Truth in Advertising Page 0,69

does he go? Has anyone made arrangements for a funeral?

“I’m sorry,” I say to the nurse. “What happens now?”

“Your father wished to be cremated. It’s on the admitting form.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“I don’t know. That would be in his will, if he left one.”

Another nurse comes over—SIMONE, it says on her nametag—and puts a clear plastic bag on the counter of the nurses station where we are standing.

“This is for you,” she says. “Your father’s things. His . . . personal effects.” She wants to sound professional. “Clothes, wallet.” She pauses. She can’t think of any more nouns. “Shoes.” Except his shoes aren’t in the bag.

In the plastic bag I see his wallet and an opened pack of Lucky Strikes. The logo used to be green, he told me when I was little, but during the war the army needed the dye for everything and so they switched to red. Lucky Strike went to war, the ads said. In movies where the art director does his or her homework, he said, you can see that the logo is green. And an old silver cigarette lighter, heavy, with his initials engraved on one side and on the other these names: DUTCH HARBOR, ATTU, PEARL HARBOR, MIDWAY, ADMIRALTY ISLAND, BRISBANE, SYDNEY, BIAK, ESPIRITU SANTO. I put it to my nose and smell it. The hint of lighter fluid. He always smelled of cigarettes. And there are brown corduroy pants with the belt still in the loops and black socks that I imagine smell bad and a handkerchief. Who carries a handkerchief anymore? And a plaid flannel shirt and a pilly dark green sweater. I reach in for the wallet, open it, and find $41. A twenty, four fives, and a one. Bills arranged front to back, high to low.

Margaret appears, fresh-faced, clear-eyed, starting her shift. We look at each other for a time and I think how wonderful it must be to share a life with her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” my mother would say when someone told her something interesting, something mildly surprising. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Is that right? She loved him and held him and planned a life. I have their wedding album in my closet in my apartment on a shelf underneath a couple of old boxes. For a time, on occasion, usually late, a glass of wine in hand, I would bring it down and leaf through it. On page after page, her pretty dress, her lovely hair, the tiny flowers, baby’s breath, long white gloves, her broad smile. And him, smiling, too, closed-mouthed, forever embarrassed of his bad teeth. So much possibility. So much hope. We will have children. We will laugh. We will build a life and a family, fill it with rich memories, and nothing, nothing, so help us God, will ever pull us apart. What do we really get in life besides family, besides people whose job it is to look out for us? Whose blood oath is that they must never forget that? I would look at the pictures and think, They knew nothing of what was to come. I stopped looking after a while because it was like knowing an accident was going to happen but not being able to do anything to stop it.

How does it come to this? Not death, but this . . . this empty, nothing thing. A wallet, a bag of clothes. A half-empty pack of cigarettes. A Social Security card in laminate and a pension card for the Boston Police Department and a pick-up slip for a dry cleaner’s dated two years ago and there, tattered at the edges, almost stuck to the leather, is a photo, in black and white, of Eddie and Kevin and Maura and me, sitting in a row, in matching sweaters, me a fat-faced three-year-old and on the back the date and the imprint SEARS ROEBUCK & CO. PHOTO LAB. MAKE THE MEMORIES LAST.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Margaret says, “Mr. Dolan?”

I look up and smile at her.

“I’m fine, Margaret. Honestly.”

I put the wallet back into the bag.

“We’re so sorry,” Simone says suddenly.

“Thank you,” I say, nodding. “Thank you.”

Milky light outside. New Year’s Day.

“Happy New Year,” I say.

They force a smile. It’s time to go. Except I don’t move. And Margaret, sweet Margaret, knower of secrets, of the right way to live, early morning walker, maker of homemade soups, understands far sooner than I the simple truth that however far you drift from your family, however much pain they’ve caused you, however hard