The Death of My Father: Day 1

I was walking down Denny Way from my apartment on Capitol Hill when I got the text. I needed to pick up my laptop from my friend Josh, because I had forgotten it in his car the night before after we’d worked together on a new website over a few beers and he’d given me a lift home. Since I’d recently found myself on funemployment, I needed to get it back right away so I could look for jobs, catch the latest Rachel Maddow Show podcast and finish watching all seven seasons of The West Wing on Netflix. With no place to be, I had slept in until 10:30, and then gotten dressed and headed out the door.

It was overcast and chilly. Josh worked in an office suite above the Old Spaghetti Factory down by the waterfront, and I decided to walk instead of taking the bus, because I wanted to burn off a few calories. I’d gained fifteen pounds since losing my job, so I thought the walk would do me good. I put my ear buds in, started up the latest Freakonomics podcast, took a sip of coffee from my travel mug, lit a cigarette and headed out into the day.

I was nearing the corner of Dexter and Denny when I got the text from my sister, Lenaé.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 11:26 AM
Dad passed away an hour ago

I kept walking. According to Freakonomics, women account for only 3% of all patents filed in the US. They’ve done studies about it, because obviously women probably have some pretty good ideas, but they found that there’s a disparity in the number of men and women in engineering jobs. Women account for very little of the D in the R&D that leads to a patented product.

I paused the podcast and called Lenaé. It rang three times and then I heard, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

“OK,” I said, and pressed End.

I lit another cigarette. The podcast turned to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopedia effort with over a billion articles in over a hundred languages around the world. Only 9% of contributors are women, and only 6% of the content on Wikipedia is written by women. Even the articles on things like miscarriage, abortion and Rom-Coms all seem to be written by men. Theories abound, but it’s probably because of the culture within the organization. People are able to just delete stuff they don’t like, and men are more competitive and direct, so they’re more likely to delete the work of others, and women are less likely to fight to keep their articles intact.

I walked up to the door of Josh’s building.

Josh LaRosee
Feb 26, 2013, 11:40 AM
I’m here to pick up my lappy.
Come up

I opened the door and went up the stairs and down the hall to Josh’s office space. He and Walker were discussing writing a bio of some kind for someone.

“I’d be happy to write a bio for him, if he paid me. I’d write a novel if he paid me to do it,” Josh was saying. My messenger bag with my laptop in it was sitting on Josh’s desk. They both said hi to me as I walked in. I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder.

“How’s it going?” Walker asked.

“Pretty good, pretty good,” I replied. I got my bag situated. “Thanks guys, take care.”

“Take it easy,” Josh said to my back as I left.

I lit a cigarette and headed back up Broad Street. Freakonomics was talking about how some people did a study about the competitive nature in women and men. They came up with a game where you had to throw balls into baskets. They asked native tribesmen to play the game, but there was a catch. They had to choose between two versions of the game. They could either win $1 for every shot they made, or they could choose to win $3 per ball if they made more shots than an anonymous competitor but nothing if the competitor made more shots. In a tribe dominated by men, where women were treated merely as property like cattle, the men were very likely to choose the more risky, competitive version of the game, and women were more likely to choose the safer version. But, in tribes where women were considered equals, where they had decision-making powers, where they were in charge of selling the produce farmed by their husbands, where they controlled the money—these women were more likely to choose the high-risk high-reward version of the game than the men were. So, competitiveness isn’t necessarily an inherited trait exclusive to men, but rather a product of social construct.

I realized I had taken a wrong turn and was about five blocks further than where I should have turned back onto Denny to head home. It took me a minute to get my bearings straight, and then I walked back down 5th Avenue under the monorail, an aged and decrepit monument to Seattle ingenuity. When I got to Denny, I decided to catch a bus back to The Hill instead of walking. According to an app on my phone, the 8 would be coming in about six minutes. I wondered if I had enough time for another smoke before the bus arrived, and decided I didn’t.

I’m looking at a tarnished brass duck. A mallard.

It occurred to me that I should probably go to Moses Lake to be with my family. I pulled up the Greyhound website on my phone and started searching for bus fares. There would be a bus leaving Seattle toward Spokane at 4:30, and would arrive in Moses Lake at 7:30. My friend Curtis was going to be getting off of work around 4:30, and we had talked about catching happy hour at Hooverville, a tavern down by the train yards in SODO. It seemed like this is the kind of situation where there should be a lot of drinking. Plus, Hooverville was one of our favorite bars, and I’ve never been one to turn down happy hour with friends. The coach leaving at 4:30 was actually operated by Northwestern Trailways rather than Greyhound, so I couldn’t buy a ticket on my phone through Greyhound’s website. I thought maybe I should just catch happy hour with Curtis, and head to Moses Lake in the morning, but as attractive as that sounded, I realized that I didn’t have much to talk about over beer, and going to be there for my mom and sister was probably the right thing to do.

I thought about walking over to the bus depot to buy a ticket in person, but the Metro arrived, so I got on, waving my ORCA card in front of the reader to pay my fare. I grabbed a seat that faced sideways, and held on to the rail to keep from sliding around. Freakonomics was over, so I started listening to an episode of the Professor Blastoff podcast, the most notable host of the show being Tig Notaro. The episode was recorded live in front of an audience in San Francisco. They were doing a bunch of audience interaction, and telling stories about getting lost on the way to the venue and ending up on the wrong side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The local audience was laughing.

I’m looking at a brass mallard. It has green felt on the bottom that’s coming away at the edges. The felt is there so the duck doesn’t scrape against the desk.

The Metro rumbled up the hill, steadily filling up with each stop. In an hour, The Hillside Bar would be opening, and I could probably have a couple of drinks there before catching a bus out of town. If I did, maybe I should pour the first sip of my whiskey out for the departed or something. I liked the idea of that tradition among a drinking culture, and I’d never had the opportunity to do it except as a joke when a friend had to work instead of coming out for drinks with the gang. But wasn’t that an Irish tradition? If I did it, I’d be a poseur on several levels. In any case, I still needed to pack, and I should probably go buy my ticket as soon as possible at the bus station in case there wouldn’t be room for me.

I thought that maybe I should hitchhike to Moses Lake. I’ve always wanted to go hitchhiking, and I had been reading Kerouac again recently since I picked up a couple of previously unpublished works of his. I thought it might make a good story once I’m a real writer. “The first time I thumbed a ride was the day my father died.” It would make a solid hook for some later American adventure story, but I didn’t know how to go about it, and figured it would be better to just spend the forty bucks on a bus ticket to make sure that I could get there on the same day. For all I knew, I could get stranded on the side of the Interstate while my family was grieving without me.

I got off the Metro at my stop, saying thank you to the bus driver as I exited according to habit and good manners, lit a cigarette and started walking down Bellevue Avenue toward my apartment.

On the podcast, Tig, Kyle and Aaron were telling a story about running up a hill at Skywalker Ranch after eating pizza and cupcakes. It started with a challenge that Kyle could run up in under a minute and they thought he should do it shirtless. Kyle tried, but stopped running when he realized he wouldn’t make it to the top under the buzzer, but he tore his shirt off on the way up before dry heaving and nearly shitting himself. Aaron, who runs marathons, made it to the top of the hill in something like forty-nine seconds, and he tore his shirt off too in victory. Tig ran slow and steady. She made it in two minutes, and insisted on joining the fellas in tearing her shirt off. This drew big applause from the audience, because she is a recent breast cancer survivor after a double-mastectomy. “There is nary a teat on me,” she said.

The duck is cool to the touch, and it’s heavy, so it seems important. It’s tarnished, so it’s darker in the crevasses that outline the feathers, the eyes and other details. The rest of it is dull and scuffed. The green felt on the bottom is coming away at the edges and is nicked and scraped in patches.

I let myself into my apartment and took my laptop out of my bag. I plugged it in and turned it on, and began watching the latest video podcast of The Rachel Maddow Show. Karl Rove was starting some kind of agenda called the Victory Project where they support Republican candidates that they think can actually win, rather than the batshit-crazy Tea Party types. Some Republicans, even the sane ones, think this is a bad idea, because it’s controlling the direction of democracy by an oligarchy of well-funded mainstreamers.

I went to the Greyhound website again and looked for tickets. I couldn’t buy a ticket online because the bus leaving at the time I needed wasn’t actually a Greyhound bus. So, I went to the website for Northwestern Trailways, but it’s such a low-scale coach service that even though they advertise that you can now buy tickets online, you actually have to do it at least twelve hours before the scheduled departure.

I thought maybe I should take a train instead. I went over to the Amtrak website to check out ticket fares. It looked like a ticket wouldn’t cost any more than a bus ticket, but it would take five hours instead of three, and it would drop me off in Ephrata instead of Moses Lake. It might be kind of fitting to roll into Ephrata on a train. That’s the town where I went to high school. Prodigal son returns home at his father’s death. But, Ephrata is 17 miles from Moses Lake, and it would be 10:30 at night when it arrived. There aren’t really any reliable buses in that area, nor taxis for that matter. Lenaé would have to pick me up, and that would be too late with her new baby and all. Plus, she was probably exhausted.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 12:45 PM
So sad. He was huddled on the floor by the heater.
I’m hopping a bus to Moses Lake today.

I decided to take a shower, because I hadn’t done that before going to retrieve my computer. I put on a pot of coffee with the last of the Gold Coast blend I had left so it would be ready when I got out. I wondered if I should go buy more coffee before I left town so that I wouldn’t have to worry about being out of it when I got back. I decided to think about it later.

I went into the bathroom and got undressed. I decided not to shave my neck or trim my beard like I do on most mornings. I climbed into my claw foot tub, turned on the faucet and waited for the water to get hot before turning on the shower. I pulled the shower curtain, and started to masturbate, because I’m a creature of habit. The daily wank-and-wash. I wasn’t really into it, but I managed to finish. It wasn’t that satisfying, but the chore was done. I shampooed my hair and rinsed. I put conditioner in my hair, and then took a swig of whitening Listerine that I keep at my sink next to the shower. I washed my body, rinsed my hair, spit out the Listerine, and then grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste, giving my teeth a good going over. I rinsed, spit, turned the shower off and got out. I dried off with a towel I keep hanging on a hook on the bathroom door, rehung the towel, and got dressed. I put my shoes on, grabbed my coat, poured a cup of coffee and headed out to the alley for a cigarette.

I’m three years old. I open the door to my dad’s office in our house. He is an important business man. I don’t think I’m allowed to be in here. There is a big desk. If my dad were sitting at the desk, he would be facing me as I came in the room, but he isn’t here. On his desk is a paper weight or some kind of knickknack. It’s a brass mallard with green felt on the bottom so it doesn’t scrape up the desk.

The garbage truck rumbled up the alley and stopped to pick up the trash at the building opposite mine. For some reason, they collect the trash for different buildings in the same alley on different days. The driver waved to me as he pulled up. Last week, he commented on how he always sees me in the alley when he comes to collect the trash. I told him it was a strange coincidence, but maybe it’s because I smoke a lot. I was about done, so I threw my butt into the grate on the ground and headed back inside before he could get out of his truck and start up with his friendly small talk about the weather.

The first time the garbage man talked to me was a couple of months ago, when he asked, “Are you in your twenties?”

“Um, no. I’m thirty-six.”

“Oh, I thought you looked young to be so gray.”

“What?”

