Wreck

by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

  “Can we do it again sometime?” He looks like a kid. He was always getting Band-Aids for me and Gracie when we fell down or getting water for all of us when we were hot and sweaty. He was perpetually sweet and kind, for whatever reason an eight-year-old has for that, and he looks exactly like that kid right now. Same but not the same.

  “Um, yeah. Sure.” I smile again and walk fast enough to end the conversation, but not so fast I look like I’m escaping.

  As I put my backpack behind the counter, my eyes catch the flyer on the wall that says VOYAGEURS AND TRADERS—MINNESOTA’S FUR-ST WHITE PEOPLE! My great-uncle Paul does that presentation every year at the Tall Ships Festival in August. It says “first white people” because there were Ojibwe and Dakota people here long before French fur traders arrived, duh. Paul’s a total history buff, and he may know more about Duluth and the area than the Minnesota Historical Society does. And no, we don’t normally have tall ships in Lake Superior—the kind with masts and sails that look they’re from Pirates of the Caribbean—but somebody somewhere decided they were tired of ore boats and cargo ships 24/7/365. So now we have a Minnesota history/American history/colonizer history weekend in August, complete with pirate ships.

  Paul also knows a crap-ton about our family. According to him and family legend, one of the trapping camps Daniel Olivier worked for was where our house is right now, which is how we were able to purchase the land. A family member built the house we live in during the late 1800s, and there was a cabin on the land for 150 years before that. If Dad hadn’t inherited it, we couldn’t afford to live there any other way. There are million-dollar mansions all around us.

  Paul also says, based on Mariette’s journals—he had to have them translated from French—that Daniel and Mariette worked hard to have a good relationship with both the Dakota and the Ojibwe in this area, which is more than lots of white invaders can say. Mariette wrote about trades and friendships, and all the times the women saved her butt. She was from Quebec, Paul said, and she was given to Greysolon’s party because she was being punished for petty thievery. He said she was terrified, and she knew nothing about how to live in the woods. Daniel was kind to her, and they fell in love, and now I’m here, almost 350 years later.

  I hope my ancestors were kind to the people they found here. I like to pretend it would make us less invasive, which it can’t. But you’d be an idiot not to be kind to the people who know how to survive the winters. I would carry their water for the rest of my life if they could teach me how to avoid frostbite.

  I go back to the front counter to see if Allison’s left me a list. Sure enough, it’s on the counter.

  TODAY FOR TOBIN TO DO:

  1. Dust figurines and dishes

  2. Clean bathroom

  3. Sweep in the back room

  Yes, ma’am.

  The figurines and dishes are in a couple short aisles on the far edge of the store. Allison has a rotation of dusting, which is good, because it would take hours to dust the whole damn store, and I’d sneeze myself to death. She makes me use a feather duster, too, which I then beat on the wall outside in the alley after I’m done. More sneezing. Last summer a guy from the restaurant next door actually came outside to see if I was okay.

  Allison doesn’t say anything to me today, aside from a basic greeting and instructions. She gets like that sometimes. She just looks at me. I look back.

  What’s not the same? It’s floating around my brain.

  Allison is very much the same.

  When I go into the back room, I take in the ten-foot-high chalk drawing of a rubber duck. She’s the same, too—big and yellow and peaceful. There’s a haiku beside her.

  My dad made the drawing and the haiku a few years ago, and since the store belonged to my grandparents before it was Allison’s, he told her she couldn’t take it down or she’d piss off their dead parents.

  Mama Duck is another creature who always goes to the Tall Ships Festival, at least since I can remember. She’s six stories high and she’s pulled by a tugboat, gliding along with her mysterious smile, looking at the crowds from her comfortable spot on the lake. My dad is fascinated with her, probably because she’s his polar opposite. Physically, he’s one of the least calm people I know.

  Six stories of Zen

  make their way to the water:

  Mona Lisa duck.

  I have no idea why someone decided to add a six-story rubber duck to a Tall Ships festival, but it doesn’t matter. She’s pretty cool. And when she’s lit up at night, she reminds me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the first Ghostbusters movie.

