Stephen Dixon: Interstate

His good arm’s for the most part paralyzed from the shooting so he can’t go back to work, tries getting a cashier’s job in other restaurants but no work around or times are tough so some of their jobs they have to double up and excuses like that or else they just don’t want him, he thinks, because he doesn’t look healthy anymore and not good for customers’ appetites or something and his clothes are old and out of date and arm stiff like it is and with everything about him unkempt and with possibly more health and accident insurance for them because of his age and wounds from the shooting and maybe they think a possible medical relapse on the job or they know what he did to those killers years ago and feel he brought the new shooting on somehow and don’t want a hothead working for them and then if you’re going to hire a cashier or guy who hangs up coats or things like that, even someone who takes care of the men in the restrooms of the higher-class restaurants, better to have one who can chase not-too-threatening unwanteds out of the place or at least look like he can, finds it more economical than working to just retire, maybe for the time being, and take the small union pension he’ll get and accident insurance from getting shot at work, which isn’t half bad, and in a year full Social Security with the medical coverage the government gives, — care or — caid, calls her a lot but after five and on weekends because it can cost a great deal, it grieves him is the best he can put it that she still talks to him in the same formal way she has since a few years after he went into prison — it wasn’t like that before with her but she was just a girl then and of course things were much different: he lived with Lee, one family, Julie, had a good job and wasn’t a temporary maniac and in fact he was a pretty good father, around average, he thought, fairly relaxed and not at all the browbeating or faultfinding kind — asks to speak to her boys and Glen almost every time after he speaks to her but not much talk there too, Glen kind of quiet and, what’s the word? unforthcoming or something and reserved, the boys always acting shy or don’t know him enough so don’t see why they should have to get on the phone with him so much, which makes some sense and he’d probably feel the same if he was them, tells her how he’s really grown close to her family almost solely by phone, isn’t that funny? and that he’d still like to come see them if she isn’t going to be in his city anytime soon, but come to think of it he can’t afford the fare right now—“Though I still have the same money put away only for you or the boys’ schools, I want you to know, or even for you and Glen if you both lost your jobs or just one of you did and you were suddenly strapped for cash — not much, you understand, so don’t set your hopes when I die on buying a swimming pool with it or building an additional wing to your garage,” and she says “I don’t harbor macabre or calculating thoughts like that and surely not on what I’ll gain monetarily from someone’s death, not that you won’t live past a hundred, and besides, we’ve only one car and park it in the street — Glen gladly takes the bus to work — and we don’t as a rule go in much for building private pools in our area — only a few days get very hot, the community is kind of artistic or professorial with a flock of doctors mixed in and very ecological-minded, and there are already several fine public pools at minimal costs,” and he says “Only kidding, honey, only kidding, about the garage and pool and my death both,” and she says “I know but I felt I had to say something as to how and where we live so you wouldn’t in the future be put in the position of possibly prejudging or just misunderstanding us, and listen, Dad, if you do want to visit us that much, use your savings for us to fly out here and we’ll put you up comfortably for a week at least,” and he says “No, I got to leave something to you, it’s an absolute must in my mind after all I haven’t done — maybe I’ll win the lottery or a big part of one, but if I did that’d mean I’d have to play it and I always thought tossing away dough like that a tremendous waste and dumb escape — excuse me, I hope you or Glen don’t play them,” and she says “ Please , and I don’t even know if we have those games here.”

