Marlboro Reds

13

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High school graduation is a month away. As valedictorian, I am asked to give a speech but somehow I get out of it. My brain turns to oatmeal after dad’s death. I don’t remember much between dad’s memorial service and graduation. Is it the cold medicine I take for a cough — and then a little longer — that pleasantly numbs my senses? I float through the final weeks of high school barely touching solid ground. A thick, black gauze tangles itself around my body. I start slamming doors; a hinged finality briefly startling me back to life.

Shortly after the memorial dad’s body is sent to the crematorium. One of his close psychiatrist friends, who mom unaffectionately calls “Luke the Kook,” recommends that we visit his body before the cremation. None of us do. The police report — a steering wheel lodged into his ribcage — paints a clear enough picture for me. The day after his cremation the local newspaper reports that the Paper Valley Crematorium caught fire. I don’t know how many bodies are turned to ash in a small town in one day but I can’t imagine a lot. I fantasize that when dad’s soul was released from its 49 year-old home, it burst forth with such magnificence that the hot, brick oven couldn’t contain it. He escaped the confines of mortal life with one hearty, flagrant roar.

I attend prom with a group of friends and my dear, platonic buddy Greg as my date. Greg has been a close friend ever since our lockers were placed alphabetically next to each other in junior high. Warner. Waters. He is a talented artist and fills my locker door year after year with his illustrations of coked-out Charlie Browns, caricatures of teachers and large-nostrilled genteel. I hang them next to my collection of airline vomit bags, an obsession I still don’t entirely understand. Barf bags excluded, I save all of my locker art for decades in a file labeled Greg. I can’t bear to throw his notebook doodles out.

two prom dates—one to my left, one wrapped around me

Before the dance, we meet at a friend’s house on the Fox River for photos. I wear a short, sequined, polka-dot dress with dad’s Harley Davidson leather jacket. I swim in the wide-shouldered, cowhide blanket but I need dad’s weight and smell on me. I find a pack of half-smoked Marlboro Reds in the inside zip-pocket when I take it off. Wait, dad smoked? I thought he had one rebellious moment with a cigarette a decade ago, but his biker identity was illusive to all of us so I shouldn’t be surprised.

When the parent’s are done snapping photos my friends and I walk down to the river. I pull out the pack from dad’s jacket, happy to share one of his secrets with my friends.

“Oh you bad boy Dave,” my friend Ana says as she reaches into the crumpled pack. I wonder how much time has passed since his fingers grazed these white tips. I have a sudden and secret impulse to hold every cigarette in my hands. I want to press them to my cheek, shove them in my mouth, make whatever is left of dad a part of me.

While my imagination devours a tobacco buffet, my friends light up and one by one, quietly take a little bit of David Warner into their lungs.

“To Dave,” they say, exhaling him into the late spring breeze. He twirls easily into nothingness while my lungs try to hold him near. I sit on the edge of the river bank letting the smoke warm my mostly-virgin bronchi and watch my friends. I am overwhelmed by their kindness and sincerity. Turns out, sharing time, puberty and cheap beer can form deep bonds.

The morning of graduation a few friends go fishing and catch a foot-long carp. So naturally, they bring it to the ceremony sealed in a few layers of saran-wrap. As the procession of students winds up to the podium to receive diplomas a fish emerges from a river of black caps as if jumping for flies. I walk up, accept my diploma and sit back down with the same enthusiasm as taking out the trash. The empty chair next to mom makes the ceremony feel like a useless right of passage so a dead fish flopping around during graduation couldn’t feel more appropriate.

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