“I turned gray in my twenties, and I thought you were like me. You seemed really young to be so gray.”

At the time, I wasn’t sure how to take it. I could either have taken it as a compliment that he thought I looked really young, or I could have taken it as a sign of my aging that he noticed the gray in my beard and sprinkled throughout my hair. I’d always wanted gray hair. Silver hair, actually. When I was in my early twenties, I tried to find someone who could dye my hair silver. They always interpreted my request as a metallic silver, and I had to explain I meant “old man silver.” I don’t know why I like it, always have. Back then, no one could do that. I understood they can now, but now I thought it would just be vanity. I’ll go gray naturally and love it. My dad had really great silver/gray hair, but he always dyed it to hide his age. He thought he needed to look young to make piles of money. He thought no one would take an old man seriously. I used to tell him to stop dying his hair, that no one was fooled, and that he was lucky that he grayed so well. That was a long time ago.

I decided to start packing. I dug out my black leather duffel bag out of the closet in the living room, and took it into the bedroom, tossing it on the bed. I picked out clothes from the closet, the laundry bag and the pile on my floor, and shoved them into my bag. I considered bringing a suit, but didn’t think I could fit into my suit anymore and didn’t want to have to use a garment bag instead of my duffel, so I grabbed a gray shirt and black slacks and shoved them into my bag with the rest. I was sure I could iron stuff at my mom’s house. I dug my dress shoes out of the back of the closet, remembering that the heels were so worn down that the rubber was gone and they made an embarrassing amount of noise when I walked on hard surfaces. I threw them into the bag anyway. “It is what it is,” I thought to myself. I went to the bathroom and put some pomade in my hair before packing it. I stuffed it into a kit bag along with my toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, electric razor and beard trimmer. I took the kit bag to my bedroom, and shoved it into my duffel with everything else before zipping it up.

I sat down at my desk and fired up the next Rachel Maddow Show podcast. I wondered how soon I needed to go down to the bus station to get my ticket. I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time waiting there for departure once I had my ticket, and there wouldn’t really be enough time to walk back home before having to head back again. This would have been more convenient if I still had my car, which I had wrecked a couple of months ago.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 2:01 PM
You don’t have to.
Unless u want to. Lots of emotions.
I’m all packed.
Ok let me know

I decided to make some eggs for no other reason than that I was bored. I had some grated cheese in the fridge too, so I thought I’d try to make an omelet, even though I didn’t have anything else to put in it. I cracked four eggs into a stainless steel bowl. It occurred to me that the egg residue on the shells might mold in the garbage can while I was away, so I tried to rinse them off before throwing them in the trash. I added a little cream that I use for English Breakfast tea, because I don’t keep milk in the house. It was nearing or past its expiration date, so I poured the rest down the sink and rinsed the carton with water before throwing it away. I added salt, pepper and a few drops of Tabasco out of curiosity and whipped it all together. I heated a pan, threw in some butter and then poured the eggs in. I remembered my mom trying to teach me to make omelets once, and I was sure there was a point in my life where I knew how to do it. I kept gathering the cooking eggs toward the middle, letting the runny eggs flow over to the exposed pan. I kept doing this until there wasn’t a lot of runny egg left, but I had no idea how to turn it over without breaking up the omelet. I could have sworn that my mom used some sort of folding and unfolding technique, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I tried flipping the whole thing over with the spatula. It broke, and landed in the pan with half of it cooked-side-up and the other half of it cooked-side-down with the remainder splattered all over the place. Looks like scrambled eggs it would be. I added cheese to melt, dumped it all on a plate, and took the food back to my desk to wolf it down while seeing what was happening on Facebook. I followed a link to a news site, which explained that the Republicans seemed ready to let the Violence Against Women Act pass in the house. The Democrat-controlled Senate had already passed it, and the Republicans in the House had tried to water it down, but they seemed to be accepting defeat, especially since they had been accused of waging a “war on women,” so they were now showing signs of letting the Senate version of the bill go up for a vote in the House.

I ate my eggs in under two minutes, and washed my plate, the mixing bowl, the frying pan and utensils by hand so that they wouldn’t sit and mold in the dishwasher while I was away. I poured a fresh cup of coffee, grabbed my coat and went back out to the alley for a smoke.

I’m standing next to a still pond, smooth as brown glass. At the water’s edge, near the reeds, is a flock of mallards. The females are busying themselves in the reeds while the males swim around bobbing their green heads up and down.

I went back inside and debated with myself about whether I should turn the heat off while I was away. They used to say that you burn more energy trying to heat a place up that you’d let go cold than you would just maintaining the same temperature. A couple of years ago, though, I got a flyer from the Seattle Public Utilities that explained that this isn’t true anymore. Heating technology and good insulation has advanced since the olden days, so you will save more energy by turning the heat down when you’re not at home and while you’re sleeping at night than you would letting the heater run that whole time. Then I thought how much it would suck if I got home at night and my apartment was freezing cold, so I decided to just turn the heat down to sixty from sixty-five degrees.

My apartment has three heaters with three thermostats. The thermostat in my bedroom was set to set to sixty-five, and I turned it down to sixty. The one in the living room had been turned all the way off, which I thought was weird. I always keep all three the same. When I looked at the one in the kitchen, it was turned up as high as it could go. The thermometer read seventy-five degrees. I didn’t know how it got this way, because I didn’t remember ever turning it up. Maybe I had brushed it when walking past? This explained why I thought I was running a fever on Sunday. I had been sitting at my desk, which is right next to the kitchen, and I felt hot and clammy. I sent an email to Paul, cancelling a meeting we had scheduled to talk about a new business venture Josh and I were considering, selling wine online. Paul is a winemaker and a lawyer, and we were going to talk about selling his wine, and also try to get some legal information out of him. I cancelled the meeting because I thought I was sick, and it turned out that it was just because my heater was pumping at full speed.

I shut my computer down, unplugged it and packed it into my messenger bag. I added the power cord, the mouse, and a new copy of the Atlantic Monthly that I hadn’t read yet. I had plugged my phone in on the counter, and it wasn’t yet to 100%, so I didn’t want to pack that yet. My iPhone seemed to be losing battery life, so I wanted to make sure it was fully charged before I left. I added the book I was close to finishing, Kerouac’s The Sea is My Brother. I looked around my bookshelves for something else to read, since I didn’t think it would take long to finish Kerouac. I still had the huge volume of Harlan Ellison stories that my friend Casey loaned me two years ago, and I’d only read two stories. But, it would add a lot of weight to my bag and take up a lot of room, so I decided to skip it. I made sure I had a notebook and a pen in my bag, and then I waited, pacing in circles, for my phone to charge. I lost my patience at 90%, so I unplugged it, put the charger cord in my messenger bag, and closed it up. I put on my scarf, my coat, my favorite hat and my glasses. I slung the bag over my shoulder by the strap, went to the bedroom and did the same with my duffel bag on the other shoulder, and left my apartment to head down to the bus station after double-checking that my door was locked.

It was a bit awkward walking down the hill toward downtown with two bags. They kept slipping off my shoulders, so I readjusted, putting each strap over my head to the opposite shoulder, the straps crossing over my chest. This solved the sliding problem, but the bags kept swinging with each step, throwing me from side to side. I lit a cigarette, and kept going.

I’m four years old. I’m tearing off pieces of sliced bread and throwing it into the pond for the ducks. They’re going crazy over it. They flap their wings and race across the water to get at it, trying to outmaneuver the other hungry mallards.

I was going to stop by a corner store on my way to the bus depot, but I walked right past the place without noticing it. As I walked down Stewart Street, I could see the big vertical sign—BUS—hanging on the side of the building. I kept my eyes on it, gauging my distance as I careened down the sidewalk. When I got there, I went in to find that there was no line at the ticket counter except for one guy who seemed to be trying to explain why he needed to go somewhere to the ticket agent. He had his ticket in hand, and she politely listened as he jabbered on and on. I don’t mind waiting behind people that are taking care of business, but waiting for this guy was like waiting for the person that insists on standing on an escalator instead of walking up it, or those that drop all their bags and stand there on the jet-walks at airports. Why he felt the need to explain the importance of his trip after he’d already been given his ticket was beyond me.

Once the man finally moved away, I stepped up to the counter.

“How can I help you today?” the ticket agent asked.

“I need to catch the next bus to Moses Lake. I think you have a Northwestern Trailways bus leaving here at 4:30.” Saying it reminded me that I was going to miss happy hour. I thought I should probably let Curtis know.

She looked at her computer. “4:15. The bus to Moses Lake leaves at 4:15,” she said.

“Great, I’ll take it.”

She took all of my information and glanced at my ID. I handed her my credit card, which she swiped before realizing that she had run the transaction as cash. She had to void it and start over. I worried a little that I’d been charged twice, but decided, “It is what it is.” We went over the same information and then she printed my tickets, slid them into a blue folder, and wrote “4:15, Door 2” on the front. I was glad she wrote that. There were three of your typical glass doors right next to each other, labeled 1, 2 and 3. There were rope lines leading up to each of them. There were no lines waiting at any of the doors, and all three doors spilled out into the same parking area behind the building. I wondered what would happen if I stood at the wrong door. I decided to go get some coffee.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk with my bags and looked up and down the street for a Starbucks. The closest thing looked to be a café half a block up the street called Motore, so I started in that direction.

I’m throwing pieces of bread to the ducks in the pond. My sister is standing next to me, doing the same. My dad is squatting in the grass, holding the bag with the rest of the loaf in it. The mallards are going crazy, thrashing around to scoop up the scraps from the water. I can’t understand why they like it, because no one likes soggy bread.

I crossed the street and walked into the café. The girl behind the counter was very sweet, but slow as shit. She didn’t appear inattentive, and she didn’t appear to be moving slowly either, but for some reason, it took forever for her to help the two people in line in front of me. It became a mystery to me. The people didn’t have a large order, their drinks weren’t complicated, she wasn’t standing around making small talk with them, and she was focused on her work. I started analyzing her efficiency, looking for clues as to why this was taking so fucking long. I came up with nothing.

Finally, I got to the counter and ordered a tall Americano. That took forever, too, even though I paid with cash. Finally, I got my coffee, took it over to an easy chair where I set the cup on a coffee table and dropped my bags. I took off my coat and scarf, draping it over the chair, and dug my book out of my messenger bag before sitting down.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 3:21 PM
Let me know when to pick you up.
I will. Looks like around 7:30.

It was probably about time I let others know what happened.

Curtis Campbell
Feb 26, 2013, 3:26 PM
My dad died today. I’m heading to Moses Lake for a few days.

That should explain why I wasn’t going to make happy hour.

Josh LaRosee
Feb 26, 2013, 3:26 PM
My dad died today. I’m heading to Moses Lake for a few days.
Oh man. I’m sorry to hear that… Let me know if you need anything.
Yes. Casseroles. Lol
You ok?
Yeah. I’m fine. I don’t really feel sad or glad. Just kind of like, “Well, huh.”

It’s the sign of a good friend when they tell you to let them know if you need anything, but I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out what a person in this situation could need. It seemed like in the movies and on TV, people always bring you casseroles so you don’t have to cook during your time of grief, but it’s not like my arms were broken. I smiled at the thought as I turned to my book, and read two pages before the phone rang. It was Curtis.

“Hey, buddy,” I answered.

