in, broke off edges and forced the pieces together. A mangled jigsaw life. If you squinted to blur the details, it passed, I guess.
Until she shot herself in the foot demanding an autopsy.
The paperwork was on the table in the kitchen when I’d arrived this morning, a bottle of moscato over the word “heroin” magnified and stretched the letters. At least she could fucking see it now.
Damn it, Anne. I shiver under the weight of second hand grief. I hasten to leave before my uncle gets back, before I have to see that I told you so look for the thousandth time today. Shutting the front door carefully, I quietly disappear into the cool October evening.
Carriage Town is as alive as ever. A neighbor’s TV is leaking a CNN broadcast through thin walls. A car alarm goes off a few blocks away. Someone’s yelling at their kids to get back inside. Porch lights silhouette trees, casting the street in an ominous yellow glow, like the entire place exists on someone’s Jack-O-Lantern. I catch the scent of a campfire as I follow the cracked cement path to the driveway.
The Spectra is parked next to the garage, a little offshoot spot from the driveway I’d parked always, since the day my dad slapped the keys in my hand. The Silver Specter, he’d named the old Kia. That’s gotta be some sort of irony.
“How about a road trip?” He’d asked, bouncing like the kid I was supposed to be.
I was still gawking at the keys in my hand. I was sweet sixteening and should have been exhilarated, should have been over the atmosphere. Instead I asked, “how did you get the money for this? Does mom know?”
“Gah!” He waved his arms impatiently above then pulled open the passenger door. “I’ll cover with mom, I always do, don’t I?”
I grinned. Dad could haggle anything, any situation. His mind was constantly whirring with the next fib, next solution. He made school lunch debts and maxed out credit cards disappear with nothing but the right words at the right time. Gotta be the right time with Mom. The woman was always wound tight; where’d this tenner go? Where’d this twenty? Didn’t “she understand how much it costs to keep the groceries stocked? Clothes on your back? Life isn’t cheap,” Dad said as I backed the Spectra onto the road.
It was always you and me against it all.
“Because I believed you.” I drive slow in the dark, with the high still on me. With care, I unscrew the cap on a water bottle in the center console and down it, the liquid chilled to perfection by the autumn air.
Who’s the real liar if the lied to is a denier?
Fuck. I’m just as bad as Mom.
“Dad, I can’t make rent this month without this money. You said you’d pay me back two weeks ago.” I had pleaded, begged into the cell phone against my face. From the apartment next to my cramped studio I could feel the thumping of bass, the chatter of a crowd with the means to party through college while I juggled two jobs and coursework. My chest was heavy with dread. Tears threatened as I mentally cut my grocery budget.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, Marsh. There was some mix up with one of the tax forms I submitted, I have to redo our entire return,” Dad replied. He used the same sickeningly sweet apologetic tone that he used on Mom when justifying buying me a car three years prior.
“Mom said you guys got your return last week!” I cried. “I know you took something for yourself. I know. You always do-”
“There wasn’t enough for me to take a cut this time, alright? I’m sorry, Marshal.” My dad’s voice was heating.
“So you do have it, why would you lie?”
“I’m not lying, I-”
“Where’s my money, dad?”
“Look, just give me a couple months and I can-”
“I’m barely scraping by, I can’t wait a couple of months!” The words came in a gush of panic. I could already feel hunger pains. The shame of being poor as dirt. The shame of being so stupid, lending my dad money again. Of him not following through again. Weighing down upon it all—the thing that crushed all these feelings into a solid mass of sheer despair—was the settling realization that my father was not a man to be trusted. He was not the emergency contact, he was the emergency.
“I’m sorry.”
“Dad, I need that money. Where the hell is my money?”
My father hung up the phone.
I clench the steering wheel with a ferocity. I grind teeth. I refuse tears. “Where are we going?” I ask.
She’s off Robert T. and Franklin.
I turn down R.T. Longway, grateful for the yellow city lights. My mouth is still cotton, but I’m attuned with the weed now, too stoned to hold on to any emotion for long. I swing through the Rally’s drive-through for an American-large Coke and fries and anything off the menu that looks greasy and delicious, because I buried my father this morning and now he’s a cotton creeper on my back. I’ll binge eat whatever the fuck I want.
