Ann

Studio 360/Significant Object: Marlboro Thermos

“You didn’t.” Liz addressed Fred, her husband, as soon as she finished talking with the Assistant Principal. “I have to go speak with Steve Granger about Jack’s ‘inappropriate thermos.’ I had no idea what he could have been talking about, until . . .”###
Fred interrupted her. “I gave him that old Marlboro thermos from the garage. It’s big, and it won’t be missed if he breaks or loses it at the picnic. What’s Granger’s problem?”###
“A Marlboro thermos?! Fred, you know the rules – nothing advertising cigarettes or booze, or promoting smoking, drinking, or drugs. Anyway, there must have been new species germinating inside that thing.”###
The thermos had sat on a shelf in Fred’s workshop, alongside a rusted tin lockbox, since they’d emptied out the old beach house. She couldn’t blame Fred for this egregious example of pathological hoarding. The thermos caught her eye several times a year, always prompting her to wonder why she’d snatched it up while her brothers and sisters battled smilingly over croquet sets, doorstops, and anchors. Nobody claimed the sea-glass or quahog-shell ashtrays, but Genie – always the eldest – refused to let Weezie throw them away.###
The thermos’s provenance was a mystery: not the sort of handcrafted or nautical-themed object Mum would have scooped up at a garage sale or church fair. It intimated a bygone era of smoking on the beach with a thermos full of prepared whiskey sours or Vodka Collins to a pregnant, abstemious woman on the edge of forty. She wondered who first brought it into their house, and whether it had been donated, abandoned, or forgotten.###
“I washed it. I actually scrubbed it out carefully, and soaked it for awhile. I don’t know why anyone could object to it. It’s not an article of clothing he would wear all day. He only had it for the picnic. That’s entirely different.” Fred would yield no ground in this argument. Liz would be the peacemaker.###
She had already slung her handbag over her shoulder. “We must have other thermoses.”###
“Actually, no, and I certainly can’t understand buying a new one when we had a perfectly serviceable one. Do you need me to come along and explain that to Granger?”###
“No. I don’t trust you to resist the urge to share your opinion of his intelligence with him. Oh!”###
She pivoted, and went to the kitchen in search of a lemonade iced tea for Jack. She grabbed the half-empty liter jug of half-and-half, amused at the notion that drinking straight from the bottle was more acceptable nowadays than a Marlboro thermos, in a town that proudly sanitized itself for their protection.###
She got into her car, and drove to the middle school. Students were already piling into buses. Most wore t-shirts and gym shorts; some wore the baseball caps that were prohibited during regular hours. Tribal affiliations abounded: school and professional teams, cultural icons, classmates’ bar mitzvah souvenirs, but no alcohol and tobacco products. No Marlboro Men welcome here.###
Her son Jack stood next to Assistant Principal Granger, mortified. Liz ran an obstacle course among the students, coolers, nets, soccer balls, and prizes, in order to hand off the iced tea jug. Steve Granger didn’t bother acknowledging her; she didn’t bother forcing him to. Fred would have, but Jack deserved a respite from the conflict.###
“Do you want me to pour off into . . .?” Liz pointed, while Jack shook his head and waved her off. She swung the offending thermos defiantly as she walked back to her car. Fred had cleaned it up nicely. She would put it back into the refrigerator, so that Jack could drink from it later.