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Jan Heller Levi Untitled (for the moment) If we hate our parents, who made us, isn’t that a way of hating ourselves? My father, for ex- ample. I made a career of cataloging his injustices, and yes, they were legion. Here’s a recap: the tongue depressors, the rigid heart, oreo cookies slashed in two, their cellophane wrappers trembling. The tampax string. The litter incident. The mission. The misdiagnosis. Mostly, the misapprehension of my twisting, like a plant, toward the sun. He saw only the twisting. How he scorned my larval, alchemical spirit. Oh yes, the days are wonderfully similar, dull and horrible in that suburban steambox called my childhood, he the pillar, the post, the key-jangler, the money-bags, the bookie, the Politburo, the President, the Archduke Ferdinand, the King, the King of Kings, I the wee thing, the holy roller, the short-division problem, the toothless and the over- toothed, the carwash drinker, the vomiting medusa, the screamer, the drop in the bucket, the poet. This has all been chronicled. Now my pop is 80, a lambie-kins, a — pfuft-pfuft — flat tire. Across banquet rooms at family affairs, I watch him nod and bob at cousins, nieces and nephews, taking in maybe half, giving out less. We all agree that he’s adorable, his second wife started out a problem, but hey, she’s got a full plate now, and hasn’t she been great, really–keeping him fed and clothed, adjusting his meds, even, now and then, getting him out to a museum. But what I want to say is oh scourge of my youth, where have you gone? Now that I am strong, strong enough for an equal match, you’ve gone and disappeared into this doddering, sweet, infuriating shade that I’d be a bully to pick on. You sneaky bastard, all bent over like that. Come on, I know you’re in there. Come out and fight like a man. We were something back then, remember, all thunder, lightning, and fireworks. Come on out, you fist in a glove, be who you’ve always been: my tall, my strong, my awful, my greatest enemy, my love. Wedding Party Reed was one of the first to go. Before it had a name, his bones started turning to paper. It’s not true it didn’t have a name. The doctors gave it a dozen. First shinsplints, next shingles, then rheumatoid arthritis. Followed by combinations of the above to which were added some kind of blood thing, or virus. Maybe a tumor or collection of tumors. They kept testing. We kept waiting. They kept naming. We repeated the names like children in a spelling bee, sounding out the letters in our mouths like a mantra. Then he was up again, same old Reed, heading to the clubs, bringing us languid, humid stories from the baths, showing up at Ken’s and my wedding party, the coolest guest of all, gentlest guy in the world head-to-toe in leather with a pack of pick-ups trailing behind, gentlest kids in the world, also head-to-toe in leather. Good dancers, too. I remember they stayed after everyone else was gone, helped us clean up, scraping lasagna from paper plates, downing the last of the wine in pale blue plastic glasses. When they left, they tossed our garbage bags over their shoulders and clomped down the stairs, Santa Clauses in reverse. Two weeks later the phone tree told us the flu, two weeks later, worse. Two weeks later back in the hospital, howling because the weight of the sheets on his skin was unbearable. He wasn’t in leather, but his favorite plaid workshirt and jeans. Casual, comfortable. If the boys from our party were there, I didn’t recognize them. Or maybe they’d already left. We got there late, after the service, stayed a few minutes, went out for coffee, went home. Since then, the friends who connected us to Reed have drifted out of our lives — there’s no name for how that happens, either – and now the marriage is over, too. Still, when I think of Reed, I taste the last crumbs of wedding cake on our lips when we kissed goodbye that night, how sweet it was, how goddamn, goddamn sweet.