Driver's Education Read online

  There’s the fluid, liquid sigh of traffic behind us on the West Side Highway. I begin picking at a spot where the railing’s green paint has chipped. I tear off a large sheet of acrylic from the iron bars, turning it on its side so it looks like a cutout of Florida.

  Randal stubs his cigarette against the railing, kicking off the ash, which lands on his toes.

  “All right,” he says. “Let’s see it then.”

  “See what?”

  “The map.”

  I use my fingernails to peel off another sheet—rectangular, almost perfectly so. I tell myself it’s North Dakota, or South Dakota, or Wyoming, or any of those other states that have unmemorable, half-assed shapes. In front of us two kayakers paddle in figure eights.

  When I lift the paper it smells ancient and important, like newsprint. The edges are brittle, its creases sharp and yellow. There are lines drawn on it—mostly illegible scribbles in black and blue and red and grey. There are cities and towns circled, places my granddad has been; there are roads, and counties, and—in the case of Florida—an entire state crossed out. Artifacts from his unbounded memories.

  And then, in the margins, there are new notes: instructions he’s written expressly for me. Like: In Chicago—Never look the Gangster in the eye.

  I drop North Dakota to the grass and turn to look out at the water. The clipper ship has tacked so the wind is at its rear, pushing its sails out in wide grinning crescents.

  • • •

  We are walking east on Jane Street and the sun floods the thin alleys between low buildings and the reflection, all the reflections, glow white and angelic on the camera’s LCD screen. The bricks of the walk-ups around us change from orange to red to brown. A woman with a stroller slows behind us, and we step aside to let her pass.

  I lean against a low green wall and bite at the dulled tip of my thumb. I smell like sweat and wine and just-chopped grass.

  I rub something from my eye with the bottom hem of my shirt.

  He says: “So, you must’ve considered the possibility by now.”

  “What possibility?” I can feel the uneven mortar play tic-tac-toe on my back and I wipe at my face again.

  “The possibility that maybe he’s . . . And that’s why he wants to see the car. Just . . . I don’t know. So he can drive it one more time before he—or something.”

  “I see what you’re saying—”

  “It was just a thought.”

  “But, ha, it’s not the case.”

  I think about the map. I think about all its lines, printed and scribbled. There are so many of them, the roads. So many ways in which they tie themselves into knots, entwine themselves like the legs of guilty lovers.

  “But hypothetically, what if it is.”

  “Then,” I say, “we’ll be the ones who save him.”

  DAD, YOU’RE KILLING ME

  Colin

  “Dad,” I say.

  “Colin?”

  “You’re killing me.”

  He hacks. First, the dry exasperations of a k. But then, something else. Something that submerges and bubbles below the surface: a cough swimming in motor oil.

  We sit in the kitchen of a house that I can no longer afford. Four broad windows reach out over the bay, where currents swell beneath the Golden Gate. The sun, flooding in from the east, turns the water to rusted silver. When his coughing subsides, I hand him a napkin so he can wipe his mouth. He folds it unevenly and struggles to slip it into the breast pocket of his blue oxford—the same shirt he wore yesterday, and the day before that. The shirt I wash each evening. The shirt I iron for him every morning after helping him from his bed, before combing his threadbare hair. The only shirt that—now—he’ll agree to wear.

  “I’d say it’s the other way around,” he tells me.

  I press my mug away from me and I begin spreading butter across two pieces of toast.

  “What I’m saying,” I say, “is that when you ask me every morning when the last time I sold a script was—that’s killing me.”

  I slice away the bread’s burnt crust and hand both pieces to him. He watches them on the chipped plate in front of him, a look of anticipation and then defeat slipping across his face. But it’s toast, Dad. What do you expect it to do? Sing? Dance? Restore your expired youth?

  He holds a finger, curved into an arthritic claw, against the side of his nose. “I ask you that every morning?” He sounds as if his cheeks are stuffed with marbles.

  I open the San Francisco Chronicle and leaf through the pages until I find the crossword. When he arrived last year, he would beat me at these things; it’d take me two hours to get through one puzzle, whereas he’d finish it in thirty minutes or less.

