Wreck

by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

  “I love you, too, Dad.”

  Ike comes back into the room, carrying plastic glasses of water and orange juice, with scissors looped over one finger.

  “There.” Dad tries to point toward the bedside table, which Ike has shoved against the side of the bed. Ike sets the glasses down. “Hand me . . . box.” Ike does. “And scissors.” Ike does.

  “I’m going downstairs now, Steve.” He bends and hugs my dad for a long, long time. “Please be with me when I’m working on my rig. I’ll need you to watch over me.”

  “Will do . . . son . . . love you . . . Isaac Richard . . . Navarro.”

  “I love you, too.” And Ike leaves, face wet, not looking at me or my dad.

  Dad’s face is wet, too, but he’s resolute. “If I can’t . . . you’ll still . . .” He’s breathing hard. “. . . help me?”

  That question sails out the window, but the lake says nothing. She just swallows it whole, into her icy belly.

  “I promised I would.”

  He relaxes into the pillows Ike has stacked behind his back. “No way . . . to thank you.”

  “Haunt the Colorado School of Visual Arts and take all my tests for me?”

  “Deal.” His smile is faint. “Prop me up?” I do my best with all the pillows he has. He’s ready to concentrate on the box.

  But he can’t get it open. He works for a long time, with and without the scissors, and I see his patience fray with every move. After twenty minutes, he lies back on the pillow.

  “Want me to try?”

  His eyes are closed, but he nods. Just barely.

  I zip the tape open. Inside, in a lot of padding, there are two small bottles. They seem too little to matter.

  “Why two?”

  “Had to . . . make sure . . . dose . . . high enough . . . No coma.”

  Oh my god. I hadn’t thought of that.

  I peel back the foil from the bottles, take out the corks with the scissors point, then pour the bottles into the orange juice. The bottles are half the size of those liquor servings you get on airplanes.

  “Tobin.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for . . . being . . . mine.” He can barely speak now, and his breathing is ragged.

  “You’re the best dad a girl could ask for.” The tears are dripping onto my shirt.

  Somehow my hand moves the glass to his mouth and tips it forward. He drinks the orange juice while my hand lifts the glass slowly, and he grimaces.

  Then I pick up the glass of water. “Just to get it all down.” I help him again.

  When he’s done with the water, he leans back on the pillows and looks out the window.

  “Can you see her?” I crawl into bed next to him, and he puts an arm around me. Like we did until I was thirteen.

  “See her . . . just fine . . . gorgeous . . . dangerous. . . all ours.”

  And we stay like that. He closes his eyes.

  “Dad?”

  No answer.

  I sit up and look. He’s unconscious. His head nods to the side.

  I get out of bed and go to the top of the stairs. “Come on up, Ike.”

  And he does. I sit on the bed next to Dad, and Ike sits at the foot. I hold Dad’s hand. We look out the window at the lake. It’s 6:25.

  We sit for a long time, and no time, in silence.

  I will never feel like a criminal. Ever.

  Closer to sunset, his breath starts to sound weird. Scary. Hitchy. Gaspy. A deep chesty rattle. There are longer and longer pauses between rattles.

  Ike can see it freaks me out, and he one-arm hugs me. “It’s part of the process.”

  The rattles keep going. My skin crawls. But I hold his hand.

  Dusk comes across the lake. There’s a pause. Then Dad takes a breath. His chest settles.

  And doesn’t rise again.

  It’s 8:01 p.m. The sun sets tonight at 8:06. I checked this morning.

  If my dad knew he died almost exactly at sunset, he’d be laughing his ass off. He’d say it was a bad dad joke.

  I look at my dad’s face, expecting him to be smiling at the joke, and he’s not there.

  There’s a body that looks like him—sort of—but he is literally not there. It’s a husk. It’s a meat sack. It’s a thing, not a man, not my dad. It’s a total cliché. But it’s true.

  My dad is free.

  Ike stands up. “Time to call Rich.”

  “Is there anything I should do?”

