A Strange Sort of Company
I was shocked by how much had changed. The road was the same, at least insofar as the curves and cross streets, but it had been repaved. I missed the rumble of tires on broken asphalt, the low growl of my engine choking on cheap gas. Between the new tread on the rental car and the smooth, black surface of the road, the whole thing felt like a record without the grooves; the music of it was gone.
Shopping centers had sprung up by the exits, bright and clean and empty, spilling white light into the same dark sky I’d often glimpsed through my father’s old telescope, his hand guiding mine, his voice whispering the names of constellations.
“That’s Orion,” he’d say. “See the shield, the outline of the hunter? He boasted that he was the best in the world, so Zeus had him killed by a giant scorpion. You know how it goes.” I’d nod, even though they all looked, to me, like clusters of stars.
It was my father’s funeral that had brought me here. I’d known he was dying, but still—you’re never really prepared for the way that phone call hits you. I got off the freeway and made my way along the backroads.
Some of it looked exactly as I remembered. There I was, fishing in the creek behind our synagogue with Andy, leaning against the dusty walls of the movie theatre in line for Fatal Attraction, waking up in my jeans on Jordan’s living room couch, the TV still playing.
Three identical blue houses still stood along the left side of The Arlington, waiting to be watched from the window of a bus on the way to school. 98.7 still blasted the Christian Rock my sister and I listened to when we wanted to torture our mother. I looked for the Rose Garden just off of Grant Street, but it was gone.
It’s funny how we expect our old corners of the world to be put on hold as we work and shop and buy houses and generally make a mess of things. I found myself fuming at the new and better supermarkets, the repaved roads. People passed laws conserving all sorts of swamps and valleys they deemed sufficiently heavy with history; had no one thought to protect mine?
The funeral was nice, I guess. Forty or so people packed themselves into the small synagogue at the top of Spruce Road. I’d spent much of my young life there, and still, I always denied that its teachings would come to inform my worldview. I spoke, briefly, to say that I was grateful for the support, and that I missed my father, and that I loved him.
After the reception, I swam through the throng of guests, trying to avoid eye contact. The script was always the same.
Thank you. I’m doing all right. Yes, he was. It is hard, but I’ll be okay. Yes, thank you.
A woman tapped me on the shoulder. “Joel, it’s good to see you. I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?”
“Thank you, it’s good to see you, too. I’m doing all right,” I said. I studied her face. She was entirely unfamiliar to me.
“Your dad was always so kind, I mean, just the sweetest man, really,” she said.
“Yes, he was.”
“And you’re sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” I said. She paused for a moment, looking at me. She seemed to be waiting for something. Then she smiled. It was a sad little smile, the kind you might give an old man when he complained that the nurse was stealing from him. I brushed away the thought.
“Well, it was great seeing you, and again, I’m just so sorry,” she said finally.
“Yes, you as well, thank you.”
I watched her fade back into the reception before it hit me. The lines by the corner of her eyes, the music of her voice . . . this woman had once been Jenny. Jenny, whose hands had pulled me over the sagging, chain-link fence of the local pool at two o’clock in the morning. Jenny, whose mother made the best lasagna imaginable, whose sense of fashion was so bad you couldn’t help but admire her bravery, and whose lips I had once kissed on a blue sofa by the window of my best friend’s living room.
I wanted to run after her, to tell her I remembered, to ask her how she was. Instead, I slowly made my way across the room, saying yes, and thank you, and he really was, until the courtesies faded into one another, and the people became a mess of moving mouths and reaching hands, and I found myself back in the rental car.
The house was what I’d really been dreading. I hadn’t been back since my wedding, when the yard was full of balloons, and my mother painted the steps like a rainbow. It seemed a shame to give up the memory in favor of sorting through boxes.
I opened the door quickly and stepped inside. It was cleaner than I’d expected, and a little contrived. It looked as though I might have found it tucked between the pages of a realtor’s pamphlet, but I supposed that once he was on his own, my father had finally taken the opportunity to remove the ragged couch and bright posters that had defined so much of my childhood.