I open my mouth to ask if he wants anything, and the absurdity of this whole situation sends me into head to toes hysterical laughter. My eyes tear up as I try to choke down giggles and pay the horror-struck cashier. What a sight I must be; ordering 40 bucks of food for my scrawny self in a beat up Silver Specter, shabby flannel over the shirt and tie I wore to the funeral. Even the homeless crowd in the corner of the lot—usually eager to hassle customers in their cars—keep a safe distance.
Christ, Marsh. You’ve gotta get it together.
“Oh! I’ve got to get it together!” My laughter turns bitter. I nearly choke on the burger I’m stuffing whole into my mouth. Cheeks still full of grease and beef I demand, “Where did that five-hundred ever go? What the fuck did you spend it on?”
Five-hundred?
“Six years ago! The money I lent you in college!” I hiss. He doesn’t even remember ripping off his own son. I chase the burger with a healthy mouthful of Coke and start shoveling fries. A car horn roars at me as I swerve in my lane. Fuck you too, buddy.
Oh. That. There’s a pause where a sigh should be. Uh, I’m pretty sure that was when I pawned my wedding ring.
“No, you did that when I was in high school,” I confidently correct him. I can still remember my parents fighting over the debacle; their raised voices rising from the floor of my bedroom, burying my head in pillows to block out slamming doors, my mom’s hysterics.
When my father later told me he’d pawned the ring for grocery money, I didn’t even question it. I’d raged at my mother, the kind of rage only teenagers can muster. “If you’d just give him enough money to feed us, he wouldn’t have done it. It’s your fucking fault!” I snarled.
She retreated upstairs in tears.
When she entered my room with my report card in hand, demanding answers for dismal scores, I snapped, “maybe if you gave Dad money to get my Adderall prescription, I wouldn’t be such a fuck up and you could pretend to be a good mom.”
She stammered, bewildered, “but I gave him that money…”
I slammed the door in her face.
Because I fucking believed him.
I hate myself for believing him.
Huh. It was definitely a pawn shop thing, might have been your mom’s guitar that time.
I scoff, disgusted almost to the point of pitching the rest of the food out the window. Almost. Foil crinkles, the little folds of aluminum reflect streetlights as I unwrap a chicken sandwich. This is art-deco. This is Flint Town Noir. “What, run out of your own shit to pawn?”
Yeah. I did.
It’s not just the high. I’m actively trying to keep my anger flowing, pump fury through my veins. I scowl. My full mouth growls, my empty mouth curses. I squeeze the steering wheel tight enough to trigger an ache in my knuckles. I mimic all the motions of pure, unfiltered rage. All the motions I’d perfected after years of practice, years of dodged questions and lies.
I don’t know what to do with the truth. The anger keeps slipping, leaking somewhere no matter how much fuel I try to pour in. I want fire and heat and scalding.
The cold bite of October air stings my face as I roll down the manual window, the crank wobbly from age, and light up a Marlboro ‘27 from the pack I’d picked up on my drive into town yesterday. The smoke is heavy in my chest, tastes like childhood car rides in my father’s truck. Tastes like chill-the-fuck-out, Marshal. Tastes like—we’re here, rounding the corner onto Franklin.
That red house there, with the Impala out front. The one with all the plants.
“All the plants” is a full front facade of Virginia Creeper, “the red” is their rusting leaves, typical of Michigan October. A brick walkway cuts across a perfectly manicured lawn from the wide front porch to the sidewalk, next to which I park the Spectra. Gas lamps glow ominously on either-side of the front entryway, their natural flicker off the door’s stained glass reflecting deep blues and reds and greens. A faint orange light illuminates the large bay window from somewhere deep within.
Eyeing the house suspiciously, I smoke the cigarette down to the filter and immediately lust for another. Fuck it—it’s a “fuck it” kind of night, isn’t it? I put the car in idle and flick the lighter on a fresh Marlboro. “Alright, I’m not just going in blind. What exactly is the deal here?”
Do you remember Mike Cambell?
“Yeah?” I ask, taken aback by the name. Mike Cambell had been my best friend as a kid— we grew up on the same street. For years we were practically glued at the hip.
“Your dad is so cool,” he’d whispered in my ear the summer after 6th grade. “I wish he was my dad.”
