Diplomas Flambé

Opening the old notebook, an aroma flutters from its pages: not mold, not dust, but love gone sour, the ripe odour of hate. Yet all its pages seem untouched, immaculate as unruffled snow, a virgin notebook. Then I glimpse his scrawl on a few pages in the middle. There’s the stench.

As I read, I can see him, many years ago, cigarette burning between ochre fingers, deflowering the book with his sordid descriptions of my mother. His pen halts as he puts cigarette to lips, its long ash falling onto the page. Quickly, he brushes it off, just as he'd like to brush her memory off, gone with the flick of a wrist. But he cannot forget.

And I cannot forget. When I left twenty years ago, I never came back. Now I've been tasked with clearing his place out.

I pour a shot of whiskey into a little glass the colour of rubies, the colour of his anger. The glass is part of a set, one in every colour of the rainbow. Lined up on a shelf in his dining room, it amazes me that he kept them. They were a gift from a kid he didn’t like very much. I got them at the five and dime down the street, where I also bought candy, then later, makeup.

I had to wear the makeup in secret. If Dad saw even a trace of lipstick on my teenage lips, he'd launch into a litany of insulting names: tramp, trollop, Jezebel. I was a mini replica of his unfaithful bride, the one who ran away with another man.

When I was seventeen he told me I was just like her. So he threw me out. I've hated him all these years. Now he's dead and I'm glad. I might toss his befouled notebook into the fireplace along with all the Get Well cards: stacks of voluptuous cartoon nurses and flower illustrations going up in smoke.

His cat settles into my lap as I contemplate the notebook. She bats at my necklace, soft paws tickling my collarbone, aiming to straighten my cynical bent. It almost works, so I put her on the floor and get up to make dinner. Following me into the kitchen, she winds her tabby body around my legs.

She purrs loudly, as if to say: “The old man had his good qualities too, like he always bought me tuna treats.”

“Yes,” I say, giving her one of the treats. “He used to make me laugh by making faces."

I sit at the kitchen table and tear the offending pages out of the notebook. Rolling them up into mini diplomas, I declare: "Congratulations, you survived your father’s rage." Placing the scrolls in a dish, I sprinkle them with whiskey and strike a match.

The boozy scent of diplomas flambé fills the air as I pick up a pen. The salvaged notebook is now my compendium of salvaged dreams.

On its first page I write: "I love you, Dad."