The Guardians Are Watching
By Katie Marks
The Cemetery Apple
My dad picks me up from kindergarten. We push through the heavy glass doors to the playground, holding hands as we go by the merry-go-round and the slide. The sun is shining, and it’s a warm fall day in Syracuse. I’m happy. I don’t usually get to spend this kind of time with my dad. He’s a chef and usually he’s working at the restaurant in his white uniform and white floppy hat right now. I like that it’s called POETS, but I like it even more that he is here with me. I smile up at my dad and he smiles back at me. At the edge of the parking lot, he says, “Let’s take the long way home.” Instead of turning right toward home, we head left down a steep hill, passing the small white house where a scary German Shepherd lives. It’s always barking and growling at my friends and me through the fence when we play in the little thicket of trees that borders its yard. I swear I can hear it growl as we pass by now.
At the bottom of the hill, my dad spots a Jewish cemetery with a rusty metal gate all around it. Without him telling me, I know that’s where we must be going. I see him squinting at something in the distance. He says, “I think there’s an apple tree over there. Let’s go take a closer look.” I’m a little nervous because I’m pretty sure he’s going to want me to eat one of these apples, and I don’t like that idea at all. These are cemetery apples. What if they’ve grown out of dead bodies? Or what if I eat one and die? They could be poisonous. He’s clearly not worried, but I am, and even at this age, I know that this is one of the differences between us.
I watch as he walks over to the tree, reaches up, and picks two small red apples. He rubs them on his shirt and then gives one to me, smiling. “Here,” he says. I look at him like I’m not so sure about this. He laughs a little and shakes his head. He’s used to this—my fear and cautiousness. “It’s okay,” he says. “You can eat it, Kate. It’s just an apple. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” I think about it for a second. The apple is warm in my hand. I decide to trust my dad. I lift it to my mouth and take a small bite. The red skin snaps. It’s sweet and tart and juicy—the best apple I’ve ever tasted, the best apple I will ever taste.
Sometimes I Make Mistakes
I’m six years old. It’s been raining all day, and I can’t stop thinking about death. I accidentally got some nail polish in my mouth a little bit ago and now I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. My mom started out patient, telling me I’d be okay, but when I didn’t calm down, she let out a long sigh. I’m trying to figure out how to comfort myself. Her dad is dying of cancer, and since I found out I’ve been spiraling into existential panic whenever I feel something strange in my body or when I eat or drink something that could be a potential poison. I try to be careful, but I’m a kid and sometimes I make mistakes and put my finger in my mouth before my nail polish is dry. I have a hard time believing her when she tells me that I’m okay because she doesn’t even read the label on the bottle. How does she know I’ll be okay? How does anyone know, really? Death terrifies me and, from what I’m starting to understand, it could happen to anyone anytime. I want to live. I love being a person even though it’s scary.
When my dad gets home, she asks him to get me out of the house. We drive over to Sky Top, which is this apartment complex where lots of Syracuse University students live. There’s a big grassy hill on one side of the complex. Dad points to the hill and says, “Think you can make it to the top?” I shrug. “Come on, Kate. Let’s see what you can do.” We climb and climb. When we get to the top, I look at the world below and take a breath. The air is fresh and wet, and I realize then that I’m still alive. The nail polish didn’t get me today.
Dad spots a trail just a little way off. “Hey! Look at this,” he says. “Want to see where it takes us?” I nod. This is one of his favorite things to do—find a trail or a road and just go, see where it takes us. We follow it through the woods and then into a clearing, stopping every so often to pick up stones and look around. The rain has stopped. It’s quiet, except for the birds and some wind and the sound of our footsteps. My dad only talks if he has something to say, and that’s okay with me. I like the quiet.
Eventually we come to a fenced-in area with a lookout tower and a sign. I bounce up and down on my toes. “I want to read it to you!” I say to my dad.
He smiles at me. “Ok, tell me. What does it say?”
The first word is easy. “No…” I say, and then I begin sounding out the second one. “Tres…passing?”
“That’s right. Good job.” He nods and laughs. “Come on.”
“Wait, but we’re breaking the rules, Dad. What if we get in trouble?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll just go a little further. Everything is fine,” he says. I look at him like I’m not so sure. The sun comes out as we follow the trail into the woods.
Shoppingtown Mall
I’m eleven years old and I’m at Shoppingtown Mall with my dad and younger brother and sister. It’s another Sunday afternoon. Since my parents have gotten separated, this is the day that we spend with him. It’s the one day his restaurant, A Moveable Feast, is closed. My dad is walking ahead of me with my brother and sister, and I’m trying to leave enough space between us so no one knows that he’s my father. I’m at an age where I find everything embarrassing, particularly my dad. His curly black hair is a mess, and his clothes are stained from working in the kitchen and from generally not caring how he looks. In this moment, I’m too young to recognize that he’s depressed or consider how he’s doing, living in an apartment by himself since he and my mom split up. I’m just mad and I direct that anger at him.
We are standing somewhere between the ice cream shop and the video game arcade, and I want to disappear. I’m afraid that if any of my friends see me with him, they’ll think less of me by association. I carefully plan everything I do, say, and wear in an attempt to avoid embarrassment. No matter how hard I try, I still feel like I can never quite get it right. And now here’s Dad lumbering along in front of me, stopping to wait for me, turning around a little more exasperated each time. When he stops, I stop too and act like I’m looking at something in the window of a shop or a display just outside. I check a price tag, hide behind a rack of sweaters.
“Come on, Kate,” he says too loudly. “What’s your problem? You want to go off on your own? Fine. Just meet us back here in half an hour.”
I walk away as fast as I can. He doesn’t follow.
