by Jason Good
Dad’s father, Edwin, worked at a factory in Dayton, Ohio, that made, as he put it, “tools people use to fix airplanes or some shit.” He was a bitter patriarch who, according to legend, wasn’t even ticklish. His calloused hands, ripped forearms, and greased-back hair were matched with a smoldering depression fueled by disappointment that his sons didn’t share his interests in fishing and wildlife. Instead, Dad wanted acting and dancing lessons. Considering that Edwin wouldn’t let his sons ride the bench on the carousel because it was “for fairies and cripples,” I’m surprised Dad had the nerve to ask for tap shoes.
I went fishing with Edwin maybe a dozen times. Once, for reasons I can’t remember, he had to drive us to the river in Mom and Dad’s station wagon. Sitting in the passenger seat, with the car still in front of our house, I watched as he jammed “the shifter” down and pulled it back, calling it a “motherfucker” and a “goddamn piece of shit.” The car lurched forward, backward, then coughed and stalled. He fiddled with the key, revved the engine, and tried again, but got the same result. “Piece of shit car,” he said, too proud to admit he’d never learned to operate a manual transmission.
Eventually, we sputtered our way to the bait store, bought a foam cup full of night crawlers, then sputtered to the river. With Edwin still hot and embarrassed, we stood in silence, staring at two motionless bobbers for an hour. I was afraid to talk to him, and he didn’t know how to talk to me. But we knew this about each other, and since neither of us made any awkward efforts to converse, we enjoyed our quiet time, just being. I think that’s what he always wanted: quiet.
When it was time to leave, Edwin couldn’t figure out how to put the station wagon in reverse. Fed up, he stepped on the gas and jammed the car into first gear. With the tires spinning, he made an angry, grass-ruining U-turn out of the parking lot. When we got back to the house, Edwin let Dad know that his “goddamn car was broken.”
After a mostly brutish life, Edwin retired on the very day he was eligible and spent his remaining years lying on the sofa. If any of us inquired as to his plans, he’d snap, “Nothing. That’s my plan! I’m doin’ NOTHIN’.” His mind quickly deteriorated into dementia. He’d spent the previous forty years watching in disbelief as his first son became a professor, his second an artist, and his third, a musician. A fourth son surely would have become a massage therapist. Perhaps the best way to guide a child toward something is to ridicule it.
I was in my early twenties when he died. After his funeral, the family congregated at my grandmother’s house. I’d never spoken much to Walt (Edwin’s youngest brother and doppelgänger) but as Walt was leaving, he found me, shook my hand, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, “Let’s go fishin’.” I felt as if a ghost passed through me. I don’t think Walt intended to take me fishing, then or ever, and I likely wouldn’t have accepted a serious offer. He said this, I suspect, as a way to remind me how much Edwin enjoyed our outings. He knew Edwin would never have told me. If I was feeling sad about his passing, this glimpse into his emotional life might have provided solace. Or Walt was drunk and I’m inserting profundity where there was none.
Later, after the extended family had left, I happened upon Edwin’s life insurance policy on the kitchen counter, tucked under a tin of peanut butter cookies. It paid out eight hundred dollars: a sullen amount, though I’m sure my frugal grandmother made no complaints. With the addition of Social Security payments and a monthly stipend from Dad, she’d do just fine.
Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of his father, Dad steered me toward classical music and acting at a young age. Private cello, and then clarinet, lessons evolved into some more-than-gentle nudges that I try out for school plays.
In fifth grade, my stunning—dare I say genre-redefining—portrayal of the caterpillar in James and the Giant Peach got the attention of Bo Rabby, the theater director at Ohio Wesleyan University. His daughter was in the play, too, and she made for a damn fine ladybug. Later, Bo told Dad that I’d be perfect for the role of Howard in an upcoming university production of Inherit the Wind, a play about the first legal case defending the constitutionality of teaching evolution in public schools. Without first asking me if I was interested, Dad told Bo I’d be thrilled to do it. When I agreed, he celebrated like a mother whose son had been drafted in the first round by the Lakers. This wasn’t only an unrealized childhood dream of his but also a political topic in which he had a fiery passion. Dad came to every rehearsal, befriended the whole cast, knew all my lines, and then when opening night finally came, he spent it in the bathroom of the Chapelier Theater vomiting his nerves into a toilet bowl.
