Malcolm’s Strainer

Two years ago Dad and I were walking down the street on our way back from eating at Nino’s. He had a turkey club and I had a grilled cheese kid’s meal, which sounds like I’m seven years old but it’s my favorite. At the time I was fourteen. In eighth grade and hating every minute of it. He was still working—a graphic designer with about twenty accounts.

He had hair back then, and he’d style it every morning to make it look like he’d just woken up. Women loved this but he never noticed. Since Mom died when I was so little, he always said he was married to fatherhood. Not married to me, because that would be creepy, but married to fatherhood.

“You’re driving me crazy with your grades,” he said.

“Eighth grade sucks,” I said.

“All of it sucks, but you have to get good grades. Or at least try.” He side-hugged me, and even though I was fouteen and he was forty-one, it didn’t make me feel like a little kid. We were close.

“I’ll try harder,” I said. “But it’s all stupid. Like. American History is bullshit. Andrew Jackson for three whole days? And no mention of the Removal Act.”

Dad cringed. “Same when I went to school. Wish I could have raised you in a place where the history books don’t lie, but pretty much all history books lie.”

“Yeah,” I said. Dad always encouraged me to be skeptical of shit in school, was the one who put the “Question Authority” sticker on my binder in fifth grade.

“So, I have some news,” he said.

“Okay.”

I genuinely thought he was going to tell me that we were moving to Europe. This wasn’t something I made up in my head. He’d been talking about it and he had three new clients there and it was on subject, right? Surely Europe didn’t lie as much in their history books.

“Well, I, uh. I don’t quite know how to tell you this so I’ll just say it.”

I suddenly didn’t think he was going to tell me we were moving to Europe. I looked over at him and his face looked like rain.

“The doctor told me I have cancer,” he said. “It’s not great news, I know, but it can be treated.”

“ . . .”

“I have to start treatments ASAP and I’m sure I’ll be fine a year from now.” I must have been quiet because he said, “Are you okay?”

“What kind of cancer?”

“Pancreatic.”

Pancreas. That was the one kind of cancer I knew about. Kills you fast. Killed Violet Numeyer’s aunt the year before.

“That’s bad,” I said.

“The doctor is hopeful.”

“The doctor is paid to be hopeful.”

“I’m hopeful.”

“Are you sure? Like, did you get all the tests already or is this, like, just the first test?”

Dad pulled me in for a side-hug again. “We’ve done all the tests we need to do.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Stupid question. He just told me.

“We had to make sure first.”

“You can’t die,” I said.

“I won’t die,” he said.

“Pancreas is bad. I’m not stupid.”

“We caught it early.”

See, that was the lie. They didn’t catch it early. They just caught it when they caught it. Dad wasn’t one to get regular checkups because he’s self-employed and his health insurance sucks. No way he’d go to a doctor if something wasn’t already wrong.

---

I don’t remember ninth grade at all. Nothing stands out, really. I couldn’t tell you the classes I took. I don’t even remember my schedule and it was only last year. I could tell you I nearly failed three classes, but teachers had mercy on me because Dad got balder and whiter and skinnier and we moved from our house into the apartment. I went on free lunch. I went on free everything.

Dad was still cool and he still sat at his drawing table and made logos and drew sketches. He worked on his computer all day and all night. Got new clients. Expanded. One time he said, “If I knew cancer would get me more work, I’d have gotten it years ago.”

That’s how we get through things. Laughing. Joking. Sarcasm.

But Dad didn’t seem as married to fatherhood as he’d been before. He was disconnecting and maybe I was, too. Makes sense.

I helped him shave his head. I shaved mine, too, in solidarity.

We ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches—but not at Nino’s. We were on an impossible budget that started with a minus sign.

That’s what ninth grade was for me. A blur of free lunch, no hair, and minus signs. We sold furniture. We sold old video games. We sold anything we didn’t need. We embraced a life without stuff. It can get addictive—downsizing. I sold almost everything I owned, and we only kept the couch and our beds and one comfy chair.

That was the chair I was sitting in when, a year after our first cancer conversation, Dad said, “So now that you’re done with ninth grade, I think you should move schools.”

“That’s stupid,” I said.

“Hear me out.”

I nodded.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said. He cried a little when he said it, too. “I can’t keep trying to work and beat cancer and pay all these fucking bills.”

“Um.”

He sighed. “I talked to my mom this weekend. She said she’d be happy to have you move in.”

“With her and Gottfried?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I’m not able to be a good dad anymore, Malcolm. You must already know this.”

“Fuck that!” I sat up in the chair. “No. No way I’m living with those two. I haven’t even seen them in like two years. You know how they are. I mean, you’re the one who told me about how they are.”

Dad did that thing where he moved his hands like I should tone it down. I only wanted to get louder.

“No!” I said. “I’m not going to calm down. Look. You wanted a chance to be a great dad and you are a great dad. The whole reason you wanted to be a great dad is because your dad sucked. You told me all this. Why would you want me to live with your sucky dad?”

