My sister reaches into her suitcase for the chilidog sauce: a gift to me more rare than a ’59 Buick. Today in Atlanta, it’s Michigan weather, cold and dull, darkening at dinnertime, like when Daddy would arrive from work, brushing snow off his tweed coat. Once he brought us leftovers from the jukebox. In the stack of 45s, shiny as our patent leather shoes, we found Love Potion Number 9. His mustard-stained white shirt always reeked of onions spiked with cigarette smoke, grease, French fries. When he took off his sweaty shoes, Pico, our Chihuahua, rubbed her body crazily against them, then against his socks with their old potato odor. We loved the food smells at Angelo’s but not the mishmash Daddy wore home, even in his mustache and the sticky sheen of his forehead as he kneeled to our level. When Mom handed him his cold Coke, he passed it around to each kid, though five sips nearly drained the six-ounce bottle.
From No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin Books, 2018)
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