This is our relationship for years.
The Guardians Are Watching
I’m in my 30s, walking around downtown Ithaca with my dad. Somehow, we’ve both ended up living in the same town. I look at him beside me and feel grateful for the chance to get to know him again as an adult. There were a number of years where we didn’t have much of a relationship, but now here we are. Dad tells me he wants to show me a trail he recently found. “It’s just over here,” he says, leading me down a little dead-end street and then up a small hill and onto a dirt path. We walk along a creek next to the high school. He’s 70 now and moving fast. I’m trying my best to keep up. Just a couple months ago, he started taking 8–10 mile walks several times a week. It’s been a few years since he had cancer, and he wants to enjoy his life as much as he can while he can.
I watch as he nimbly makes his way across rocks and railroad tracks. He ducks under a bridge, charging ahead, and I carefully follow behind. I’m wearing sandals and worrying about stepping on glass or needles. I’m worried about ticks and Lyme Disease. I’m worried about somehow hurting myself. I keep my eyes on the ground. Dad looks ahead and up at the sky. “There’s a hawk,” he says. “And, hey, over here! Check out these ferns.” He’s always pointing out birds and plants.
While we walk, my dad tells me there’s a small chance that his cancer might have come back. He has a swollen lymph node in his neck, and they just sent him for further testing. I’m scared. I put that aside for now and ask how he’s doing. He shrugs and tells me, “I’m different than most people. I worry about the little things, not the big ones. There’s nothing you can do about the big stuff. You know, I can’t change whether I’ll have cancer again or not.” I take a breath and try to let go of my fear. I look at my dad. I look around. Here we are. In the woods. In this moment, everything is still okay.
A little further down the path, we come upon a freestanding concrete archway, the former entrance to what was once a bird sanctuary. Someone has spray-painted a couple of owls with demonic-looking ears on its surface. They’ve also written something I can’t quite make out near the very top. Dad is already zooming away, exclaiming about the mushrooms growing along the path and the birds twittering up in the trees. It feels like we’re in this strange and magical world. This archway to nowhere. The mushrooms everywhere. “Wait a second,” I say. “I want to look at this.”
He turns around to wait for me. “Sure, honey. What does it say?”
I walk up to the archway, trying to make out the faded black letters. “Beware,” I tell him. “The guardians are watching.”
Lucky Stone
A few years later, my dad and I walk across the hospital parking lot together. I’m in my 40s now and he’s in his mid-70s. It’s the end of July. Maybe the sky is grey. Maybe it’s blue. For once, I don’t notice. I have to get a biopsy because I have a lump in my left breast. My doctor tells me the spot feels like several small almond shards. As we walk, I can feel myself trembling a little. It’s been a couple of months of testing, and the whole thing just keeps slowly rolling forward. I’m scared of the procedure, scared I have cancer, scared of death and disfigurement. My mind keeps racing to the worst possible outcomes. I have always been this person.
I’m grateful to have my dad here with me. He insisted on being the one to take me. I know it isn’t just because I’m his daughter, but that it’s also that he understands what it’s like to sit with this particular kind of uncertainty. We walk from the admissions desk to the waiting room. I affix my blue “Patient” sticker to my chest, and he puts on his green “Support” one. He says he likes his sticker, and he’ll go on to wear it the rest of the day. While I’m on the table, he wanders around the hospital parking lot. He finds a lucky stone and gives it to me on the way back to the car. I hold it in my hand and hope I’ll be okay. My dad squeezes my shoulder and says, “Listen, you’ll get through this. My gut says it’s going to be okay, but even if the news isn’t good, you can get through this.” I wish I was as sure as he was. A couple days later, I get the results and it turns out that he’s right. It’s benign.
Across the Frozen Lake
Months later, my dad and I walk across the icy surface of Cayuga Lake. The water has mostly drained away leaving just a few frozen inches. The wood and stone that are usually submerged are visible and form an unexpected topography. It looks somehow otherworldly, almost lunar. Closer to shore where we are, the surface is smooth and perfect, but underneath it looks like there are frozen cobblestones made of ice. A kid lies down and makes an invisible snow angel. I imagine it feels good against his back.
My dad takes a walking stick out of his bag. He tells me he always has it with him in winter to help him stay on his feet when things get slippery. He knows I worry about him falling. He’s still walking miles nearly every day. He has adventures by himself in the woods, foraging for mushrooms and crossing creeks, finding beauty in the strangeness of the world. He wobbles a little on the ice and I reach out to catch him. He shrugs and tells me he’s good at falling, took a fall earlier, and has learned that you just have to go with it and drop. Don’t resist it and try to stay up or you’ll just fall harder. Let it take you. I’m not so good at that. I struggle with surrender.
We keep walking further and further out onto the lake. I look down at the frozen surface. It strikes me suddenly that I don’t know how deep the water really is out here. Even though I am the one who suggested we walk across the lake, even though it’s a very measured risk, I have moments of doubt. I tell myself there are just inches of water beneath us—at least I think so— but I still imagine the ice cracking and us falling through and dying—or maybe surviving a harrowing near drowning. I shake my head and try to let the thought go. I look at my dad. There he is, slowly spinning around, taking a panoramic photo to send to his girlfriend.
I spot an orange flag planted not so far from where we’re standing. “What do you think that means?”
“Caution. Go no further,” he says.
I smile at my dad, and he smiles back at me. We turn around and carefully make our way back to shore.
Katie Marks received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. She teaches writing at Ithaca College. She was the co-author of the headphone walking play, The Missing Chapter. Her work has also appeared in the Hoxie Gorge Review, Modcloth’s Written Wardrobe, and Massage Magazine, among others. She is always trying to learn something new.