  “Show the doctors that,” he’d say. “And then ask them if I need to be living with my son. Ask them if I shouldn’t be back at home in New York, where I belong.”

  I’d tell him, “But, Dad. It’s not your head; it’s your heart.”

  Now, though, I’m not sure. He still completes the puzzles—in fact, often faster than he did before. But now once he’s growled Done, once he’s thrust the torn newsprint beneath my nose so I can survey his handiwork, I’ll notice mistakes. Missed clues. Answers that don’t fit. Three letters shoved into one cramped box.

  19 down. Three letters. Washington bigwig, abbr.: ASSHOLE

  7 down. Five letters. Grateful: FOR WHAT

  1 across. Four letters. _____ Boleyn: LUCY

  At first I would circle the flubs in black ink and hand the puzzle back to him. I’d say, Molière wasn’t a Confederate general, Dad. He’d shake his head defiantly, toast crumbs tossed from the corners of his mouth. And the clue calls for three letters, second letter E. He still wouldn’t listen, though. He’d hold the point of his pen against the table and lift a single eyebrow in my direction. He’d keep it raised until I’d say, finally, Yeah, all right. I can see it. Molière at Appomattox. Why not!

  Now I just let him have them.

  He still has his finger pressed to the side of his nose, but now he’s tapping it slowly. He knits his brows together as he looks at me from across the table, his eyes grazing over the dirtied rims of empty cups, the stacks of my half-finished scripts.

  I say, finally, “It was called The Family Room. It premiered in nineteen eighty-three. Yes, that’s more than twenty years ago. Yes, it starred two very famous people who have since died. Yes, you remember correctly, it was nominated for four awards, but not the Oscar. And yes, you remember even more correctly: it won precisely none of them.”

  He stops his nose tapping. “It’s funny—”

  “That you never saw that particular movie?”

  He nods.

  “Yes, I know. Ha, ha, a real hoot. Hilarious every morning!”

  I ask him if he’s finished with his toast. He looks down at the uneaten slices and the despair returns to his face: first in the folds where his neck meets his chin, then, climbing upward, to his sagging jowls, his stretched ears, his pocked crown. You’ve disappointed me, toast.

  I take the plate and shovel the mess into the trash. I return to fix the collar of his shirt, ignoring him as he mutters to himself, to the table, to the piles of paper: “Nineteen eighty-three was a long time ago.”

  • • •

  The call came two Februaries ago in the early afternoon: 1:30 PST/4:30 EST. I had finished my lunch and was cleaning the windows when Finn phoned, repeating all his cries in threes.

  “Oh Dad, oh Dad, oh Dad.”

  “Something’s happened, something’s happened, something’s happened.”

  “If I hadn’t missed the train—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  I said, “Finn?”

  “Oh, Dad. Oh, Dad, we’re at the hospital.”

  “Stop,” I’d instructed him. “Slow down. Explain to me—exactly—what’s happened.”

  He’d arrived in Westchester an hour earlier, he told me. He’d missed the 1:34 train and thus had been forced to wait for the 2:11. He’d come u
p from the city to visit my father—his grandfather—who was still living in Sleepy Hollow, in the house where I grew up. The two of them had planned to meet at the Tarrytown station, where my father would pick him up in that goddamned car. They’d eat lunch. My father would pour my son some Lowland scotch and offer him cheap cigars. They’d pull from their collections of finely woven stories; they’d trade them with each other, sewing them into imaginary shapes.

  But when Finn arrived, my father wasn’t there. He waited for an additional half hour. He scanned the parking lot for Lucy’s rusted yellow frame, ducking between minivans and sedans, hoping she was hiding somewhere between their hoods. He began to think: maybe his grandfather had gotten tired of waiting and left—Finn was, after all, late. Or maybe she’d broken down again? Maybe he’d been forced to call a mechanic? Or maybe he’d remembered the plans incorrectly? Maybe he was meant to take the bus?

  He told me that this had happened before.

  My father—he’s not all that patient. And he does have a tendency to forget.

  Still, though, it wasn’t until Finn knocked on the front door and my father didn’t answer that he became nervous. That he was hit with the suspicion that something was wrong.

