Gorilla and the Bird

by Zack McDermott

  “That means each one of these episodes puts you at greater risk of having another. And the line between bipolar one and schizophrenia can be blurry. This episode lasted much longer than your previous. Each one blurs the line a little bit more. Marijuana…”

  “No marijuana. I know.”

  “No marijuana. Ever. You don’t react normally to it. It can trigger the psychosis.”

  He said he was keeping me on the Depakote for now, that I could talk to Dr. Singh about transitioning back to Lamictal when he thought it was safe. Until then, I had to stay on the Depakote. “You are vulnerable right now.”

  “I understand.”

  He set a discharge date for two days later and told me I had a wonderful mother.

  Chapter 19

  The Bird and I gunned it out of town. I was glad to see Osawatomie recede in the rearview mirror, but I was terrified we’d one day be making this drive again. Or, worse, what if I only made a one-way trip—the drive there but never the drive back. After all, no one but me left while I was there.

  “Hey,” I told the Bird. “Would you ever let me live like Uncle Eddie?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think Granny and Pa thought they’d let Uncle Eddie live like Uncle Eddie?”

  “No.”

  “So do you think they had a choice?”

  “No.”

  “So how can you know?…Don’t ever fucking let me live like Uncle Eddie, okay? Don’t ever let me be one of those people who never leaves. You promise me that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chain me to the fucking wall if you need to, but let me live in the basement.”

  Just because I understand the legal issues of a guardianship proceeding didn’t mean I wouldn’t one day be the subject of one. How many times could I wiggle out of this straightjacket before I drowned?

  We stopped at a gas station fifty miles down the highway from Osawatomie. I shuffled in like an old man at a nursing home but came to life when I saw the hot dogs on the roaster—plump dogs, sweating and spinning hypnotically. They’d probably been there for hours, but they looked so delicious. I finished two and was working on a third before my mom even pumped the gas. When she came inside to pay, my fingers and beard were coated in ketchup. “No money,” I tried to say, but my mouth was so full I was nearly choking. I pointed to the hot dog roller, held up three fingers, and pointed to the cash register. “No money. Pay him. I had three.”

  “I think that clerk thought you were extorting me,” the Bird said when we were back on the highway.

  Riding in the car while my mom drove felt like a relic of a bygone era. Were we going to soccer practice? To school? To the movies for a middle school date? I used to love having her all to myself in the car, and I had that same feeling now, like the car was our oasis. I felt safe. Our nightmare was over.

  Speaking of nightmares, Mack McD was in the ’Ta when I got back. Other than the first couple of Christmases after he moved to California, Mack didn’t visit Wichita much. He came after I was expelled in sixth grade and smacked me in the face after I said something smart-ass to him—something in the vein of “You want to come in here and act like a parent now? You’re gonna set me straight?” The Bird told him she needed to speak with him in the basement and grabbed him by the collar. “You have no right!” she told him. “You have no idea what goes on here.” He told her, “You’re real tough, Cindy. I’ll leave. I know I’m not welcome here.”

  Mack otherwise only came to town when he felt like he was obligated. Such obligations usually marked the end of an era of some sort—Alexa’s senior violin recital, for example, or my senior soccer season. With these visits, there was usually accompanying praise to be accepted about what fine children he’d raised and how he must be so proud. “I am,” he would say, or sometimes, “We are,” like it was a team effort.

  As far as high school soccer players go in Wichita, Kansas, I was pretty good—started varsity all four years, sat on the bench for one year at a Division I school. Which is all only to say that soccer was the most important thing in my life from ages six to nineteen. Mack always said he intended to come see a game or two, but freshman year turned into senior year quicker than he’d anticipated. In the fall of 2000, he realized it was now or never.

  He flew to Wichita and immediately made his presence felt, overwhelmingly so. He started attending practices, made every game, and went to the social get-togethers the soccer moms organized. After games, he’d buy us beer and drink and smoke his ass off with us. Before long, he was a valued member of the Northwest Grizzlies soccer community. His gift to the team was to be a highlight reel that he’d shoot and edit himself. After all, he was a “producer, director, and editor” in Hollywood.