We were sandwiched in my dad’s Ford Ranger, a little three seater with me in the middle. Knees knocked against knees with every bump on the road. My dad’s fingers drummed the steering wheel in time to some dad music on some dad radio station.
I cupped my hand around Mike’s ear. “Then we’d be brothers,” I said.
“I wish my mom and your dad would get married,” Mike sighed with a pout. “I bet they wouldn’t fight.”
“Or my mom would marry your dad,” I replied, “and then they’d fight even more.”
Mike laughed, and I smiled. The other kids at school didn’t understand why we wanted our parents to get divorced. Sarah Goyette had kicked us off her dodgeball team when she found out we used our birthday candle wishes on such a thing—her parent’s divorce was the reason she was going to have to move schools. Mike and I had wondered whether her parents screamed as loud as ours, whether they broke things when they got mad. I remembered the sting of my mom’s open palm across my cheek for asking why dinner was taking so long after such a fight. I decided on the spot Sarah was a brat who couldn’t have it that bad.
What a dream it would be, for my dad to marry Mike’s mom. Every summer day would be a beach day like this one, packed in the cab of the Ranger, skin smelling of sunscreen and hair of second-hand smoke. While my dad struggled to light charcoal on the public grill and Mike and I built sandcastles, I pictured Mike’s mom there with us, helping my father grill hot dogs. When we took turns being lifted in my father’s arms to be chucked into the crystal blue lake, I pictured Mike’s mother at my dad’s side, laughing—because I couldn’t picture my own mother laughing.
When my dad chuckled at Mike’s mustard covered chin and dabbed his nose with a fresh application of sunscreen, I knew my friend was dreaming the same thing.
My father’s credit card was declined at the gas station on the trip home, leaving us stranded. I knew Mike was secretly happy about it too, we mirrored each other's wide grins when my dad broke the news. We watched the sun set from a bench facing the road, passing around chips and sun-melted chocolate, laughing at goofy songs my father made up about passersby. We didn’t wonder why the card was declined, we wondered why my mother was so angry when she arrived.
We kept wondering until high school, when Mike started partying with an assortment of fuck-ups; drop-outs, drug dealers, kids self-medicating mental health issues with pain pills they nicked out of their grandparent’s medicine cabinets. We never fell out so much as drifted. Last I’d seen him was at our graduation, smoking a bowl in his mom’s Corolla.
“What about him?” I ask.
I used to see him around a lot, when he got into harder shit., my father continued, pretty sure we had the same dealer for a time. The first couple times I ran into him, he would bail the second he saw me, but pretty soon he was hitting me up for connections.
“You didn’t,” I gasp, but the shock is feigned at this point.
I’m not proud of it, but yeah, handful of times, when he was looking really bad. But then I just stopped seeing him. I feared the worst, given our situation. People go missing in that crowd, they’re dead or in prison.
Then this summer, I’m up at Starlight getting breakfast, and who walks in? Mike. Fucking. Cambell. And he looked fucking great. He’d put some weight on, but like, looked real healthy. His hair used to be so greasy you couldn’t even tell it was blond, but he had it all styled and sharp. Shit, I was damn proud of that boy, offered to buy him breakfast.
He tells me about this woman he met, “Marie,” he says, “She’s a miracle worker. Got me clean.”
I was like, ah shit. Here comes some preaching about 12 steps or fuck-all.
“Nah, Marie’s not like that,” Mike says, “Her mom was a Voodoo priestess, she’s the real deal.” He gave me her card, it says she’s some “all natural healer” or something.
Trying not to roll my eyes. I take a drag before asking, “Well? Did you go?”
Not right away. It sounded hokey as hell. But then, well. I can see him shuffling his feet, staring at the ground the way he always did when caught fucking up. I was in a bad way. I was nearly out of dope, rationing it to get by, but I was already getting the shakes, the sweats. I tore the house apart, but anything worth any money I’d sold years ago. Your mom was almost home from work, so I bailed. I just… I fucking hated myself. It’s not like I wanted to be like this. It’s not like I thought it was okay.
If I stayed high, I didn’t think about it. I was too, well, stoned. I could deny it. But running that low, I felt like the scum of the earth. It was like years of self-loathing were just… attacking me. My brain was attacking me. That’s when I said fuck it. I called up Marie, I came here.
“And?” I crush out the cigarette in the Spectra’s overflowing ashtray.
