By Mary Herman
Summer 2014 Kaplan Award Winner
I stepped out to smoke a cigarette. I hid them in my pocket and said I was going for a walk, which wasn’t a total lie. I promised myself that I’d never buy a pack, so when I found my brother’s ex-girlfriend’s secret stash in the car he and I shared, it felt precious. Although, precious is a strong word for unfiltered Pall Malls. Is that really what she smoked? They were terrible, but I was desperate.
I started smoking when I was with my ex-boyfriend, Eoin. After we made love, he’d reach for the nightstand and pull out a pack of Menthols and a sleeve of Irish biscuits. We’d sit up in his twin bed together, the window open beside us, and pass the cigarette back and forth, taking turns while the nicotine made its way into our bloodstreams. I’d never felt more relaxed, more in love, more connected to a single moment.
I left the property, turning left and right, trying to get lost in the sweet sticky afternoon of Tampa, Florida. I wove through flat pavements of craftsman houses with lawns of crabgrass, looking for the perfect spot to stop and smoke my terrible, precious, unfiltered Pal Mall. I found a seat at the edge of someone’s lawn where a tree gave shade. I lit up and inhaled carefully, it was harsh. A few of those made me feel light and comfortable. I didn’t know how to relax anymore on my own. I’d finished my first two years at community college, but managed to fuck up everything else by cheating on Eoin with someone else who I didn’t so much love, as I was addicted to. I pushed away my friends, and started smoking more, well aware that everything I was doing was hurting me. Maybe I wanted to be hurt. Maybe I wanted a reason to start anew. Slash and burn. Maybe I was just running away from responsibility.
I looked around at the manicured houses. I thought how comfortable it would be to live in one, to decorate it just so, to be happy.
I was in Tampa to see grandpa for the last time. His heart was giving up. So was mine. Figuratively. I didn’t know what to make of his dwindling life – a renowned, wealthy businessman, now clouded in the mind and resented by his children, at least a little bit. But I was his grandchild, removed from his leaving my grandma with six children and a mortgage to pay, from his first remarriage, to his second, then his third. Removed from it all, but not involved in any other kind of relationship with him. My grandpa was faint in my memory, only a stern figure who tsk-tsked my poor grammar and etiquette. My step-grandma, Joanie, always referred to him as Gramps. I never quite picked up on the nickname. It felt forced.
I made the trip out with my Dad, someone I also didn’t have much of a relationship with. He was another one of those important businessmen who wore a blue tooth in his ear and would “touch base” with his colleagues, having his “people” contact with theirs.
Dad was the third child of six and when my grandpa walked out, my older uncles did their own thing – got into drugs, checked out. Dad was younger than them and didn’t do so much of that, but old enough to understand the severity of what was going on. I know these things because my aunts and uncles have told me. Now that I’m older, we drink together and things slip out. They tell me that my dad didn’t break down under pressure the way the rest of the family did. He talked my aunt out of suicide, and mediated when emotions ran high. He was dyslexic and repeated the third grade, but played college soccer, finished a masters in biology, and paved the way for his younger brother who was also dyslexic. I don’t want to raise my dad on too high a pedestal, though. He took a middle way, making amends with my grandpa, working for his company, turning into him just a little bit. But in his own way he tried to be a better father to me and my siblings. I love him for that.
When we arrived at Grandpa and Joanie’s expensive house, Joanie opened the door. She didn’t seem excited to see us like she usually did. She seemed exhausted. It’s a lot of work being a martyr. “Just call me nurse Joanie,” she’d say lightly, but with an undertone of obligation.
Grandpa bought the house, but it was really Joanie’s. She picked it out, she decorated it, she had her own room. It was given that she’d spend more time living alone there than with Grandpa. The house felt like Joanie – modern, expensive, cold. White walls met high ceilings and resounded every step I made on the hard tile floors. It was a museum and the exhibit of the month was the dying man in the other room.
I took a seat on the white couch while I waited for the adults to tell me what we were doing. The rug was white too, so were the two chairs across from it. The only thing that wasn’t white was the painting of Bob Dylan perched on the easel in the corner. I knew Joanie had painted it – Bob Dylan was the only music she listened to, as if the man alone could be considered a genre. He was also the one subject she had multiple paintings of. This one was bright in color, a psychedelic image of his face, hair spiraling out to the edge of the canvas. It was obvious that the explosion of color in contrast to the white living room was intentional.
I felt dirty in comparison to it all. I sat there in the white room – a little hippie – with long arm pit hair peeking out of my tank top, sweaty palms, and greasy hair. My dad came in the room. He looked clean in his collared shirt and dark denim jeans. His expensive cologne smelled subtle and paired nicely with the house, unlike me. He looked at his phone while he spoke to me, “Mary, you should get up before Joanie sees you sitting there.”
“Are you serious?”
He laughs, “Yeah I’m fuckin’ serious.”
I got up and went out to the porch, like a dog.
The horse races were on T.V., Joanie had money on one of them. The volume was on low and the flashing images were constantly in her peripheral. She passed by every hour or so to check on her bet.
I took note of the underweight jockeys riding the overworked animals and thought about how wealthy my family was – how it felt like we were characters from a Wes Anderson film, but less poetic.
Later, the adults ushered me into the room where the main exhibit was. They left me alone with him. I listened to the sounds of the hospital equipment while we waited for something deeper to surface. His mind was cloudy and he told me things I later tried to interpret like dreams.
“I eavesdropped on your mind.”
His hands were boney and freckled.
“I always envisioned you stepping out of a limousine . . .”
They trembled as he spoke.
“You receiving recognition for something and people applauding . . . ”
I caught his fluttering hand in the air and held it between the two of mine.
“A man standing next to you in a suit and tie, giving you a tap on the right shoulder.”
I massaged the muscles under the skin of his palm and his thumb stroked mine back.
I watched him fall asleep and let myself cry, not at his death, but at the humanity of it all. Need, connection, love. I thought about the selfish things I’d done, that he’d done, but how we’re just as easily dependent on others.
Grandpa woke up from his nap with a lucid mind that had Dad and I convene on the porch with him. I was barefoot, sitting on the concrete steps with a black tank top on and black cotton shorts. Dad and Grandpa sat in wicker chairs. We watched the wind ripple the pool water and listened to the sounds of cars drive by while we waited for something deeper to surface.
It was lingering somewhere between the clouds of Grandpa’s thoughts, in a haze of mixed memories and a smog of emotions.
Grandpa addressed Dad, “Frankly, Jim, I don’t think you ever gave a shit about me.”
It came down like acid rain and I watched as it soaked Dad’s clothes and seeped through his skin to the bone.
He was silent.
Joanie retrieved Grandpa, and when he was inside, Dad stood up, so did I. I looked at his round, blue eyes, the same as mine, and watched them well with water as he walked my way. He opened his arms for a hug, and when I received it, he crumbled into me. Holding his weight, I realized we were the same height. I let his tears soak my clothes and seep through my skin to the bone.