They speak on the phone for two more years, occasionally a letter or postcard between them and always birthday cards and gifts at Christmas from him, a few times she says she thinks she’s coming east for a convention or with one or two of her boys to visit him and then perhaps take in New York City and Washington, D.C., but then writes or phones that her plans were canceled or fell through because of personal reasons she doesn’t want to go into when he asks what, “Well, I thought it might have been over me — a dispute between you two, for instance, though I wouldn’t know why, I’m really a harmless and mean-well guy — or something to do with stopping you, though there also I’m in the dark about, my lousy memory of last week’s things,” and she says no and for the last time about it that’s as far as she’ll go, okay? and he says sure, “I was only saying, nothing to it, so I’ll be speaking to you, honey, goodbye,” and about a month later she gets a call from an official in his city (there were a number of reasons they hadn’t spoken since their last conversation when she said her plans had fallen through and he thought it might have been over him: it was midsummer and they were away two weekends in a row at Glen’s mother’s beach house when he called, another night they were having dinner in a restaurant when he called and then he got tired and took a nap that ended up a six-hour sleep and when he awoke he felt it was too late to call even with the three-hour time difference, another time her son took the message that he’d called but forgot to give it to her, another time Glen took the message after a brief exchange with him, “So how’s it going?” “Everything’s fine,” “Tell her I called?” “You bet,” but got into an argument with her when she got home from work and after it was still so mad at her he didn’t want to tell her anything and next morning he’d planned to mention her father called but they talked mostly how sleep usually irons over any bad feelings still lingering from the previous day’s fight and then he forgot till three days later when he thought “Why bother, he’ll probably call today anyway?” she called him that day but he’d pulled the phone jack out of the wall because he had a stomach flu or it was something he ate but anyway was too weak to answer the phone and didn’t want to be woken up by or even hear its rings, the boys were in day camp and she yelled from the bedroom “You interested in paying me a visit?” “You bet,” and later the phone rang while they were making love and Glen reached for the receiver and she said “Leave it,” and he said “What if it’s important?” and she said “If it is, they’ll call back,” they got an answering machine that recorded his message but something malfunctioned that first day or maybe it was the way she’d assembled or connected it into the wall, but the entire day’s tape was erased and next day without them doing anything new to it except taking the plug out of the wall socket and putting it back in, it worked fine, she called and he wasn’t in, she thought she’d call him back in an hour or so but then a number of things happened — Glen called and they had a long talk, one of her sons was invited to sleep over at a friend’s house and she had to pack his things and give him an early supper because she knew he wouldn’t get fed much there except for sweets and drive him, she decided to make a potato salad now instead of tomorrow for a picnic, a bird feeder fell down and broke and it took some time fixing it and hanging it back up in a tree, the radio was playing a familiar Mozart piano sonata and she wanted to hear it to the end to get the number, she got interested in the last of a series of articles on welfare and the poor and then went through the newspaper pile for the papers of the two previous days for articles one and two — and she never got around to it, he called but their line was busy for hours and he gave up after almost twenty tries and went to bed thinking he’d call her at work next day just to hear her voice again and see how things are going with her and her family after almost a month or even earlier at home if he can remember to call, say, between eleven-ten and — fifteen his time but he died overnight) that he died in his sleep it appears, in no way is there any indication of foul play, and may have been dead three to four days—“Excuse me, but if all this is too much for you,” the official says, “though you are the person I really want to talk to, I can speak to your husband about it,” and she says “No, it’s okay, it’s been a while since I saw my father, more than a month since I even spoke to him, and we haven’t been close for many years and I don’t want anything decided about him without my immediate say, so please continue and if it does get too much for me I’ll let you know,” and the official says “As I was saying, and if I do get too blunt please excuse me, it’s not the job but my manner…three to four days he might have been there — the police had to break in his door as the neighbor he kept a spare set of keys with for emergencies like this one might have been, just as he had a spare set of hers for the same thing, was out of town all that time and because no one else in the building saw him for that long, or the smell — I never got straight which one, but that shouldn’t be an issue now — but that’s how he was eventually found”—and though he laid out sufficient money with instructions that his body be cremated and for a small ceremony at the cemetery for relatives and close friends where his ashes are to be buried unmarked next to his daughter Julie’s grave, does she want anything different done? — “His instructions, along with where his passport is and checking account and union membership number to help with the cost of the funeral and things like that were all in an envelope in his night table drawer but weren’t notarized, the instructions, or even properly witnessed, so you can