  • • •

  By nine o’clock I’ve led him into the den, where he’ll stare at the television for the next six hours while I work. He’ll watch shows I’ve never seen him watch before, shows that I didn’t realize were still on the air. Bonanza, Charlie’s Angels, Diff’rent Strokes. He’ll manage to find every infomercial for every product that should have never been conceived: sleeping bags for cats; plates that double as cheese graters; a set of twelve katana samurai swords.

  My office sits directly above the den, on the west side of the house, and is cut in the same square shape. The room’s blue carpet curls up in each of the four corners, where there are small holes in the floorboards; the frayed empty spaces allow the television’s strangled voices to seep upward, to ping-pong off the surfaces of my desk, the sagging bookshelves, my ribs. I try closing my eyes before I turn on the computer’s screen.

  The truth is, I used to be so good at this. Twenty years ago, blank white sheets used to be wide-open highways, clean, paved roads; conduits to thrilling and accessible places away from myself. I used to fly down them with terrifying certainty, taking the banks and curves at breakneck speeds, never shifting down to fourth; never clamping my heel against the brake; never noticing the wheeze of a tank that’s out of gas.

  After the near success of The Family Room, the calls from studios, producers, and directors found their way to me at a wondrous and alarming rate. Anything, they’d tell me. Just write anything, and we’ll get it on the screen.

  And maybe it was the openness of it all, that blank-check promise of success that gummed me up. As the phone rang and the projects accumulated, filling the empty corners of the house, I fumbled and dropped the keys beneath the seat—unable to find the damn things again. The pages became something else: roadblocks. Detours in flashing lights, half the bulbs gone dead. Robust, angry trucks jackknifed on tight mountain roads. I’d spend months constructing two lines of dialogue, convincing myself I’d been productive if I managed to change two strokes of punctuation. I’d paint scenes with no sense of space, races with no sense of time.

  Trash bins became bonfires, piled high with half-used sheets.

  In the evenings, I’d call the producers and the agents, situated high in their glass Rubik’s Cubes along Wilshire Boulevard. I’d pant into the phone, feigning a sense of excited exhaustion, as if I’d come in from running a marathon, as if I hadn’t spent the day recumbent on the floor of my office, picking at the corners of the carpet, watching the way shadows chased themselves on the ceiling. Just a little more time, I’d beg them. I need just a little more time. They stopped calling back.

  I worked odd jobs, and sometimes I still do. These low-glam assignments sent my way by folks who’re too young to have heard the news. A one-episode script for a sitcom that failed after a few seasons. Four commercials for an acne cream. A set of jokes for the People’s Choice Awards. But no screenplays.

  You’re right about that, Dad.

  It wasn’t, though, for lack of trying. I spent years taking stabs at other genres, forms of storytelling either more marketable or obscure: romance, mystery, comedy, French art house. I’d start each of these projects with a sincere and earnest belief in my genius; a sense that, finally, my feet were lifting off the ground; that, finally, I’d managed to kick-start the engine. But then I’d turn back. I’d look upon the draft’s first pages. I’d read, Why don’t we get out of these wet clothes?

  I listen to the synthetic cries of his infomercials as I leaf through these drafts, set at angles on my desk; I run a finger along their yellowed edges.

  What Happens at the Water Cooler . . . ; The Empty Garage; The Vintage of Love; Punching Horses; Congress! The Musical; Only Swallows Cry at Night; Bottoms Up; The Grass Is Always Greener; The Apples in the Attic; Two Days After Yesterday; The Sand Is Full of Grains; Her Dangerous Heart; The Ventilator; The Vaporizer; The Blender; Punching Horses, Again; Longing Is a Breadless Toaster; Palm Fronds at Dusk; Bottoms Down; Kappa Kappa Killer; Don’t-Post-It; Windmills Only Turn Once.

  No. No, it was Palm Fronds at Dawn.

  • • •

  I arrived at Phelps Memorial Hospital the day after Finn called. I was groggy from the overnight flight, the skin beneath my eyes ringed and purple—but still, he looked worse. His cheeks were flushed red, and his hair—auburn, the color of my father’s, the color of mine—was matted with something: sweat. He’d pulled a plastic chair to the side of my father’s bed and he lay there, his head resting on the mattress next to his feet, his thin hands folded on top of each other, propping up his chin. There were four empty cups of orange Jell-O stacked at his feet.

