Merridawn Duckler

On the In-Law.

There’s what we marry and what we marry into. Men are not the only ones to look at their partner’s parent and consider what time has in store. My first father-in-law was a land rich southerner, a lover of art, a wine connoisseur, an adventurer and a forever boy. He fathered so many children that once, stopping us on the streets of the tiny town where he reigned, his friend said, “Man, if this was China, you’d be in jail.” He delighted in friction with his offspring and by the time I was escorted from the picture, I could smell the estate litigation burning on the horizon.  I liked his almost non-existent eyelashes, his chivalry, his rebellious desire to feel something, anything at all. When all was ended he flew me back for one last spin. I close my eyes and sense again the grip of his wheels in red rural dirt barreling toward the country club in his sleek midnight blue Mercedes. Without a sound we are gliding past package store drive-throughs and questionable historical markers. He was an inveterate traveler who loved to roam the world where he would get in fist fights with absolute strangers and everything about him was a lesson in not taking safety for granted.

My second father-in-law would have drunk my first father-in-law under the table and then sold him a fake funeral plot. His interest in me showed less in compliments and elbow taking and more in nervous side eye assessments and strategies for one-upmanship that rarely worked out. He had a masterful laugh due to his seasonal gig as a Santa, driven to malls by his cowed third wife. He was intelligent but not always smart, a researcher of expensive toys he’d buy at a discount, and they’d break. He had once been a thin autodidact with a cheap wine-draining sensibility. By the time I knew him he was enormous and had no cork. My husband  took care of him until the end. His other two biological children wanted nothing to do with him. It is a great mystery of the universe how one discarded child will take on the burden the courted others reject. I liked his deceptive pink cheeks, his knowledge of wars he’d never been in, and his valiant fight against humility. He was a part-time actor who kept suggesting we do a show together. That would have been epic, though not in the way he thought. I love his son. I watch for traces in him and I’m not afraid. Where we come from is everything but what we do with it is the truth of our lives.

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Merridawn Duckler is a writer and visual artist from Oregon author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press) IDIOM (Harbor Review) MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dink press) and the flash fiction collection ARRANGEMENT (Southernmost Books.) Micro essays in the ON series have been published in Mayday, Pembroke, Fish Barrel Review, Pine Hills Review, Broadkill Review, Gigantic Sequins and Folio. Winner of the Invisible City flash CNF contest judged by Heather Christle. X@MerridawnD, instagram@merridawnduckler