All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(43)
His response, simple and clear.
Honey. Thanks for keeping me looped in. Let’s chat this weekend and pls know I’m in your corner always. Dad.
He died forty days later.
24
The Water Has It Now
“Great work comes from the spaces in between people.”
I spent much of the time writing this book at our family’s cabin in the Adirondacks.
He wrote his book up here, too. The two of us lived together that summer in 2007. I was a waitress/bartender at a fancy-ish eatery down the road. The locals hated me for being that college girl who scooped up the seasonal cash and left with the tourists. I was nineteen and just about the worst roommate a debut memoirist could ask for. At the end of a long day, I would trudge back to the cabin, manage to grunt a “Hey” to my dad, and head into my room. I had plastered the walls with embarrassing emo band paraphernalia and would proceed to fire up a green bong that I named Jenny, after the nearby lake. I was the worst.
Pot was an innocuous substance to my dad. He didn’t like the smell of it or the way I acted when I smoked, but he figured I was an adult and could smoke if I wanted to. How could he tell me not to? My dad had struggled with substances his whole life. Pot, coke, crack, vodka—you name it, he tried it. He is what one might call a garbage head. He was many things, but a hypocrite was not one of them.
After I was under adequate cannabis sedation, I would lumber into the kitchen and take root in front of the refrigerator. There I would stand for a good five to ten minutes, considering, through the different cooking equations, what could be combined to result in dinner. My dad would yell with irritation from the other room, “Erin, the contents of the fridge are not going to change. Close the fridge!” It was a tenuous time in our relationship. I didn’t care about the intense crack addiction memoir he was writing, and he didn’t care for the prolonged adolescent shift I was going through. But seeing as we were roommates, and family, we tried to find some ways to make it work.
I would hear him typing from every room in that wooden cabin. The speed and intensity with which he clanked on the keyboard were legendary. He would ask me questions sometimes about what I remembered from when I was little. Who was that guy that he used to be? Did I remember him? I did, but it was hard to put into words at the tender age of nineteen.
One thing we did have in common at the time was music. Not only our bond, music was also an education in taste growing up in our household. From alt-rocker PJ Harvey to the lyrical Magnetic Fields to the family favorite, soft-spoken busker Mary Lou Lord, music was a constant. When my dad introduced me to the supreme space pirate known as David Bowie, I was mesmerized. I had a tiny gray stereo that I placed right next to my bed, and every day for two years I woke up to the song “Five Years.”
Teenagers, however resentful, are just looking for a way to connect, and through trial and error I had found my connection. I read countless books about the riot grrls, glam rock queens, and shoegaze heroes. I even went so far as to compile lists and make more than a couple of mixtapes for him. Making mixtapes for your dad is next-level dork. Yet that’s what I did, without reservation. Liz Phair, Arcade Fire, Tegan and Sara, the Mountain Goats, and Against Me! were carefully organized into a playlist on my charcoal iPod. I usually put some Elliott Smith on there to round out the fun with some bummer. Dad got me very into the Replacements and Heartless Bastards in turn.
* * *
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I sit here in the summer of 2017 at the cabin where he once was. I even presume to sit at his desk while I write this book, hoping some magical transference will take place and I’ll be gifted, if only for this moment, with his way with words. I feel like a boy trying to fit into his dad’s running shoes.
I walk down the shore along the lake and still expect my dad to be sitting there, propped up in one of our ancient beach chairs, our family dog at his side. But he is not.
For the most part, his belongings in the cabin have remained untouched. Books, scraps of paper with furious scribbling on them like “IBM” or “survival holding” sit on his desk. I laugh when I see his headset. God help you if you moved that headset. If you did, you were in for some trouble. On the wall next to his desk is a hodgepodge of objects: a flag with a Native American wearing a headdress with the words THE TRADIN’ POST—ADIRONDACK MTS embroidered on it, a green sleeping bag that I am sure no one ever used, and in the center a silver plate with the words HOME SWEET HOME engraved. In the other room, empty cigarette boxes, loose change, and nails sit inside a yellow Frisbee. An ax and a hatchet hang on the wall in a Shining sort of way. A scorecard from Brookhaven Golf Course remains pinned to the post in the kitchen, documenting his first and last hole in one. Pictures of his wife and kids line the mantel above the fireplace.
What happens to all this stuff when a person is no longer here? The remaining objects are both comforting and devastating, compelling me to sit and stare at them.
I regret not going out on the lake more with my dad. He was always asking, but I much preferred to be on dry land on my days off, curled up in the shade with a good book. The summer before he died, he cajoled me into joining him in the canoe. “C’mon, it’ll be fun,” he said as he pushed my shoulders toward the door. “Grab the paddles.” I looked up, knowing that this wasn’t a battle I would win. I dutifully grabbed the yellow paddles and chased after him down the dirt path. He kicked off his shoes when we reached the shoreline and then told me to hop in the front. I would be our guide.