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Smoke Signals
Theres an old photograph of my grandfather, Elliott Frank, in my cousins home in Los
Angeles. He looks so young in the photo, my age maybe, and hes smiling. Its a close up from
the shoulders up, his face tilted and grinning at the camera, in his green, army jacket. I remember
all the stories my dad used to tell of him. He was a neighborhood man, and a family man. He was
an army man. He was a New Yorker. But for a man who smoked three packs of Chesterfield
Kings unfiltered cigarettes a day, I cant find a picture of him with a cigarette. He died of lung
cancer before my dads fourteenth birthday, so I never got to meet him. Looking at the photo on
the wall, I feel the grief of having lost him myself, as though at one point and no longer, he was
mine.
The calendar points out that Spring, 2016 has arrived, but in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where
I have been attending University for the past three years, the chills of winter have not yet thawed.
My roommate, Nahiyan, opens the door to our balcony, and the inner warmth of the living room
collapses into a wintery rush. I get up from the couch, take a cigarette from his pack lying on the
living room table in front of me and follow him into the breeze, past the balcony door. I look at
my friend and ask:
Cig?
The one in your hand? Sure, but thats it. Im not gonna be the one who gets you
addicted.
When Elliott died in the summer of 1969, the Frank family was devastated. His younger
brother, Harvey, had died of heart failure just a year before turning forty. The heartbreak was
irreparable. Half of the Franks, Harveys family, moved to Los Angeles from New York, unable
to bear any longer the pain Long Island had come to represent. But it was not Long Island that

had killed those two men, it was cigarettes. Rita, my grandmother, kept her sons, my dad being
the middle child of three brothers, in New York. In 1973, she remarried to a man named Polly.
Winter of 2015 ended and took my grandmother with it. Polly was left with an empty
household, and an unexpected will dispute with Ritas eldest son, my dads older brother. I
received an unexpected call from my dad just a week after the funeral, after I had headed back to
my apartment in Michigan.
Hey, dad, whats goin on?
Listen, there is some disagreement over my mothers will. Polly wants more money, but
we think its because his son from his last marriage wants the money and is tricking him.
Uncle Jaime is being stubborn. Polly is getting a lawyer to handle the case. Hes unhappy
with your uncle.
So?
We have to get a lawyer too, now. All talking will have to go through them. You can try
to call him, but its a mess.
Sometimes Ill take a cigarette from a pack lying around the house, courtesy of Nahiyan,
and play with it when he isnt home. His type, Marlboro Lights, are a very bland looking brand
of cigarettes outfitted in all white except for three regal gold stripes and the word Marlboro
wrapped around the diameter just above the filter. Ill dangle it from my mouth the way I figure
Elliott used to. It seems to come naturally to me. Ill put it above my ear, or just crinkle it around
between my fingers until it breaks, watching the loose brown pieces of tobacco fall through the
cracks of my extremities.
I called Polly the next weekend at the same time I always call: 10am, Saturday. There
was no response when I called, so I left a voicemail:

Hey Grandpa. I just wanted to call you to say I love you and miss you. And after a
pause, I added, Whatever the argument is over the will, just know I support you, and I
love you. Goodbye.
Polly was like Elliott in many ways. He grew up in Brooklyn, not far from Elliott. He
joined the army when he was sixteen, lying to recruitment officers in an attempt to escape the
mundane lifestyle of life after graduating two years before the rest of his class. He got back and
joined a business, quickly maneuvering to the top, just like Elliott. Back in the day, he used to
tell me, I would travel so much for work that sometimes I would wake up and have no clue
what city I was in or even what time it was really crazy stuff. Now, his bald head and wirerimmed oval glasses only contradict his thick Brooklyn accent and the way hell clench his hands
into big fists when hes stubborn.
I examine the top of one of Nahiyans Marlboro Lights. When lit, the top becomes an
ember, a glowing, open sore, receding slowly down the frame of the cigarette. It burns, and
orange specks flicker and dance as the paper wilts away. As the flickering grows nearer to the
smoker, the smells and the smoke become closer and more intense with every inhalation. For
each cigarette, it is up to the smoker just how far down that ember may burn, that sore may
travel. On the occasions in which I do smoke, Ive noticed that I smoke it down as close to the
filter as it can get, although never further.
Like Elliott, Polly smoked a few packs a day when he was a younger man. He thought
nothing of it until after his first daughter, Janie was born. Looking down onto his beautiful child
as she lied on her back reaching out to him with stubby, new arms and legs, he reached out to lift
her into his arms. As he lifted her, the ember at the tip of his cigarette which drooped from his