  “Hello, Mama Duck.”

  She smiles a little bit, though it’s obvious she’s tired of being captured on this wall. She’d clearly rather be out on the water.

  Allison, who’s just come into the back room, bursts into tears.

  “What the flipping hell?” That was unexpected.

  “Nothing.” And she races for the door into the alley.

  “Okay then.”

  I sweep the back room, around piles of books and boxes of china and old rolled-up carpets and antique dressers. Allison comes back from the alley, sniffling and heading for the box of Kleenex she keeps behind the counter. I don’t even ask.

  On my way back to the front with the dustpan and broom, I spot a box of action figures on a shelf, tucked next to some other toys. A box of my action figures.

  I dig into the tangle of arms, legs, and heads. My dad’s tiny Lando Calrissian, from the first Star Wars movies, is in there, and his bigger Professor X is there, in his wheelchair, along with my Mystique, complete with skull-head belt. Both of them are X-Men. There are also two Reys—one the size of Mystique and one the size of Lando—from the reboot of Star Wars a few years ago. I have no idea why I had two Reys—I had just become a teenager when that movie came out. Dad probably gave them to me, hoping I’d go back to being a little girl.

  There’s a bunch more, too, some of which I don’t know because they’re from my dad’s era. He gave them to me when I was about eight, then I added even more. When I was a kid, they were a hundred times better than Barbies, because Barbies were boring girls who went shopping. These people had adventures.

  “Allison, where did these come from?” I take the box off the shelf and bring it into the store.

  “Your dad brought them in last week.” She blows her nose again. Her eyes are red.

  “They’re off the market.”

  She sighs. “That’s the most you’ve said since the hospital.”

  I don’t reply, just put the box with my backpack and go to clean the bathroom.

  What’s not the same?

  My dad bringing stuff to the store.

  Allison crying.

  He tripped and fell last week, too, when he was walking toward the lake.

  I saw him.

  A weight settles into my stomach.

  I don’t know if I want to know or not.

  I mean, I do.

  But of course I don’t.

  I leave at 5:30, in silence, snapping photos as I go. The sky is gorgeous. Tourists would pay a shit-ton for a photo of pink air as seen through the aerial lift bridge. Maybe Allison would let me sell some prints. In five minutes, I’m over the bridge and on my way home, carrying my action figures.

  The lift bridge is one of the main reasons people visit Duluth. The part of the bridge you drive and walk on moves up into the bridge supports, so big ships can come into the bay to load and unload stuff. After the lake itself, it’s probably the thing people like to visit most. Sure, it’s neat to watch the road go way over your head, and yeah, big cargo ships are cool, but it’s an enormous pain in the ass when you’re trying to get home or into town and a ship’s going through.

  Park Point is wide enough for one street down the middle of the land, with one row of houses and businesses on the south side of the street. On the north, there’s a little more land—the houses are sometimes two deep before you get to the trees and ginormous sand
dunes that come before the beach and the lake. On the south side of the land, there’s the bay for ships to use, and then it’s Wisconsin on the other side of the bay. On the north side, it’s the lake, which looks like an ocean.

  Even though our house is one of the crappiest out here, it’s still worth $387,000, according to the assessor of St. Louis County, State of Minnesota. And even thirteen blocks away, you can still hear the ships when they blow their horns as they cross under the bridge. Floating giants with deep voices.

  What’s not the same? What’s not the same? My feet beat it out as I walk.

  When I come in, Dad’s there, and the table’s already set.

  “What are you doing home?”

  He raises his left arm with the cast. “Remember?”

  “Oh yeah. Right.” I’ve tried so hard to figure out what he’s going to tell me that I forgot about his wrist. “What’s for supper?”

  “Leftover pot roast. That okay with you?”

  “That’s why we have leftovers, isn’t it?” I smile, and he smiles, and that helps the knot in my stomach.