  “No. You said goodbye. Your dad’s just fine. And my dad will be here in a little bit, to take care of what’s left behind.” He envelops me in a bear hug, then bends down to kiss my dad’s body on the forehead. “Rest easy, Stephen Tobin Oliver.”

  I kiss Dad, too. One last time. And we go downstairs as the light fades in the window.

  After Rich and Lexi have left with Dad’s body, Ike hands me a note. “He wrote this for you last night.”

  “I don’t know if I have any more tears in me.”

  Ike smiles a weary smile. “You still want to read it.”

  It looks like a pencil has attacked the paper, then self-destructed. But slowly the marks start to coalesce into words.

  Dear Tobin, my sweetest girl, the most awesome person on the planet:

  Death is just a change of address. I’m moving from where you can see me to where you can’t. But I’m still here. Me and the lake. We’ll always be here for you.

  One last dad joke. What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back? A stick!

  My love is with you on your travels, Voyageur.

  Dad

  I fold it up, give Ike a hug, leave the note on the table, and go to bed.

  There’s nothing else left to do.

  Dad’s Big Book of Advice #23

  Never give away my stethoscope. Keep it and listen to your heart when you miss me. I’m always there.

  AFTER

  AUGUST 27

  It’s two days after the memorial.

  Allison is here with me.

  I hate it.

  It was bigger than Dad’s birthday party. At least three hundred people. But no Mama Duck.

  He wanted his service at the Beach House, so we had it on the sand, and everyone who wanted to stood up and talked about him. Then all the families of the people who work for Dad’s ambulance service put on a big spread inside. My voice gave out from trying to thank people.

  After everyone was gone, Allison, Paul, Ike, Rich, and I took a boat about ten miles out and scattered his ashes. Mark, the guy who owns the boat, was one of the guys who worked for their ambulance service. When we were on our way out, he told us all about the time Dad decided he was going to climb Split Rock Lighthouse and got arrested by the state park rangers. He was twenty, Mark said, and he had to go to court. Allison didn’t even know about it.

  Dad’s ashes floated for a long time. I threw in flowers from the memorial service, too. We watched for a while, then we went back, and Ike took me home. Then everything went on.

  What’s not the same?

  Nothing looks the same.

  Or tastes the same.

  Or sounds the same.

  Or feels the same.

  Or is the same.

  But I think he’s the same. He’s somewhere else, but he’s still the same dude. Still funny and happy. Still running and laughing and having a good time.

  Gracie and Sid must have worked out a texting schedule between them. Every few hours, one of them pings me with some version of these messages: Doing ok? Can I get you anything? Do you want me to come over? I text each of them the same thing: Doing OK. I don’t need anything. Come over anytime, but I don’t have anything to say right now.

  I’m sitting out on our beach, looking north. School starts September 4. I have no idea how to be a senior. I have no idea how to be an orphan. I have no idea how to pack my dad into boxes. So I stare at the lake.

  I spend most of my time outside or in my room because I can’t stand to see Dad’s stuff in the house, and I won�
�t let Allison clean it out.

  I’ll be eighteen at the end of September. Then she’ll go home.

  And it won’t be soon enough.

  “Tobin?” Allison is calling for me.

  “Down here.” Not that I want her to find me, but if she doesn’t know where I am, she’ll send out the cavalry.

  She comes and sits next to me on the beach. “Ready for school?”

  “Nope.”

  “Should we go shopping? Don’t all senior girls need new clothes?” She smiles. “We should book your senior photos soon.”

  “No clothes. No photos. I’m good.”

  She studies me. “I know this is hard.”

  “I can’t imagine you do but thank you.”

  She sighs. “I have something for you.” She hands me a journal-sized book covered in black cloth. “It’s from your mom. I don’t know how many she sent. Rich has one, I know.” She stands up. “There’s a letter in the front for you. Come inside when you get hungry again.” And she walks back over the dunes toward the house.

  I open the book and read the note.

