Golden Arches
Every M your dad writes comes out like the McDonald’s arches. No backbone on the left—just two camel humps. So every time he writes your name, you think of McDonald’s, and how you order the same thing every time you go there: a cheeseburger with just the meat, the cheese, and the bun. Plus a Coke and fries.
Every birthday card: McDonald’s. Every Christmas present: McDonald’s. Every note, every sign-up sheet, every doctor’s office form, every Post-It in your lunch: McDonald’s.
You wonder why he can’t write his Ms a different way. Why not spikier? Less McDonald’sy?
Fourteen-year-old you will gripe about it in your diary, as if this were the worst offense in life someone could commit against you. How dare he write my name like McDonald’s, you’ll write. Leafing through this collection of angst when you’re older will turn your face hot every single time.
“Why do you write it that way?” you’ll ask him while spreading fake cobwebs all across the hedges in your front yard. It’s Halloween, and you’ve just completed your shared ritual: hitting up the closest Spirit store, picking out a few of the creepiest decorations, then grabbing some dry ice from the gas station on the way home. The two of you will artfully arrange it all, dangling much-too-large spiders from trees, digging holes for skeletons to crawl out of, and propping up your army of zombie cats.
“It’s faster. And more fun,” he’ll say, using tongs to pluck dry ice out of the Styrofoam cooler, placing the cubes in a cauldron near your front door.
You set a few skeleton arms in the cauldron, as if they were crawling out from some portal. “Well it reminds me of McDonald’s. I don’t like it,” you’ll say.
“Where should we put the tombstones?” he’ll ask. “Look—this one says Dustin Ash. Hah!”
You’ll roll your eyes. You don’t know it at the time, but this will be the last Halloween you’ll decorate the house together before you proclaim that you’re “too old for that kind of thing.” When you tell your dad, he’ll nod. Won’t say much. Maybe an “are you sure?”
But you’re sure. The next Halloween your crush will invite you to hang out, and you can’t say no. You’ll drive around with him and his friends. They’ll steal pumpkins off porches and smash them in front of children. The whole time you’ll ignore the knot in your stomach because you’re with him, and isn’t this fun, he’ll ask, and you’ll say yes because you want him to like you, but really you’re wondering how your dad is decorating the house.
When you get home, there won’t be any decorations.
Every gift he gets you after you turn fifteen will be hit or miss—hit when they’re things like See’s candy, miss when they’re things like hiking socks, for that camping trip he keeps threatening you with. And each gift comes with a card that you’ll read with a smile but later throw away. You’re sneaky about it: after he’s dragged the recycling to the curb, and when you take the dog out for a walk before bedtime, you’ll toss in whatever card has offended you most recently.
Your desperation to not be associated with McDonald’s crescendos alongside the hormones and angst. And with the increased awareness that you’re balancing on the cusp of adulthood, about to cross over into a territory free of parental involvement, you’ll start to snipe at him more and more.
“Those shoes are so gross, Dad,” you’ll say one day when he kicks on his New Balances to run to the store. “Why can’t you be like Larissa’s dad? He wears Vans.”
“These are comfy,” he’ll say, wiggling his toes and making the worn white toe box nod. “I bet you Larissa’s dad gets blisters from his shoes.”
“He doesn’t,” you’ll say, even though you aren’t sure that’s true.
And when he drives you to school on mornings when you take too long to get ready and you miss the bus, you’ll make him drop you off three blocks away.
“Are you embarrassed of me?” he’ll ask with a laugh.
You’ll hop out and shut the door.
When he catches you sneaking back into the house past your curfew, rolls of toilet paper tucked under your arm because you and Larissa will chicken out of TPing Ryan’s house, he’ll ask you where you were. You’ll say you noticed you were running low on toilet paper, despite the Costco-sized pack lurking in the hallway closet.
“What about that?” he’ll say, pointing to the flashlight sticking out of your back pocket.
It takes you too long to come up with an answer, so he grounds you.
“Fuck you,” you’ll say before slinking off to your bedroom.
“You know,” he’ll say before turning off the lights, “you’re a real piece of work.”
By the time you’re sixteen, he’ll stop writing his Ms like McDonald’s. They’ll grow sharper, less casual and more intentional, the way you like them. But when the cards and notes start coming around, you can’t kick your tradition of throwing them away. Now there’s a different reason for trashing them. One that you don’t have the words for, but you have all the feelings for.
You start wearing makeup. You want your lip pierced—no, your belly button—but you don’t bring it up because you know what he’ll say. You think about lying to the piercing parlor and telling them you’re eighteen when really you’re a few months shy of seventeen. You bring a friend to vouch for you.
