Novelty Coffee Mugs

                   
         
          Trays of novelty coffee mugs are triple stacked next to an ice bucket stolen from a hotel. Mom serves whiskey and beer from them. Dad's handheld legacy. Two shelves in two cupboards are stuffed with porcelain wisecracks and commentaries, and only the first row of three was ever used before the wake. We're sitting together in the living room while everyone else stays on the porch. By we I mean family.

          Clarissa is a bitch. She meditates. That isn't why she's a bitch, though. She's my sister. She took up Buddhism a year ago, so now she's a self-righteous bitch. She and dad didn't get along. She is wearing beads on her wrist that is supposed to be on her neck and they rattle every time she moves. She's holding a black mug, and she says how she was riding a bike and a car coming from behind hit her and she fell off. This was when she was a kid, she says. She tells us that the bike frame was bent, and so was the wheel, and she draws the angle in the air for us to see. Mom says she remembers that. I'm wondering if my hot cousin is on the porch, and Clarissa says she had to walk the bike home only to be yelled at by my dad.
          She looks down at the coffee mug and traces the circle of the rim with her finger, rattling, and says, "It was my first lesson in impermanence, only I was too deluded to understand. Thank you, dad." She lifts the mug and rattles and sips, and the mug says "Sh!t Happens" in white.
          Mom says she remembers that. Her eyes are red and she slurps when sipping from her mug, then coughs a little, and I think she chose whiskey. Mom says dad wanted us to be strong, so he was sometimes tough on us. Tough meant destroying our toys when we were bad. It meant dropping us off at the edge of a road three miles from home if we talked back. It meant hearing sex through faux wood paneling when we had school the next day but couldn't sleep.
         
          My uncle Jake is leaned back in the chair with his legs open too wide, bulge apparent and aimed at my sister. He and my dad were more friends than brothers. I'm pretty sure he fucked my mom sometimes. I try not to think of that, but I'm pretty sure. His daughter is hot and I try not to think of that either. He's smoking a Marlboro.
          Jake sips his Wild Turkey and tells us he and my dad loved porn. They would sit in their treehouse and look at nude mags together. Candles surrounded them on the floor and they would sit back-to-back and race to see who could finish first. He tells us this and grabs his crotch and shifts while his bright blue eyes stare at the wall, then says they had a pact. Jake says pacts are sealed in blood, usually with a handshake, but they didn't use blood. They just waited until they were both finished.
          Jake's mug is Caucasian. It's rounded with 3-D boobs sticking out of one side.He's holding it with both hands, rubbing it with his thumbs and he says the pact was that whoever died first would leave their porn to the other. He tells us how there were times he and my dad shared girls, and how he--my dad, not Jake--was so generous because he usually let Jake go first. "He was the most generous person I knew," Jake says, and my mom says it reminds her of her wedding night and she smiles. Jake breaks his stare with the wall and looks at my mom and smirks. His mug says across the boobs, "'That's what.' - She"
         
          The door opens and closes and groups of people are in pockets of home, walking between us from the patio to the bathroom or kitchen. They're all holding different mugs, but a lot are the same.
         
          Best Dad Ever.
         
          Some Heroes Don't Wear Capes...They're Called Dad.
         
          I really love my Dad. That's what the mug says.
         
          My brother isn't holding one of those. None of us are. He's sitting on a barstool, his back and head against the wall. His mug is held with both hands covering the army green peeking between fingers.
         
          "We didn't really get along," he tells us.
         
          He lets go of the mug with one hand to scratch his beard. Someone passes in front of him holding World's Best Dad. He keeps scratching and says, "I didn't hate him but he hated me..."

          He says, "He taught me how to fish, though."

          He sips from a grenade that says Complaint Department, Take A Number, and says, "One time, he pushed me against the wall and told me to look at his brown eyes. He asked if I wanted a different shade of blue for mine. Dad's punches were already almost forgotten, he tells us. Mom grumbles something that sounds like, "David," and drinks, and my brother says, "He was the only dad I knew."
          Mom says Dad's spankings might as well have been punches, and his punches might as well have been spankings. She says she met Dad when they were in junior high. He called her his flower, then deflowered her by the dumpster behind the school cafeteria. She lights a cigarette and nobody says anything. None of us have seen her smoke. At least I don't think so. My brother asks if that was really his dad and Mom says no.
         
          "He ravished me like a hyena stealing meat, and he shared me with his friends," she says.
          She says, "I never said no because I didn't want to disappoint him. Because I didn't want to not be wanted."
          She sips from a tie-dye colored mug that says Have A Nice Day and says, "We never used protection and nobody ever pulled out. I'm surprised I didn't catch anything other than children."
          She tips up the mug for her last sip. A hand shoots me the bird from the bottom. A wisp of smoke hits her in the eye and she squints.Jake is smiling and staring at her. Clarissa is looking at the floor and taking deep breaths.
         
          None of the guests say hi. Nobody stops to apologize for our loss. Maybe they knew it was a gain. They're all over the house now. Murmurs and loud laughs. The door opening and closing constantly, and I don't recognize most of them. A record is playing. I think it's Sinatra. It was dad's favorite, I think. Nobody is sniffling except my sister who just sneezed from the smoke.

          My brother scratches under his beard and gets up for more beer and my mom holds up her mug asking for more Wild Turkey. Her cigarette is hanging loosely from her lips and an ash drops on her lap. She looks at it and says she wonders what Hell is like. My brother hollers that it's hot, and my mom says of course, and he tells her no, the whiskey was sitting by the window and it's now hot. She wants it anyway and says she likes it hot while smiling at Uncle Jake who is smiling at Clarissa, who is rubbing her beads between two fingers.
         
          "Dad took me to work with him sometimes," I tell them. "The smell of embalming fluid stains your olfactory for days."
         
          Dad's cigarettes were always flavored with embalming fluid. He would just barely dip the tip of it and leave it out to dry, and then smoke it during his breaks. My brother says he took one once. He says dad let him touch the bodies wherever he wanted. I tell him I did, too.
         
          Aside from my mother, the first naked woman I saw was dead.
         
          "There was a fat lady on the steel table that wasn't fat anymore because her insides were now her outsides," I say, "and Dad put her ribcage on a cart because she was an organ donor. She was just hollow now."
         
          When you are a slab on the table, you get cut down the torso. Think of someone drawing a stickman on your torso, down from your head. Think of that stickman's arms raised up in joy, drawn along the clavicle of each side, and the legs standing, drawn along the hips. Think of this being drawn with a scalpel while you color with a crayon in the corner.
         
          I tell them, "Dad taught me, once someone takes their last breath and the heart stops, it's all past tense from there. They're already a memory."
          I sip from my white mug and say, "A collection of them if they're lucky." Clarissa says memories are delusion. Mom says it's all she has anymore and she squishes her cigarette butt against the coffee table and leaves it there.
         
          I finish my drink. My mug is black except for the white outline of Darth Vader's mask.

          I was the last person he saw, that heard his last breath. It's not like the movies, where the eyes are wide open and you can lay a hand on them and close them. It's not like the movies where the eyes just close and stay that way, like they're sleeping. His eyelids just relaxed and closed halfway, and a moment later, the shine was lost to a dull gaze at nothing. It wasn't just a whisper or sigh that escaped his lips as his last breath, it was a long gurgle.
          Past tense now, he's a collection of memories that might be better off as secrets.

          He told me he loved me.

          He told me he loved all of us, but I don't tell all of them.

          Below Darth Vader's mask, it says Who's Your Daddy?