  My father had had a stroke, is what Finn had told me when he called, and what the doctors at Phelps Memorial reiterated. Technically speaking: a thrombotic stroke, caused by a blood clot in one of his arteries, blocking the flow of blood to his brain. When my father didn’t answer the door, Finn had unlocked it with a key he’d been given. There was a kettle of water that was boiling over on the stove, drops hitting the range with an exaggerated hiss. Once he’d switched off the burner, he called my father’s name out in the kitchen. And then in the foyer, in the living room, in the garage, under Lucy. He opened closets, pushed aside moth-ridden coats drooping from their hangers. He said, in that voice he’s got that’s somewhere between a laugh and a whimper, All right, Granddad. Now I’m starting to get worried.

  Where he found him was in the bathroom. The bathroom Mom used to use, across from their bedroom. He was sitting on the toilet with its lid closed, his pants still up but his belt unbuckled. Finn put a hand on his shoulder and shook him gently, but he couldn’t lift his chin: he’d raise it to about ninety degrees, so he was gazing at Finn’s belly, but then—then his head would fall again, thudding against his concave chest.

  “I tried again,” Finn would later tell me. “And again, and again! I said, ‘It’s me, Granddad, it’s Finn.’ But his eyes were droopy. Like sleepy cartoon eyes. He just sort of looked past me.”

  I wish I could say I reacted to Finn’s call in a way that’d make my father proud. That, after I heard the news, there was the initial icing of my veins, followed by a flow of heated panic. That once I’d found my wits again there was—obviously, and obligatorily—a sense of guilt. Guilt that I hadn’t been there; guilt that I hadn’t prevented my son from being propelled to that age where death becomes routine. Despite everything that my father had done to me, guilt that when his chin was lifted in my mom’s bathroom, it was my son’s face he saw with his half-closed eyes. All of that.

  Once I’d cradled the phone, I choked on my own throat till I induced tears; I paced the kitchen; I glanced in the mirror, verified that I looked distressed. But if I’m being honest, all that hit me was a slow-burning envy. The sort of twisted j
ealousy you feel when something awful happens to someone else, something that should’ve happened to you. That wrench you feel in your gut when someone recounts a particularly harrowing car accident; schadenfreude in reverse. The sudden knowledge that once my father’s gone, once he’s dust, I won’t be able to recount to friends, in hurried sobs, about the Time I Found Him There.

  In the hospital, I had stepped out into the bleached hallway so Finn could continue sleeping, and I asked the attending doctor, “So, how bad are we talking?”

  “Bad, but not disastrous,” she told me. Doctors are wonderfully inadvertent liars.

  “You’ll forgive me, but I really don’t know the difference.”

  The doctor looked too young, too frazzled. I wanted to comb her hair and wash her face. To say, If you’re telling me all this, at least try to look presentable.

  “He’s lost function in his brain stem and portions of his cerebellum.”

  “Again—I’m sorry, but I don’t—”

  She pulled at her hair, which wasn’t blond, but also wasn’t brown—some unwashed tone in between. She wrapped it around one finger, like I’d seen my son do while he worked.

  “He’s lost some basic muscle functions, particularly on the left side. He’ll have trouble walking, swallowing, maybe writing. And talking. Definitely talking.”

  “Well,” I told her. “Ha. Well, there’s a silver lining.”

  She continued pulling her hair, a little more aggressively than before.

  I turned my feet inward, as if I were preparing for this girl to chastise me. To throw me out of the hospital and leave my father to my son. I said into my shoulder, “Maybe that was a little too soon.”

  She only let go of her hair when she shrugged—He’s your fucking father. She reached into the pockets of her white coat—the sort of pockets that initially you don’t notice, but when you do they seem infinite—and she handed me a set of blue brochures. Pictures of old people, falling apart people, their children steadying their walkers. Everyone smiling.

  “We have a wonderful stroke clinic here at the hospital.” She nodded at the brochures.