“I can’t provide for you anymore. It’s—I don’t know. It makes sense from where we sit.”

“No way. I’m not leaving you. And anyway, if you die then I don’t get to spend time with you before you die? No Bruce Lee movies? No impromptu Bob Marley dance parties in the living room?”

He had tears on his face now. They escaped and raced down his cheeks. “Malcolm. Stop. Look. I’m exhausted. I can’t even feed you anymore.”

“I love fucking grilled cheese sandwiches. I love cereal. I’m easy to feed,” I said. “And who’ll be here for you when you feel like shit? To make you eat?”

He stopped and wiped his face and blew his nose. I felt like I was in eighth-grade history all over again learning about how Andrew Jackson was such a great guy. The room was spinning with stupid ideas.

I said, “You managed to beat this so far. You managed to beat this. So now, if you die, you’ll just die alone and with client work piled up on the coffee table? I mean, if we still had a coffee table. We just became new people, Dad. Remember when you said that? About how we shed our mountains of bullshit? About how stuff didn’t matter—about how we’d start going cool places and doing cool things because we don’t have anything to lose?”

“Jamaica.”

I was in such a rage I didn’t hear him. “You said all these people were working so they could afford more shit in their lives and you weren’t going to be a part of it anymore. You said we’d be minimalists. You said all that mattered was human connection. And you’re moving me in with your parents? The only thing minimal in their lives is human connection. I don’t think they ever talked to me beyond a hello and small talk. Fuck. Please tell me you haven’t already made this decision without asking me first.”

“I—”

“Because that’s how you told me about cancer, too, and I’m tired of being the last one to know about something this big,” I said. “Hold on. Did you say Jamaica?”

That was the trade-off.

Dad can work from anywhere. He chose Jamaica because he had friends there. Mostly Ruth, who he used to go out with in college, but she has a lot of friends—one of whom owns a hotel on the cliffs in Negril.

Our first stay was a month long. We didn’t talk about Marla and Gottfried for the whole time. I met Eleanor during the second week. I bought three bracelets from her and asked her to tie them around my wrist.

“All of them?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She giggled.

“Do you want to come and have dinner with us tonight?” I asked. “It’s just me and my dad and sometimes Ruth. Over on the cliffs.”

“I have to get home,” she said. “Make dinner, you know. And I have to study.”

“It’s summer.”

She tied another bracelet around my wrist. “I’m taking a class. Next year I sit my exams.”

“I just want to see you again,” I said.

“I’m here every day. You can find me.”

“Okay,” I said.

And every day I bought one more bracelet and asked her to tie it on my wrist. Every day we talked more and I learned that Eleanor wants to become a politician. “Women need to have more power here,” she said. “We can’t get ahead if there’s no one to represent us in our own country.” She told me how she’d never date a boy because he’d only get in the way. “Imagine! Me with some American boy and trying to represent the women of Jamaica! No, mon.”

By the time I left after our month, my left arm was almost to my elbow with bracelets. I’d convinced Eleanor to kiss me only once, but we both liked it.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t get in the way of your bid for prime minister.”

“Good.”

“I just like you a lot.”

“Good.”

“Maybe I can be on your cabinet or something.”

“Minister of bracelets,” she said, pointing to my left forearm.

We laughed and didn’t kiss again. She had no idea I’d be back. I had no idea I’d be back. Neither of us had any idea that Dad was there on a mission. A new mission to beat cancer—not his personal cancer, but capital-C Cancer. No pharmaceutical bills. No hospital bills. He was sure he’d found a cure, except he was too late to save himself.

This was how he got the idea for the business.

That’s what we would call it. The business.

Except he didn’t buy or sell anything. Ruth had a friend who had a kind heart, enough money, and fields up in the mountains. You know the kind of fields. Dad did whatever he did to make it into an easy-to-transport product. Stationery, brochures, business cards—all of which looked totally normal in a graphic designer’s luggage.

“If I sell it, I’d be as bad as the drug companies. You can’t sell life. You can’t buy life. You can make life and offer it to anyone who needs it. That’s the only way to do this shit. First come, first served, and free.”

Dad was so excited by the business that I couldn’t talk to him about how it made me feel.

Secondary. That’s how it made me feel.

He was more worried about being as bad as a pharmaceutical company than he was about being as bad as his own crappy father. Fact is, I’ve never felt as alone as I’ve felt in the last two years. I couldn’t complain because people dying of cancer have it worse than me. I couldn’t explain because I sounded like I was whining.

Funny thing was, all those squares he’d meet on planes and in airports—every one of them knew someone dying of cancer. Didn’t matter that they wouldn’t smoke a joint if you lit it for them. What mattered was they didn’t want to watch their loved ones suffer.

And outside of my grandparents, I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone who wanted to watch their loved ones suffer.