Visitation

I’m convinced ghosts retain their sense of smell, and appetites, because my ghost, my ex, always manages to haunt me when I’m cooking. Most recently? Thanksgiving; yesterday. I’ve got all four burners going and two oven decks at 400 and a crock pot on the counter and a roaster in the dining room and the toaster oven in the TV room because I can’t plug more than one of anything hot into a single circuit without a fuse blowing, and if that’s not enough, along comes with my nearly invalid mother in my face, asking for lunch, for soup, an hour before this massive meal, on top of one of my sons high as shit playing drums in the garage and the other in a wicked jack-off phase, probably yanking in his room right now, all while I’m trying to figure out how everything’s going to be done and actually, you know, good, at relatively the same time so everything’s perfect and everyone remembers today as amazing. Then I turn around to rinse yams off a spoon and he’s just there, in my kitchen, in his fucking coveralls and wallet chain and filthy ball cap and Howard Hughes beard, sniffing and telling me how amazing everything is going to be, and I’m like, Really? Now? and he reminds me Thanksgiving is his holiday with the boys and I remind him he lost those privileges when he became a ghost. He swears that wasn’t his fault, but I don’t want to argue today so I plead for him to stay out of my way, to go check on the boys, that even a ghost can attempt fatherhood. He says okay and I stir one thing and turn around and he’s just there again, claiming the boys didn’t even look up at him, acknowledge his presence. Then he suggests staying for dinner, just a half hour, forty minutes tops, give the family some normalcy. I say him ghosting us is the normal and Poof! he’s gone and we won’t see him again until Christmas, when he’ll yet again overstay his welcome, no gifts in hand, not even a clean shirt, insisting how great everything smells, how he’s going to make it all up to us, wishing he could be part of the family again, not realizing just how over him we all are, and have been, always.

​​

​​