“Dude, are you OK? What happened?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t really know. I just got a text from my sister today saying he’d passed away. All I know is that he was found dead next to a heater.”

“Oh, man,” he said, “how are you doing?”

“I’m totally fine. I’m not really sad or glad or anything. It’s kind of weird. I’m about to get on a bus to MoHo to be with my mom and my sister.” MoHo is short for Moses Hole, a derogatory nickname for Moses Lake with a distinguished history.

“Oh, wow, OK. Will you tell your sister and your mom that my thoughts are with them? Will you do that, please?”

“Sure, of course. I’ll call you when I get back. I’m not sure how long I’ll be there.”

“Yeah, OK. Let me know if you need anything, even for, you know…I’m here.”

I almost told him that I’d need casseroles, but the joke didn’t warrant that kind of lifespan. “Thanks, man,” I said, “I will. Talk to you soon.”

I sipped on my coffee and turned back to The Sea is My Brother. Wesley, a merchant marine, had been joined by Bill, a Columbia University assistant professor who wanted some adventure, and together, they hitchhiked from New York to Boston to catch a ship. Wesley’s home was at sea, and his time ashore, “on the beach,” was spent on booze and women, because he had nothing else to spend his money on, and it was a way to pass the time until his next ship went out. For Bill, going out to sea represented a huge life-change, even though he had simply taken some vacation time from his job to be able to do it. Two nights before the ship is to set sail, they take a few other sailors to a dingy tavern, where we meet the owner and bartender, Wesley’s father. They haven’t seen each other in years, and don’t spend much time talking, but the father dutifully gets the whole band of brothers drunk on whiskey, free of charge in honor of his son stopping by.

I figured I should be back to the bus station by 4:00, so I had to hurry the last of my coffee to get out of there. I put my scarf, coat and gloves back on, and hefted my bags back up to my shoulders by the straps. I dropped my cup into the bus-service bin on my way out the door as the sweet barista shouted, in her way, a thank-you.

I walked back to the bus station, and no one was standing in line by any of the three doors. The clerk who had helped me said, “You’re going to…”

“Moses Lake,” I reminded her.

“Oh, that one’s not here yet.”

So, I went back outside, dropped my bags on the sidewalk against the building and lit a cigarette. It occurred to me that it was kind of weird that I still didn’t know any details about my father’s death. I figured Lenaé was probably too emotional to talk, and who knew about my mom, so I did the only thing I could think of. I looked up the phone number for Samaritan Hospital, the only hospital in Moses Lake, and called the front desk.

“Samaritan Health Care Services, how may I direct your call?”

“Uh, I’m not really sure. I just found out today that my dad died, and I’m not really sure who to call, but I want to find out where his body is.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. Was he admitted to Samaritan Hospital?”

The noise from traffic was deafening, so I threw my cigarette into the gutter and started going back inside.

“Sorry, I’m trying to go inside where it’s quieter,” I told her while I awkwardly tried to lug my bags and open the door with the same hand. “Um, I don’t really know. I mean, he didn’t die there. He was found dead in his home today. I don’t know how it works when that happens. I don’t know if they take the body to the hospital when they’re already dead, or what.”

I dropped my bags on the floor in the video arcade area of the bus terminal and started pacing around.

“I understand,” she said, “How did you find out your father died?”

“I got a text from my sister this morning. I’m sure they’re all too emotional to talk, so I don’t have any other details. I’m just trying to find out what happened to his body. I didn’t know if I should call the police, or the ambulance or anyone. You’re the first thing I thought of.”

“I understand. Let me see what I can find out for you. What was your father’s name?”

“Douglas Lee Haugen, Sr.”

“OK, I’m going to put you on hold. Is that OK?”

“Sure. Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.”

When she put me on hold, the music that came over the phone seemed somehow almost inappropriate. Instead of a strings version of “Chariots of Fire” or something, it was kind of a techno or electronica music. It would make sense if you were on hold for customer service about an internet order, but for a hospital, it was weird.

She came back to the phone. “Sir, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Do you know if your father was taken to Samaritan Hospital?”

“No, as I said, I don’t know where he was taken. I didn’t know who to call, so I called you first.”

“OK, well I have a call out to the ambulance dispatch, and I’m waiting to hear back. I’m going to make another call as well, so I’m going to put you back on hold, OK?”

“OK, thank you. I appreciate it.”

Again, the techno came over the phone. I couldn’t think of a situation where it would be fitting to hear this music when someone called a hospital. Nearly everybody admitted to the hospital is either dead, dying, or trying desperately not to die. There are painful injuries like broken bones, dangerous punctures and lacerations, allergic reactions, chronic diseases, fire and chemical burns, drug overdose, and more. Sure, some are experiencing the miracle of childbirth, but even then, would someone calling after them find the boots-and-cats music reassuring?

“Sir, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m still here.”

“Sir, your father wasn’t brought to Samaritan Hospital. They usually only do that if the person dies in the ambulance, or if they feel they need an autopsy done. If he was found dead, then that explains why he wasn’t brought here. I placed a call to the coroner’s office, too. He wasn’t in his office so I had him paged. Now we’ve got calls out to two different people, so hopefully one of them will call back with an answer. Would you like me to take your number and call you back?”

“Well, I’m about to get on a bus to head to Moses Lake from Seattle, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to reach me.”

“Oh, I see. Can you not talk on the bus? Is it not allowed or do you not get reception?”

“Um, well, probably a little of both. Really, it’s just kind of rude to talk on the phone on the bus.”

“OK, I understand. Well, I’ll just put you back on hold, but why don’t I take your phone number just in case we get disconnected. If you don’t answer, I can just leave you a message, and then at least you’ll know.”

“OK, great, thank you.”

I gave her my phone number, and she put me back on hold. Boots-and-cats-and-boots-and-cats-and-boots-and-cats… People were starting to queue up at the door to board the bus that must have arrived. The clock on the wall said 4:13.

She came back to the phone right away.

“Sir, I just heard back from the coroner. Your father is at Carver’s. I can give you a phone number.”

“OK, great,” I said, scrambling furiously to find a pen in any of my pockets. I came up with one and started writing on my hand as she spelled out the number and started to give me directions to find it near the hospital. She offered me the address as I put my pen away and started making my way to the line at Door 2. It was easier to tell her to go ahead and give me the address than to explain that I’d already put my pen away and that I could just Google in later. I repeated each part of the address back to her as she gave it to me so she’d think I was writing it down.

“That’s great, thank you, but I have a question. What is Carver’s?”

“It’s a funeral home.”

“Oh, OK, great. Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it. I’ve got to get on my bus now.”

She wished me well, said she was sorry for my loss, and let me go. She was a class act, and I was impressed that she was willing to do all that legwork to locate someone who wasn’t even a patient. Class act.

The bus driver was standing in front of the line of people waiting to get on his coach. Of all the bus drivers in the fleet, I got the funny one.

“Who all here is going to Moses Lake?” he asked. The guy in front of me raised his hand. I didn’t feel the need to.

“Oh, so we got one? I suppose I can slow down long enough for you to jump off as we pass through,” he grinned. No one chuckled. A guy at the front of the line, who wasn’t going to Moses Lake, piped up.

“My favorite hotel ever is the Motel 6 there in Moses Lake, so you can slow down as slow as you want, because I love that place.” How the fuck was this guy going enjoy passing through MoHo on a bus just because there was a motel somewhere in that town that he wouldn’t even be staying in tonight? I guess some people place more importance on making conversation than they do on the conversation itself.

The bus driver smiled politely. “So, the rest of you are going to Spokane, then? Great, we’re going to start boarding the bus, so have your tickets out so I can look them over before you get on.” At this point, he noticed that the guy in front of me had a small dog on a leash with him.

“Is that dog going to be good?” he asked.

“Yes, she’ll probably just sleep the whole way,” the passenger said.

“OK, well here’s the deal,” the bus driver said sternly, “The dog can’t roam around the bus. No barking or whining. If the dog starts causing a disturbance, you and he—or she, or whatever—will be shown off the bus into the nearest snow pile, you understand?”

“No problem,” the guy said. Then he looked at his dog, “He thinks you’re going to be a troublemaker.” The dog was unconcerned.

The bus driver led us out to the bus and started checking tickets and letting people on. I handed him mine and he looked it over.

“Oh, we got another one going to Moses Lake? I may actually have to stop then to let you both off,” he said with enough volume to ensure everyone in the queue could hear. I smiled politely.

The bus wasn’t very full, so I had no problem finding a seat to myself. I stowed my duffel bag in the overhead compartment, and my messenger bag below my feet when I sat down. A woman two seats in front of me was holding a baby. A girl opposite and two more seats further was wearing a mask on the back of her head. It was the laughing half of the laughing/crying theater masks. It really creeped me out, because every time she turned her head to look out the window, the mask would turn to look at me. Suddenly, I felt like I had landed in an episode of Twin Peaks.

The bus driver climbed aboard, got himself situated in the driver’s seat, and made a long, rambling announcement as we pulled out of the depot.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting on our way to Spokane. We’re leaving about fifteen minutes behind schedule, but we’ll probably make that up on the way to Moses Lake. We’re looking at about 7:45 there. I wonder if that city bus knows it just ran a red light. We’re not going to do that on this bus, I’ll tell you that. Just to let you know, according to federal regulations, this is a non-smoking bus. Non-smoking also includes all other tobacco products, so no smoking, no chewing, no spitting. I should let you know that this also includes marijuana now that the state has passed legislation to legalize it. Also, according to federal regulation, there is no alcohol allowed on the bus. If you need to drink, you’ll have to ride down below in the cargo bin. If you did somehow bring alcohol in your bag onto the bus, leave it in there and say nothing. If you’re caught drinking, you will be shown off the bus at the nearest snow pile. OK, I’m turning now and I’m going to try not to hit any pedestrians. There is a lavatory in the back of the bus in case you need to use it, and there’s a trash can up here at the front of the bus. If you have trash, please use the trash can. Don’t go throwing your cups or pop bottles on the floor or shoving it down into you seat for someone else to find or sit on. Thank you for doing what you’re supposed to do!” he suddenly shouted toward the door. “There is an unwritten rule in Seattle that you’re supposed to yield for transit vehicles and that guy just did. Sometimes people don’t, but he did. Anyway, we’re getting on the freeway, and it looks like traffic is a little backed up, so it may be slow going getting out of town, but we’ll make all that up on the way to Moses Lake. I have the temperature set at seventy degrees, so if it gets a little too hot or too cold, you know, let me know. The back of the bus is warmer than the front of the bus. I keep the temperature cooler at the front of the bus.” He turned in his seat and momentarily looked at the woman directly behind him, “You’re in the coldest seat on the bus. We’re not like an airplane, so you are certainly permitted to use your cell phones. But, just remember that you’re in a tin can. This is a big bus, but that’s essentially what it is. So, if you’re using your phone, everyone else can hear your conversation, and they may not want to. And vice versa. So, you’re welcome to use your cell phone, especially if you need to call someone at the other end to let them know when you’re arriving, but try to keep your voice soft and low.  If there’s anything I can do to make your trip better, just let me know. Again, we’re looking at about 7:45 in Moses Lake, and then Spokane about 9:30. Enjoy the ride.”

I only had three pieces of information surrounding my father’s death—that he had died, that he died next to a heater, and that his corpse had been taken to a funeral home—and here I was on a bus. I needed to do some more investigating. I looked up the funeral home on my phone and found an email address, so I sent a message.

