We’re taking a tour of Falling Water because my dad always wanted to come here, make this pilgrimage to bumfuck PA to see the jewel in the King of American architecture’s crown, but my dad’s dead and Frank Lloyd Wright is dead and I feel like my relationship—to Candle Girl, to my friends, my remaining family, myself—is dying and I couldn’t give two or three or forty shits about architecture.
But I’m dating this girl who’s artsy now, makes her own candles, sells them at the small mall market, donates them to community vigils. I like her kindness and because she has waxy fingers and because when we’re fucking I stop thinking about how dead my dad is. But Candle Girl keeps asking the tour guide all these questions, interrupting her spiel and only half paying attention to her answers and the guide, a little old lady, frail, shrunken, trying to meet a schedule here and looking like a Brownie in her skirt and beret and she’s even got cookies! Look! Cookies. Never mind, they’re Werther’s, I recognize the gold wrapper. But still, sweets. I wonder how my dad would’ve looked at her age, if he’d made it that far, I mean, and you know, not died.
And Candle Girl keeps asking about Frank Lloyd Reynolds, if Frank Lloyd Reynolds built this or if Frank Lloyd Reynolds designed that, and I don’t have the heart for much of anything let alone correcting her. So we shuffle along on the tour, yes, yes, what lovely stones, what interesting books, ah, fascinating, these windows, except it’s a gray spring morning out there and you might say the trees are blooming but in the drizzle it could just as easily be decay.
I listen to the waterfall. I listen to Candle Girl, to the tour guide. I imagine some sort of chimera, a cross between America’s most famous architect and Frank Reynolds, the character Danny DeVito plays in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I think my dad kind of looked like Frank. Not short, not really, but a little round, a little strung out. Conniving. Vindictive. And funny. And beautiful.
The tour guide pops another Werther’s and the drizzle turns to rain, real rain, and the tour guide says to Candle Girl, exasperated, finally, “I think you mean Frank Lloyd Wright, dear. Wright, not Reynolds.”
And Candle Girl looks crushed and the tour is almost over and I couldn’t care less about architecture but I feel I need to ask something anyway, to know something, so I say, “No, I think it’s Reynolds. I’m pretty sure he changed his name. As a young man, making his way, starting out in Chicago, right?” And it’s not true but the guide looks stumped for a second, poor old Brownie sucking on her Werther’s, and I feel bad for gaslighting her but Candle Girl perks up, is emboldened, grins like an angel, and that’s enough for me, at the moment, to take me out of my grief and let me admire the stones and the lines and the windows and we’ll drive back in the rain and I’ll hold Candle Girl’s hand, feel her waxy fingers, and when we get home we’ll light a candle for Wright and my dad and everyone.
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Jon Doughboy is a kendo instructor in Oklahoma and moonlights as a custodian at a research university near you. @doughboywrites
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image: Jade Hawk is a meat popsicle.
Rejection Letters 