Here Lies a Father. Mckenzie Cassidy
Cadillac dropped about a foot and released a metallic groan. He breathed a sigh of relief also, one he’d been holding inside to rally his robust midsection around the steering wheel. The car smelled stale too, like cigarette smoke. I glanced at the dashboard, at the ashtray more specifically, and saw that the small plastic container with a reflective facade of stainless steel was clean and untouched. Smoking in the car didn’t bother me much. There wasn’t a time I rode in the car when my parents didn’t have cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. The reek of smoke stuck to everything we owned, from the clothes on our backs to the bags we carried to school, and our walls always turned yellow from the burning nicotine.
Uncle Neil drove through the side of town Catherine and I hadn’t seen when we first arrived. The nicer houses were near the center of New Brimfield. The neighborhoods reminded me of a cul-de-sac on which my family had once lived. A cul-de-sac was a fancy way of saying dead end. Most of our neighbors were doctors and lawyers—professionals—and I’m certain we were the only ones on the block who didn’t own our house. None of them knew that, of course. Mom kept the house up, planted fresh flowers under the windowsills and mowed our well-fertilized, emerald-green yard. During the holidays, like Christmas or the Fourth of July, Mom sent Catherine and me out with boxes of fudge for the neighbors, or miniature American flags to stick in their front yards. No one had any idea we didn’t belong in that neighborhood, and they certainly didn’t know we barely scrounged up enough money each month to pay rent and utilities. Everything was an act, but for a time, it worked.
Mom said she had no interest in owning a home because she didn’t want to be held down in one place for too long. Her only valued possessions were pictures. She was compelled to always document the good times. Our walls were covered in picture frames of all shapes and sizes, easy to swap out or strike down, based on her mood or fancy. Sometimes she even hung a frame with the stock photo to further an aesthetic only she had in mind. There were pictures she only put out when certain people visited, like her mother, and others she replaced periodically to conceal outdated hairstyles or months when she had put on unexpected weight. For her, the placement of pictures was an art of personal expression, and they each told a story, her story. As the years passed I noticed fewer pictures with Dad. I didn’t know why he had been excluded, but a simple answer would’ve been that he wasn’t around as much.
Uncle Neil drove under two flashing red lights on Main Street and took a sharp right onto a dirt road. Thick forests surrounded the car on both sides. Only the occasional gravel driveway leading to cabins and camping pavilions indicated that anyone else lived in the area. I pushed open the backseat window about six inches, as far as it would go, and breathed in the fresh country air. I caught a whiff of saturated soil, pungent pine needles. We sat quietly and I grew queasy, either from stress or the bumpy road. I took a series of deep breaths, which seemed to help. An uncle I’d just met was driving me to the home of an aunt I never knew existed, to meet an estranged family who was likely as uninterested in me as my sister Catherine was in them. I was journeying into uncharted territory and Catherine was a tether to the only reality I’d ever known. The next two days would be daunting for sure, but something about the situation felt right.
When Neil slowed the Cadillac and began turning into a driveway, I sat up and pressed myself against the glass to take a good look. Marie’s house was long and narrow, a manufactured home—not a trailer, exactly—painted a drab shade of gray. The front patio was a later addition, supported by a pile of cinder blocks and covered with a makeshift roof of corrugated tin. The windows were smaller than in typical houses and overlooked patches of dead grass. If not for the white smoke that seeped from the stovepipe chimney and a car parked out front, I would’ve thought it abandoned. We stepped across a muddy driveway and our shoes sank into the bog. I’d have to take mine off to avoid tracking mud across Marie’s house, but my socks felt wet so I’d have to change them too. That’s when I suddenly realized that Catherine and I had no change of clothes, not even a toothbrush. We had never expected to stay the night.
Neil stepped onto the porch, opened the screen door, and knocked. Marie answered, smiling, and ushered us inside, which was surprisingly warm and pleasant despite its rough exterior. The living room had a deep red shag carpet and she asked us to sit down on her blue sectional couch. She even pulled a wooden lever on the side so I could recline and raise my feet.
“Take a load off, everyone,” she said, busying herself in the kitchen. “I’m going to fix some coffee.”
Oak-colored cabinets lined one side of her kitchen while the adjacent wall was plastered in blue-and-white wallpaper with floral designs. She didn’t have as many pictures in her house as Mom did—in fact, no one did—but I saw one of a young man, his wife, and a baby. I didn’t want to ask her because it was none of my business, but I assumed they were her family. Photographs are often unreliable, though. They only capture a moment in time, seldom the truth. Mom toiled over every picture hanging on our walls. They told a story and were displayed in a very specific way. Her personal favorites were from her own happy childhood in Fairfall Valley, a tiny hamlet in upstate New York, even smaller than Wellbourne.
There was no better place in the entire world to grow up, she said. I stewed with jealousy when she described her youth to me and I never stopped to wonder if that was the reaction she had intended. We’d never have it as good as she had—end of story. Her family was poor, yes, but happy. She left town at nineteen for a job waiting tables in Wellbourne, in her own words, “to get away from your grandmother.” That’s when she met my father, Thomas Daly, a well-respected manager of the community’s only hotel. He served on numerous civic and nonprofit boards. Some people said he could’ve run for mayor and won.
Catherine and I spent most of our summers in Fairfall Valley. Mom dropped us off with my Aunt Cynthia, who lived next door to my grandmother. Our stays with Aunt Cynthia felt like days or weeks, but I couldn’t recall precisely. We caught rainbow trout from creeks nearby; they glistened and writhed in our hands. We had to cut our fishing lines with curved shears when snapping turtles attached to the lure. The snapping turtles were also the reason we didn’t go swimming. On breezy afternoons we ran through rows of cornstalks, hot streaks of sunshine boring through the gaps in the leaves, until giant bumblebees stung our legs and cool mud was the only remedy to soothe the pain.
As I stood looking around Marie’s home, I remembered how Mom, Catherine, and I celebrated our birthdays and attended summer picnics in Fairfall Valley, but Dad never came. He didn’t have time, with his heavy work schedule. He worked such long, erratic hours. Those days were tough for Mom, but she never asked for help from anybody. She was too proud. She did what she needed to do to survive. I remembered, once, she told me she’d scrubbed toilets when Dad had to find jobs elsewhere and wasn’t sending any money. That was when he had started taking jobs all over the state, living in staff dormitories for months at a time, rather than commuting back and forth, to save on gas. It was hard for us, but he always came back. Always. I respected him for being such a hard worker and provider, but it had been strange how his growing absence from the family was never questioned.
Marie finally stepped out of the kitchen holding three mismatched coffee mugs. On the coffee table she set down a dented tin of sugar, a couple of soap-spotted spoons, and a white porcelain dairy cow full of fresh cream. She also set out some leftovers, trail mix, and bags of potato chips, but no one was hungry. The mug I lifted was white and brown, its handle the thick head of a Great Dane. I only added a few drops of creamer into my coffee and a quarter-spoon of sugar. Catherine sat beside me on the couch, her purse occupying the space between us. Neil kept his coffee black and leaned against the wall jutting into the living room. I realized that the only person missing was Carla. I wondered if she was avoiding us.
Marie sat in a vacant recliner, took a big sip of her steaming black coffee, her hands wrapped around the mug, and rocked herself with a smile. “This is simply wonderful,” she said, looking around the dim room. “For the longest time I asked Thomas to let us all meet, but it just never seemed to work out. And look at us now!”
“Yes, look at us now,” repeated Catherine vacantly.
“How has your mother been doing through all of this?”
“It’s been rough on her,” I said. “I think that’s why she chose