Dodo Eraser

Not without agendas.

Mom calls first, lagoon blue sky with towering, diamond spires in the background and a fluffy cloud floor stretching on forever, hunky himbo angels flitting around on dove wings—two toss a beach ball; one strums an acoustic guitar, softly crooning Janis Joplin’s “Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz” (my Mom’s favorite) with an ill-matched gorgeous voice.

“Hi handsome!” Mom says, her customary greeting. “You look great.”

This next part is distracted as she fishes a Kool from her pocket book and lights, all this with the charred arm that burnt up in the crash—our crash, our single engine plane over the Grand Canyon that I miraculously survived. “It’s so sunny up here! Look at this—” I’m temporarily blinded as she shows me the sun “—I’m going to burn to a crisp. I forgot my sunblock. But it’s so pretty. The weather’s perfect. There’s this little breeze.”

A stern older angel, a silver fox with sunglasses and a clipboard, appears at her shoulder, tut-tuts with a faint, flirtatious smile, and Mom chuckles, flicks the ash from her cigarette and drops it off screen. He says, “Thank you, Susana,” and disappears. My mom, walking now, mutters, “no smoking, though. Of course.”

“I’m okay.” I say. I’m sitting in my car at my therapist’s home office, two beers into a six pack. “I miss you.”

Her mouth tightens. She nods, finally says, “I know. How’s Beth doing? ”

Beth’s my wife. They never got along. Beth, as usual, sat out my family’s annual Christmas trip to Vegas (taken out of adherence to tradition, not pleasure), her absence a point of contention between us—“It’s the family’s vacation! She’s not part of the family?”—one of many things we were shouting about—me and my parents—when the pilot, half turned in his seat to watch, lost control of the plane.

“Okay—what’s up, Mom?”

She frowns. “Nothing. What’s that mean: ‘what’s up’? I’m just calling to say hi—there’s no reason—” the Silver Fox angel reappears, eyebrows raised, no nonsense. My mom does a little sigh through her nose. “I love you,” she says. “I just wanted to say that,” she locks eyes with Silver Fox’s sunglasses, holds, but he doesn’t give, “and, I’m sorry, okay. Just for everything. I want you to know that. Tell Beth.”

A tiny nod from Silver Fox. He checks something off his clipboard, then disappears.

Mom softens, eyes moistening. I haven’t seen this since I was in the hospital for pneumonia in junior high. “I do, Tyler. I love you. I am sorry, sweetheart.”

A beach ball angel floats closer, calls for her to come join. Mom begins to fish for a cigarette again, paying no attention to the phone, which swings and shows a glimpse of two James Dean-ish angels leaning on a classic red Ferrari slightly sunk into the cloud floor; I hear her growling to herself, “You know what, goddammit, if I’m in heaven, I’m going to smo—”

Our Facetime cuts out.

I’m turning up the next beer when my phone starts ringing. It reads “HELL.”

Here’s my dad, crouching behind a volcanic boulder. Distant screams. He speaks in a breathless whisper, “Hey bud, what’s up?” He’s missing several teeth and the top of his head is flattened; they repaired this for the funeral but the work’s been undone.

“Dad? Jesus—”

“Hey, real quick, I wanted—” he looks away, startled, “Shit. Shit. I just wanted to ask if—”

Something, a tentacle, whips through the screen and he screams, now is being dragged but hangs onto the phone. I catch a crimson sky with large, dark shapes swooping here and there, three purplish moons, and a giant baby toddling around. Dad regains control of the phone so he speaks—calmly—while sliding along dark gravel. Whatever’s pulling him unseen.

“Hey, Tyler. You get those shipments out to Montreal?”

“Yes, dad,” I say. Last fall, I moved home and took what was supposed to be a temporary position as assistant manager at the family business, until I got back on my feet. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh. Sure.You didn’t let them fuck you on the service, did you? Did you go to Mike Rutherford? We went to school; he’d’ve given you a—” Dad disappears for a second, yanked through a puddle of something greenish with the skeletons of small creatures floating in it, then reappears, sputtering, “—a good deal. On the funeral service.”

A goat leg stamps down by Dad’s head.

“Son,” he says, his mouth tightening, then he begins wincing, grits his remaining teeth, winces again, “I want you to know that I—” he looks at something above him angrily, gives a tiny shake of his head, his eyes get huge, then he sighs. “—okay, I love you. And all that stuff.” 

The last time I remember my Dad saying this, I was, maybe, in kindergarten, around the time he was teaching me to read Dr. Seuss, bopping my head with books in facetious anger when I made mistakes: my warmest recollection of him. And this I’m uncertain of, more “I’m sure he said it once or twice”than an actual memory.

“I love you, too,” I say, tearing up.

He smiles. “Right. Hey look, I’ve got to—just make sure those shipments get out, go check—” and the Facetime cuts out.

I pound my palms on the steering wheel, tears flowing, and shout until my voice breaks.

My therapist steps out on her porch and looks at me, puzzled.

I give her a little thumbs up. She frowns and goes inside. I start the car, toss the 7/11 bag with three empty, three full beer cans, and my phone out my car window and into the parking lot, then drive home.

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Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee his stories appear in Necessary Fiction, Fractured Lit, Cleaver, Iron Horse Review, and elsewhere. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs.