A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Olive Garden

That night, a bunch of the family met at an Olive Garden for dinner. I felt a nagging sense of shame that we went to such a cheerful place. Its peppy waitstaff gave the illusion that the world is a fair and happy place and no one ever dies.

I sat next to my cousin Terry, who is about ten years older than me. I didn’t know him that well. He asked me about living in Portland and said he sometimes visited there to go to bookstores. He was a history teacher at a high school in Walla Walla and had a room in his house just for his library. There aren’t too many people in my family whom you’d call literary, so I was excited to have someone to talk books with. The conversation soon turned to family though. We played connect the dots with the bloodline. His mom was my dad’s sister, Evelyn, who had spent time at Medical Lake, being treated for psychosis at the same time Elinda was there getting shock treatments. His dad was someone he never knew. Apparently, he was a drug dealer who was shot and killed in their front yard when he was a little boy.

He asked me in all earnestness, “How was it growing up with John?” I could tell he knew the answer wasn’t going to be good, and I could also tell that he had his own opinions to share.

“It was kind of crappy,” I offered.

He nodded and said, “I used to go to your place a lot when you guys were little and I just wondered how you guys dealt with him. He was a bastard.”

I ordered another Spanish coffee and we talked more as we ate. By this time, I was tired of everyone treading softly and pretending that Dad’s life was saintly. “It’s nice to know that there’s someone here who isn’t full of shit,” I said to Terry. I was actually starting to feel like Dad’s death would become a reason for the family to open up more. After all, if there’s someone in your family whom you’re always afraid of offending, it can be stifling for everyone involved. Terry told me about being a kid and going to visit my dad a few times with his mom. This was a couple of years before I was born, when Matt was a baby and Mom and Dad were split up. Dad was living in some kind of motel out by the airport in Kennewick and there were Playboys scattered around. One day, after hearing that he didn’t get a job that he’d been hoping for, Dad got so angry that he trashed the place, knocking holes in the walls and breaking furniture. He grabbed a gun and went outside and shot bullets into the hard ground.

Matt heard us talking about Dad and joined in the conversation. Soon we were joking and laughing about his spazzy temper and creative cursing. Matt and I tried to remember the exact order of f-words and other swears when he smashed his fingers moving the fridge down the stairs. It’s the closest we got to a eulogy.