The History of Living Forever

by Jake Wolff

  “Hey.” He stopped me. “I’m saying you have to forgive me for being a shit dad.”

  I stared at the floor. I didn’t know if I could do what he was asking. I’d carried my hurt and anger at him for so long; it wasn’t like luggage I could simply leave on the side of the road.

  “Okay. But you also have to call Dana and tell her I’m with you and that I’m spending the night here.”

  He laughed himself into coughing again. “Oh, she’ll love that. I’ll do that for free.” He grabbed his phone from the table and pointed me toward the closet. “Get my jacket, and we’ll go.”

  * * *

  It was a five-hour drive from Cumberland to Winterville, almost three hundred miles. My father lay in the passenger seat, his seat reclined to the maximum, dozing on and off. I drove, gripping the steering wheel so hard I would later find bruises on my palms. At that hour, it was just us and the trucks driving I-95 north through Brunswick, Augusta, Waterville. It was too hard to find a radio station, so we drove in silence, interrupted only by occasional bursts of my father’s snoring. He didn’t ask why I was taking him to Winterville until hour two, when we hit Pittsfield and he was woken by the distant sound of a fire truck.

  “What’s the plan?” he said then, popping his seat upright, stretching his arms above his head. I could see how hard it was for him to be crammed into this tiny car. He grimaced and adjusted his seat belt.

  “It’s better if I don’t tell you.”

  “You’re running this show, but a hint would be nice.”

  A truck passed me on the left, and I moved a little into the breakdown lane to make room for it. “You’re going to die before they let you out of St. Matthias,” I said once the truck had merged back into the right lane in front of me.

  He turned in his seat, half-startled, half-amused. “You’ve gotten really honest.”

  “Do you think I’m wrong?”

  He sighed, though it was more of a wheeze, dry like the desert. “No, I don’t think you’re wrong.”

  “Okay, so would you agree that if you’re going to die anyway, it would be worth trying anything to save yourself, even if that thing is kind of insane?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Wait, that’s what this is about? You’re trying to help me?”

  “Of course. What else would it be?”

  He looked out the window. “I don’t know. I just didn’t realize.”

  I didn’t say anything. His uncertainty reminded me of how little we understood each other, how rarely we’d even talked—really talked—over the past few years.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” he said after a minute, “but I need to sleep.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He reclined again and was snoring in seconds.

  We hit Bangor and Old Town, and the interstate led us away from the ocean and deeper into lake territory. The air grew thinner and sweeter then, less salty. I cracked my window, just a fraction of an inch. The speed limit changed to 75 mph, and seeing this, I said screw it, what’s left to lose, and stepped hard, and then harder, on the gas.

  * * *

  The moon was still up but low in the sky when we passed Portage Lake and saw the sign welcoming us to Winterville. Bad weather came early up there, and the ground was hard with cold. If my dad had been awake, he would have protested as I turned right onto Dubey Lane, but he wasn’t awake, so I switched on the brights and followed my heart home.

  The road to our old house was paved, technically, but so long ago that the icy winters had cracked the pavement in huge, strangely uniform chunks, revealing the dirt and stone beneath it. Maybe the light was right, or maybe I was just sleep deprived, but I could see our old life. There, on the side of the road just before our mailbox, was where my mother, in heavy sweaters and pale, high-waisted mom jeans, had hung bat houses that never attracted bats, being much too low and facing the wrong direction, and instead housed only spiders and long green caterpillars. And there, halfway down our driveway, was where my dad had tried so hard to grow peas in square wooden planters, but deer would come with their whole families and eat them, roots and all, straight out of the dirt, burping as they did it and flicking their ears. You can buy deer repellents—and we tried those—but the owner of the convenience store said, “Honestly, if you aren’t prepared to shoot them, they’re going to eat your peas. Are you prepared to shoot them?” My dad said no, definitely not, and the man said, “Me neither, and that’s why I buy my vegetables from the grocery.”