To: scott@____________________.com Date: February 26, 2013, 4:48 PM Subject:

Scott–I found out today that my father died, and the nice folks at Samaritan Hospital made some calls for me and found out he is at your funeral home. His name is Douglas Lee Haugen, Sr. I am coming to Moses Lake to be with my family. They have been too emotional to talk today, so I have very little details about his death, only that he was found dead in his home. Could you tell me how he died and what has happened since he was found? Also, would it be possible for me to come see his body tomorrow? I will be arriving tonight and will hear whatever my family knows, but I feel in the dark at this point. Whatever you could tell me would be much appreciated. Thank you. –Douglas Haugen II

I dug my book out of my bag and started to read. Drunk at his father’s bar, Wesley was taken by surprise when his ex-wife appeared and took him outside to talk. She told him she still loved him, kissed him and told him she wanted them to be together. She told him that she had always loved him and that things could still work. She was even proud that he was a merchant marine. He was soused and got confused and emotional, throwing his empty liquor bottle into the street and then shouting back at the tenants upstairs who were yelling at him to pipe down. The police were called, and Wesley was thrown in the clink.

I realized that I should probably let Laura know about my dad’s death. If I didn’t, I could see Laura getting mad that I hadn’t told her. Everybody wants to try to be there for you when someone dies, so you kind of owe them the chance. I wondered if she’d tell me to let her know if I needed anything.

Laura Bory
Feb 26, 2013, 4:51 PM
My dad died today. Feel kind of indifferent about it. I’m on a bus to go be with my family. They are very emotional right now.

The bus trudged on as I read. Before I knew it, we were traveling across a snowy countryside, glowing in the twilight. I looked out the window at a lake, mostly frozen over. In places, there were swaths of open water surrounded by sheets of ice encroaching from the shore. I started to wonder if the ice was receding or advancing. If the water was cold enough so the ice didn’t melt, why was it not itself frozen? The lake was long as we chugged down the highway. We came to a part that was again completely frozen over with ice, but there were starbursts strewn across the ice where it had either melted through or been broken with cracks extending from the center of each, as if someone had dropped rocks on it from directly overhead. The shores were lined with forest of pine trees frosted with snow, and white billowy snow banks. It was a beautiful and serene sight. I thought that if this were a movie, this would be the scene where I’m filmed staring out the window at the passing countryside, on my way to my home town upon the news that my estranged father had died. There would be a song chosen for this moment—probably an acoustic guitar and a leading male voice, quiet and melancholy. I couldn’t decide if it should be someone like Dan Auerbach or someone like Alexi Murdoch. The camera shot would include the posts of the guardrail passing by with a tree here or there temporarily obscuring the view of the frozen lake passing by more slowly in the background. Then it would pan over slightly, and there would be my solemn face just staring at the scenery, deep in contemplation. What the audience wouldn’t know was that I was actually just contemplating what this would look like in the movie.

Josh LaRosee
Feb 26, 2013, 5:25 PM
How did he die?
I don’t know. Lenaé was too emotional to talk. I guess they found him curled up next to the heater.
Dang.
I called Samaritan Hospital, who made some calls and found out his body is at Carver’s Funeral Home. I sent them an email to see if I can get more info.
I don’t even know who found him, though I suspect it was my grandmother.
Proudly.
Er, probably.

It was getting too dark to read. I considered putting my ear buds in, but I didn’t want to drain the battery on my phone, because I wasn’t sure when I’d get to charge again. I closed my book and set it on the seat beside me, hoping that it wouldn’t slide off onto the floor if the bus took a tight turn.

The bus driver turned on the lights, and got on the PA.

“Is the temperature better?”

“No,” someone said from the back.

“Excuse me, is the temperature better in the back of the bus? Anyone?”

“No!” the guy said louder.

“OK, let me see what I can do,” said the bus driver.

Someone must have walked up to the front of the bus and asked about it, but I hadn’t noticed. I thought maybe he would leave the lights on for the rest of the trip like they do on airplanes, but just as I looked at my book, the lights went out again. I leaned toward the window, and noticed that I could hear air rushing in through a crack somewhere. When I’d pull my head away, the sound would disappear. It seemed odd that I would only hear it, and loudly, when my head was in a certain spot. I felt around to see if I could gauge the air flow, as if there was a slipstream that I could only hear when my ear was in it. I could feel a little cold air coming in at the corner of the window, but not at any significant force. This was a mystery that I was going to have to solve at some point. Maybe later.

Hector and Achilles are facing off for their final duel. Hector is scared, and thinks he’s going to die, so he asks Achilles to agree that the victor would surrender the opponent’s body for a proper burial. Achilles denies the request, telling Hector that he will feed his body to the dogs and vultures. They battle, and Achilles throws a spear through Hector’s throat, killing him. He cuts slits in Hector’s heels, and uses the incisions to tie Hector to the back of his chariot with ropes before dragging his body around the walls of the city in an act of dishonor. Achilles spends the next few days desecrating the body, but the gods preserve it from further injury.

The girl with the theater mask on the back of her head was still creeping me out. When she looked out her window, the mask turned to stare straight at me. It looked like a serial killer was peeping over the top of the seat, and the fact that it was the happy mask made it all the more unsettling, like clowns.

Laura Bory
Feb 26, 2013, 6:03 PM
Holy fuck. Oh honey. What happened??/
Not sure yet. Only detail I know is that he was found dead, curled up next to the heater.
Oh wow. Who found him? R u almost there?
I don’t know, but it was probably my grandmother since he lived with her. I’ll be on the bus for another hour and a half.
Ugh. Do you need to talk? R u ok? Can duck into a back room of my Aunt’s.
No, I don’t need to talk. I’m fine. Plus, I’m on a bus.
Oh, right. R u detached?
Its going to be a lot to take on being there for ur mom & sis…even if u r indifferent..
I’ll come out…if u would like…

I pictured myself helping the funeral home guy prepare the body for cremation. I’d cut off the clothes, or wash the body, or whatever they do when they incinerate a corpse. It would be an act of honor, not an act of reconciliation or even forgiveness, but rather signifying an end to our war. A gesture that said there is honor in death. A way to provide dignity to the end of an undignified life. They are no longer your enemy when they’re dead, so you may as well put some coins on their eyes and let them cross the river.

I had now informed Curtis, Josh and Laura. I still hadn’t told Casey, and I figured I should. We hadn’t been very good at communicating since he moved to Wisconsin with Sarah and had a baby.

Casey Chapman
Feb 26, 2013, 6:13 PM
My dad was found dead in his home today. I’m on my way to be with my fam. I’m totally OK. Indifferent really. Just thought I’d share the news.
Wow!
I know, crazy right? The only thing I know so far is that he was found curled up next to the heater.
That’s so wild!

Then I turned back to Laura.

Laura Bory
Feb 26, 2013, 6:16 PM
I’ll be fine. Yeah, my mom and sister are emotional. I want to see if I can observe the funeral home doing whatever they do to the body.
Who’s taking care of the arrangements? Do they expect you?
& observe what??
They know I’m coming. Don’t know about arrangements. I want to observe whatever they do to the body.
Getting it ready for burial? Cremation? I don’t know what the plan is, but I kind of want to help with the body.
Why? Curiosity? Or as a way to make ur peace?
I meant expect u to make
All the arrangements as the surviving man of the family
Little of both. He and I were at war. I outlived him. I don’t suppose I need to go hectoring.
So, if I could help with the body, it would be a dignified ending.
Feb 26, 2013, 6:31 PM
Of course. Not sure u r allowed, but worth a shot.
Either way, I can’t imagine it won’t fck u up in some way. Death is Death.
I want to be there for u
I’ve never been close to death. Might be different if he and I had liked or loved each other.
Well, of course. Make ur peace if u so choose or close that chapter (even if it has been closed to u for so long) Just keep ur heart open. Ur family will need u.
I am off tomorrow if u would like to talk
(& home)
OK. I’ll keep you apprised. Love ya.
Plzzzz honey. I love you.
(& u get to meet Cypress, right?)
I met her the other day!
Awwwwwww. Nice!!

I wondered if we would stop in Ellensburg to pick up any passengers. I didn’t see why Northwestern Trailways wouldn’t service Ellensburg since it was right on I-90, and we’d pass by it anyway. I hoped that if we did stop, I’d have time to get off for a smoke break.

I wouldn’t probably have time for both a cigarette and to use a bathroom, though, and I needed to go. I decided to use the lavatory on the bus. I’d never done that before, so why not?

I stood up and made my way down the aisle toward the back of the coach. It’s a lot harder than it is on a plane, because the bus is constantly correcting course and rounding bends, so the bus sways from side to side. I had to grab seat backs all the way down the aisle, trying not to irritate the other passengers. I almost fell into one person’s lap, who looked back at me irritated, but not angry. You could tell he didn’t want to be a dick about it, but nobody likes to be bumped.

I reached the lavatory and tried the door. It was unlocked, so I went in. It was really dark in there, and I couldn’t find a light switch. I dug my phone out for some light. I had a flashlight app on my phone that uses the camera flash, but I figured the dim light of the screen would be enough and it would take too long to locate the app. There were no light switches on the walls, but I figured out that the light goes on when you latch the door. The mechanism on the door was just a lever that you were to push all the way to the left to lock it and turn the light on. It was broken, and wouldn’t stay in position. Whenever I let go, it slid back to center, the light would go off and the door would come loose. It was too dark to see in the lavatory, and I didn’t want another passenger to walk in on me. So, I held the lever tightly in the latched position to keep the door closed and the light on.

With my other hand, I unbuckled my belt, managed to unbutton and unzip my jeans and awkwardly pulled my pants down by tugging alternately on one side and the next. The bus was careening down the road, throwing my body from side to side, occasionally loosening my grip on the latch and turning the light off. I couldn’t piss standing up in this environment, so I sat down on the seat. As soon as I did, another passenger started tugging on the door. It didn’t occur to me to say anything, like “Occupado!” I figured he or she would just realize that the door was locked so it must be in use. As I peed, the other passenger tugged on the door about every fifteen seconds.

When I finished, I stood up, and tried to get my pants back up. I kept a death grip on the door latch, because I didn’t want to give some unsuspecting passenger the full Monty. I pulled my boxers up first, and then started tugging on my jeans, first one side and then the next. As I worked them up my body, my boxers rode up with them. There wasn’t going to be a way to do this gracefully, so I finally let go of the latch, the light went off, and I adjusted my underwear and fastened my fly and belt like a madman. The passenger tugged on the door just as I was ready to come out. She was an older woman, probably in her sixties, and she seemed surprised to see me in there. She was the woman sitting in the very front seat of the bus, so it made sense that she wouldn’t have seen me shuffle past to the lavatory, but Jesus, did she think that if she just tried enough times, the door to a vacant lavatory would open for her? I shuffled past her in the narrow aisle, and returned to my seat.