  When we’re almost finished, I remember what I brought home. “Please tell me why the hell there was a shoebox of action figures that belong to me at Trash Box. Allison said you brought them down.”

  “Don’t call it Trash Box.” He always says that.

  “It doesn’t change the fact that I found my box of action figures on the shelf. I repeat: What the hell?”

  He swallows. “Just cleaning closets. Figured you didn’t want them anymore.”

  Had he asked me if I’d wanted them a week ago, I would have told him no. “You should ask before you give away something of mine, you know.” I give him a look over the top of my milk glass and take a swig.

  “My bad.” His eyes tell me he’s sincere. He thought I wouldn’t care. “I was just . . . cleaning. So you’d have less to do . . . someday.”

  “Less to do?”

  He looks at the floor.

  I keep myself calm. “Tell me what’s not the same.”

  My dad takes a long gulp of his milk. “Time for a dad joke, Voyageur.”

  He calls me Voyageur sometimes because my middle name is the same as Daniel Olivier’s wife, Mariette, and because I never, ever, used to stay where I was put when I was little. He says I was lucky I didn’t voyage my way into drowning or getting run over before I made it to three.

  “No thank you.”

  “Did you hear that the administration confiscated a rubber band pistol from a student at Twin Ports Academy? It was a weapon of math disruption.” He smiles, with a look that shows how much he wants me to smile back.

  “That wasn’t horrid.” I return the grin, even though it’s hard, and my guts are screaming WHAT’S NOT THE SAME WHAT’S NOT THE SAME WHAT’S NOT THE SAME.

  “Thank you for enjoying it. And it’s beyond time to tell you all this.” He sighs. “To be blunt, I am the patron saint of the totally fucked.”

  “That’s the painkillers talking.” He doesn’t say things like that.

  He gets up from the table, goes to his desk in the corner—the one where he pays bills and signs serious papers—and reaches into the middle desk drawer. When he comes back, he lays a booklet in front of me. The cover says What to Do when Your Parent has ALS.

  Nope. Not the same.

  “This is why I fell up the front steps two weeks ago, and why I fell down yesterday. Why I can’t hold on to a fork sometimes.” He reaches out for my hands, and I let him take them, though it’s hard to hold hands with someone in a wrist cast.

  “Why you fell last week when you were walking toward the lake?” I see it again in my head.

  He nods. “Remember the ice bucket challenge? Sometimes it’s called Lou Gehrig’s disease. A person’s muscles eventually stop working. Remember Mrs. Nealy down the street?”

  Mrs. Nealy. When I was a tiny girl, she used to come with me over the dune to visit the lake, and then we’d go to the neighborhood grocery to get a Coke. But then she couldn’t walk, and then she couldn’t talk or breathe, and then she died. When she was trapped in her wheelchair, not able to say a word, I could see in her eyes how badly she wanted to be like the rest of us, up and doing things, living in the real world, but she was stuck. Doomed. She seemed ancient to me, but she might have been in her fifties or sixties when she died. Not that old.

  “You have the same thing Mrs. Nealy did?”

  He closes his eyes.

  NOT THE SAME.

  “Your body’s going to quit on you, and you’re going to die?”

  He coughs, looks at the floor, then at me. He’s crying, but he’s not making a sound. Tears are just flowing silently down his face, splatting on his shirt as he holds my hands, one tight and one awkward.

  Nothing will ever be the same again.

  I’d swear someone’s blowing whistles in my ears.

  “We’ll get through this together, okay? I’m still here. For as long as I can be here, I’m here.”

  He says this with the same smile he’s always had, the one that made me laugh when I landed on my ass the first time I tried my in-line skates and scraped my leg from butt cheek to back of my knee. The smile that says he’s not too pissed, like the time I burned the macaroni in the microwave, when I forgot to add water to it, and then sprayed the microwave with perfume to try and cover it up, and our house smelled like a torched Victoria’s Secret for days. The I-know-you’re-trying smile. The I-know-this-is-tough smile. The smile that tells me all is well.

  Told me all was well. Not anymore.