  I stopped the car when I saw another car, a minivan, parked in the driveway. My father sold this house after I moved out, and he sold it cheaply, so it went fast. A new family lived there now—a husband and wife, a boy about my age, just a little younger. Dana had given me this information when they made their first offer, and she said it happily, as though it would please me to know that a boy my age was living in my house. For years I’d pictured that boy in my bedroom, sleeping soundly, lulled by his confidence in the world’s moral truths.

  I kept my lights on and studied the house for changes. They hadn’t repainted, but they’d done something to the roof, and the shingles looked bright and bloodred. They’d installed a second exterior light on the side of the house, and this shone onto an empty doghouse, a big one, such as for a German shepherd.

  Next to me, my dad woke up, sensing the car’s lack of movement. He was disoriented, and he clutched at the dashboard. “What’s happening?” His voice was breathy and panicked.

  “It’s okay. We’re in Winterville.”

  He nodded and began to relax, but when he saw the house, his face darkened. “What are we doing here?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to see.”

  He elevated his seat. “Well, let’s go. People live here. You’re going to scare them.”

  Foolishly, this hadn’t occurred to me. How could anyone be scared of us? This was our home.

  “Christ”—my dad reached over me—“at least turn off the lights.”

  “I just wanted to see.”

  Whatever softness in him I’d found earlier, he seemed to have slept it off. “This is the last place I’d want to be. Living here alone with you was the worst part of my life.”

  I was too hurt to say anything, and too angry at myself for letting him hurt me. I put the car in reverse and did a slow, careful turn until the car was facing the road and I could switch back on the lights.

  My dad settled in his seat. “I didn’t agree to side trips. Let’s just get where we’re going.”

  “Fine.” I reminded myself that I wasn’t saving him, not really—I was killing this version of him. I steered the car back onto Main Street, into and out of town, and toward the ruins of the now-defunct Aroostook County Health Organization, the conversion camp for homosexual boys.

  * * *

  My dad made me stop for coffee on the way, and we refueled, so it looked something like morning by the time we reached the camp. The sight of the sun peeking over the tree line tricked my body into thinking it was time to wake up, and I felt, if not energized, at least less nauseatingly tired. My dad’s only advantage over me was that he’d become accustomed to bad, interrupted sleeps. He hummed quietly to himself as he sipped his drink and worked the phlegm out of his lungs.

  “This place?” he said as I turned into the camp and drove right past the open gates.

  “I told you it was crazy.”

  I parked the car and circled around the hood to help my dad out of his seat. He clasped my forearm and groaned as I pulled him standing. Prior to its use as a camp, the building had served as a packing and shipping facility for a Canadian company that made snowshoes and cross-country skis. When the Health Organization took over, they’d painted the building a soft, pretty shade of blue. As a kid passing by on the bus, I could see the small outbuildings, like barracks, where the children slept at night. Those were missing now—having been torn down, I assumed, when the place closed.

  When we first pulled in, I hadn’t noticed the tiny white two-doo
r parked with its nose kissing the building, but a man was coming out of it, tall, heavy, and dressed in a square black suit. He flashed an even-toothed smile as he approached, his hand extended long before he reached us. He pumped my dad’s arm once, mine twice.

  “You the folks come to see the place?” It was just past six in the morning, but he showed no signs of tiredness or of having been put out.

  “Are you Livia’s cousin?” I asked.

  “I don’t know who that is,” he said cheerfully. “My pal Sergiu called and said to wait for you here. That guy has bought a lot of property from me, so when he says jump…”

  I started to thank him, but he was already leading us to the front doors. “I’m Frank.” He unlocked the building. “You’ll see there’s oodles of space in here.” He held the door for us and punched some switches on the wall. The entry room lit up in a wave of bright, sterile light. “Kind of a creepy vibe, but never let decorations keep you from buying a place.”

  Those decorations comprised two separate mobiles of construction-paper snowflakes, a column lined with postcards, and a feature wall with a pastel mural of Jesus touching ten to fifteen boys on the tops of their heads. Jesus had been drawn so that he appeared to have a separate arm for each boy, and while I think the idea was that his two arms could move at a speed beyond sight, he nonetheless looked like an octopus monster, his happy eyes glowing as he made sparks of light shoot out of yet another boy’s head. At the foot of the mural, a box of blue-handled safety scissors lay next to a box of crayons, all in primary colors.

