For the purpose of this story.
For clarity’s sake.
Know that I am the son and there was a bank.
_
And the bank had planter boxes in front of the windows that looked out from the ATMs, which were home to many dead or dying Marigolds, Begonias, and Inch Plants. Also in the planters, were the end-parts of cigarettes that the Ashland Avenue bus drivers had left in the dirt, next to their played lottery tickets, scratched eagerly and with possibility, once endorsed by the State Tax Commission, only to end up lying abandoned and sun-dimmed, disappointments amongst disappointments amongst the disappointing flower stalks.
_
The bank was on the corner of Ashland and Wool.
It sometimes snowed there, on that corner.
Come winter.
But never enough for people to not drive in.
No, the few times when it seemed close, the employees of the bank took great pride in their branch’s particular knack for perseverance, for gumption; they braved; they drove; they carpooled and took the access roads when larger arteries of traffic developed around more popular, more plowed thoroughfares. And it was this commitment to duty which had won the bank, its managers and employees, a record four––four!––Mauritius Commercial Bank Awards for outstanding achievement in service. The awards––which were not medals, nor trophies, but certificates stamped in gold and signed by the bank’s chairman and chief executive officer––all hung in the lounge, above the Keurig.
The revolving doors unlocked at 8:00 AM.
The pull doors at 8:00 AM.
The bank opened at 8:00 AM.
They weren’t ridiculous.
Delays happened.
Once the doors opened at 8:08 because somehow, oddly, a mouse died on the staircase that led to the safety deposit boxes.
_
On a day without smoke.
The bank hired a new gun guy because the old gun guy learned everyone’s names and stopped bringing his gun.
Which was a sad day.
For all parties.
And all pertaining parties.
_
My father hated that.
Being a bad gun guy.
Being fired.
Not that he ever used the word, “Fired.”
No, it was always, “Dismissed.”
He’d been dismissed.
And after my father was dismissed from the bank, he got a job fastening things.
He had to have it.
That job; a job.
Fastening fasteners.
Soldering the fastens.
Securing ends.
“Forever welds,” his boss called them. Then amended, “Generational welds at least.”
Welds which, as my father understood, were meant to last for seven thousand or eight thousand years; for generations; and generations; and generations beyond those; generations so evolved and artless that my father’s mind could not or did not want to imagine them. Welds meant to last all the way up until the end of their chemical life, their compound life, their life-life, or, at least until the progeny collapsed beneath the kingdom.
_
Later
Years later.
On a night with bugs.
My father watched the nightly news on a television we’d fought very hard for on Black Friday.
I was visiting, in town from Knoxville.
There was breaking news about the bank he stopped bringing his gun to.
The bank he was dismissed from.
A news reporter in a jacket walked through a shattered window, passing wrecked counters on which the tellers had set money, stacks of bills, unmoved, still in the clean, crisp, equal rows that the robbers had demanded. Further still, the reporter passed the unplugged fountain; the manager’s office; the coffee lounge with gold certificates. A desk was kicked over. A lamp shade strewn sideways. Then. Soon. Soon, the reporter came to the ruptured vault at the heart of the bank.
“Wow,” I said, swaddling my baby.
The reporter pointed overhead.
The camera followed.
My father, never an extra movement maker, sat forward in his chair.
Listening.
Watching.
Stretching his legs out in both directions.
It looked like he was going to pick up the television with his feet.
Like a forklift.
Like a Montague.
A Capulet.
I can’t be sure, I never read what I was supposed to read.
His bald knees––stiff from a missed cortisone appointment––reflected the television.
My baby sniffled.
The camera stopped moving.
It fixed.
Focused.
Right above the blown-out seal of the vault, sprayed in orange.
Or dark yellow.
Yes.
In dark yellow paint, the words “NO ONE EVER TOLD Y0U” dripped towards the missing hinge.
_
My father walked onto the porch.
I followed.
He lit a cigarette and stood at parade rest.
I watched.
He snapped his fingers loudly.
And something about that brought my baby close.
Which seemed right.
Because then.
Then he did something he doesn’t.
He screamed, “No one ever told you!” “No one ever said!” “No one told you anything!” “No one.” “You weren’t told.” “Ha.” “Ha.” “Because nobody told yooooouuuuuu!”
And he drugged the last “yooooouuuuuu” like it was going down a hill with him.
No slowing.
No caution.
Then.
He stomped his foot on the porch.
And jumped down and stomped the walkway.
All the way out to the road.
Where the bugs were working.
He stomped.
And yowled.
Until my mother came out.
Yes, until my mother came out and said something very gentle, gently to him.
_
At some point in the months that followed I sent my father a short message.
While my baby walked right under the table in the kitchen waving her soccer toy.
I created this little message.
With the title: How you feeling?
And I asked him how he was feeling.
re: Comeuppance.
re: Sweet revenge.
re: Real splendor and everything that could follow.
_
It’s worth mentioning here.
It’d be silly not to mention.
That the Ashland-Wool Park Heist took place on December 4th in the year 2081.
If that matters at all.
Does it?
It shouldn’t. The future is not a wholly different occasion from any other.
See.
My father was born on July 18th of 2013.
On the highest floor of a private hospital, so that his mother––my grandmother––while she wasn’t giving birth, could possibly, almost watch the kids from the Thursday sailing class practice their downwind turns beyond the wharf. Or, if she couldn’t see them, at least hear them, she hoped. And be able to imagine her soon-arriving son––my father––out there, one day, among them in a small schooner he’d saved all year to buy himself, sailing, learning to sail, tacking and jibing and tying knots with both hands: the bowline, the reef knot, the anchor hitch; knots that could be trusted under any amount of pressure; knots that wouldn’t faulter––no, but from time-to-time, occasionally, on their very worst day, did have the possibility of snapping loudly, cracking the cleat, failing, and breaking loose, leaving––for the very first but certainly not last time––a junior sailor unmoored.
But
Sadly.
There was no wind in 2013.
No.
So.
Instead, my father was born into a still, flawless day beneath a window half-cranked, looking out upon an endless calm of still buoys, of longboarders at the mouth of the headland, splashing at each other’s wetsuits, waiting for surf, for current, for motion, of which there was none, save for the occasional break of the Silver Carps coming up for their water bugs, their drowned horseflies, their flecks of city powder and leftover picnic waste.
Yes.
He was born.
My father.
Then.
Dismissed from the bank at the age of 59 for being a bad gun guy.
Somehow, 68 on the night of the Ashland-Wool Park Heist.
And turning 71 in just five short days.
Now.
My mother is sick but turning 66.
Her machines cut up the floor of the old office.
She’s sick, okay?
But on the days when she’s better, she and my father will walk to where the path stops.
Yes.
My daughter is 5 and a celebrity to me.
So much so that, at times, I’m struck by even the sight of her bracelets, her books, her plastic fruits, and accompanying silverware; all of the small and flawless messes she leaves for me, her dad.
I’m in awe.
I’m in sandals.
Everyone is still here.
Still happening.
Still living.
All around me.
And, about me.
Please.
If possible.
Imagine me: jetpacked in crowded airspace, with bird flares. Imagine me way high above my local superstores with their smokestacks, their eyes exams, their big and bruised pallets of spider spray.
Yes.
Do: imagine my daughter every other weekend.
And my still-alive father once more.
And now me again.
In 2084.
Me.
Lucky me.
With two tickets to New Paris, a place they say, everyone must visit at least once in the Spring.