Reasonable people, p.40
Reasonable People, page 40
Truth be told, I was anxious about having to see my father again, whom I hadn’t seen since my brother’s wedding the year before. “See” is the operative word here, for we hadn’t said a word to one another, hadn’t even acknowledged the other’s presence. Like DJ, I’d practiced the doctrine of preemption, instructing my sister to tell the old man to stay the hell away from me and my family. And, of course, I was terribly disappointed when he did just that—and did so comfortably. It turns out there’s no inoculation against disappointment. Driving into Chicago, I wondered if he’d be able to do the same with me in a neck brace and facing a hip replacement. Surely, my physical condition would compel him to reach out and bury the hatchet. No matter how pathetic I found the spectacle of a forty-year-old son wanting something from a father he detested, a father in whom he could find not a single thing to admire, I just couldn’t stop myself from being sucked, like a smallish star, into the black hole of longing.
And longing—surprise, surprise—led to resentment. Why hadn’t he bothered to call when DJ was in and out of the hospital, having seizures and, eerily enough, being tested for a brain tumor? Did it matter that we were feuding? Why hadn’t he been able to put forth that show of self-aggrandizement he called love when my son was sick? Why couldn’t he have embraced a boy he said was not “his real grandson”? As the traffic started to move, I thought of DJ’s relationship with his birth father and of what he might one day need from that man who had hurt him terribly but who had at least now expressed some interest in seeing him.
I had gotten so worked up thinking about these things that I imagined my father delighting in my injuries, pronouncing them, retroactively, the punishment for spurning him—or rather being spurned by him. (There’s a great line in Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men in which the protagonist says to a woman he’s wronged, “I forgive you for everything I did to you.” That would be my father’s approach to the past.) But delight isn’t right. Once you’d exhibited even the slightest refusal to fawn all over him, let alone voice your disapproval about something he’d said or done, you didn’t exist. You were like the “disappeared” in Argentina, removed from your filial apartment in the middle of the night and sent ignominiously to the bottom of the ocean. My father had cut so many people out of his life—so many friends, relatives, and colleagues—it was scary. And while he was married to my mother, he demanded that my siblings side with him in their endless, acrimonious battles, or face the consequences.
A relationship with my father wasn’t technically possible; it was like trying to have a relationship with a king, who could only conceive of you as his subject. (When Emily and I got married, he told her—seriously—that she could call him “Dad” or “sir,” the two options of course being one and the same.) The world, he believed, revolved around him; under no circumstances would he renounce his Copernican philosophy, banishing any and all would-be Galileos. In order to preserve their relationship with their father, my siblings had had to behave like the prickly monarch’s court attendants, assiduously indulging his megalomania, all the while knowing he was just another planet in the solar system, which was just another solar system in the universe, which…how much insignificance can we tolerate? My little sister had lost herself in the process, slowly but surely aspiring to the throne of total self-involvement.
Years ago, I wrote a poem that tried to capture a son’s dissatisfaction with estrangement—the estrangement (back then) of being with someone who wasn’t reciprocally present to you. I was reminded of it as I inched my way toward the city and what would be, without a doubt, the ghastliest of family reunions: a vigil for baby Charlie in Children’s Memorial Hospital. The poem was called “Cries from the Way Back.”
You can travel in a car,
as we did frequently,
and never get to you.
You’re all indifference and departure.
You simply can’t be reached
by phone
by fax,
by common words.
You’re as complete and as empty as a zero.
As the years have taken their customary toll,
I’ve come to think of you
as distance itself:
a haughty and mocking horizon—
so much so that when I remember the little boy
in the back of the family station wagon,
eager to arrive at his summer vacation
and asking, for the umpteenth time,
“Are we there yet, Dad? Are we there?”
I toss my heart into the tollbooth basket
and now ask wearily,
“How much father do we have to go?”