I started to wonder again about a smoke break in Ellensburg, until I saw a road sign saying that Vantage was ten miles away. We had passed right by Ellensburg while I was in the bathroom. I felt responsible, as if we would have stopped there had I been available. Silly.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 6:35 PM
Still around 7:30
Yes. 7:45 expected.
Ok.
Are you OK?
Wiped out! Sad, mix of emotions. How about you?
Kind of indifferent. It’s weird. How is mom?
Sad but indifferent too. It would have been better if I hadn’t of had to see him. It was awful. Ill never forget it.
I do want to see him. I emailed Carver’s Funeral Home to see when I can.
Oh, I said no viewing. They have to prepare him and it costs extra. So just ask.
Yeah, no formal viewing. I just want to go see the body.
To
Make sure he’s dead?
Feb 26, 2013, 6:45 PM
LOL
; )
Could be a trick!

It was fully dark outside, so there was nothing to look at out the window. I thought about turning the overhead lamp on to finish my book, but I couldn’t be bothered to make that kind of effort. I thought about napping, but I wasn’t really tired. So, I just watched for lights. I could see the little town of George approaching. George, Washington. It occurred to me that I hadn’t even noticed when we passed through Vantage, or crossed the big bridge over the Columbia River. We had descended into the valley, crossed the river, and ascended back up to the plateau without my noticing. Then, I noticed a road sign that said Moses Lake was twenty-one miles away.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 6:58 PM
21 miles from MoHo.

I knew that the next sign would say eleven miles and waited for it to approach. I leaned against the window, and again heard the rushing wind. I pulled my head back, no sound. I leaned my head toward the window again, rushing wind. I leaned away and felt around looking for the source, but couldn’t find it. I rested my arm on the ledge of the window, and it didn’t change the sound at all. Leaving my arm there, I finally rested my head against the window, and air started rushing in again. This time, I could feel it. Eureka! When my ear was close to the window, my body was leaning against the emergency release bar that lines the bottom of the window, which was pushing the window slightly outward, letting air rush in. It wasn’t the position of my head or ear at all, but my body that was causing the leak. Mystery solved!

I saw the road sign announcing eleven miles to Moses Lake. I sat there, satisfied with myself for my scientific solution to the rushing wind problem.

We passed through May Valley where there is a little gas station off the exit with no ramp. We crossed the first finger of the lake and onto the Peninsula where there is another exit ramp marked by a Motel 6, and passed it by. I remembered that this motel was that one guy’s favorite hotel in the world. I had no idea why. The bus trudged over the next finger of the lake (Moses Lake looks like a retarded hand on a map), and sailed straight on until I saw the Best Western. We were approaching our exit. The bus driver got on the PA again as he pulled the bus off the freeway.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at Moses Lake. It’s 7:20, and by the time I park the bus, it will be 7:25. At this point, we’re going to take a break. For those of you continuing on to Spokane, be back on the bus by 7:45. I’ll be leaving at 7:45.”

The bus pulled onto Pioneer way, passed the Best Western, the Starbucks, the Burger King, and turned right at the Shiloh Inn and Bob’s Café. He then turned left into the far side of Ernie’s Truck Stop, where there were a couple of eighteen wheelers parked. He maneuvered slowly around the back of the building, and into an open area of the west side parking lot. Moses Lake hadn’t had a dedicated bus depot for years, which makes sense since it probably only sees a couple of buses a day. The driver shut the bus down and turned on the lights. I was here.

I shoved my book back into my messenger bag, and stood up before anybody. I held my messenger bag in one hand and started trying to get my duffel bag down from the overhead compartment with the other. The buckle on the strap kept catching. I set my messenger bag down on the seat, and used both hands to wrest my duffel out, then grabbed both my bags, apologizing to the guy who was now waiting in the aisle behind me. I carefully maneuvered my way up the aisle, trying not to bump any of the still-sitting passengers with my bags. The bus driver hadn’t even opened the door yet. He was pushing the button, but the door wasn’t cooperating. After several tries, it worked.

“Stubborn little thing,” he said to me nicely.

I realized that I might seem a bit pushy, rushing to get off when most passengers hadn’t even made a move to get up, and he hadn’t yet opened the door, but the door was open now, and I clambered down the steps.

“Thank you!” I shouted over my shoulder.

Lenaé Haugen
Feb 26, 2013, 7:28 PM
OK, I’m here.
I’m on my way.

I wanted a cigarette, but I wanted coffee to go with it. I didn’t know how much time I had before Lenaé arrived to pick me up, so I rushed across the parking lot and into the truck stop’s convenience store. The guy that sat behind me on the bus followed right behind me the whole way, across the lot, through the door, down the aisle, past the deli, past the soda fountains, to the coffee urns in the very back. Awkward. I grabbed a Styrofoam cup, and examined the coffee urns. Neither of them were marked with “decaf” or “regular” or a particular blend. I guess truck drivers don’t drink decaf, nor do they probably care if it’s a French roast or Columbia blend. I guessed I didn’t care much either at that point. I filled my cup and found the appropriate lid, and made my way to the counter, where I paid with two dollars I had in my pocket. I went out the door again to the side of the building, setting my coffee on top of the domed garbage can lid next to the ashtray, and I lit a cigarette.  I noticed my pack was nearly empty, and I didn’t know what the plan was for the evening, so when I finished my smoke, I went back inside to buy another pack.

A truck driver in Carhardt coveralls was at the counter asking questions about a kit bag. He had taken it out of the plastic package while the clerk looked on. She wasn’t sure what he was doing until he explained that he wanted to examine it before deciding whether to buy it or not, and thought he should do that in front of the clerk so she knew he wasn’t trying to steal it. Well done, sir. Behind him was a local man buying a bag of Funyuns and two bottles of wine. I wondered if I could get some liquor here, so I left the line to browse around. There wasn’t any liquor, and the wine selection was shitty, so I got back in line. The truck driver decided the toiletry kit didn’t have a certain kind of pocket inside that he was looking for, so he walked away to browse around for something else. The next guy paid for his wine and Funyuns quickly, and I was up. I set my coffee on the counter, explaining that I had already paid for it, and asked for two packs of Camel Wides. She found them for me, and I paid with my debit card.

I went back outside, and assumed my post by the trash can and ash tray. My sister still wasn’t there. I lit another cigarette, and sipped on my coffee that was losing temperature by the minute. It was cold outside, but there was no snow on the ground like I thought there would be. We rarely get snow in Seattle, but it’s common in Moses Lake. I watched the main road so I could see when Lenaé would approach in her Cadillac Escalade. It was 7:40. With nothing else to do, I started another cigarette. Then it was 7:55. I started another cigarette. I started to get worried. There is a theory that you can get from anywhere in Moses Lake to anywhere else in Moses Lake in seven minutes. It had been half an hour now since she said she was on her way. I worried that she’d gotten into an accident. I pictured her crying in the car, tears blurring her vision, and going right off the road. I finished my coffee, now cold, and threw the cup into the can it had been resting on. Then I saw the Escalade speed up to the stop light at the corner. She was here.

Lenaé pulled her rig into the parking lot. I grabbed my bags and walked over. I opened the back passenger side door and started loading my bags into the back seat on top of the vacant children’s car seat. Lenaé got out and came around to my side of the car. Her eyes were red and blotchy. She’d been crying.

I gave her a hug.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, “I was at Grandma’s.”

“Is everyone there?”

She nodded.

“How are you?” I asked.

She sobbed, her head pressed against my chest. She’s almost a foot and a half shorter than I am.

“I’m OK,” she sighed, “It’s just hard.”

We let go of each other and got into the car. She turned the car around and then stopped again instead of pulling out of the parking lot. She got out her phone, and banged out a text. Then, she put her phone down and started driving. We pulled onto Pioneer Way toward the heart of Moses Lake.

“So, what happened?” I asked her.

It was 10:30 in the morning when Lenaé had gotten a call from our grandmother. At the time, she was giving Aspyn, her two-year-old daughter a bath, so she didn’t answer. Shortly after, she checked her voicemail, and heard Grandma’s panicked voice, “Lenaé! Lenaé! LenaéLenaéLenaé! Lenaé!” and the voicemail ended. Lenaé didn’t call back. She threw a shirt on Aspyn, grabbed Cypress (the baby), loaded them in the car and raced to Grandma’s house.

“It’s so weird. I never have my phone on in the morning, but I did today. I’m surprised I even heard it. And I’m surprised I checked my voicemail, because I never do that right away. Usually, I’ll listen to my voicemails hours later, because they’re never important. But, for some reason I did today.”

When she got to our grandmother’s house, she was let in and Grandma was fluttering around. Then, she saw him. Our dad was lying on the floor between the dining table and a small bookshelf that lined the underside of the open-sided kitchen counter, dead. One of his eyes was half-open. He was ashen. He wasn’t moving. Lenaé felt for a  pulse, which didn’t exist.

“It’s so sad,” Lenaé said, “I guess he was cold all the time and would huddle on the floor next to the heating vent when he couldn’t get warm.”

“Can we stop up here at Safeway?” I asked her.

“Sure, do you want to get some wine?”

“Whiskey, if they have it,” I answered.

“I told Urban to get you some red wine,” she said.

“Thanks. I just feel like something stronger is in order.” We pulled into the parking lot. “You know what I’ve been thinking about all day? Ducks.”

“You’ve been thinking about ducks?”

“Well, this brass duck that dad had. You remember that duck knickknack he had on his desk when we were little?”

“No.”

“Well, when we were little, when he had that office in the house with his desk and everything, there was this brass duck on his desk. I remember looking at it and thinking it was important. I don’t know why he had it.”

“Maybe it was a Feng Shui thing.”

“That’s kind of what I think, too. It must have been a symbol of success or prosperity or something. It keeps popping into my head today.”

Lenaé decided to come into the store with me, so we walked in together and she continued her story. “So, I had Aspyn there with no pants on. No underwear. And, I didn’t want her to see a dead body, so I sent her in to the kitchen to play. Grandma went in there with her and fed her ice cream.”

“Did she see him?” I asked. I didn’t think to ask where the baby was, but at two months old, she couldn’t have cared.

“Yeah, she asked what he was doing. I told her he was taking a nap with Jesus.”

“Did she know who he was?”

“Oh no. She’s never met him, thank God. I just tried to keep her away, because I don’t want her to be affected by seeing a dead body at her age. I really wish I hadn’t seen it. I’d be a lot better off if I hadn’t seen the body.”

We walked to the liquor aisle where I started looking over their absolutely pitiful selection. I was hoping for some rye, but the best thing I could find was a bottle of Bulleit bourbon. It would do.

“I want to see the body,” I told her, “I think I’ll be better off if I do.”

“Why?” she asked, “For closure?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it ‘closure,’ but I guess so. In your text before, you asked if I wanted to make sure he was really dead. It was funny, but in a way, that’s exactly what I want to do. Otherwise I’ve just heard that he’s dead, but for all I know, I’m still two minutes away from him showing up again, or sending me a psycho email or something. I want to see the body to make sure he’s really gone.”

“Can you even buy whiskey if you have a DUI?” she asked me.

“Yeah, it’s not a problem.”

We went to the self-checkout. There were six stations, one of which was out of order. The other five were in use by the slowest fucking people you’ve ever seen. They would take one item out of their baskets and seem to examine it as if they weren’t sure if they wanted to buy it after all. Then, they would run it past the scanner like they weren’t sure if they had the right part of the machine, even though they’d already scanned multiple items. You’d think they were coloring Easter eggs with the precaution and scrutiny. One station opened up, and I told a lady standing next to me that I thought she was in line before me. She thanked me and stepped forward. Soon, it was my turn. An attendant took my bottle of whiskey to her station, removed the safety/security device off the top of the bottle and brought it back to me. She scanned it, and put it in a bag. She looked at my ID, and entered my birthday into the machine along with what I assumed was her employee ID. All I had left to do was scan my card. If I’d known she would have to do all the work, I wouldn’t have gone through the self-checkout. It didn’t seem fair to expect her to do everything for me when I chose the one method of checkout that was supposed to have me do all the work on my own.  I paid, and we walked back to the car.