And it worked.
“Oh, it worked, did it?” I scoff. “How come you’re dead then?”
That’s my fault, not Marie’s.
The house’s bay window fills with light. “Shit,” I murmur. Feeling it would be better to approach than be approached, I pull the key from the ignition and slip out of the car.
My mind whirls with what I’ll find inside as I walk up the brick path. Cajun cooking, French accents, jars pickling exotic animals. A Creole witch with braids and missing teeth, rings on each finger, pulling open the door in exotic costume. Maybe even naked. I use that last image as confidence to reach for the handle of the door.
It swings open before my fingers touch the knob, but it’s no witch before me, and she’s absolutely not naked. A head shorter than me, she glares up with dark, nearly black eyes. Her natural hair is trimmed short, the curls a voluptuous halo of artificial red that match her pursed lips. Her fists are on her hips, tucked against a threadbare Cobra Starship t-shirt that hangs loose over black leggings. Voodoo Queen of what? A college campus? “I, uh, um,” I stutter pathetically.
She looks me over, her eyes falling on the flannel. Wordlessly, she reaches out and rubs the collar between her thumb and forefinger. “Oh, you dumbasses,” She says, no hint of French in her Midwest accent. “C’mon.” She turns around, and waving at me to follow, walks back into the house.
It’s okay, Marsh. If anyone can fix this it's Marie.
I follow her inside.
Besides the lamp next to the front window, the room is dim. Orange string lights are draped along the shelves of a tall mahogany bookcase that’s filled with worn leather-bounds and glass jars where various plants float in brown, murky liquid. A battered grey plaid sofa is covered in papers and more books, which Marie stacks onto a chipped glass coffee table. Incense burns on an end table next to the bay window, engulfing the jungle of potted plants residing there; hazy smoke heavy with the scent of Nag Champa wafts around their thick leaves and tall stems.
Yet across from the sofa, a massive flatscreen is mounted on the wall above an impressive looking speaker system. An iMac is on a minimalistic white desk next to the hallway entry, half its screen on Reddit, the other half a paused Kendrick Lamar music video on Youtube. Above the computer hangs a framed print of a map of Westeros. I am wildly confused.
“Sit,” Marie commands, pointing at the cleared sofa. I obey, carefully stepping around the coffee table. Sinking deep into the cushion, I feel horrendously small. She stands over me a moment, sizing me up. Finally her face softens. “Want a beer?”
“Oh my god, yes. Thank you.” My mouth is still uncomfortably dry. I huff a relieved sigh as she slips into the hall and around the corner. A light comes on in what must be the kitchen. Pressing my palms into my eyelids, sharp white patterns swim against the black.
See? She’s a sweetheart.
“Uh-huh.” I open my eyes and blink back tears, shifting in my seat, uncomfortable. For someone making enough to buy a big-ass TV and Apple computer, you’d think she’d invest in a new couch.
Marie returns with two bottles of some craft IPA I’ve never heard of, but guzzle gratefully. She grabs the back of the desk chair and drags it across from me, taking a seat before drinking herself. She wiggles her fingers in a give-it manner then rolls her eyes at my blank stare. “The shirt,” she says, “I need to be touching it too.”
“Oh,” I say, “Right.”
“So you’re the son, I take it?” She says as I slip off the flannel. I drape it carefully over the coffee table, trying not to send Marie’s pile of papers crashing to the floor.
“Yeah, Marshal. And you’re Marie?”
She laughs, a surprisingly musical sound. “My name’s Sam. ‘Marie’ is just a thing to get white people in here, no offense.”
Wah, Seriously?
“Non taken.” I smile, picturing my father’s genuine shock.
I still would have come…
“Mm-hmm. Sure you woulda,” Sam teases as she picks up a sleeve. A hint of sadness has appeared in her eyes. “I told you what would happen if you used again, Dan.”
I know. I… Sam and I stare into the blue plaid, waiting for him to continue. It’s my fault. I know you said to get help, a therapist or whatever, but I just felt so good at first, I felt so much better.
But then, eventually, I didn’t. I thought if I stopped using, maybe your mom and me wouldn’t fight so much. But we kept fighting. I thought maybe I’d be able to hold down a job, but I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d toss and turn with these terrible dreams. Dreams about my dad, dreams about being a kid again.