An earlier version of the poem alluded to a trip I took to look at colleges, a trip on which I became terribly ill with gastroenteritis—so ill that I actually threw up during my Williams College interview. When I couldn’t continue with the trip, my father deposited me in a hotel room and went to see a movie, though I begged him to take me to the hospital. Hours later, he returned to more moaning and vomiting. He said nothing, just attended to some business in the bed beside me.
As melodramatic as it sounds, during the period that Emily and I were debating whether to adopt DJ, I repeatedly dreamt about a plane crash in Guam in which a man was thrown from the wreckage, his legs horrifically mangled. The man’s son was stuck inside the burning fuselage, yelling, “Help me, Daddy. Help me.” But the man couldn’t move, and in his agony he had to listen to his dying son’s screams. Were my father’s legs broken? Were mine? What keeps us from walking the shortest of distances—a hotel room, a waterfront home, an inner-city block, a checkpoint (may I say this?) in the Occupied Territories? “More,” DJ had signed in the emergency room some eight years before, prefiguring, I imagined, a new discourse of personal and social concern.
Over the course of the weekend, my brother, James, would ask, “How do you raise a dying son?” By doing what you’re already doing, I’d want to tell him. By counting every remaining minute with Charlie a blessing, savoring it, drawing it out with rapt attention so that it seemed as if it might conceal a longer span of love—a paradoxically infinite bridge across the bay of years they wouldn’t, in all likelihood, have together. And there, as a backdrop and foil, would be my prodigal father who’d wasted so much time, so much possibility, wrapped like a pharaoh in the silk of arrogance. For all of his actual interest in people, the man might as well have begun to mummify himself.
I digress. But life was offering up a hundred thousand parallels and just as many contrasts. Like DJ, I found myself in the stacks of association, shelving memories and impressions by mysterious call number. I was headed for the ultimate stage of family conflict. We Savareses were like something out of Tennessee Williams. Could we keep it together, all of us (my father and his new wife, my mother, my sisters, I), and try to help James? Each of us had a plotting, brooding understudy who wanted a chance to act—act up, that is, change the script of reasonable care.
* * *
—
When I arrived at my brother’s apartment, I found my mother and Eileen’s sister, Marie, in the kitchen. James was on the phone, and Eileen was taking a shower. Baby Charlie was asleep. The mood was tense and sullen. When my mother first spotted me in my neck brace, she began to cry. The evening would go like this, with one person or another breaking down, all the while baby Charlie seemed, once he’d awakened, as peaceful and as happy as ever. You couldn’t get yourself to believe he was ill. He looked so blissfully unaware.
The next morning, I learned, there would be an emergency baptism, right in the living room, conducted by a family friend, a former priest named Dominick. Eileen’s immediate family—her brothers and sister and, of course, her parents—would be present, as would my mother and I. The rest of the Savareses would be flying in Saturday night, in time for the private mass on Sunday and the surgery on Monday morning.
After dinner, I sneaked off to call Emily and tell her what was happening. She and DJ had been having highly fraught conversations on the computer. “how is uncle james and baby charlie/”
“They are feeling better now that Dad is there with them. We will call Dad in about twenty-five minutes and see what his plans are.”
“im possibly loving you huimer” [him?]
“I’m definitely loving you.”
“you I love you true you look hurt”
“No, I feel just as happy as I did thirty minutes ago. You don’t need to worry about Mom. What are you thinking?”
“im nervous because im misding dad”
“Are you nervous or sad about missing Dad?”
“missing dad makes me really nervous because im trying n0oy to poke.”
After the ferris wheel of anxiety had made several revolutions, DJ announced, “im nervous that you try to hide things from me”
“DJ, Mom heard your message this summer about how important it is to be truthful. I have been entirely truthful with you since then. What are you afraid I am hiding from you?”