  Mack scored the opening sequence of the highlight film to Kenny Loggins’s “Highway to the Danger Zone” before transitioning to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rendition of “Voodoo Child.” The choice of the latter track was in no way influenced by any consideration of the musical taste of the players on the team—Eminem and Linkin Park would otherwise have been best. Mack’s song selection was instead all but an out-and-out declaration that he’d been through a pretty heavy cocaine period.

  Despite having never purchased a pair of shin guards, Mack was recognized for his contribution at the end-of-season banquet. In fairness, he did put his best effort into the production. At the City League finals, he lay on his belly in the grass after persuading the three team captains to run out of the equipment shed before roster introductions so he could shoot their “playoff shoes” from the ground. As they burst through the barn door, he popped up off his belly and jogged with them to midfield, holding the camera at knee height all the way to the center circle.

  The film was well received, but he still left the awards ceremony with a bad taste in his mouth. His intention, as it turns out, wasn’t simply to create a highlight reel to give to the players and parents purely out of goodwill; he also aimed to turn a modest profit in the process. The DVDs were set up at the cafeteria’s exit, with a box for cash next to the stack of discs. But the parents missed the cashbox and simply helped themselves to the DVDs, gratis. On the way to the party that followed the ceremony, he stated numerous times that he didn’t really care, how that wasn’t really the point anyway, and it wasn’t about the money. But he continued to grumble under his breath, “They can have the fucking things. It’s nice to get compensated for your time, but they can have the fucking things.” Twenty minutes later, he was in Mrs. Searfoorce’s basement, holding up her son by the legs while he set the evening’s keg stand record.

  I had no idea Mack was in Wichita when I left Osawatomie. Neither did the Bird. The bigger shock was that I’d apparently invited him. Lost to the hazy fog of lifting psychosis was the call I’d made from the pay phone at Osawatomie, asking him to come visit. My brother broke the news to me when the Bird and I got home. We hugged each other first. Then we cried.

  “Are you okay, BB?”

  “I’m okay, LB. Dark side of the moon. But I’ve been there before.”

  My brother told me that Mack had shown up the night before, stoned out of his mind. “He wants you to call him.”

  I did call him. I figured I was obliged to if I was indeed the only reason he’d flown into town. We made a lunch date for the next day. I wasn’t 100 percent sure he’d make it.

  My dad picked me up in his friend Drake’s sun-bleached, primer-red ’88 Pontiac Grand Am. It smelled like an ashtray—Drake owns a decent portion of the merchandise offered in the Marlboro Miles loyalty catalog. Mack was also blowing Marlboro Ultra Lights all the way to the restaurant. I told him to give me one and he handed me a cig, though he’d yet to say anything to me beyond “Hey” and “Where do you want to eat?”

  We went through the Jason’s Deli line in silence. Neither of us considered the salad bar. I took my usual: turkey wrap with avocado and baked Lay’s. Mack ordered an open-face Reuben with regular chips and a Coke. You are a fucking open-face Reuben, I tho
ught.

  Once we sat down, I couldn’t meet his eyes, but I could feel that he was staring straight at my forehead, ready to catch mine the second I looked up. When I finally did, his expression was exactly as I thought it would be: mouth agape with his big bottom lip protruding. The mouth breathing and the plump lips, combined with his wide-set eyes, made him look like a freshly caught sea bass. His eyebrows were raised, accentuating that big forehead of his; it’s always a little bigger and a little more wrinkled every time I see him. I recognized the two middle wrinkles as recent additions to my own forehead. I closed my own big gaping lips and made a note to be more vigilant about mouth breathing. He looked pained as he tried to decide whether he was supposed to be here for support or discipline.

