Gerry

Six days a week my father was at work, managing a supermarket in Staten Island, NY. He was supposed to be in the office counting out the register trays or making work schedules or pointing out what needed to be done. But he enjoyed the grunt work better: filling endcaps with that week’s cereal specials, stocking the freezer cases with boxed vegetables and tubs of ice cream, collecting wayward shopping carts from the empty lot down the street, grown wild with milkweed and sticker burrs. And on Sunday, his only day of rest, he didn’t want to hang around his family. ###

Before heading out on Sunday mornings to the coin shop to admire the flawless currency so far beyond his salary’s reach, or to wash his Duster at the do-it-yourself place in town, or to escape to God knows where without his wife and kids, he’d sit at the kitchen table with his only true confidants, his Marlboros and Budweisers. Under a cloud of smoke, a dull-gray signifier of comic strip bad luck, he’d empty a couple of Buds. It took a prodigious amount of alcohol to even get my father buzzed. Two Buds was like unsweetened Kool-Aid. ###

One Sunday my mother dragged my brothers out to K-Mart to buy off-brand sneakers, leaving me alone with my father. I could tell by the way he pinched the filter hard as he smoked that my presence was monkeying with whatever his plans were for the day. I passed him at the table on my way to the television when he spoke. ###

“Sit,” he said, the word floating in exhaled smoke. My father was not abusive, never hit us beyond a smack on the rear, but he was a dad—unpredictable, mercurial—and his invitation could carry any number of implications. ###

He upended a Bud, brought it down heavy on the table. He tapped his cigarette over a cereal bowl. I heard the ashes hiss in the dye-stained milk. ###

“Got something for you,” he said. He fitted the cigarette in his lips and disappeared into his bedroom. I heard the click of the wardrobe door lock, the squeak of its hinge. He returned with a brown paper bag and a magazine rolled into a tube. "For you." ###

I took the bag by its strangled goose neck, wary of what could be inside. “What is it?" ###

"Marlboro Miles," he said. "Been saving them up. Got a few hundred. They come on the packs of cigarettes. I looked through the catalogue and don’t want anything, so I thought you could get something for yourself." ###

He unrolled the catalogue before me. The items celebrated bedrock American pursuits: poker sets, with clay chips and polished cards; grilling accessories, like hickory wood chips and tongs and burger flippers; lighters and ashtrays and beer cozies; and all branded with the Marlboro logo. Only one section interested me: the camping equipment. I picked out a long Coleman thermos with a squared-off handle. ###

"Make up your mind?" my father asked. ###

"Thermos," I said. "Looks cool." ###

“Great,” he said. “I’ll send for it.” ###

He stubbed out his cigarette and grabbed another beer from the fridge. Instead of notching the long neck in the opener screwed to the wall, he pointed it at me. “You wanna head out to the car wash?” he said. “You can work the sprayer.” ###

I tried not to smile. “Sure,” I said. ###

He refridged the beer and we headed out, with me riding shotgun in the filthy Duster.