  “Say something, Tobin. Anything at all.” He’s staring into my eyes, almost into my heart.

  Words are chunked and broken in my throat. All the good things I could say, like “I love you, Dad,” and “You’re the best dad ever,” are mixed in with the words I said when I hated him, even for two seconds. I could have been a better daughter so many times.

  My eyes go to the photo on the wall between the kitchen and the living room. My mom took it. I’m about three, in my dad’s lap, and we’re laughing. Our hair is blowing in an invisible breeze, and you can see our beach dunes behind us. We’re looking out into the lake, dad and girl, the unit we’ve always been.

  I bolt for the sink and puke.

  When I turn on the water to rinse everything down, I realize he’s there with me, hand on my back.

  “It’s a gut punch, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one way to put it.” I wipe my mouth and get a glass of water. “How long have you known?”

  “Since early February.”

  Before I answer, I gulp the rest of the water in my glass, for strength.

  Then I let him have it. At full volume.

  “Why are you so,” I spit the word at him, “casual about it? I can’t believe Molly and Allison knew, and I didn’t. Oh my god, you suck. This SUCKS.” If I could breathe fire, I would. “How am I going to handle all the shit you handle? How am I going to handle ANYTHING?” I feel like I’m gonna puke again, but there’s nothing left in there.

  He tries to pull me into a hug, but I shrug away. He teeters, but grabs the counter, face white. “You can’t do that, okay? It’s easy for me to tip over.”

  The room is whirling. “How did you figure it out?”

  He pulls himself steady. “When I had trouble in the Twin Cities Marathon, back in October, Marshall told me to get myself checked out.” Marshall’s the guy he normally runs marathons with. “They give you lots of tests, and they have to rule things out, so we weren’t really sure until six weeks ago. Then . . .” He pauses and the tears start flowing again. “Then I didn’t know what to say. Or how to say it. So I just . . . didn’t say anything at all.”

  He looks lost, like he’s in the middle of the woods with no flashlight. He reaches out for my shoulder, to touch it, but I shrug away.

  “I love you, Tobin. We’ll get through this.”

  My voice is a hiss. “You could have told me when you fell the first time. Or the next t
ime. Any time in the last month you could have told me.”

  “Tobin . . .”

  “I asked you if you were okay, and you said yes. You lied to me.”

  We don’t lie to each other.

  I slam out the back door, out to the lake, and leave him standing in the kitchen.

  When I walk over the dunes, I’m out of sight of the house, and it’s dark, with no moon, so he can’t see me to come and find me. The sky is clear and full of stars, and the lake is whispering her night song of waves. Where we live, she’s not loud unless it’s windy or stormy. No big rocks for waves to crash on. Here, she seems peaceful and calm, though she’s still icy dangerous. Here, she specializes in illusions.

  I google ALS for the next ten minutes. By the time I’m a frozen popsicle—sitting by Lake Superior on March 16 is a recipe for human popsicles—I’m confident the next two to five years are going to be the worst ones of my life, and the last of his. So I scream into the lake until I’m hoarse. Nobody hears me because it’s cold. Nobody has their windows open.

  Not ever fucking the same again.

  What am I going to do when I can’t see him running up the street toward me, sweaty and happy? Or wading in the lake in August, big grin on his face, or surfing on the waves in his wet suit in May, icicles hanging from his elbows? He used to swing me through the air at the water’s edge, big arcs where my toes would graze the waves, and he’d laugh right along with me. What about Medic 3464, and Rich, and not sleeping for thirty-six hours because he was pulling thirteen people out of nine different car wrecks on the Fourth of July weekend when there were too many drunks on the road?

  What about his wavy blond hair? His hands, which have a million calluses on them from lifting stretchers and equipment? His laugh? His dumb dad jokes?

  What about his notebooks?

  What will I do when he can’t walk anymore? Or talk? Or eat? Or breathe?

  Who will help me fix my house when I’m old enough to buy one? Who will fix this house? What about the car? Who’s going to approve my future husband? Hold my first child?