have the final say,” and she says “Why would I want to countermand my father’s wishes?” and the official says “By the city’s health law we have to give you this opportunity, your being, so far as we know — his instructions say you are and we’ll look into it further — his only heir, so we even have to get you to sign a release for the cremation or regular interment or whichever kind you finally decided on,” and she says “That’s what I mean — what else could I possibly want that’s different than what he said?” and the official says “You might not want him cremated, for example, as it could be antithetical to your beliefs, religious or otherwise — considerations like that, which you might not have thought about yet because of the suddenness of the news,” and she says “No, that’s the way I also want to go — it’s easier for everybody,” and the official says “You’re saying cremation,” and she says yes and the official says “Okay, and that’s what your father wrote in his instructions too — he, quote, don’t want to cause anyone a fuss, unquote, but another thing is the ceremony — and I’m only trying to be helpful here, this isn’t part of my regular job — he wrote he didn’t want any professional religious person officiating — someone, quote, lay and unpaid, unquote, as he says, could easily do it and that way too, quote, my daughter’s spared the minister’s or rabbi’s or whatever officiator’s expense, unquote,” and she says “There too, it’s fine with me, whomever he chose — did he, in these instructions?” and the official says “He has written down here the funeral home taking care of the cremation and graveside service but no one named as speaker or what kind of service he wanted, secular or otherwise, so I assume that’s all up to you — maybe, if I can poke my nose in a bit further, this neighbor lady friend of his will know who his closest friends were— she , even — and who can speak and be understood and lead a service…but the place of burial might be something else for you to consider — the truth is, my dear, though your father kept up and paid for in perpetuity, it says in his instructions, the grave of your sister and several others alongside hers plus some empty burial plots, you might not even want his ashes buried there but flown home with you,” and she says “Now that you bring it up, it would be senseless for me to come east for only a ceremony with people I mostly don’t know and with not even a casket to look at and really nothing much else to see there except the gravestones of my dead sister and some grandparents I never knew, so perhaps I can have half the ashes buried next to her grave and the rest sent to me and buried unmarked in my husband’s family gravesite — it would only occupy a small part of the plot so I’m sure my husband’s family won’t mind, and that way I’ll be able to pay my respects to him whenever I want since I don’t see when I’ll be flying east again now that he’s not there, and he’d be, or his ashes would, half of them at least, buried next to or near me since I’m sure I’ll end up buried here too,” and the official says “I’m positive all that can be arranged through the funeral home doing the cremation, but one last thing, dear, with your permission: if you don’t intend on coming east soon then you better start figuring out what you want done with his apartment, or room, rather,” and she says “Can all his belongings, for a price, be junked, the ones that aren’t worth anything, and the rest given to charity or some Goodwill place that might take them?” and the official says “That’ll have to be arranged between you and his landlord but I don’t see why it couldn’t be done — as for his private papers, if he has any,” and she says “Oh I’m sure he has: letters from my mother dating back before they were married, photos of the family and when he was a kid and no doubt some personal objects of my sister Julie from day one,” and the official says “Those, then, plus some more practically important items to you like his bankbook and check book and birth certificate perhaps and deed to his cemetery plots and maybe even some tucked-away savings or stocks and bonds certificates or things of that ilk he might have accumulated over the years though we hope paid income tax on,” and she says “I doubt he had any of those — not only was he just making it, we’ll say, so too poor to buy them, but he frowned on that kind of income like playing the stock market, money made on paper and if it turns out to be real money when cashed in, then money made without doing hard labor for it — he was old-fashioned that way, of that, from the little I spoke to him about gambling and livelihood, I’m sure,” and the official says “Whatever, but once you sign and return the documents I send you, if you’re truly not coming here, then the padlock will be removed from his apartment and you’ll be able to designate a surrogate to go through it and send those things of a more practical financial nature to you the surrogate might find — as for the photos and your sister’s possessions and such your father might have had,” and she says “It’s not what she possessed but what he might have kept of hers — she died when she was five, you know, murdered by a maniac; we were in the same car at the time — a crazy spray highway shooting,” and the official says “I didn’t know and I’m very sorry, dear, extremely,” and she says “Oh yes, that’s what started all my father’s problems — marriage breakup, in essence giving me up, certain quirks and obsessions, losing his job and so on,” and the official says “I didn’t know that either, dear, I’m sorry — anyway, those things, the ones that are only of possible personal value to you, well, unless you come here and claim them or have them sent to you or keep up his lodgings till the landlord thinks, because no one’s living here, that he wants the place vacated so he can raise the rent, then I’m afraid they’ll be disposed of as garbage too.”