Molly Esteve
7-inch Obit

      Most often, when we were alone, he was the philosopher. On Saturday, over hash browns and coffee, the philosopher mused over our future, he grappled with the good and evil in life during Wednesday night basketball games and on Sunday evenings he spoke about fiction. We’ll be poor, living from the sludge of education and tip of a greasy spoon. Good is predictable and solid, the green tinge lining the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. Have you ever picked up a book and wanted to wiggle it in just the right way that would unhinge a character and drop her into the palm of your hand? With elbows deep in dish soap, he described a miniature Oedipa Maas crawling along the webbing between his thumb and index finger. He takes her to see a street on the Northeast side of town where rows of neon lights from old motels still stand. Signs like Pink Flamingo, Bingo’s Motel, and Del Rancho light up the strip in fluorescent greens, pinks and reds. Mon chou, you can find a little bit of the old town charm anywhere, the philosopher earnestly wants her to see. Charm, something he knew a thing or two about.
      Tuesday I found him standing in the corner of the library observing a wilting ficus, a kind of intention on his face that suggested he would swaddle and nurse the ornate plant if it would fit in the crook of his arm. Gingerly, he fingered the leaves turned dry and yellow, removing them from their branches and placing them in the pot’s basin. Two or three he stowed between the elastic waistband of his underwear and his hip. Later, I find them as bookmarks in his war novels. One he had tied with thread around the sweating pipes below the sink to watch the condensation run off their brown and green tips.
      A few months back we decided on a companion memorial. The philosopher proposed his side should read: With death comes endless billows. “Have it carved whenever,” he said. “I don’t need to die for that statement to come true.” The philosopher was rarely uncertain. By eighth grade, he knew his way around two things: jazz music and girlfriends. In brew pubs crowded with eager family members and girls gently arching their bodies over tables, he bounced around a raw and mashed instrument. He was expected to notice these things; the proud smiles of his family, the way some bodies made a suggestion.
      Later, when we were living in a basement with a futon and kitsch, the philosopher held out a pair of scissors and two tennis balls. “What do these have in common?” He asked the morning of our first Thanksgiving.
      “They kind of cost the same. Made for occasion, for convenience?” I fumbled.
      “The comparison exists because we make it.”
      The philosopher wanted to cook the turkey. Out back he told Mom he could really smoke the shit out of meat but never had managed to patch the front-tire of his 6-speed. Meanwhile, the extended family worked out the daily crossword and argued over public education. In the doorway, an uncle stood with a puppet goat in hand. “You were waiting for Goat-dot. Get it?”
      Only weeks ago the philosopher mentioned that he could not prevent the small tears that ran from his lower eye every time he walked in cold winter air. How had I not known about his silent weeping all these years?