DEAR OLD DEAD EXCERPT

 The voices, or rather the voice, my father's voice, started shortly after he died. We hadn’t spoken since I came out as transgender, and as far as I was concerned, he was already dead. If there was any sense of guilt at not having been reconciled with him, it was quickly dismissed as his fault, not mine. So when he spoke to me, it was quite unexpected, and not entirely welcome.

“Surely you're not going out dressed like that?” I heard him say one morning as I was leaving for work.

“What’s wrong with a skirt and a T-shirt?” I found myself answering out loud. I checked myself in the mirror by the front door. I looked beautiful in a denim mini skirt, a black “Keep Asheville Weird” T-shirt, and cowboy boots. It was so typical of him to criticize when everything was perfect, not a hair out of place.

“You’ve got makeup on. You’re a guy, you should go put on some trousers.”

“I am not ‘a guy’, I’m transgender, remember? It’s why we haven’t spoken in ten years.”

“Yeah, but you might run into someone I know.” It was a line I remembered well. He used that line every day of my adolescence, always certain that my appearance would make him look bad in the eyes of his friends.

“Knew. You’re dead now.”

“I didn’t raise you to look like a goddamned faggot ass faggot. And don’t even get me started on your hair. When’s the last time you had a haircut, Alexander?”

I winced at the sound of my dead name, which I hated. All through school I had been tormented by people asking what made me “great” or where my telephone was, or could I sing songs from the musical Hamilton. When I turned 18, I had my name legally changed to Alex. I was lucky in that regard, as a lot of trans women didn’t have names that could easily be feminized – David, Thomas, Roger - and had to think up a whole new one. “I happen to like the way I look.”

“Okay, fine. If you want to get the snot kicked out of you, go ahead, just sayin’.”

“And for the record, I’m not a faggot. I like girls.”

“Sure you do. So where are we going, anyway?”

“I am going to work, and you are going to shut up,” I said, slamming the front door, hoping that would be the end of things. I was wrong.

“So where does a faggot ass faggot work in this town, anyway?” My father said as I got into my beat up Ford Escort, a shade of green that seemed only to be found on, well, Ford Escorts.

“I’m a private investigator.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What?”

“A faggot ass faggot private eye? What do you really do, work at a salon? A spa? As an interior decorator? At Pottery Barn?”

“That’s something you would know if you had paid attention to me the past ten years.”

“Paid attention to you? What about you paying attention to me? I put you through college, Clemson University, four years of out of state tuition. Do you have any idea how much that cost without scholarships? Do you? Your brother and sister both got scholarships to their schools. And did you ever thank me? No. You wasted it all being an English major. At an engineering school, no less. You could’ve been a goddamned engineer for Christ’s sake, with a real job. And where were you when I got COVID? Still don’t know how that killed me.”

“You were 70, and at high risk.”

“Baloney. I was a mere pup, healthy as a horse.”

“Regardless, you’re dead. Get over it.”

“Wait, if you’re a PI, shouldn’t you drive a cooler car?”

“Oh, gee, the Lamborghini is in the shop, and this was the only loaner they had.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

“Sorry,” I said again. Why was I apologizing to a voice in my head? I just hoped I wasn’t coming down with COVID. I got in the car and started it.

“Apology accepted. Now, where are we going?”

“’We’ aren’t going anywhere. I’m going to work, and you are, as I said before, going to shut up.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry,” I said again, trying to catch myself and failing. I pulled the car out of the parking lot if my apartment complex, and onto Larchmont Avenue, then turned left onto Merrimon.

“Is that ‘shut up’ order open for discussion?”

“No!”

“Alright, I’ll just shut up then. No point in offering fatherly advice if it isn’t welcome.”

To say the resulting silence was deafening would be an overstatement, but it was certainly awkward.

“Fine,” I said after a few minutes. “What fatherly advice?”

“You didn’t check your oil and your tire pressure before you left home.”