I’d only ever gotten snippets of my father’s childhood, disclosed in offhand comments. His own absentee father, an unmedicated schizophrenic with a habit of disappearing for weeks. Growing up in the ghetto of Detroit. Years in and out of the system; foster care, juvie.
I’d end up not sleeping for days, then passing out for a straight 24 hours, missing work. Got fired again. Your mom sure loved that. I can picture him defeated, tired. Sullen and weary. Scrawny and unshaven, sulking around the house. All I could think was, what a fuck up I am. What a waste. I felt like trash. Got to the point I couldn’t even get out of bed. Your mom wouldn’t talk to me, she started sleeping on the couch. I felt like she hated me and worse, I deserved it.
I thought about calling you, Marshal. I really did. If his phantom voice could crack with a sob, it would. I swallow my own. But I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know what to say. Hey, son, I’m sorry you got stuck with such a garbage father. I don’t know how to be better. I’m sorry. A bitter laugh. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, to reach out.
“Oh, Daniel,” Sam sighs. I glance at her, she’s staring into the flannel with tears in her eyes. I wonder how well they’d gotten to know each other.
I knew what would happen if I relapsed.
Sam looked up to me. “It’s like a need, addiction,” she said. “It’s like hunger, or thirst.”
I remember college days, trying to make ramen noodles ease the pain in my stomach until my next paycheck.
“I take that need away. But there’s a cost.” Her brows straighten, serious. “To use again is to revert to a maximum state of that need. It is to instantly starve, instantly dehydrate.”
Instantly withdrawl.
Sam frowned, nodding.
It happened so fast. I never even felt the high. Then I was in the dark, the void.
“I don’t understand,” I say, “They found you half naked in some abandoned house on the North side.”
Well, I was dead, can’t really account for that. Best guess is my dealer wasn’t too happy about me ODing in his living room. He must’ve moved me, ditched the clothes to remove evidence. Wouldn’t be the first time he had to hide a dead junkie.
“But your flannel…” Neat on the chair, folded with care.
Hadn’t worn it since I came to Mar-, sorry, Sam. Too many bad memories. Now, how I ended up In the thing is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.
I look up to Sam, who’s shrug knocks a sleeve of her oversized t-shirt off her shoulder. “I’m no expert about hauntings,” she says, “but souls usually don’t like forced removal from their bodies. I’ve only ever seen a handful of ghosts, but their deaths are never planned or peaceful. Murders, accidents—that sort of thing jars the spirit.” She takes a sip of her beer and readjusts her shirt.
“So, it’s because he overdosed?” I ask.
“Nah.” Sam shakes her head. “Addicts know they’re playing with death, chasing after Bawon Samedi. Dan didn’t overdose—he reversed my spell, triggered a curse. His soul tried to run. This flannel is like a voodoo bomb shelter, not a sanctuary.”
Even a coward in death. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to feel. I take several greedy gulps of the beer Sam had given me. She remains respectfully silent and I wonder how used to this she is.
I wonder how this is.
“So,” I finally say, “you can get him out?”
“Oh yes,” she replies with confident ease. “Whenever you’re both ready.”
Ready? Who the fuck is ever ready for their dad to die?
Well, Marsh… I guess this is it.
My throat feels thick, my eyes warm. Fuck.
I just… I just hope you can forgive me.
Missing Adderall prescriptions, maxed out credit cards, pawned wedding rings.
Road trips in the Silver Specter. Hot summer days at the beach.
What could I have done differently?
“I don’t...I-” can’t. I can’t. I’m angry and heartbroken and disappointed and relieved to finally be getting the truth, finally getting the raw, unfiltered version of my father. I can’t fucking process. I don’t know what to do with this. “I don’t know,” I manage to choke out. “I just… I can’t right now. I…” My words fall off. Sam is pretending to read the label of her beer, trying to give me an illusion of privacy.
Right...right. I understand, Marsh. Even if you hate me-
“I’ve never hated you,” I say. Tears sting my eyes, a sob chokes my throat. “It was never about the drugs. It was-” I hold the sleeve of the flannel with both hands. I remember my wedding. Pleading. “It was the lying. Lying to me. I always trusted you, and you lied to me.”
I know I did. If I could do it over… but I can’t do it over. I’m dead, Marshal. This is it. Regret. Mistakes.