I made my way into the study. Even now, entering the space felt mischievous. I waited for my mother to poke her head through the doorway. What are you doing, Jo? You know Dad doesn’t like you to be in here without him.
Most of the stuff was garbage: tax returns and junk mail and textbooks I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to read. I decided to keep my old report cards, but found little else of value.
The rest of the house was mostly bare. I salvaged a few mugs I thought I remembered, and a pillow I’d embroidered for Mother’s Day a million years ago, and continued to look around for something I could hold on to. Where were the photos, the journals, the old calendars? Everything was too new, too unfamiliar. Someone had painted over the initials we’d scratched into the wall beside the fridge. Our old TV had been tossed aside in favor of a flat screen.
I headed back into the study to grab the report cards and noticed a letter on the side of my father’s desk. Finally, I thought, here was something of his I could hold on to. I turned it over. It took me all of two seconds to realize the return address was mine; I had sent him the letter only weeks ago.
And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to put it down. I imagined my dad holding the paper between his fingers, reaching for his glasses. I imagined him doing his best to decipher my handwriting, thinking about what to say, setting the envelope on the corner of his desk. Maybe he was hoping to write back in the morning when the light was better. Maybe he went to the couch to watch the news and forgot all about it.
I read my own words until my hands started to shake and my eyes felt hot and the letters blurred together, and I sank to the floor, sobbing.
I cried for a while, thinking about his ridiculous status updates on Facebook, the way he always asked about the kids before he asked about me, the way he let them dye what was left of his hair over our summer break, the last time I’d seen him. I thought about his old tweed flat cap, a relic of the time he’d spent in the Lower East Side as a child, the long breaths he took between sentences, the way his hand felt on my shoulder. I thought about the first time he’d held onto me not as a gesture of warmth but to steady himself as we walked down a flight of concrete stairs, how scared it had made me for reasons I couldn’t quite put into words.
What did it matter if the town was no longer small and ragged, if my old friends had changed? He had changed too, long before the pills and nurses. It had been a long time since I’d spent a night chatting with him under the stars. For years, our conversations took place over the phone, our topics ranged from preschool to doctor’s appointments to politics.
It occurred to me that the man my high school classmates remembered had died long ago, little by little, and each time I’d had a chance to mourn alongside him. I’d cringed as he pulled out the holiday card from the year he forced us into matching sweaters, listened to him sigh as I attempted to spread my full-size sheets across a twin-size bed in an empty dorm room.
Those losses were gradual, and shared. Most of them had long since been forgotten. I was longing for the man I’d written two weeks ago, the man who was old, and contemplative, and grouchy sometimes. It’s one thing to miss someone you remember. It is quite another to feel that they should still be with you.
I packed the report cards and mugs into a small cardboard box, grabbed the pillow, and headed back to the car.
The road was still too smooth. The sky was still washed out. It didn’t bother me. I knew what I was looking for. I knew it would still be there.
It was a warm day, and the beach was lined with tents and towels. The lake was dotted with the bright colors of children’s swimsuits and life jackets. I took off my shoes, enjoying the warmth of the sand on the bottoms of my feet. There it was, perfectly preserved, a bright splash of color between the aging planks of the closest picnic table. My kids had insisted on pink, spreading the dye across his head, staining his hair. I closed my eyes. That was how I wanted to remember him: sitting in the sun, pink hair dye streaking down his back, watching me, and the kids, and the waves.
Running my hands over the cracked wood, I felt, for the first time, a closeness that was almost unbearable. I wanted desperately to see him sitting next me, to feel his calloused hand on my shoulder, to hear the rough edges of his voice over the wind. I opened my eyes.
I was alone, of course, and lonely, but it was a loneliness that felt for all the world like a strange sort of company.
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Asher Witkin is a singer-songwriter from Berkeley, California. While these are his first published pieces of writing, you can find his music wherever you listen to songs; or check out his website at asherwitkin.com.