  If he was waiting on me to break the silence, it was going to be a quiet Reuben. I wasn’t giving him the cold shoulder for cold shoulder’s sake, but I’d only seen him three times in the past four years: once at his mom’s funeral, once at my sister’s veterinary school graduation, and most recently at our Ocean’s Thirteen “production meeting,” after which he screamed at me for setting a pot of hot water on his countertop. “Don’t put that there! There’s no finish on the wood!” He’d been planning on finishing them for seventeen years. I walked away, he followed me, things escalated, and I ended up putting my fist through a wall. He grabbed me by the neck, cocked his fist in front of my face, and said, “I should knock you the fuck out!” Then he told me that “the little lion always wants to take down Mufasa.” I laughed in his face, thinking (a) This forty-seven-year-old man’s worldview relies entirely too much on The Lion King; and (b) That’s not even how the movie goes—Simba was destroyed by his father’s death; it was Mufasa’s brother, Scar, who orchestrated the hit.

  I told him the most painful thing I could think of: “You know what? You’re right. Your kids do think you’re a goddamn joke and we’ve thought you were a goddamn joke for a long time now.” I felt stupid about that sooner than I expected since the next day I had to rely on him for a ride to the airport. We drove to LAX together in silence.

  So there was catching up to do—more ground than we could cover over a fast-casual dining experience. And I didn’t expect we’d ever discuss the psych ward or my mental health problems. I didn’t think he’d ever even know about them. I certainly wouldn’t have reached out if I’d been in my right mind.

  I knew I’d inherited a few regrettable traits from him, but I’ve never figured out exactly what’s wrong with my dad. Persecution complex? Delusions of grandeur? He claims that at one point he had a high-level security clearance with the Department of Defense. What would happen if I hooked him up to a lie detector with a gun to his head? Would he admit that he knew he didn’t have a chance of making it in Hollywood? Would he admit to being a shitty father?

  One thing that watching my father had taught me is that there is a real, and very important, distinction between sanity and lucidity. In my time at Bellevue and Good Shepherd, I’d lost both. My father, on the other hand, was arguably lucid—he spoke in sentences that made rough sense to strangers, he loosely understood cause and effect, and he was generally on the same page as everyone else regarding the properties of the physical world. But could you say that this man was “sane”?

  It looked like he was trying to put on a concerned fatherly face, but I couldn’t entertain the charade of “supportive parent” from him anymore. We snorted coke together until 8 a.m. the morning of my college Honor Society induction ceremony, for Christ’s sake.

  I broke. “So, what have you been up to?”

  “Eh. You know…”

  Please don’t say pulling your head out of your ass.

  “I’m getting my head out of my ass.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.”

  “Got a few projects going.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, tell me what you think of this. You know the album Born to Run?”

  “The Boss? Yeah.”

  “That album…as a musical!”

  Fuck me. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You do it as a musical. Whatta you think?”

  “Hm. Yeah, I guess it could be. Do you know anyone who does Broadway-type shows?”

  “It would be more off-Broadway.”

  “Do you know anyone who does off-Broadway-type shows?”

  “No. You could figure that out, though.”

  “Well, I’d say you might have trouble getting the rights.”

  “That’s step one. Figure out who owns the rights.”

  “I think it’s Bruce Springsteen.” He laughed fairly hard, like I was being sarcastic. “But, yeah, if you can get the rights to Born to Run, I could see it as a musical.”

  “But what I want to know,” he said with gusto, “is what is going on with you.”

  I told him that I’d just gotten out of the psych ward. That I have a pretty serious case of the bipolar. And that I was coming off a hardcore psychotic break. That’s what was going on with me.

  “I’m not sure I believe in bipolar disorder. What is bipolar anyway? It’s a label we’ve made up.”

  “Yeah.” He was right, to the extent that all words are labels we’ve made up—like “ball” or “car” or “cancer.” But if words have meaning, I have bipolar disorder.

  “So talk to me about this,” he said.

  “Mack…”

  “Dad. I am your father.”