Restraint is out the window, snot leaks from my nose, racing the tears. I grit my teeth.
I understand you can’t just forgive me. I hope you can, in time, someday. I just hope you can find acceptance.
“I could have helped you!” I cry.
No, you couldn’t have, son. I did this. Only me. Don’t you blame yourself, you understand me? The rare authoritarian; clean your room, do your homework, eat your vegetables. Followed up by a cheeky grin, a pop-tart snuck to me under the table, out of sight of Mom’s keen eyes.
Fuck.
The beer tastes like salt. My hands shake.
So, how do we get me out of here?
Sam gathers the necessities; herbs and solutions, a clipping of my hair, some threads plucked from the flannel. Owe! my dad yelps, as she pulls loose a blue strand.
I gasp, horrified.
I’m just kidding! I can hear his buffoonish laugh, see him slapping his knee, giddy at his own joke.
Sam tosses her ingredients into a wide, flat bowl of a thick, earthen brown material. She’s chanting under her breath in a language I don’t know, finally living up to my imagination. She takes a slim glass vial from the bookcase and carefully removes the cork stopper before dashing her concoction generously with the thick, oil-like substance within. She wafts the scent into the air with her hand, beckoning it towards her and breathing deeply, before offering me the bowl to do the same. The thick smell of beef-stock and cayenne pepper stings my nostrils—my nose scrunches involuntarily.
I’m trying to get it together, but my dad is about to fucking die, so you know, fuck off. I chug down the rest of my beer and Sam hands me her still half full bottle. I drag anxious hands through my hair and gag on a new sob, remembering my father’s hair, thick and mouse-brown and identical to the mess my hands are in.
Sam clears a spot on the table and places the bowl on top of the flannel. She searches the room a moment, returning with a box of matches. She places the cold cardboard in my hand with a nod. “You must light the match,” she says. “It will burn fast. Once it’s out, his soul will move on.”
I stare down at the box in my hand, the tiny rectangle has the weight of a pistol. My other hand is still holding a sleeve, absentmindedly stroking the fabric with my thumb.
It’s okay, Marsh. I’m ready to go.
“I’m not.” My voice is small.
You will be.
I slide open the box and pull out a match with thick, fumbling fingers. My hand shakes as I drag the tip against the checkered red side. The match sparks feebly, failing to ignite.
I breathe deep. Exhale. Strike again.
The match ignites, the small flame blazing, flickering light casting spectral shadows across Sam’s face.
Deep. Exhale.
I drop the match into the bowl.
The effect is immediate. The contents light up in a wicked array of colors; orange and blue and gold and green. The flames lick across it all, engulfing the bowl, showering the room in enchanting illumination.
I’m proud of you, Marshal.
“I love you, dad.” The tears blur the multicolored flames into a ghostly, mystic light show.
I love you, son. I always will.
Then as suddenly as it began, the flames recede. The room grows dark again. The bowl smokes feebly, weakly. I squeeze the sleeve in my hand, attempting to wring my dad’s voice out of the fabric, but he’s gone. Dead. Buried. High on my mind, despite a six foot depth.
When Sam removes the bowl, I pull the flannel back on. I hold it tight against me. The warmth of the thick, scratchy fabric feels artificial now.
She lets me mourn awhile. Let’s me finish her beer, brings me another one. Eventually we slip out to her porch for a smoke. The autumn chill gives the night a certain menacing feel; a feel of wickedness, of specters and ghouls. Or maybe that’s just the weed and the beer and the Voodoo Queen, the nicotine hitting my lungs, the flickering glow of the gas lamps at our backs as we gaze out over the quiet Flint Town street. I wonder how the fuck I’ll explain this to Amber.
“I liked him alot,” she says between drags. She flicks the ash off her cigarette delicately, elegantly. “He was funny. And kind.”
“He was,” I say.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She echoes the same words I’d heard all day, but only now do I feel them. They’re heavy, somewhere between my stomach and my lungs.
My father is a drug addict. Present tense. I burned up his soul this evening with a Voodoo Queen off Robert T. and Franklin. The residue of his vice will decay into the earth with all the same elements that make up his corpse. Complicated, incalculable atoms. Bits of matter somewhere between science and urban garden herbs. He is in death as he was in life—loved.
