Written by Emery Roberts, with support from the DAC Team
I found them at a thrift store the day before I drove across the country. One was broken, so of four I had a set-of-three, plaster coasters, shaped like an array of keys, housed in a miniature replica of a typewriter.
And I think of you:
Seven years old at our neighbor’s table. You stare at your drink as conversation swirls around—over us both, then lean towards dad and ask
How do coasters work?
He offers a hasty jumble: cork, mattermoisture, gas and a state of—change—with temperature, and condensation.
I wonder at that word, my finger carving letters in the sticky polyester of my “fancy pants,” preempting all the ways I’ll (mis)-spell
Consednantion, consendscendatune
You trace your own circles in the wetness—the con-dun-say-chun—on your glass of lemonade. An hour later; you ask
Do coasters still work if they aren’t made of cork?
Dad laughs
The question is so like you,
and it’s repeated at family dinner the next night and at Thanksgiving and at a parent-teacher conference, and in the CAST waiting room.
He doesn’t answer your question, though; doesn’t see the logic of it
But little brother, I do:
When you held a lighter to the plastic Ficus on our front porch
How are fake trees different than real trees?
When you came home with a saxophone, traded for a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards from a kid two grades below your own,
then met with the principal and apologized to the sax-kid’s parents and scooped the cat box for two weeks
How is this fair?
(This one’s tricky; Mom thought you meant the cat box.
You didn’t. You meant)
Will I get my cards back?
Right now, I’m watching rivulets of condescendation running between the dainty keycaps of my typewriter-coaster
to pool on the bubbled surface of my desk.
Dad never did answer you.
Which is a shame
Because these damned coasters don’t work.
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