It was another of his classic sayings, and I hated it. I had long since concluded that checking one’s oil was a manly man thing to do, and as a woman, I wanted no part of it. And I could never get a pressure gauge to read the same way twice.

“I’m only going across town, not to Oklahoma.”

“Still, a few minutes spent checking now could save you hours stranded by the roadside later on. Oh, and while you’re at it, you should check your belts and hoses. Those can break and leave you stuck, too.”

“Fine,” I said, turning into a Shell station at the foot of Merrimon at the on ramp to I-240. I pulled up next to the air hose and popped the hood. I thought about just waiting for a few minutes, and getting back in the car, but it was clear he could see everything I did, so I pulled out the dipstick, wiped it on a paper towel, and put it back in like you’re supposed to do. When I took it out and looked at it again, it read a quart low.

“See,” my father said, with a trace of smugness in his voice. “You have to keep a really close eye on the oil in these older cars.”

I pulled on the hoses, which were nice and tight, and checked the tires as carefully and precisely as I could.

“So,” he said, as we went up the hill where Merrimon becomes Broadway. “Why did you not come to my funeral?”

“Didn’t see the point. You poisoned the entire family against me. I didn’t need the animosity.”

“I had no choice. You’re a faggot ass faggot, and they needed to realize it.”

“You’re sure it didn’t have more to do with not wanting to be the only one against me?” I said, turning right off of Broadway onto Walnut Street, then into an alley halfway down the block.

“Just drive.”

My office – the third in as many years, which probably played a role in my pronounced lack of clients – was located on the second floor of a building on Lexington Avenue. I pulled the Escort down the alley, and parked in the tiny parking lot behind the building.

“I’m going to work now,” I said, getting out. “Don’t come with.”

“Oh, so you’re going to leave your dear old dad in a hot car like a dog?”

“Let’s get one thing clear: You are not my ‘dear old dad.’ You are a mean, hateful, bigoted, transphobic man. What are you trying to achieve here, anyway?”

“Son, did you ever give any thought to where I ended up?”

“I am not your ‘son’. I am a woman, damnit.”

“Yeah, right. Anyway, the place is called Purgatory, and I have to stay here until I gain your forgiveness.”

“Then you’re going to be there a long time,” I said, locking the car.

“Aw come on, it’s not that hard. Just say we’re pals again, like when you were a kid, before you got messed up in the head and decided you were a girl.”

“I am not ‘messed up in the head,’ and I didn’t ‘decide’ I’m a girl, I have been this way from the day I was born.”

“Whatever. Remember the good times we had tossing the old pigskin around in the back yard? The ball games? Remember the Georgia-Clemson game we went to? Or the Bengals game they say was the coldest in NFL history? And the air shows, like the first time we saw the Thunderbirds in Middletown, when they were still flying Phantoms. How loud they were?”

“You think those were good times?”

“Sure.”

“I only did those things to please you. I was miserable. I wanted to play dress up with sister or play with her dolls. Or spend time with my girlfriends.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Nope,” I said, going up the stairs to my office. I unlocked the door, and opened it, noting that in spite of my having been gone for like a week, there was no mail. No summonses, no pleas for help, no New Yorkers, no nothing. It was blazing hot in there, and musty, so I opened the windows and listened to the sounds of traffic, both vehicular and foot, on Lexington. A street singer was camped out across from my building, and I could clearly hear his out of tune guitar and off-key rendition of the Grateful Dead’s Ripple. Two women walked by hand in hand. Ah, Asheville, I thought blissfully.

“This is your office?” my father said. “Nice view of the back of the Civic Center. How much you pay for this dump?”

“I thought I told you to stay in the car.”

“And I said I have to win your forgiveness. Is it working yet?”

“No!” I said, sitting in my office chair behind the desk I bought at Ikea in Charlotte (an Arkelstorp,) during a recent vacation with my on again/off again fellow transgender girlfriend, Bonny Dagger. I opened the desk drawer and took out her picture. She was tall, blonde, and infinitely more passable than I could ever hope to be. I was supposed to go see her over the weekend, which was good, because I had been jonesing for her pretty bad since I last saw her three weeks prior.