  Dear Tobin:

  In small towns in France (and sometimes in big cities), they place black funeral books on the doors of houses where people have died. People come by and write condolences in the books. When Paul told me your dad had ALS, I decided to do something similar for you. I sent a book to Allison, a book to Paul, and a book to Rich. I might send a couple others, but I’m not sure. I want you to have as many memories of your dad as possible.

  Please don’t be mad at Paul for telling me. He was right to do so.

  I know my mothering skills are awful. Boxes of objects don’t make up for anything, especially not now.

  I’m going to be in the States in October. Can I come and see you? I understand if you don’t want me to. But I hope you’ll let me. Even though it feels like it right now, you’re not really an orphan.

  I love you. I hope you believe me.

  Mom

  Her monthly box came a day ago. I took everything in it—a French fashion magazine, some chocolate, some really expensive lip liner, judging from the package, and a T-shirt—and I buried it all right at the shore. With a shovel. Then I jumped on the spot and splashed and yelled and generally acted like I’d lost it.

  Because I had.

  I flip through the book, and Allison’s filled it full of things I don’t know. When he was a kid, when their parents were alive, when she visited him in New York, when he came back to Duluth, when he married my mom, when I was born. It’s all there.

  “Tobin?” Another voice, but one I like.

  “Down here.”

  Ike comes over and plops into the sand. He’s got a black book in his hand, too.

  “How did you know Allison just gave me hers?”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “Rich thought he was special.”

  “Of course he is. He’s just not the only one with a funeral book.”

  He hands it to me. “I was there when Rich and a bunch of guys were writing in it. They were laughing their asses off.”

  “Perfect.”

  “What did insurance say?” He knows I had to meet with them. Two different insurance guys, actually, with two different kinds of policies.

  “There are funds I don’t get until I’m twenty-five, but I get some cash when I turn eighteen. Which is in about a month. Then Allison will go home, and I can live here by myself, and then I can go to college and have it all paid for. With maybe a little left over to live.”

  Ike gives me a sad face. “You know I can’t live here, right?” He’s been at Rich’s house since Dad died. “It would look really bad. Rich would kill me.”

  “So get yourself a girlfriend, and then the two of you can move in. You can pay rent.”

  Ike chuckles. “Like he’d like that any better. And who’s got time for a girlfriend? Work and school is enough.”

  “School?”

  “Lake Superior Community College.” He points in the direction of the campus. “Next semester full-time, but I’m taking an online class right now, just to get warmed up. The semester started the day your dad died, ironically.”

  I attack him with a hug. “Good job, dork. But seriously do find a girlfriend. I could use a sister. Just make sure she’s nice.”

  That makes him laugh long and loud as he stands, brushing the sand off his butt. “For now, read the book. And remember what I told you. No wrong way to grieve. You just have to do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I love you, Tobin.”

  “Love you, too, brother.”

  He thumps me on the head and walks over the dunes.

  I stare north into the lake.

  I think about what I’ll do if anyone finds out what I did. Tell the truth, I guess.

  What other choice was there? He needed to be free. There was no question.

  I think about how cold the lake is. It’s the coldest Great Lake.

  I think about being a senior. And about the Colorado School of Visual Arts, and what it’s like in Colorado. I wonder where my dad is now.

  It takes a bit to get his wheelchair down to the water’s edge. Even empty, it’s still a bitch to push through sand. It takes me a while to get the photo set up in a way that satisfies me.

  I tip his chair over, headfirst, into the shallows. Like he’s fallen out and drifted away. I float the action figures next to his chair: Lando, Rey, Mystique, Professor X, and next to the crowd is a tiny Mama Duck replica Chip brought for Dad.

  It is surreal and weird and kind of perfect.

  I get shots from several angles. Then I go up to the house, have lunch, read my funeral books, and wait for my friends to come over. Or my brother to come back. I think about how to thaw out.

  I only had seventeen years with my dad, but maybe that was enough. He was kind of like a slingshot—he taught me all he could, then he launched me out into the world. Now I’m sailing over everyone’s heads, with no idea where I’ll land.

