Gail Mackenzie-Smith

Word Count 967

My dad didn’t talk much when I was a kid but when he did, practically everything that came out of his mouth was a cliché. A conversation longer than three sentences was usually 75% clichés, 19% conjunctions (used to connect two or more clichés), and 6% real words. A typical dinner conversation might run something like this:

"My violin recital is next week, Dad, and I need a new dress."

"Do you think I'm made of money?"

"Um..."

"Money doesn’t grow on trees, Gail."

"Dad..."

"These kids are driving us into the poor house, Rose”.

"But..."

"Finish that pork chop, there are children starving in Europe”.

When he was really on a roll he might—over a cup of coffee with my mom—let it rip:

“So, he comes in with some cock and bull story about why he was late like I just fell off a turnip truck and I say to him, don't give me this song and dance, I've got your number, buddy. You don't have a leg to stand on. Take off and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

Not exactly the scintillating conversation you’d expect from the valedictorian of Jamestown High School Class of ‘42. We kids didn’t know what the hell he was talking about most of the time. What five-year-old can make sense of Rome wasn’t built in a day; you can’t have your cake and eat it, too (I confess, I still don’t get that one); you’re grasping at straws or his absolute favorite: a hundred years from now, nobody will know the difference.

Huh?

As I grew up, this non-communication with my dad—this castle keep he built around himself with words—made me feel lonely. My best friend Robin had heart to heart talks with her dad. Why couldn’t I? I rationalized his behavior by convincing myself that all the other dads in the neighborhood were the same, that Robin’s dad was obviously a magical unicorn in a mob of mute men. But somehow this didn’t make me feel any better.

Born and raised in upstate New York into a huge Italian immigrant family with 13 or 14 kids (no one can remember the exact number to this day), my dad was swept right out of high school and sent to fight in the South Pacific—his dream of college and becoming a philosophy professor squashed. After the war, he ended up selling real estate in the San Fernando Valley with a wife and four kids.

With his thick black hair and dark, moody eyes, he looked like Frank Sinatra and smelled like Old Spice and expensive pipe tobacco. My mom’s friends thought he was cute. And he was cute. But he was also a social recluse suffering from debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder before there was even a name for it. Most nights he’d wake up screaming. Legend has it that after one particularly horrific nightmare he got my mom in a head lock and was seconds away from punching her in the face before she managed to wake him up. There were whispered stories of an aircraft carrier sinking in a fiery blaze. But he never, ever talked about the war.

“What did you do in the war, Dad?”

“This and that. Nothing much”.

In fairness, non-verbal communication did take place. He’d grab my mom’s ass when he thought we weren’t looking or brush tears off my cheeks after a fall. His hands were large and surprisingly soft and I have memories of him tucking me into bed, smoothing my long, dark hair and kissing my forehead. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d wander into the living room and snuggle next to him on the couch. We’d watch Johnny Carson or Alfred Hitchcock together while he gently rubbed my back until I was “out like a light”. Then he’d carry me back to bed.

Years later, when I was a psych major in college, I ran across an interesting article about clichés. The author believed that many of the people who use platitudes are the ones who have led the hardest lives.

Boom.

This aha moment was both thrilling and incredibly sad. I thought of my dad growing up in the depression—his tight, scuffed, hand-me-down shoes; the sandwiches made with lettuce from the small garden out back; fighting in a world war at the age of 18 witnessing atrocities no one should ever have to witness, let alone a teenager. Maybe his clichés helped him retreat into the soothing comfort of the safe and familiar, keeping the memories of war at bay for fleeting moments. Maybe his parents, fleeing Sicily in 1921 to create a better life in America, used the same language to cope with their lives which were harsh and unrelenting. Maybe they told themselves every cloud has a silver lining or good things come to those who wait to keep going.

It wasn't until his funeral many years later that I learned he was a war hero. Apparently, he saved an aircraft carrier from suicide bombers. A grateful Navy cook announced he'd make him anything he wanted for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My dad loved steak and eggs. Soon he was eating like a king and sporting the nickname, Steak and Eggs.

Sitting with him a few weeks before he died of lung cancer, we finally had our first real conversation. Adult to adult. We discussed his funeral—about cremation opposed to burial and about my mom, his Rosie, and how they met and fell in love. He told me if he could do it over again, he'd never start smoking. I listened, silent, fighting tears. He noticed, paused for a moment, then winked.

"Will you miss me when I'm gone?” he asked. “You know, a hundred years from now nobody will know the difference."

Gail is a screenwriter and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert. When she’s not cranking out treatments, she writes essays, flash fiction, and film reviews. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Manifest-Station, Purple Clover, the flash fiction anthology “Microchondria II”, published by the Harvard Book Store and elsewhere. She lives in L.A. with about three million other screenwriters, an eccentric and highly entertaining British husband, and a one-eyed poodle/terrier mix named Bowie.