lips ashed onto her ever so slightly, burning her arm. In his words, I dont really like to tell that
story, but anyways, I never touched another cigarette. No way.
Like tough conversations, cigarettes usually have filters. Soft white tissue is found at the
base of most all cigarettes since the mid-20th Century, there to filter out some of the toxins and
other things that come down the rod. Filters serve to soften the intake of abrasive materials. They
serve to make more appealing and ingestible that which is otherwise harder to take in. They
begin white but by the end of the cigarette, the filter is a musty looking brown. An indicator of
what was not ingested, but in the end, just as much an indicator of what was.
In the Spring of 2012, the topic of smoking brought my family together at the dinner
table on the sixteenth floor of a small apartment in Manhattan to talk. Without food on the table
or a game to play, this was a rare calling. We sat down at the same table that sits in the kitchen
today: a beige, rectangular wooden table pushed up onto a yellow painted wall of the kitchen.
You can sit facing the wall or on an end, facing the other. My sister sat in her usual kitchen table
spot, on the end nearest the door. My mother occupied the other end, so my dad and I took the
middle seats.
I want to tell you about my father. Said my dad.
As the story went, Elliott was the life of the neighborhood in his shiny green Alfa Romeo.
He would drive around the block and let the kids touch it. But I wanted to know about his
personality. About what he was like.
With my father, it was the best, or nothing, explained my dad. We had the best stereos
you could possibly buy, but we had no furniture!
In the summer of 1969, after knowing for months of his condition, it was finally time he
told my thirteen year old dad and his brothers. Within months, Elliott was gone. According to my

dad, he was frail and weak when he died. We all wanted to believe he would get better, but even
on his deathbed, dying from lung cancer having smoked three packs a day for years, he needed to
smoke. I hate this so much, but I need a cigarette, Elliott had said to my dad. I still hear those
words as if I was in the room too, and I wish I was in the room with him. For a final story or a
moment, I would have shared with him that cigarette.
Chesterfield Kings, unfiltered, long cigarettes. Best for You, as the 50s slogan read.
Thats what Elliott smoked. His cigarettes had no filters, so what you saw was just what you got,
all roughly 84mm of it. Three packs a day, 60-63 cigarettes. In the house, on the porch, in the car,
at the business in Brooklyn; a continuous chain of them. And yet, there is not a single picture of
him smoking. Polly either.
The paper around the long frame of a cigarette is actually made up of the same materials
that go inside it. In factories, making the paper consists of mixing together tobacco with other
ingredients like ground up leftovers from old, unsold cigarettes, and materials left over from
previous manufacturing runs -- those calculated casualties. All these materials are soaked
together, the juice drained into a huge vat, and hardened into sheets of paper. Chemicals are
added that will help ease the delivery of smoke into a persons lungs. Cigarette paper, then,
serves as a sort of taste filter and eye filter. It makes the cigarette look and feel and act to your
senses like those which came before it.
I called my dad for an update after not having heard back from Polly for weeks. All he
could tell me was that nothing had been figured out. In his words, my brother is stubborn like
my father was. Polly is the same way. We must be family.
But family sticks together. I responded.

My dad finished up what he wanted to say to me, pausing to figure out the best way to
say it: Wyatt, listen. This is so stupid, I think so too. But, these will disputes, they can
take months, years to figure out.
I would called my sister, and she would tell me: I want to just show up to his house too,
but we cant scare him. We dont want him to have another heart attack like last year. Was it the
cigarettes catching up to him too? This past of his that I had so admired seemed to be creeping up
on him recently, and none of it was positive.
I thought back to a time with Polly in his kitchen. It was the tail end of a routine visit to
the grandparents house in Long Island. My dad and my mom talked on the old green couch in
their living room. My sister talked with our grandmother, Rita, from her wheelchair next to the
television. Alone in the kitchen, Polly and I stood waiting for the water to boil for some tea. His
right hand was on his hip and his left was balancing his body onto the countertop next to the
stove. His khakid legs, matching his khaki colored wool sweater, crossed over one another, and
his dilated blue eyes stared out at me through wire rimmed glasses. He raised his right hand from
his waist, gently lifting his glasses from his nose and bringing them back to his side. I told him:
Grandpa, youre so cool. Most people dont connect with their grandparents so well.
Theyre just grandparents, you know? But I feel like we connect.
And he had responded, Youre a good kid, son. Sometimes, it just clicks.
So why would he call a lawyer? More weeks passed. Saturdays at 10am passed. I left
voicemails about my life. I left out the little detail about the cigarettes.
The following Saturday, 10am, I called again. I expected to leave another voicemail, but
this time after one ring, the phone picked up with a click, followed by a pause. In his usual,
musky voice and almost accusatory tone, he picked up.