“thetb dad is really gttinv his hip replaced right now”
“Absolutely NOT. Dad is not getting his hip replaced until Wednesday, May 5th. Look on the calendar and see. Dad is in Chicago helping Uncle James. I am glad he can be there to help, but I’m also sorry he can’t be here the weekend before his hip operation. You will definitely see Dad before his hip operation on Wednesday. Either we will drive to Chicago or he will drive home. Dad is fine.” It had never occurred to us that DJ might think that I was having surgery now, but it made sense, perfect sense.
Emily then addressed the subject of my operation, believing he needed to talk through the specifics. “When Dad gets his hip operation on Wednesday, Mom will go with him for the day. You will have school and hang out with some of your buddies, and Mom will get back home here around your bed time.” Emily then added, “Lots of people might call here today to—”
“poking is bad,” DJ typed, interrupting her.
“You have nothing you need to worry about.”
“im possibly pointing out that you look kind of tied” [tired]
“I’m not feeling tired. I think I saw you yawn and it made me yawn. Did you know that yawning often spreads from one person to the next like that?”
“poking is bad,” he repeated. If some day I have a stroke and language leaves me, I’m certain that I will be able to say at least this phrase, so imprinted on my consciousness is it, so nearly automatic.
Emily and I debated the pros and cons of their coming to Chicago and decided, finally, that they should come. DJ was just too stressed without me. If they didn’t come, I’d only have a few hours to spend with him before my surgery. And then I’d be in the hospital for four days, and DJ had already made it clear that he wouldn’t be visiting me in “great places.” I couldn’t bear to go such a long stretch without extended (or semi-extended) time together. I think Emily heard this in my voice, and trooper that she is, tipped the balance in Chicago’s favor. So, they’d make the trip the following day, have dinner with me, go to the mass on Sunday, and then drive back immediately afterward. I was glad; I wanted to see them both badly.
I spent the night in a hotel, had breakfast with my mother, and headed back to my brother’s apartment for the baptism. My sister-in-law’s family is Irish Catholic—they’re wonderful, progressive, peace-loving Catholics, but real believers. It had been a long time since I’d had my falling out with the Church, and I felt a bit uncomfortable participating in such an intimate and urgent ritual. But the weekend’s motto had clearly become “Anything for Charlie,” and so I went with it. I remember being surprised by how much my brother, who’d never been religious at all, went with it. Someone (was it Hemingway?) once said that a foxhole can make a believer out of anyone. How much more true when your kid is in the foxhole? But beyond this obvious explanation lay the warm embrace of Eileen’s family, for whom Catholicism was an integral part of a generous way of life. Who wouldn’t want such a rich and consolatory bear hug?
Dominic, a lovely man who’d recently had his own hip replacement surgery, arrived with the biggest clam shell I’d ever seen, which was to serve as the baptismal font, and various oils and holy water. Marie was looking for someone to videotape the ceremony, and I volunteered—in part to avoid being assigned another, more awkward task, like reciting a prayer. The baptism was beautiful. Each of us made the sign of the cross on Charlie’s forehead and pledged to support the newest member of the Christian community. We sang hymns a cappella, led by Dominic’s wife, who has a soothing voice. Because James had a habit of singing goofy songs to Charlie, songs set to familiar Christmas melodies, we all tried that as well. When Charlie heard the “song” he knew best, he broke into a smile, lifting everyone’s spirits like a spot of sun on a foggy morning. Sadness and hope battled it out, finally deciding on one of those bright, gray skies.
Imagine the videographer’s shock when, suddenly, Dominic suggested that they perform a healing rite on him—on me! “We have the oils,” he said. “We might as well.” I felt my pulse rate rise immediately, and I began to sweat. My mother gave me a look that could be interpreted kindly as: “Say anything and I’ll kill you.” Everybody lined up to make the sign of the cross on my forehead. I saw Eileen’s brother Paul, Charlie’s godfather, shoot me a smirk; he knew I was uncomfortable. I admired how easily he traveled back and forth from the old world of Catholicism to the hip, new world of, say, The Simpsons and South Park, like someone with a diplomatic passport. I was still waiting at customs, frankly, when Dominic and his oils greeted my forehead. What made me more uncomfortable: a ritual I didn’t believe in or the magnanimous good wishes of deeply caring people? I’d been complaining privately that my own problems had been lost in the shuffle, the mad scramble, of DJ and Charlie’s medical issues, and here I was finally getting some attention and not enjoying it. “You are,” Emily would say later, “at least as complicated as your son.”