“I knew he was sick,” Lenaé told me as we pulled out of the parking lot, “He looked awful the last time I saw him. Did I tell you about that?”

“No.”

“I saw him around Christmastime. I dropped a card off for Grandma and he answered the door. His skin was gray. His eyes were bulging. He was so skinny, but his stomach was sticking out. I cried for two days. I didn’t tell you about that?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I cried for two days. He just looked so defeated. He looked like he was about to die. I knew he was going to die. I mean, he was so skinny but his stomach was sticking out.” She started crying again. We crossed the Alder Fill and turned onto Valley Road.

“A lot of older men get potbellies,” I offered. “It even happens to skinny guys; you hit a certain age, and bam, you have a potbelly. Curtis’s dad Dennis is like that. He’s always been skinny, but when he got older, he got a potbelly. He runs, he’s active, but he’s seventy now, and that little belly isn’t going away.”

“Well, maybe. But his skin was so ashy, and his eyes were bugging out. He looked like he was about to die. I cried for two days, and I prayed about whether I should let the girls see him. But, I just felt like God didn’t want me to. I had to protect my girls from him.” We started down a hill into Cascade Valley, surrounding yet another finger of the lake. I could see the lights from all the houses below.

“Of course you did, Lenaé. Just because he was sick doesn’t mean he wasn’t a bad man. He never changed. He still would have used anything he could to hurt you.”

“I know,” she admitted, “It’s just sad. He was always such a giant personality, you know? He was always going to get rich, but he died with no money, no family, living with his mom. I saw his room. He had all his jackets on hooks on the wall. Everything was mismatched. The room was full of boxes and boxes of all his papers. It’s like he was a hermit and all his things were crammed into that little bedroom. And I know he did it to himself. I know he did. But he always loved fine things. He loved nice clothes and watches and shoes. He loved fine things, and he never had any. His room had old mismatched blankets. The pillow cases didn’t match. It was just old crappy stuff, and that’s all he had in the end.”

“Right, and he was ready to leverage his family at any time to get those fine things,” I reminded her, “He didn’t know the value of his family.”

“That’s true, I know,” Lenaé continued, “but part of me wished he had gotten those things. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been so psycho. He was so smart. He really could have been a success, but he always screwed things up.”

“Maybe he wasn’t so smart, then,” I suggested.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with all those boxes of papers now. All those papers that he saved and thought were so important. What do I do with them?”

“Maybe you should give them to Clayton. He’s still your accountant, right? He’s needed the American Dream Homes paperwork for years that Dad held hostage to fix your taxes.”

“It’s too late,” she said, “Too much time has gone by, so he thinks I’m in the clear. He couldn’t use them anymore.”

We pulled into the gravel driveway of Lenaé’s house. I had thought we were going to my Grandma’s, but apparently I was wrong. I got out of the car, and opened the back door to get my bags out. I wasn’t sure if I’d be staying here or at my mom’s house, so I left the bags inside and just grabbed my grocery bag with the whiskey. When I came around the front of the car, my mom was standing there halfway through a cigarette. I set the whiskey on the hood of the Escalade, and gave my mom a hug.

“Hi, mom.”

“Hi, son.” She didn’t look surprised to see me, though I hadn’t let her know I was coming. I hadn’t even called to see how she was doing.

“How are you?”

“I’m OK,” she said dismissively, “How about you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” I told her. I decided to join her in a cigarette. Urban came out on the front porch.

“Are you guys hungry?” he asked.

“No, I’m OK,” I said.

“Doug, can I get you a glass of wine?” he followed.

“No, I brought some whiskey, but thanks, Urban.”

“Corinne, do you need anything?”

“No thanks,” my mom said.

“OK, well let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Urban finished, sounding a little defeated. That guy’s a class act. I should have asked him for a casserole.

Lenaé went inside to help Urban with the kids. As my mom and I smoked our cigarettes, I told her how I had found out, the email I had sent to the Funeral Home and the rest.

“I got that text, too,” she told me, “I didn’t get it until I got home from work, because I never look at my phone. When I saw it, I thought it said that your dad had passed away, but I didn’t have my glasses on. I put on my glasses and swiped to open the message but I lost it. I don’t know what happened to the message, it was just gone. So, I called Lenaé and she told me.”

I wanted to give her a tutorial right then to show her how to use her older version of iPhone that Lenaé had bought for her. I was sure that message wasn’t just gone, but I decided that could wait for another day. We finished our cigarettes, and put them in the dirt of a large planter with no plants in it at the front of the house.

“We’ll pick these up later,” my mom told me, “I always take them with me.”

We went into the house. Cypress was laying on an afghan on the couch, squirming in her little baby way, and Aspyn was playing in the living room. She was wearing pink pajamas and white sparkly butterfly wings that must have been part of a costume.

I set my bottle of whiskey on the island in the kitchen. Urban jumped at the chance to be helpful. “You want me to throw that in the freezer for you?” He’s not much of a drinker.

“No, that’s OK. I like it at room temperature.”

Urban again asked if he could make any food or something for anybody, but no one was interested. I kind of felt bad, because the guy was trying so hard, but there was just nothing he could do. Lenaé walked over to Urban and hugged him. She was exhausted and emotional, and he held her for a long time, lending her his strength.

I got a glass down, opened the bottle and poured a little whiskey. Urban asked if he could smell the whiskey in the bottle and I told him that, better yet, he could help himself. But, again, he wasn’t much of a drinker. He smelled it and his face scrunched up.

“Yep, that’s whiskey,” he said. To make conversation, he started telling me about a drink that his friend liked to make called an Apple Pie. It had apple juice, apple cider, a little bourbon and some other stuff, and it tastes kind of like an apple pie. His friend would drink big glasses of it and get wasted because it goes down so easy.

“I’m not much of a cocktail guy,” I decided to keep the conversation going, “I like my liquor neat, usually, but a guy I know at a bar called Tini Bigs in Seattle made up this drink called a Rooster Cogburn that I like.” He stared at me blankly. “Have you seen True Grit?” I asked him. He hadn’t. “Well, there’s a character in True Grit who’s an old salty cowboy and takes this little girl under his wing to avenge the death of her father. Anyway, he’s this salty cowboy and the drink is named after him. When we order the Rooster Cogburn, Shane asks us if we want it ‘proper,’ because there’s a very specific recipe that not everyone may be comfortable with. Of course, we always want it proper. So, here’s what you do. First, you need rocks—”

“Actual, like, rocks?” Urban asked, making a gesture as if he was dropping pebbles into a glass.

“No, ice. Rocks. Like ‘on the rocks.’ That kind of rocks.”

“Oh, OK.”

“So you start with rocks—or ice—in a glass. Then you need a man-sized pour of Old Overholt rye whiskey. Then you add bitters, but you have to add the bitters while telling a story. When the story is done, you’re done with the bitters.”

Urban laughed, “OK.”

“Then, you have to stir it with a dirty finger.”

“Like, with dirt on it?” Urban asked.

“No, you don’t have to get your finger dirty before making the cocktail, you just use your finger as it is. You don’t wash your hands before putting your finger in someone’s drink. That’s why he asks us if we want it proper, because not everyone would like a bartender sticking his finger in your drink. But, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Urban laughed politely at the cocktail recipe, not quite appreciating it the way I do.

The baby started to cry, so Lenaé decided she needed to be fed. Lenaé took a seat on the couch, held Cypress to her chest and covered her over with the afghan. Cypress stopped crying. My mom decided to entertain Aspyn.

“Aspyn, let’s take your wings off. You can wear them again tomorrow,” she said.

“OK,” Aspyn said sweetly.

My mom unclipped the wings from the back of Aspyn’s pajama top and laid them on the coffee table. “There.”

“Thank you, Nana,” Aspyn said quietly.

The girls were so adorable. At just two and a half, Aspyn had already grown up so much since the last time I saw her, and she was turning out to be really precocious. I loved her pleases and thank-yous. I even loved her yeahs and OKs. Laura and I would have been great parents and made beautiful children in another universe.

My mom picked up a book from the floor, Ten Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. “Ten monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed.’” She asked Aspyn if she could count the monkeys on the page, and Aspyn did, one at a time. I couldn’t help but think something was wrong.

“Nine monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed.’”

Aspyn counted all nine monkeys.

“Eight monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed.’”

I couldn’t take it anymore. Not to be critical, but the rhyme was wrong. “When we were kids, didn’t the rhyme used to go, ‘Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, “That’s what you get for jumping on the bed”?’”

“Yeah,” Lenaé said with a smirk of remembrance. We used to sing the rhyme when we jumped on the bed. Fortunately, we either never fell off, or were so concussed that we never remembered bumping our heads.

“Did society at some point decide that that was less instructive and more callously unsympathetic?” I asked.

My mom and sister laughed, but it wasn’t really a rhetorical question. I wondered why they always have to fuck with things. I decided to go out on the back deck to smoke.

The balcony overlooked a swath of lawn sloping down to a dock at the lakeshore. The night sky was overcast, but there was enough light coming from the flood lamps at the neighbor’s house to cast shadows around a leafless deciduous tree halfway down the yard. As a city-dweller, I found the quiet unnerving. I paced around the deck, populated by an assortment of wicker patio furniture without the cushions, a glass and iron coffee table and large planters and urns full of dormant potting soil. I checked my phone for messages (none) and looked at Facebook out of habit, but there was nothing interesting. I sipped my whiskey and smoked in the cold air. Finally, I extinguished my cigarette in one of the planters.

When I went back inside, everyone was in the kitchen. Cypress was seated in a formless hard-plastic baby chair on the dining table that reminded me of the McDonald’s Grimace character. My mom and Urban were standing around the island, and Lenaé was making chocolate covered strawberries for everyone at the stove while she described what had happened when my father was found dead. She threw some Ghirardelli chocolate in a small saucepan and let it melt. She dipped strawberries in the chocolate, and put them on a plate. She couldn’t wait for them to harden again before eating them, and Urban joined in. Aspyn pulled up a stool and climbed up on it to join in the action. She got chocolate all over her face, so Lenaé got a bib out of a kitchen drawer and put it on her.

“Thank you, Mommy,” Aspyn said sweetly.

Urban got a second bib out and put it on Lenaé, barely able to get the Velcro ends to touch. She wore it proudly.

“Do you like my bib, Aspyn?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“I like yours, too!”

I took off my coat and hung it on the back of a chair at the dining table. Aspyn busied herself licking the chocolate off her strawberries as Lenaé continued her recounting of her time at our grandmother’s apartment.

“Grandma was so weird. She was so protective of dad. When the ambulance came, they were trying to ask her questions and she was really defensive. They asked her if he had been taking any prescription medications, and she said, ‘He was not a druggie!’ They tried to tell her that they weren’t saying he was a druggie, but she kept saying that he never used drugs, never drank and didn’t smoke.”