Hello?
Oh. Hello! Grandpa, Polly, its Wyatt.
Hey, kid.
I didnt think you would pick up.
I know... Im sorry. Its nice to hear from you, son.
Um, I should catch you up on everything--
I really dont think thats a good idea, son. I had to hear your voice, but I dont think we
can say more than this. The lawyer wont be happy.
Ok. was all I could say.
Im sorry about everything. I want to talk but we just cant right now.
We hung up the phone and I thought to myself, This is the stubbornness you admire in
him, right? But this stubbornness was not grounded in love and passion now. It was mixed with
fear and uncertainty, disguised by a familiar voice. This wasnt the sound of a stubborn man who
fought his way out of Brooklyn, or lied about his age to join the army, or was persistent when he
met my grandmother, sure of himself that he could handle a new family of three boys.
I watch Nahiyan smoke sometimes, intrigued by it. From a cigarette of any kind comes
the same string of grey smoke. It carries itself upwards while the smoker takes breaths between
puffs. It carries itself outwards, spreading thin and polluting the oxygen around it. A smokers
mouth becomes the substitute for the ember tip, exhaling from pursed lips the same gray smoke,
immediately into a smoky haze. And this haze takes on an unmistakable presence, filling up
rooms with a distinct odor and distinct lack of clarity as smoke particles sift quietly. On the
balcony, it simply disappears into the wind.

When I hung up this time with Polly, something seemed different. I began to dream about
him. In my dreams, I was minimized to a thirteen year old boy, a son of a man diagnosed with
something bad and uncertain. I can see myself as a kid, holding Pollys hand at the park next to
their house in Long Island, looking up to him as he smiles back down on me. He smokes a big
cigarette in this dream, the dark embers spitting out of the tip and falling toward me like flaming
rocks. He wants to put it down and quit again, but this time he cant.
Summer, 2016 is around the corner. Polly is turning ninety soon. The will dispute and any
negotiations seem to have stagnated. My uncle is just as stubborn, offended, as Polly. I wonder
what my grandmother would have done. For now, the occasional smoke with Nahiyan seems to
offer respite, however hollow. Almost out of spite and almost out of adoration for the younger
grandfathers I never knew, I have caught myself in a familiar habit. Elbows resting on black
painted guardrails, looking out into the night sky from our balcony, Nahiyan and I try to find
meaning in the smoke as it blends into the clouds. I take out my phone and show Nahiyan the
picture of Elliott from my cousins home in L.A.
Wow, hes a handsome guy. Nahiyan tells me.
Sure is.
Hows it going with your grandpa now, by the way?
I take back my phone and look at the picture some more, focusing on Elliotts thick black
hair, bushy eyebrows, his dimples, all features that I share and take pride in. I cross my left leg
over my right and lean onto the guardrail with my left hand, balancing my bodys weight.
Nahiyan blows out smoke into the night, fogging up his thick, square glasses. I look up at him
and respond to his question:
Not so well. Im trying to think about what he would have done in a situation like this.

Who, Elliott or your grandpa?

I dont know, both? I realized then that if I had known Elliott, I could never have met
Polly.
Well, what would you do? It sounds like you cant ask either of them right now.
I nod my head in agreement, but cant respond in words. Realizing what he had said, he
offers me the rest of his cigarette, reaching over to me with his gift outstretched between two
fingers.
Here, finish my cigarette if you want.
I gently receive the cigarette, watching the ember burn through the last bits of paper and
tobacco filling before the filter burns too. I inhale from it half-heartedly; my gaze into the dark
night sky losing focus, my vision waning. The ember is all the way receded now, and I can barely
pinch on as it burns through the filter. I take my last puff, my lips turn to smoke and the cigarette
falls forever.