  “Honestly, no offense, but I think our relationship is what many therapists might call estranged. I don’t know what you are hoping to accomplish here.”

  “I am trying to accomplish nothing. I want to understand. I seek understanding. This is what I seek.” Sometimes he talks like this. I don’t know how to describe his inflection other than biblical. “We don’t know what the universe has in store for us,” he continued.

  “I can agree with that.”

  “We are not estranged either. We are here.”

  “Mack…”

  “Dad.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Dad. Historically, seeing you is hard. It brings up difficult emotions. I don’t feel like confiding in you about this, and I hope you can respect that.”

  He looked a little hurt, which was fair.

  “Fine. I can’t make you do shit. No one ever could.” It was obvious he thought I was being a petulant teen. I couldn’t give him what he wanted, though.

  We left it there and finished the meal in silence. He dropped me back off at the house and that was the last I saw of him for six years. I don’t know what his intent was in visiting, but it did make an impact. I was twenty-eight, the same age he was when he moved to California. I’d been running my whole life from what Mack represents to me as a human being. It’s no coincidence I ended up on the East Coast. Law school, too, was a stand against Mack’s Peter Pan lifestyle. Instant legitimate adulthood—that’s what an LSAT score and $200,000 in loans buys you. You become “the lawyer in the family.” It was proof that I wasn’t a big damn joke. But all of a sudden, in spite of everything I’d worked for, I couldn’t shake the fear that I was on the verge of becoming one.

  To call the Bird a teacher would be like saying Obama was a civil servant. She is the lone teacher at the Urban League Learning Center. Her students are all high school dropouts. Many of them only attend classes to comply with probation. If I were a PD in Wichita, we’d know quite a few of the same people. Some I’d meet first; others I’d get after the Bird. For years now I’ve known she does the Lord’s work, but I always have a renewed appreciation when I get to see her in action. Plus, she likes it when I drop by. The day after lunch with Mack, I did.

  I surveyed her desk: a picture of Alexa in cap and gown at her vet school graduation, one of me standing in the East Village, and one of Adam in his high school cap and gown. I pointed out to her that she had a minor First Amendment violation in the form of a black Jesus calendar hanging over her desk.

  “Boy, I am not here to argue logic or religion with you. I am here to graduate Coley
Cole. Isn’t that right, Coley Cole? You ready to do y = mx + b?”

  “Whenever you ready,” Coley Cole said.

  “Do your thing,” I told her.

  I knew about Nacole “Coley Cole.” She started coming to the Learning Center when she was twenty-eight years old. She had zero high school credits when she first started working with the Bird. Eight years later, they were still grinding toward her diploma.

  Coley’s mom left on her fourteenth birthday—she told her daughter she was going out to get a birthday cake and never came back. Even before that day, Nacole rarely lived with her mom for continuous stretches. Her home situation had been a series of foster homes and temporary stays with aunts and uncles in houses that were already four to seven people above capacity. She was never a welcome guest—food was already too scarce and she was just another mouth to feed. When she was nine, her thirteen-year-old cousin woke her up by smashing a dirty diaper in her face. Other cousins and uncles sexually abused her, and the foster system wasn’t any better. Under the state’s guardianship, she was sent to foster homes in western Kansas a handful of times, but she always left and walked back to Wichita. She’d be on the street or back to a different cousin’s house, hoping—but not expecting—that each new arrangement might not be as bad as the last. The food situation was the lone consistency: there was never enough, and it was every man for himself.

  While the Bird helped Coley Cole calculate the slope of a line—“It’s y = mx + b. You know that, ’cause I told you that. There’s your mx, now where’s his brother b?”—three other students gathered around her, all working on different lessons. Maurice was trying to remember the principal interest rate equation: (i)nterest = (p)rincipal × (r)ate / (t)ime. “You know prt. I equals p times r over t.”

  “What’s the r stand for again?” Maurice asked.

  “Not ‘rich,’ not for you,” the Bird said, “not unless you can remember that it’s ‘rate’!”