  Maybe that’s all right. He’ll still be there.

  Dad’s Big Book of Advice #24

  According to energy conservation laws, nobody ever leaves. We just get less orderly and more spread out.

  NOVEMBER 10

  I make the rock cairn at the edge of the water. I picked them specially—flat, stackable—from farther up the shore. These rocks don’t exist in my backyard. Here it’s just sand.

  Today is the anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, an iron ore freighter that left from here and sank a day later, killing all twenty-nine people on board. Dad would have remembered it like he always did, by playing the famous Gordon Lightfoot song once for as many times as I am old—eighteen this year. I don’t know if other people in Duluth, or other people who live along Lake Superior, remember this day. But he always did.

  So I’m remembering him remembering his favorite ship as he played his favorite song.

  The cairn shifts a little as I place the top rock, but it holds. Five in the stack. One for him, one for me, one for Ike. One for the future. One for the past.

  I had no idea that pieces of my memories would just . . . drift away. Like the ashes he became. They float off, and you know you’ll never get them back.

  Silly little things. Which side of the door he left his running shoes on. Which days he wanted peanut butter on his toast, and which days he wanted rhubarb jam. Stuff I didn’t pay much attention to in the first place—but I should have.

  Those things drift out from the shore, and all that’s left is the big stuff. The color of his hair (blondie-brown, a bit of white by the end). The color of his eyes (gorgeous blue, the same shade his lake sometimes is). How he looked when he bounced out the door, on his way to save people. How tired he was when he came home. How he smiled when I told him about my day.

  I have the important parts. But the ashes—the daily details—wash away.

  It hurts.

  He got to decide. It was his life.

  But other peo
ple can be angry with his choice.

  Or lonely afterward, and sad.

  I’m so grateful he was my dad. Is my dad. Somewhere, he’s still my dad.

  My love for him is the size of this lake.

  If it had been me, he would have let me choose.

  The water ripples a tiny bit around the cairn, but the rocks hang on. The lake is still today. And freezing, of course.

  It’s only going to get colder.

  But spring will return.

  Even if it seems like a million years until it arrives.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I like to write books that are villages. This one is no different.

  Many thanks to Paul Dobratz for telling me stories about your dad, and about your dad’s struggle with ALS. What a man, and what a son that man raised. You are so kind to share him with me.

  Many thanks to Lisa Kronk, who I’m convinced my dad sent specially to me, for all of her expert ALS knowledge and her excellent proofreading skills! Thank you for helping me make Steve a living, breathing human struggling with a horrific disease.

  Many thanks to SMSgt Filiverto G. Rodriguez, USAF (retired), who helped me understand Ike and where he comes from, on many different levels. Thank you to his daughter, illustrator Christina Rodriguez, for introducing me to your awesome dad. Thank you both for helping Ike and Rich become well-rounded humans, and thank you for being a living embodiment of why father-daughter relationships matter.

  Many thanks to Craig Samborski, for teaching me how Mama Duck works, and for having such a cool job. Mama Duck spreads joy wherever she goes.

  Many thanks to Darlene Daniels, Anishnew, Garden Hill First Nation, for her thoughts about how the Ojibwe around Duluth would have received Mariette. I hope I got it close to right.

  Many thanks to Dillon Navarro, for letting me borrow his last name; to Alexa Zarn, for helping me understand a little about paramedics; to Chelsea Marie Hanson for sharing the Spanish lullaby; and to Austin Oropeza, who educated me about what Rich would bring to a birthday party.

  Many thanks to to Minnesota Public Radio and Dan Kraker for reporting on Lady Superior’s return of Paul Kellner’s canoe.

  Many thanks to the Mankato runners on Steve’s Grandma’s Marathon committee (especially the ones who were volunteered by their spouses): Kerri Ambrose, Ken Ambrose, Rachael Hanel, David Hanel, Kevin Langton, and Layla Pappas. Appreciation and love to Kerri for being as kind and generous in real life as Book Kerri is to Steve.