None of this was true. My dad had almost always been a smoker, though he’d occasionally publicly quit and then start up again in secret. He’d stopped drinking when I was a kid due to some sort of Christian conviction, but I’d taught my parents to drink again when I was 21. He’d never really gotten into recreational drugs, but he was a hypochondriac and was always starting up some new regimen of dietary supplements. I guess hypochondriacs are vindicated when they just up and die.

“I guess he’d been cold a lot lately,” Lenaé continued, “and I guess for the last couple of days, he was complaining that his leg hurt. The ambulance guys think maybe he had a blood clot in his leg that broke loose or something and went to his heart.”

“Ouch,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Yeah, so when Grandma got up, he was sitting there next to the heater vent with his magazines. She went back to her bedroom for a little while, and when she came back, he was keeled over dead.”

“I can’t imagine…” I said.

“I don’t know what she’s going to do with herself now,” Lenaé went on, “She thought Dad was living with her to take care of her, and I guess he kind of did. He mowed the lawn, he did the grocery shopping and whatever.”

“He wasn’t there to take care of her,” I pointed out, “He had no other place to go. She was just another person to use while he waited for God to make him a millionaire.”

“I know,” Lenaé replied, “and she told me that he’d run up $20,000 on her credit card.”

“$20,000?!”

“Yeah, he said he needed it for gas and stuff to get her around. Grandma was like, ‘I thought it seemed a little much, but we needed the gas.’”

“She’s in denial,” I said. “Who spends $20,000 in gas in just a couple of years? In Moses Lake of all places. What a fucking dick. He totally took advantage of his old mother.”

“That’s true, but in her eyes, he could do no wrong. I guess he was trying to market some kind of energy drink. He’d found a company that would make it for him, and he was trying to get investors. Grandma says it was going to make big money for him and he had some company in China ready to invest, but they never did. Grandma says the Chinese screwed him. Everything would have been better, and he would have had all this money if the Chinese would’ve just paid him what they promised him.”

“Same old story,” I said. “He was always on the verge of striking it rich with some ‘big idea,’” I made air quotes, “and would screw everyone he knew out of their money with the promise of a big payback.”

Aspyn was still up on her stool, hovering over the strawberries. She seemed to be having more fun picking out the perfect strawberries than actually eating them, though she was finishing each one before selecting another.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking bad about him,” my mom said.

“I don’t see why not,” I shot back. “Can any of us think about anything positive to say about him? Are we supposed to pretend he was a good guy now that he’s dead?”

“I guess not,” my mom answered.

“He was going crazy!” Lenaé said.

“He’s been crazy for a long time,” I pointed out.

“No, but I mean seriously crazy. When I was at Grandma’s house today, I saw all these vision notebooks he’d been making. There were tons of them, all full of scraps cut out of magazines. You know, like from The Secret or whatever. Books and books full of these collages about success and blessing and God. There was one in there about you, too.”

“About me?”

“Yeah, it had your name, and “son” and all of that. I wonder if he wished you guys had a better relationship. Grandma says sometimes he would just cry on the couch about how he’d lost his son.”

“Whatever! If that was true, why was he sending me all of those psycho emails and doing everything he could to get under my skin? He would do whatever he could to piss me off. Maybe he was like a little kid. You know, ‘any attention is good attention.’ Maybe he was just trying to piss me off to get a reply from me, but if he was so sad about losing his son, he had a piss-poor way of showing it. He could have just tried to be a good person.”

“Has he still been emailing you?” my mom asked.

“No, I just realized a few weeks ago that it had been a while. I searched my inbox and saw that it had been almost a year since he sent me the last psycho email. I was wondering why life seemed so peaceful,” I laughed.

“What would he say?” my mom asked.

“Oh my God, they were crazy,” Lenaé answered. I’d been in the habit of forwarding my dad’s emails to her so we could laugh about them together, but I’d never shared them with my mom.

“There was a lot of stuff about God. A lot of suggesting that I’m gay, that you’re a lesbian or whatever. He was kind of obsessed with my atheism and belief in evolution, and somehow he connected that to an idea that I might not be his real son. If only that were true,” I laughed. “He had some kind of fixation on dreams, too. You know how I’ve always had night terrors? He started saying things like ‘enjoy your nite dreams’ all the time, and it was funny because he could rarely spell “night” right. Or he’d sign off with ‘happy dreams’ or anything about dreams. But, he’d say it in that suggestive, manipulative way where you’re supposed to guess at what he means. Here, I’ll show you.”

I got out my phone and did a search of my inbox for the emails I’d gotten from him. I handed my phone to my mom so she could read.

From: d h <dunamis1@live.com> To: doug@_work_address_.com Date: Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 12:56 PM Subject: evolution

Doug; Just thought i would let you know that the “Return of the planet of APES”, is now playing at your favorite theater. There is a Genealogy website. Hope all of your night dreams come true!!! Doug PS. those that do not believe in GOD. they would not believe in Satan either, all their nightmares would be their reality show for eternity, no do overs Have a great weekend or weekbeginning.

“That’s weird,” my mom said, giving my phone back to me.

I pulled up another one and gave my phone back to my mom.

From: d h <dunamis1@live.com> To: doug@_work_address_.com Date: Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 11:44 AM Subject: Dreams

Doug if you are having dreams. Ie nightmares? Read job 33 verses 13 thru 18. Of course you do not believe in a heavenly father . God. Of course you are happy. Then theres your evolution belief. If you study it and the creationism to balance your thought. Yes i said study. There are dumb intellectuals. Anyway yous evolution sperm ir the progeny of the alpha male look like their sperm doner. The alpha ape, or bull elk. Read on dna, maybe you can read the article in mens journal. Paternity fraud. On dna . Its said that 10 percent of the us population are not the biological offspring of the men they presume are their fathers. Of courre at 5 you said i was not your dad and could not tell you what to do.. You have said maoy timer i war never a father. Of courre once you called me . Pops. Lenae told you were adopted because you dont look like me or her or corinne. There is the same thing with don and melainee. Yes the do have a birth certificate. Except a daughter concieved out of wedlock and born has a birth certificate and looks like her ukraoian father. Oh melaine hasent told the truth to her daughter. Ro i hope your evolution theory works? Yes you twitch your foot in bed wheo you dont feel good. Just like your mother. It like coming out of the closet. !? I respect your being naive, like your mother. It is genetic dna. You should study . I Raised you as my own. Son. Just like i raised . Lenae, my daughter. I Apoligise it was not good enough according to your standardr. please do not interpret this wrong. Or twirt it or spin it. I Am not working on restoration as father and son. Look in the mirror., was lenae right ? Oh did you read the phone app about whether your child is gay?. Its all the fathers fault. Not genetiC. Have a great day. I Laugh at lenaes calling you here wino brother. In the old days it was a drunk, today its a sophisticated drunk. Chow . Doug

“What was his deal with your dreams?” my mom asked.

“I don’t know. I think he was just trying to think of anything that would get under my skin. He was a manipulator, so he would always say things that left him plausible deniability while still trying to get some point across. I asked him once why he was so obsessed with the dreams—my dreams—but I didn’t get a straight answer. You could never get a straight answer of any kind out of him.”

“But he stopped emailing you?”

“Yeah. For a long time I told him to stop emailing me, but that just seemed to egg him on. Then, all of a sudden, his emails didn’t make me angry anymore. I don’t know why, but I just kind of got over it. I’d tried to hide from him for so long, and he’d keep finding ways of telling me that was impossible. Even before the magazine, he’d find people to ask where I was working, what I was doing, everything. He’d just show up at my new job just to let me know that he knew. It was like a threat without saying anything threatening. After we started the magazine, though, my email address was all over everything, so he started emailing me directly. It made me so angry for so long, but then one day, I just didn’t care anymore. Maybe I just realized that there was nothing he could do to actually hurt me anymore.”

“It’s still weird, though,” my mom said.

“Yeah, but it’s kind of funny, too, like watching a chihuahua thinking he’s the big dog on the block. I started sharing Dad’s emails with friends when we were out drinking, and we’d all have a good laugh. Some of them were so funny! I told Dad that in a reply, and he stopped emailing for weeks, but eventually he got his confidence back and it all started up again. I really think he’d gone crazy, so it was kind of fascinating.”

“Tell her about the Spandex thing,” Lenaé suggested.

“Oh, I don’t know what the deal was with that. Those were actually the last emails I ever got from him, and I never replied to those.”

From: d h <dunamis1@live.com> To: doug@_work_address_.com Date: Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 6:44 PM Subject: Do you sell spandex

2 packs of cigarettes and 4 vendie starbucks. A day; its about the paycheck?

From: d h <dunamis1@live.com> To: doug@_work_address_.com Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 2:40 PM Subject: Are you really?

From: d h <dunamis1@live.com> To: doug@_work_address_.com Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 2:42 PM Subject: Do you think?

Doug. Are you really selling spamdey? Pop

“I don’t get it,” my mom said.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to get,” I told her. “If I were to guess, I’d think that he was just trying to let me know that he’d found out I was working at Eddie Bauer. It also might have something to do with his bike-riding. He was pretty worked up about that when he’d heard you’d made a joke to someone about him wearing Spandex when he was riding his bike.”

“I did not!” my mom objected. “I saw him riding his bike by the library once, and I told a friend that he acted like he thought he was hot shit in his Spandex.”

“Well, he heard things, and went into this big thing about how much weight he’d lost, what kind of bike he had, and he went on about how professional bike-riders wear riding shorts, and how these big-time bike-riders that he rode with all wore them. I told him that I didn’t care about any of that, but that I remembered him as a fat guy, and the idea of him in Spandex was pretty funny,” I laughed. “He probably started biking, because he couldn’t put gas in the tank anymore.”

“Maybe,” my mom laughed.

“Anyway, this last year has been quiet. Maybe he was too preoccupied with his vision books to email me anymore.”

“I brought a couple of them home with me,” Lenaé told me. “They’re over there on the end table.”

I was curious. I grabbed my glass of whiskey and took it over to the table that stood between the back of the couch and the walkway to the kitchen. There were two thick books sitting there. One was a ruled notebook and the other was a binder the size of a day-planner and thick as a phone book.

I took a sip of whiskey and set my glass down on the table. I picked up a book and opened it. Page after page of magazine clippings haphazardly arranged and adhered with a glue stick. Each page or set of facing pages had a theme, and Lenaé was right, they were mostly about success, money and God. Some had actual pictures of cash. Others had boats and planes and mansions. They all had clippings of words (success, wealth, et al.), some passages of Bible verses from religious tracts or books, and a few handwritten notes. It was both frightening and fascinating to see a mind breaking down by way of the things it chose to compile together in this way.

“This reminds me of when Dad used to tape pictures of a Mercedes on the refrigerator,” I called into the kitchen, “except it’s even worse.”

“I know!” Lenaé shouted back. “There were a bunch of these, but I only took two.”

I noticed a picture of my sister and me on one page. It was surrounded with clippings that said, “your seed,” “like you,” and our names. The whole page seemed to be devoted to restoration of the family. Phrases like “happy reunion” and “family ties” were interspersed with “modern day prodigal son” and “the family blessing.” One combined message read, “I believe God will turn it around.” I laughed quietly to myself. Apparently God hadn’t gotten around to it in time.