When, to your astonishment, that works, you come home smug and practically purring. The next day at school you show off your new jewel, shirt hiked up farther than it needs to be. Your classmates go wild. By the end of the day you’ll have heard your name whispered across too many lips to count. You’ll be a legend. An object of desire.
A few days later, the pain will come. Your belly button will turn red and grow itchy. You’ll kid yourself into thinking it’s cramps.
Another day will pass. Then another. You’ll know something’s wrong, but you can’t let your dad know what you’ve done. Should you talk to Larissa’s mom about it? No—she’d just call your dad and blab everything.
And then the fever will start. That’s when you really start to panic. What if the infection spreads? And goes into your bloodstream? And then you die? Mom always mentioned that sort of thing could happen.
You’ll find him in the kitchen, chipping away at the Sunday crossword puzzle. “Dad,” you’ll say, holding back tears.
After coming home from the urgent care, belly bandaged, piercing removed, he’ll order your favorite pizza and you’ll watch baseball together. You’ll laugh. Reminisce. Talk about how you don’t have to order Hawaiian pizza for Mom anymore. Meat lover’s is a common bond you and he share.
“Whose idea was it to put pineapple on pizza?” you’ll ask. But you only say that because you’ve heard your dad say it before. The last time you stole a bite of Mom’s slice, you had to hide how much you liked the blows salt and sweet traded atop your tongue.
When you go to bed, on your back because of your belly, you’ll think maybe he isn’t so bad.
You’ll remember how fun it was to do science experiments together when you were younger. Like how once you filled an empty Coke bottle with baking soda and poured in vinegar until foam erupted from the top. He picked it up and chased you across the lawn, and you narrowly escaped his foamy attacks.
And then you’ll remember how he struggled to braid your hair for months. Each one came out crooked, errant hairs poking out from the sides.
And then you’ll remember his old Ms, and how he changed them just for you. He changed his handwriting just for you. Just especially for you.
“This doesn’t taste like Mom’s,” you’ll say one night after he makes an apple pie to celebrate how you passed a physics test you thought you failed. You’ll pick at the slice in front of you, pushing around the mushy apples that are missing that extra cinnamon Mom would add. The crust will be wet on the bottom but burned around the edges.
He’ll spear a chunk of apple and pop it into his mouth. “For a guy who’s never made pie before, I’d say it’s pretty good.”
“Did you even follow her recipe?” you’ll say, picking off the burned crusts and piling them up so he can see how inedible his creation is.
“I followed a recipe,” he’ll say, squinting as he chews a bit of crust.
You’ll push your plate away, stand up, and say, “I’m not hungry,” leaving an uneaten mound of pie as his only companion at the table.
Later, when you use the iPad, you’ll stumble across his search history: Apple pie recipes. Secret to good apple pie. Apple pie burned on edges but uncooked in middle. How to tell if oven is broken.
For your seventeenth birthday, you and your friends will go out to dinner at a nice Indian restaurant across town. You’ll tell him no parents allowed except for when he picks you and your friends up and drives you back home for a sleepover. Larissa will have two hidden bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade in her bag. You’ll pass the bottles around, taking sips and puckering your lips, pretending like you’re drunk even though Mike’s Hard Lemonade doesn’t have that kind of power.
The next day, after everyone leaves, you’ll go through your presents and find his birthday card. He’s slipped up: his Ms looks like McDonald’s. You’ll bristle at first. But after a moment, you’ll slide the card into your desk drawer, where the old ones are. The ones that are still signed “Mom and Dad.” The ones you’ll smell to see if you can still catch a whiff of her perfume. The ones you’ll keep to memorize how she signed “Mom”—spiky Ms and all. The ones you’ll eventually get tattooed on your wrist when you realize you don’t want to forget how she signed cards, or how he signed cards either.
So that’s why, right now, when you’re thirteen, and you’re standing in the doorway, watching your dad on the porch, sitting on the swing, holding the urn, holding all that’s left of her body, not the warm body he used to hold at night, not the entire body he fell in love with, most especially because of her confidence, and her laugh, and how free it was, how often she loosed it from her red lips, red every day, always red, because it was her favorite color and she knew it looked good on her, because she was wearing it the day he fell in love with her, those red lips, those ashy lips, just ash, that’s all that’s left, and that’s why when he clutches the cold ceramic to his chest and thinks about how last week it was a body, don’t shut the door because you’re embarrassed to see your dad cry.
Instead, let him write his Ms like McDonald’s.
Kristin Eade is a writer from Seattle, although she currently calls the Bay Area home. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts and has an ardent love for words, especially those that need a good edit. Her work has appeared in Defunct Magazine, Spectrum, Rogue Agent, Fragments, and Rue Scribe. When she’s not writing she enjoys daydreaming, playing with cats, and being in nature. You can find her at www.kristineade.com.
