hollywood

by Mike Lee

Three pulp paperbacks lined up on the wooden rack at the used bookstore I frequented in the East Village. One was by my father, a man my family hardly mentioned.

The paperback was tightly wrapped in plastic. I pulled it from the rack and looked at the price sticker.

Fifty bucks. I didn’t know Dad was collectible.

I smirked. When my mother married him, the only collectibles he had were people he owed money.

Years ago, Mom mentioned he published several tawdry noirs under various pseudonyms—none under his name. Frank Britt was one name she noted, and this was one of them—Cabin Fever was the title.

He also published stories in men’s magazines, again using pseudonyms. Anything to make the rent when driving to Vegas as a rounder and getting drunk, that and being a second assistant director with rejected screenplays, hopeful meetings in Hollywood restaurants with bottom-tier producers, and the occasional medium-sized name for movie deals that never worked out.

One day, Dad left, telling his mother he would look for a real job. A year later, he showed up to see his infant son and then left.

At least he held me.

I returned the book to the rack and moved to the political science section.

I thought about the man who provided half of my existence. Although my California birth certificate listed him as a freelance writer, the hospital and state certificates had two different birth dates. Other than the visit and what little I was told about him, the thing that haunts me most is my mother telling me, in a very soft voice, that her biggest fear when I was a teenager was him showing up suddenly and asking me to go with him.

She expected I would go. I assured her I wouldn’t, but she seemed unconvinced. That bothered me then, but now Mom is long gone, and so is Dad.

I wondered why. A free-spirited boy, I was, but who wasn’t during the Carter years? For me, that time was about punk rock and being a self-described “street Marxist.” That may have been why she thought I’d leave, I guess.

Maybe because I was already writing then.

I would never leave. I was always loyal to Mom, terribly flawed though she was. He left her in poverty. She slept on a couch until I was twelve at my grandparents’ house, while my mother continued her tendency toward more bad men.

Late in life, she went back to college, got her degree, and was halfway through her master’s when she suffered a stroke.

Mom died almost instantly. I hoped she felt relief as her spirit left her body.

In the autopsy, the coroner discovered two long-fused broken vertebrae, an old injury. No one knew how it happened.

When informed, I knew how it happened. For as long as I could remember, Mom complained about back pain that made it hard to sleep. She often said, “When I sleep, I do not feel rest.”

Eventually, I will have to do one of those DNA tests to find out who he was. I keep putting it off, afraid of what I may discover.

I flipped open my notebook and began writing.

Photo of Mike Lee (taken by Donna Rich)

BIO: Mike Lee is a writer and photographer at a trade union. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Opiate, BULL, Roi Fainéant Press, Bristol Noir, Corvus Review, Wallstrait, and others. X: @lml1962