It’s a funny thing, as I woke up, cold under the blankets, hours before the alarm, the thing that made me get out of bed was the thought of continuing this conversation with my long-dead father.  I’d been bitter, waking after so little sleep, noting it was an unseasonable 27 degrees outside and the slumlord hadn’t bothered to put on any heat overnight, nor in the morning, for that matter.  Ironic, since during the entire mild winter, on days it was fifty or more outside, my thermometer often read ninety in here.  Most days it was a sauna, impossible to wear so much as a shirt while sitting at my desk at any time, day or night.  But this morning it is bitterly cold in the apartment.  I tried to remember the last time I couldn’t sleep because I’d been too cold to sleep.  But now, drinking hot coffee, wearing a hat and three shirts, the top one fleece-lined, I’m back in business.

“A conversation?” said the skeleton, from his frosty bed, “you mentioned the thought of continuing this conversation?”  

Yes, actually, it was that thought that got me out of bed.  And, let’s note again, how an interested party will see the one word among dozens, or hundreds, that interests him.  

“That insight can make a man millions of dollars in advertising,” noted the skeleton, “finding the magic words that press the buttons.”  

Well, the magic words are something to be aware of, for sure.  And the other side of that, the magic words to not say; one haphazardly placed adjective can blow up the whole beautifully constructed house of words.  

I once wrote a very measured letter in a ticklish bureaucratic situation that was about to turn fatal for me.  My friend read the rewrite and began nodding with approval.  Then, at the last line, he laughed, and stabbed at a word I hadn’t been able to resist, hadn’t even noticed I was placing there.  In the letter’s very last phrase I called the bureaucrat’s response cynical, and that one adjective gave away the game.   I thanked my friend, who was still laughing, and removed the word before I sent the letter.  Not that it helped much in the end, they were supremely cynical motherfuckers.  

I don’t suppose you remember that time I called you “weird”?    

“No,” the skeleton said, “I don’t remember that.  I remember that time you called me a cunt, though. That made an impression.  You could call me a lot of things, but I don’t think ‘weird’ is really one of them.”  

Ah, but I did, and I remember your reaction very well.  It was a great reaction.

 “What was my reaction?” he asked.  

I can only call it weird.  You got this strange expression on your face, slightly amused and slightly insulted, you were smiling, but it was a very bizarre smile.  The smile was, dare I say it, quite weird, I’d never seen that exact expression on your face.  You kept saying ‘weird?  weird?’ and it was almost like you were about to start twitching, like a haywire cyborg about to start malfunctioning.  You must have said ‘weird’ five or six times, sort of turning the word in your mouth like it tasted funny.  You were still saying it as you walked past me out of the kitchen.

“Hmmm, I have no recollection of that,” he said.  

You also have no recollection of that great moment with Sekhnet, the first time I brought her to meet you and mom.  To me, that’s the funniest part of the whole story.  

“What story?” asked the skeleton.  

We drove up to visit you outside of Burlington, when you rented that place on top of the mountain.  You’d never met Sekhnet and we spent a weekend up there.  There are those great photos from that weekend.  You’re wearing a red jacket and baseball cap, mom is holding Ginger, who was still a pup, no older than 15 or 16 years old.  

“She was a good dog,” he said.

Yes, and she had a good, long run.  Anyway, at the end of the visit, which had been perfectly nice, we’d packed up the car and the four of us were sitting in a dim little sun room saying goodbye.  You made one of your patented barbed comments to mom, one of those ‘epitaphs on the tombstone of a feeling’ type jokes that Nietzsche spoke of.  Sekhnet has always been fond of that quote, said it enough times that I remember it.

“Thus spoke Sekhnet,” mused the skeleton.

So you made this remark to mom, a typical one, like “Evvy, if I had your nose full of dimes, I’d never have to work again,” you know, a lovingly friendly but mean little throw-away of the type you liked to toss off, and mom’s nostrils flared the way they used to when she was about to cry, and her eyes got misty, but she smiled gamely, the way she did at such times.  And Sekhnet, seeing this pain on mom’s face, looked quickly from mom to you and back.  Having seen the satisfied smile on your face, and the painful one on mom’s, she jumped into the breach.

“You know what the problem is, Evelyn?” she said to mom, “you didn’t start whacking him early in the relationship every time he said something like that.”  And she illustrated what should have been done from the beginning by thumping you in the chest with the back of her fist.  

“I would have remembered that,” theorized the skeleton.  

You’d think so, yeah.  Your hands went up, like a praying mantis, and you had this great shocked look on your face, something like mom’s smile a moment before, except without a trace of tears.  And mom began laughing, and looking at Sekhnet with admiration and love.  We all laughed, at how quickly the tables had turned, as you acted the part of the man who’d just been dissed, but who could take it.   I always thought of that as the first moment of their great relationship.

The funniest part of the story, like I said, was that less than a year later, neither of you had the slightest recollection of the incident.

“That is funny,” he said, “and another illustration of the basic unreliability of the so-called ‘historical record’.  What goes on there is what certain people sort of agree actually happened, and even in that agreed on set of events, there is great disagreement as to what things truly meant, how significant this or that was, etc. I guess you could say human beings are basically fucking idiots, the more intellectual ones just much higher functioning, more skillfully self-justifying, fucking idiots.  You could make a very strong case for that proposition.”  

I suppose you could, if you were being judgmental about it, the evidence is pretty overwhelming.  I guess it’s also human nature, to sand away the memories that cause discomfort.  Denial is another word, I guess, but also a judgmental one.  It’s just one of those things people do, I suppose, to keep their worldview intact.  Even if that worldview is weird, insane or self-destructive.  I guess especially if that’s the case.  The unlearned lessons of history, and so forth.  

“It takes a certain amount of courage to keep things in mind that make us uncomfortable.  We all like comfort, and being right, and we build our lives around somehow maintaining the illusion of it, even if our efforts wind up killing us,” said the skeleton.

True dat.  I was reading the transcript of our last conversation, the part of it I got recorded, the part where you said you wished you’d been capable of having a real conversation with me ten, fifteen years earlier.  

“Well, I would have happily settled for that, wouldn’t you?” he said.

I would.  It’s funny, all I really wanted as a kid was to have conversations like this.  

“Well, that’s really all everybody wants, Elie,” said the skeleton quietly.  “To be heard and to hear what the other person is honestly saying, to say things to keep the dialogue moving forward, toward greater and greater mutual understanding,  throwing the ball back and forth like that.”

You remember that catch we had one early summer evening on 190th Street?

“Yop,” said the skeleton with a small catch in his voice.