After the baptism, most of us went over to Paul’s house for an impromptu reception. It would serve as a meeting place for other local family members and those flying in. James and Eileen remained behind with Charlie. They wanted some downtime together. At about 5:00, Eileen’s oldest brother, Joe, gave me a lift back to the hotel, where I had told Emily I would meet her. The first thing DJ did when they arrived was to ask me to remove my pants. At first, I didn’t understand why, but then I got it. He wanted to make sure that I hadn’t had my surgery. He spent an inordinate amount of time inspecting my leg before he was satisfied that we’d been telling the truth. He seemed to relax after that. Once we’d unpacked, we ordered dinner from an Italian restaurant next to the hotel and brought it back to our room. DJ then took a bath, and we cuddled and tickled until bedtime.
The next morning we met various family members—my aunt, cousin, mother, older sister, and brother-in-law—for breakfast at a waffle house. Before leaving for the restaurant, we went over the day’s schedule with DJ. “DJ, tell me what the plan is for today,” I said.
“eat breakfasrt, eat lunch, go to church sergice, feel sad hurtn.” Another laugh-out-loud moment. The idea of purposeful, orderly heartache was at once bizarre and oddly perceptive. It certainly captured the way we human beings try to contain grief, and, at the same time, it exposed the masochism in even bothering to confront it at all.
“Tell me more about feeling sad and hurt at the church service,” Emily replied.
“charlie is realy sick”
“Yes, and family members are feeling sad about it. On Monday he will have surgery to see if they can help him feel better. Let’s go meet Boo [my aunt] and Julia [my cousin] and Grammy for breakfast. We’ll bring the labeler and continue our conversation there.”
The second we entered the waffle house, DJ signed, “all done, all done.” He was frantic to leave, ignoring my many attempts to get him to greet his relatives properly. When we finally persuaded him to sit down at the table, he again signed, “all done, all done” and typed, “too many sad faces.” DJ was like an emotional seismograph detecting tremors a thousand miles away. No matter how diligently my relatives tried to seem upbeat, DJ could tell that they were not. “All done, all done.” We couldn’t get him to touch his breakfast—not even the strips of bacon that he customarily devoured. I ended up having to take him for a little walk about halfway through the meal in order to get him to calm down.
After breakfast, we had some time to spare, and so a bunch of us took a cab to the Lincoln Park Zoo by the lake. It was a beautiful, blustery day, and we thought that DJ might enjoy seeing the water and the animals. Later, in the hotel room, we encouraged him to write a short letter to James and Eileen. We knew it was a risky proposition, but we wanted to give him a chance to wish them well. “Dear Uncle James and Aunt Eileen, I hear that Charlie needs our help,” it began. “He is very brave.” I can’t remember the rest of it, and since it was composed on the labeler and presented to his aunt and uncle at the service, I don’t have a record of it. But as with all of DJ’s communiqués, it was touchingly sweet. He always seemed to rise to the occasion when trying to comfort someone.
As the hour of the private mass approached, DJ signed, “drive, drive,” indicating an intense desire to flee.
“In about twenty minutes we will take a cab ride to the church,” Emily said. “That will be your drive, OK?”
“poking is bad”
“You are feeling nervous, but try to keep it separate from poking and bad memories.”
“i need sadness to go,” DJ explained.
“I know it’s hard, but we are all here together trying to help each other. You are safe and OK.”