There was a part of me that wanted to get a couple of books to take home with me to add to the “box of bullshit” that my mom had given me. The “box of bullshit,” as my mom called it, was a collection of all of the creepy notes, letters, brochures and other things that my dad had taped to her door, left on her windshield or conspicuously placed for her to find after breaking into her house. There were long, handwritten letters to my mom’s divorce lawyer—who used to be my father’s lawyer, too, because they knew each other from church—accusing him of being a worshipper of Satan; accusing him of being gay because the Christian fish symbol that Bill had on his road sign was actually a secret, cultish symbol of homosexuality; accusing him of illegal activity and conflict of interest; accusing him of whatever he could think up. He would write and send one of these long, crazy letters every day knowing that as my mom’s divorce lawyer, Bill was obligated to read them. He did this until Bill found my mom another lawyer and stepped down as lead counsel in her divorce. I’d asked my mom for the “box of bullshit,” because I was fascinated by it. It represented layer upon layer of insanity. I decided against asking for vision books, because I didn’t want to go through the steps of getting them. So, I just snapped a couple of photos with my phone.

I picked up my glass, downed the last of the whiskey in it, and took it back to the kitchen. I grabbed the bottle and poured myself two more fingers.

Cypress was getting fussy in her plastic chair. Urban, who’d been trying to keep her entertained while we talked, had run out of tricks. He picked her up and took her to the couch in the living room, laying her down next to him with a blanket and turned on the TV.

“Aspyn, let’s get you ready for bed,” my mom said.

“OK, Nana,” she replied, hopping down from her stool. Lenaé removed her own bib and then took Aspyn’s off, using it to wipe the chocolate off of her face. I put on my coat, grabbed my glass and went back out onto the deck to smoke.

I lit a cigarette and took a big drag. Exhaling, the smoke seemed to crystallize in the cold air. I couldn’t tell how much of the cloud was smoke or just my breath. I exhaled a couple more breaths, watching the fog in the light coming through the sliding glass door from the kitchen. I took another drag from my cigarette and exhaled, examining the plume for distinct features. It was hard to tell.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check for text messages. There weren’t any new ones. It was getting late anyway. I could send a text, but I really didn’t have anything to say. I pocketed my phone again.

It was a good thing I had told Laura not to come. My mom and sister would have felt uncomfortable having a stranger there. Our family was always our secret. They’d have been polite to her, they’d certainly like her, but they would have felt intruded upon.

I wasn’t really sure what Laura would do if she were here. She’d want to “be there for me,” but I didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t need to talk, I didn’t need a shoulder to cry on. She would have been content to pass the time listening, or being helpful in any way that presented itself. She wouldn’t feel the need to dispense advice or offer her own anecdotes or words of encouragement. She’d just be there. I couldn’t imagine it would be fun for her, but I supposed death wasn’t supposed to be a fun occasion.

For a minute, I wished I had agreed to have Laura to come. I wished I felt worse so that I could hug her or lay my head in her lap while she lovingly stroked my hair and listened to me blather. I imagined her holding my hand to show support, solidarity and love. I imagined the bond that would come from her being the only one I’d ever allowed to experience the dysfunction of my family first-hand, though the source of that dysfunction had just been permanently removed. The idea of it was really attractive, a tragedy giving birth to restoration. Except there was no tragedy, and I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel anything, really. Nothing, that is, except the now-growing guilt about selfishly using these circumstances for my own benefit, even if it was only in my imagination. I’d done the right thing, but I was an asshole for even considering the alternative.

I took another drag from my cigarette as I paced in circles around the deck. I watched my breath hang in the air as I exhaled, before stubbing the cigarette out in the planter next to previous one. I went back inside.

My mom was putting on her coat, and everyone was saying their goodbyes.

“Do you want to stay here, or stay at my house,” my mom asked.

“I think I’ll come with you, if that’s OK,” I told her.

“Of course it’s OK,” she said.

I gave Lenaé a hug. She looked exhausted. Her makeup was smeared, her eyes were red, and even her posture gave away her fatigue. But, she was the strong one. She was the one who got things done. She was the one who took care of everybody. It was taking its toll.

I shook Urban’s hand, leaned in and told him quietly, “Thank you for being such a support for Lenaé and my mom.”

“Oh, hey, no problem,” he said, as if the kind of drama he’d had to endure with my family was just one of those things. He gave my mom a hug.

My mom and I walked out the door, and as we passed by the oversize urn at the front of the house, my mom remembered the cigarette butts we’d left there earlier. “I always take these with me,” she said. Neither Lenaé or Urban were smokers, so there wasn’t really a good place to put spent cigarettes. My mom didn’t want to stink up their garbage with them, so she always collected them and took them away when she left. That reminded me of the two I’d left in the planter on the back deck.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her, and raced back toward the front door. I let myself in, sped through the house, tossed an “I forgot something” at the surprised Lenaé and Urban, and went out to the back deck to collect my butts. I retraced my steps just as quickly, snatching up the unfinished bottle of whiskey on my way and tossing a “Goodnight!” at them before a conversation could be started, forcing another round of goodbyes.

I took my duffel and messenger bag out of the back seat of Lenaé’s Escalade, slipped the whiskey into one of them, and walked over to my mom’s white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. I unloaded my bags into her back seat as she started the car, and climbed in next to her. She cranked up the heater, switched on the headlights, and we backed out of the driveway.

“Well, that was fun,” I said dryly, just to fill the silence.

We made our way out of the valley, and navigated through the nearly empty streets of Moses Lake to my mom’s house. After parking in the driveway, I got my bags out of the back seat while she unlocked the front door of the house. I followed her into the split-level house, climbing the stairs to the main floor. I took my bags to the guest bedroom, setting them on the floor next to the twin bed. I dug out the bottle of whiskey and returned to the kitchen.

My mom was using the bathroom. I got a short glass down out of one of the cupboards, and poured myself a couple of fingers of whiskey. I looked in the fridge, and found an open bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle Gewürztraminer, so I got a wine stem down and poured a glass for my mom. When she joined me in the kitchen, I handed it to her.

“It’s late and I have to work tomorrow,” she said.

“It’s a small pour,” I pointed out, “and you could probably use it.” She accepted the glass and took a sip.

“I’m going out to smoke,” I told her. I hadn’t yet taken my coat off, and she put hers on to join me. We went out the doors from her kitchen to the deck in the back yard.

I set my glass of whiskey on the rail, lit a cigarette and began to pace around as I do. My mom, leaning against the house, lit a cigarette, pulled her black pea coat tighter around her and squatted down to preserve body heat.

“We match,” I laughed. I was also wearing a black pea coat.

She smiled. “I noticed that earlier,” she said.

“Your house is looking good,” I told her. “The cabinets turned out really well.”

“Oh my gosh, this house is so much work!” she said. “Every time I get something done, something else needs to be done.”

“Well, that’s what you were expecting, isn’t it? A fixer-upper?”

“Yeah, that’s true, but I just want everything done right now,” she said.

I paused, looking at her.

“How are you holding up?” I asked tentatively.

“I’m OK,” she said dismissively, as if she’d merely had a tough day at work. “How about you?”

“I’m OK, too,” I told her. “I don’t really feel one way or the other about it.”

“I wonder what your grandma is going to do,” my mom mused. “Whatever else your dad did, he did take care of her. I mean, he did the things that she couldn’t do herself.”

“Hmmm,” I replied. I didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of his living situation. The last time I’d seen him was at my mom’s divorce hearing several years prior. He’d approached me with a big grin and and offered a handshake like he was seeing a long lost friend, as if he hadn’t spent years acting like a psychopath. I didn’t shake his hand. I’d only seen him briefly three times in eleven years, each of which involved very few words. Other than all of his crazy emails, we’d had no contact. Anything I knew about him during that time was relayed to me by my mom and Lenaé when they needed to vent their frustrations.

I sipped on my whiskey. I liked how it warmed my insides while the weather was below freezing. There was a thawed circle in the frost where I’d set my glass, so I decided to make another one by setting my glass down on the rail a few inches to the left.

“Well, I need to go to bed,” my mom said. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’m tired, too.” I flicked the cherry off of my cigarette into the backyard, and we put our cigarette butts into a container that she kept there for that purpose. I reached into my coat pocket, and pulled out the ones we’d brought with us from Lenaé’s house, and dropped those in, too. We went back inside with our glasses.

My mom took the last sip of her wine and set her glass in the sink. “You can just leave your glass in the sink when you’re done with it. I’ll wash it in the morning,” she told me. “Do you think you’ll need any extra blankets on the bed in there?”

“No, I’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t worry about me.”

“OK,” she said, giving me a hug. She held the hug a few seconds longer than usual. When she let go, she said, “I love you, son. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I love you too,” I told her. “Sleep well.”

She headed down the hall to her bedroom. I poured another two fingers of whiskey and went back outside. I took a sip, and then set my glass back on the rail to thaw a third circle in the frost. I lit another cigarette that I didn’t really want, but it was the only thing I could think of to do.

The grass in the backyard was short and frosted over. The flowerbeds were bare. Over the chain-link fence and across a gravel lot, I could see the back end of the UPS processing facility. The floodlights cast a cold, antiseptic light on everything around the building, and while it was still dim on the deck where I was standing, I hated looking at the grating light beyond.

I was shivering from the cold. I took another sip of whiskey, and checked on the status of my circle in the frost. It was coming along nicely. I set the glass back down carefully in the exact same spot so it could continue to thaw.

I began to wonder why I’d come. I didn’t have any particularly sentimental words of encouragement to offer my family, and I didn’t need any encouragement myself. I wasn’t providing any real benefit, but I was doing what you’re supposed to do, right? Wasn’t it the right thing to do? To go be with your family when someone dies? Our situation was different than most, I guessed. Still, as much as I’d kept myself removed from the drama created by my dad, leaving my mom and sister to deal with him without me, I’d at least always been there to listen. Well, in recent years I had been. This would be my last experience related to my father. This was my last opportunity to deal with his poison directly. I was here for my family. And I was here to be a man.

I flicked my cherry into the backyard, and dropped my butt into the container. I grabbed my glass, found the thawed circle beneath it satisfactory, and went back inside. I set my glass down on the counter and took my coat off, hanging it on the back of a chair at the dining table. I finished my whiskey in a gulp, triggering a little gag reflex that I burped away. I put my glass in the sink, turned out the lights, and headed down the dark hall to the guest bedroom.

The guest bedroom was one of my mom’s unfinished projects. The walls were blue and there were dinner plate-sized polka dots in various places. Apparently, it had been some kid’s room in the past. The only piece of furniture in the room was a twin-sized bed. It had been my bed in high school and my mom had held onto it, because it was a good mattress.

I dug my laptop out of my messenger bag and plugged it into an outlet behind the bed. I took off my shoes, my socks, my jeans and my sweater, turned out the light, and climbed into the cold bed in my tee shirt and boxers. I was used to my king sized bed, so it was awkward being back in a twin. I was accustomed to taking my laptop to bed with me and falling asleep while watching something. There wasn’t much room for both me and my laptop, but I could still get into my preferred Superman sleeping position and make it work. My mom didn’t have internet service, so I started up a downloaded copy of Pi that I’d been meaning to watch.

I closed my eyes.

I’m looking at a brass mallard. It’s heavy and it seems important. It has tattered green felt on the bottom that’s coming away at the edges. The felt is there so the duck doesn’t scratch the desk. I wonder what would happen if I tore the felt off?