  “I’m sorry,” said Frank to my dad, studying him, “but are you Ned Aybinder?”

  My dad blew his nose and groaned from the exertion. “You recognize me from my acting roles or my modeling work?”

  “Ha ha. I believe I sold your house.”

  My dad looked at him. “Oh, that’s right. Frank.” I couldn’t tell if my dad actually remembered this.

  Frank swatted one of the mobiles, setting it in motion. “That was an easier sell than this place. Though it really is a lot of space for the money.”

  I said nothing, and my dad had stopped listening. He found an old swivel desk chair and claimed it for himself.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Listen, should I leave you two with my card? Or is this a forget-you-ever-saw-us type of situation? Like I said, Sergiu has bought a lot of property from me.” Frank was looking at my dad for an answer.

  “Ask the kid.”

  I felt like the least intimidating criminal in history. “You should probably forget us.”

  Frank held up his hands: Say no more. “Just leave the key on the desk. And enjoy your stay, et cetera.”

  I waited until I heard his car pull away from the building. Signs for the restroom pointed one way, for the barracks, another. A third sign said CLASSROOMS →.

  My phone buzzed with a text from RJ: Dana knows u & dad not in Cumberland. She MAD.

  “Upsy-daisy,” I said to my dad.

  His fingernails, as he reached for my arm, were the color of mustard. “I feel like you’re bringing me to a surprise party.”

  “It’s just us,” I promised.

  We navigated the long, dusty corridors. At each doorway, I stopped to investigate the contents of that room while my dad leaned against the wall, breathing hard. One classroom contained an art-therapy studio, the walls still covered with crayon drawings of boys and girls holding hands. Another was a small library, which held not many books but a lot of pamphlets. By the door, a copy of Hamlet’s Father lay atop an illustrated children’s Bible. In the halls themselves I found a jump rope, a toothbrush, and a stack of origami paper. There was a flashlight with no batteries, and farther down, a box of unmarked cassette tapes. This place, like many similar places, had been shut down following allegations of abuse, and it was impossible not to see every object in every room in terms of its potential to harm a child.

  In the back of the building, in the classroom farthest from the entrance, I found a 1960 Siemens Konvulsator.

  I’m not sure if my dad recognized the machine. “Can I sit?” he asked. Next to the Konvulsator was what looked like a brown leather dentist chair, but with wrist, chest, and foot restraints. I helped him settle into it and then knelt in front of the machine.

  The device was white and about the size of a large microwave. A series of switches and knobs adorned the front panel, and these were labeled in German, though someone had scribbled English translations in red Sharpie along the side. I didn’t need them. An ECT device is surprisingly, frighteningly simple, and its design matches its function—you’re shocking someone, not launching a spaceship. One knob controlled the intensity of the current, and two knobs acted as timers: one to control the duration of each shock, and one to control the amount of time between shocks. There was a power switch, and in the center of the panel, a square yellow button marked ANFANG—in Sharpie, BEGIN.

  RECIPE #102

  SAMMY AND CONRAD’S ELIXIR OF LIFE [ANNOTATED]

  Yield: 1

  INGREDIENTS

  THE APPETIZER

  1. Dor (1 sp) [cocaine weakens the blood-brain barrier (first attack) and triggers the immune system; immunostimulants strengthen the body’s defenses]

  THE ENTRÉE

  1. Quicksilver (200 ml) [sneaks past and dissolves the blood-brain barrier (second attack) and clears the lobes of the brain like a forest fire (destruction breeds creation)]

  2. Tribal medicine (100 ml) [slow-acting soursop restores the blood-brain barrier once the elixir has finished its work]

  3. B. rossica (3 oz) [free radical scavenging activity combats the effects of aging]

  4. Rapamycin (15 mg) [inhibits the kinase mTOR to slow future aging]

  5. P. cupana (100 mg) [targets hippocampal NMDA receptors to aid memory formation and retention]

  THE DESSERT

  1. Brain burn (bilateral) [third and final attack on the blood-brain barrier, allowing the mercury to escape]

  PREPARATION

  Inject Appetizer. Combine Entrée and drink. Dessert until seizure.