“Hey, hey, who’s the hot chick? Any chance you’ll produce grandchildren with her? I mean, it’s too late for my sake, but it would be nice to know the Rigby family line will be continued.”

“Nope.”

“Why not? Surely she’s cute enough to get your motor running.”

“Dad, she’s a transgender too.”

“Wait, did you just call me ‘dad’? You’re surely about to forgive me now, right?”

“Not even close,” I said. “Not. Even. Close.”

“Come on, just say it. Say ‘I forgive you.’ You know you want to.”

“No! I don’t want this! I don’t need this. Go away!”

“Sorry, no can do. You’re not going anywhere without me from now on.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggh!” I screamed. I must have finally, fully, and completely lost my mind. I pulled a lighter and a joint out of the center drawer of my desk. I would smoke him out of my head. I put old 97’s CD Most Messed Up in the CD player on my desk, and, in keeping with the instructions on the back of the jewel case (“Play this album loud!”) cranked up the volume. Twelve glorious songs about getting fucked up. There was no way “dear old dad” could handle any of that.

“That’s a stupid place to keep your stash. Cops would find that before quick.”

I took a hit of the reefer and ignored him.

“Is it good stuff?” he said as I inhaled.

“The best. Smokey Tokey Gold, the finest marijuana grown in the Great Smokies National Park.”

“Groovy.”

“Did you just say ‘groovy’? Tell me my father didn’t just say ‘groovy’?”

“I did. Cool music, who is it by?”

“Old 97’s out of Texas.”

“I like it, it’s funky.”

“You have got to be kidding me. You cannot possibly like this. You wanted to throw me out of the house for listening to the Beatles for Christ’s sake.”

“I’m just trying to fit into your world.”

“Well don’t!”

“So what are we working on today? Murder? Chasing down a cheating spouse? Tapping a phone line?”

“Background checks,” I replied, toking on the joint, and starting to feel very relaxed. “Interviewing people. Legwork and paperwork.”

“Well that’s boring. What can I do to help?”

“You could try shutting up!”

“That’s no way to speak to your father.”

“Sorry,” I said, then thought again, why am I apologizing to a voice in my head?

The message light was blinking on the office phone. I turned down the music and listened. There were four messages, one about my car warranty expiring, one offering diabetic supplies with no doctor visits required, and one offering to lower my credit card debt, which was odd, since I didn’t even have a credit card. The last message on the machine made me sit up and take notice.

“Alex, it’s Melissa,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m sending someone to see you. I talked you up big time, so don’t blow it.”

Melissa was Melissa Rigby, the chief of the Asheville Police Department, and my wife. We met when she was a patrol officer and stopped me for speeding. She let me off with a warning, and gave me her phone number, which led to a whirlwind romance. We had hit it off instantly, moved in together after a month, and, to quote the Hollies’ song Bus Stop “By August she was mine.” We had married soon after but split up over my transition. We never got around to actually going through with a divorce, and were still close, so close that she often steered difficult cases that the cops didn’t have time for my way.

“Was that Melissa?” my father said. “Any chance you’ll be getting back together? She was a great daughter-in-law. Took real good care of me when I was sick, which is more than can be said for you. It’s a shame you couldn’t stay male and make things work out.

“Dad, I keep telling you, I couldn’t ‘stay’ male because I never was male.”

“There you go using ‘dad’ again. That surely must mean you are going to forgive me.”

“You wish!”

“Indeed I do.”

“Here’s the deal. I will accept you haunting me, or whatever the hell this is, on one condition: You shut the fuck up when I’m trying to talk to someone. You don’t interrupt, you don’t make suggestions, you don’t do anything.”

“So I’m supposed to just watch and be quiet while you royally screw everything up?”

“Exactly.”

“Harsh.”

“You can do it,”