Smoking with Didi

Chapter 1: Wake-Up Call“You got a black suit or at least one in navy blue?” This was how, without a greeting, Pete’s sister Didi, three years his senior with a voice like a railroad spike lodged in a running garbage disposal, called in the middle of the night to tell him their father had died. And then she abruptly added, “Oh: Dad passed.” “How?” Pete stared at the blank bedside clock. He recalled yanking it out of the wall, but not when, nor what provoked the rage. “Cancer, remember?! The sliver of information I called you with three years ago?!” she roared in disbelief. “He’s been knocking at death’s door so long he was wedged in the mail slot. He had cancer everywhere but his fingernails, and I’m not so sure about those, as gray as they got. Did you know I had to cut them with tin snips?” “Right, right,” Pete replied. After crippling back spasms sent their father to the emergency room, there had been a Stage IV diagnosis, which had been no real surprise after a three-pack-a-day habit. For a year, he soldiered on, even permitting himself a once-monthly bus pilgrimage to play the slots in a casino over the Ohio border in Indiana. By year two, Didi was chronicling in somber updates how his cancer had progressed from one lung to both, then to his hips, spine, and colon. That ovarian cancer had taken their mother had never deterred his chain-smoking, nor had it his sister’s. A lit cigarette seldom left Didi’s hand. It was, essentially, a sixth finger, one with flame at the end. “So when did it happen?” Pete tentatively asked. “Half past nine.” “Was he in bad shape at the end?” “Maybe if you had responded to my Zoom invitations, you could have stayed up-to-date.” “You know restaurant hours. The times were never convenient,” Pete mumbled. “It was Dad who kept asking. He wanted to see you one more time before he didn’t know who you were.” “He never knew who I was,” Pete snapped. He could hear her grinding out a cigarette. “Here’s what I’d do,” Didi offered. “When he’d ask, ‘Where’s Petie?’ I pretended you were visiting. I’d tell him, ‘You just missed him. He stepped away.’ Dad was so out of it, he believed me.” Pete hated how his had eyes filled at Petie, what his mother had called him and what his father never had. “Yet he didn’t notice in all those years that I was missing on Thanksgiving, at Christmas, Father’s Day?!” “I’m not going to apologize for him, Pete. You asked what his condition was and I’m telling you how it went down,” Didi declared. “He refused a ventilator but, technically, his heart gave out.” Actually, he thought, their father’s heart had given up long before. He asked why she waited to call. “Let’s see…I had to figure out whether I legally had to dial 911 for an ambulance or if I could just cut to the chase and call for a hearse, I had to put on something other than dirty sweats, and then I sponged him off a little because he’d soiled himself and I didn’t want anyone claiming negligence. That was a low moment, not that you’d know about washing a carcass covered with bedsores every day.” He winced at the mental image, which she chose to pursue. “And that rubbery old man’s wee-wee would put any woman off romance,” she continued. “My God. My God!” “Wee-wee” reminded him that he had invited some worshipful twentysomething back to kneel down and suck his. He glanced around. The clothes cast on the chair were his own. Shoes, too. Was that his belt? Yes. He could smell an unfamiliar cologne, but there was nowhere to hide in a two-room apartment. Were the halcyon days that long ago, when he had plenty of rooms in which a twink could curl up, even once a penthouse apartment? He considered looking under the bed, but it was crammed with issues of Cooks Illustrated magazine, sauté pans and torques. Fuck it. It was a just a tourist. Plenty of those to choose from, in Miami, in February. “So he’s at Frey Funeral Home?” Pete asked. “Yep, and they charge by the day to keep him on ice.” He heard a lighter click. She was really ripping through them. Then something was dragged across whatever surface she was sitting at, and it was probably the ashtray that held up to eight cigarettes at once. The smoke was probably pressing up against the windows; someone passing by could legitimately call in a fire “How quick can you wrap up to get up here from the Sunshine State?” she asked. Nothing would require care. Anything that did, like him, had lost hope. He’d even stopped checking the apartment door to see if was locked. He didn’t respond fast enough, and he knew she was squinting from the smoke curling into her eye. He used to call it “doing the Popeye.” “Are you between jobs again?” she demanded. “Between jobs” was generous. That implied bookends and that you were in the middle. There was no middle. Things were tight, he acknowledged, but he’d find a timely way to get to Aughe, Ohio. “I can get a few days off. They owe me. I work like a dog,” Pete replied. “Frosting a cupcake can wear a person out. When will you fly up?” Didi demanded. Naked, he swung his legs out of the bed. In the bathroom, he stared at the patch of black mold engulfing the bathroom ceiling, avoiding the mirror, which no longer flattered. His clear pee was long and loud, and he didn’t care if she heard it. “That’s going to be super-pricey, last-minute.” “I’ll buy the plane ticket.” Her voice crackled. “Half this country is still crazy anti-vaxxers. I’m waiting for polio to make a comeback. Drink a couple Airbornes before you get on. That recycled air is like French-kissing everyone.” He splashed his face with yellow, cold water from the sink faucet. “People still wear masks on planes,” Pete reminded her, looking for a hand towel, then remembered. Absent detergent and eight quarters, laundry didn’t get done. Goddamn it. “Wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to go nowheres, trying to keep the old man alive.” Her voice was as thick with animus as it was phlegm. “Back to that black suit…” “Everyone has a marrying and burying outfit!” Pete replied. “Please. When’s the last time you were invited to a wedding?” Pete wasn’t thinking about that. He was trying to remember if the shoulder pads in the only black suit he owned were removable. His “good shoes” weren’t anymore, but they’d do, with extra polish and new laces. “We’ll get you a suit when you get here,” she stated. “I need something, too. The black dress I have shows my knees, and you know how they are these days.” No, he didn’t. He hadn’t kept current on his sister’s knees, elbows, or neck. The videos she insisted on sending were always of their father, propped up, as Didi encouraged him with false cheer to “Say something to Pete, Dad,” and the old man would croak, “No.” She’d settle for a “smile and a wave,” and Pete remembered his father’s mouth widening like a rotting jack-o-lantern. He heard a click and Didi drag on something really hard. Her lips were forming a small o to welcome it, the lines around her mouth deepening with satisfaction. “Remember it’s winter up here. Pack a coat, if you have one. Otherwise, I’ll loan you one of Dad’s. After I check the pockets. You know how he hid money.” Pack? Pete wasn’t sure if he still had a suitcase that would remain shut, or if it mattered, or what he’d even put it in it. Maybe he could get by on semi-clean clothes d do his laundry once back in Ohio. He was also trying to remember if he still had a flask somewhere. Maybe he could pour liquor into travel-sized shampoo bottles. Did TSA check those? He didn’t want to think too much on the flight, sure that Didi had overthought things for both of them. The reality of entering their childhood home had already begun to feel like a slow walk to the gallows. Lots of splintery memories were going to jab him. He stubbed his toe on a dumbbell. With plenty of time on his hands, it had been a New Year’s resolution: to reclaim his body, once so admired. But unemployment had sapped him of all will, and the free weights had gone untouched. Nothing like the prodigal bum returning home with a bum foot. He didn’t even have a Band-Aid to buddy-tape it to another toe. It was probably a harbinger of things to come. Didi’s voice shed the logistics and crept toward pleading, or as close as his sister could manage. “I can’t do this part alone, too, Pete.” “Then I’m on my way. I’m glad you were with Dad at the end.” “Thank you.” She was coughing as she ended the call or, Pete thought, maybe crying.