  HOW DID IT TASTE?

  My father would have to tell me, if he survived.

  * * *

  When I came back to the classroom with the cooler, my father was asleep in the dentist chair, his mouth open. He looked like a boy. Quietly, I tore open the sparkler and dumped its contents into the spoon. I used the syringe to draw up water from my bottle and sprayed it onto the powder. With the top of the plunger, I stirred the liquid clear. I pulled the Dor into the syringe and flicked the needle, depressing the plunger until all of the air was out of the rig.

  I took my father’s arm, gently, trying not to wake him. I rolled up his sleeve and wiped his arm with an alcohol pad. With shaking hands I tied the elastic tourniquet around his arm, secured it with a slipknot. My father’s eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t wake. I pinned his arm against the chair and reminded myself of Sadiq’s instructions: Go slow, but be confident.

  I found a vein, held my breath, and stuck in the needle. I removed the tourniquet and injected my father with the Dor. His nose pinched, reacting even in sleep to the pain.

  As I withdrew the needle, he opened his eyes. “Con? What’s happening?”

  “You’re okay.”

  “We’re in Winterville. You took us to the house.”

  “Yeah.”

  He licked his lips. “I feel weird.”

  “I need you to drink something.”

  He didn’t respond. I squeezed his hand and took the Entrée out of the cooler. This, we’d mixed back in Littlefield. I’d transferred it to a stainless steel travel mug so that he wouldn’t be able to see the color.

  “Can you sit up?” I didn’t really ask, just pulled him up by the shoulders.

  He groaned.

  “I need you to drink this, and I need you to keep it down. That’s really, really important.”

  “Roger that,” he said thickly, and I know he was trying to give a salute, bu
t he wasn’t in full control of his body. His right arm just sort of hung there, twitching. He looked down at it in surprise.

  “Open up.” I held the mug and tipped it back slowly, not wanting to spill. The taste of it made his eyebrows squeeze together, but I kept on him, held the bottle against his lips. He drank the whole thing. When it was done, he closed his eyes, panting.

  “Are you going to throw up?”

  He took several deep breaths. “Only if we keep talking about it.”

  “Okay, sorry.”

  He fidgeted with the armrest as if he were still in the car. He was trying to recline. “The house looked good,” he said dreamily. He closed his eyes.

  I checked the knob beneath his chair, but he was already as far back as he could go. Even though he was falling asleep, and that was good, I said, “They made the roof so red.”

  “Mm,” he said, surprising me. “It’s cedar.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t open his eyes. His voice was as thick as peanut butter. “With cedar you buy it brighter. The weather will dull it down.”

  “Oh.” For some reason, even though I would never live in that house again, I was flooded with relief.

  “Good night,” my dad said.

  “Good night.”

  * * *

  When, after five minutes, he still had a pulse, I opened his mouth and inserted a mouthguard I’d bought at a pharmacy. The Dor had kicked in by now, and I could have poked my dad right in the eyeball without waking him. I attached the electrodes to his temples and fastened the restraints on his body, which was easy, like putting on a belt.

  What’s missing? Brain burn. Dessert. Sammy’s theory, now mine, was that ECT disrupted the integrity of the blood-brain barrier. But that’s all it was, as I hooked my father up to the machine—a theory.

  Many years later, as part of my undergraduate thesis, I proved it. I designed an experiment based on Dr. Edward Goldmann’s initial demonstration of what was then called the hematoencephalic barrier. I injected trypan blue dye into the bloodstreams of Wistar rats, some of whom were then treated with ECT, some not. In the untreated rats, the dye failed, as expected, to reach the central nervous system. In the rats treated with ECT, the brain turned blue. You can find my article on the subject in the Journal of Neurochemistry. In the acknowledgments section, I thank Sammy.