Dad was hesitant to push too hard. Perhaps he knew that would only send me in the opposite direction. When I turned down the role of George in a local production of Our Town because I wanted to attend soccer camp, he smiled, nodded, and then probably sequestered himself in the basement to scream into a stack of oily rags or squeeze his head in a vise. Despite being disappointed, he wanted my world to be open. Forcing me into music or acting would have been the other side—an opposite, equal, and arguably better side—of his father not letting him ride the bench on a carousel.
Dad’s desire for his progeny to grow up free-range has only increased since becoming a grandfather. The advice book he gave me says a lot about education. Dad crossed out all of it and wrote, DON’T SEND THEM TO SCHOOL!
Clearly, Dad would prefer that Lindsay and I homeschool Silas and Arlo. “Don’t dump these precious minds into a broken system,” he said. “Unless, of course, you want them to think in rote ways that contribute to the dominant paradigm.” But since we aren’t part of a traveling circus, and I don’t know the difference between a porpoise and a dolphin (much less a buffalo and a bison), and Lindsay can only name four U.S. presidents, we figured traditional school teamed with frequent visits to the alternative learning house of BooBoo might be a safer bet.
Perhaps it was my failures in school that turned him against formal education. I was always a horrible student: distracted, antsy, disruptive. After trying everything else, Mom and Dad bought a collection of VHS tapes called “Where There’s a Will, There’s an A.” I rolled my eyes, and watched the first tape to appease them. Then I announced, “I know exactly how to get an A. It’s the will that’s the problem.” This caught Dad off guard and he smiled. I think he took a little pride in my recalcitrance, but at that time, believed a good education was the only ticket to being a successfully recalcitrant adult.
Without any desire of my own to excel in school, Mom and Dad decided to force the issue by instituting a three-hour solitary study period in my room every day after school. Aware of how absurd this was, I followed only 50 percent of the rule. I hated missing out on all the after-school fun, like watching Barry Cast bite his arm until it bled, or avoiding Tim Fisher’s Trans Am as it sped down “bus alley,” but I was generally a good kid and tried to do as my parents asked. So I would come home, sit in my room for three hours, and stare at the wall. I found that more interesting than congruent triangles. It wasn’t long before I started getting a little too brave.
I was in my room playing Atari with the sound off when Dad walked in. I knew I was in trouble, and I fumbled pathetically to hide the evidence, resulting in something out of a hackneyed Disney sitcom where I was reading a book upside down with a joystick in my hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?” he asked.
“Nothin’.”
“Were you playing video games?”
“No.”
“No? What’s the joystick for?”
“Nothin’.”
“Just one word answers, eh?”
“No.”
This went on for long enough that he started preaching about how lucky I was to be allowed to go to school at all and other nonsense parents say despite promising themselves they never will.
I looked right through him.
“Are you even listening to me?” he asked.
“Nope.”
He paused. Then in a soft, confused, and earnest voice, asked, “Why?”
“Because it’s bullshit.”
My answer hovered there for what felt like a full minute but was probably no more than a couple of seconds. I was waiting for some kind of punishment and assumed he was taking his time to weigh his disciplinary options. But to my surprise (and his), he laughed. He laughed hard—hard enough that I feared it was more of a maniacal laugh driven by insanity rather than amusement.
Years later, Dad said his reaction came from a realization that I was right: he was full of shit. The study-time rule was ridiculous, as was his defense of it, and I’d called him on it. I was now a man in his eyes, and though I would continue to be an idiot for another couple of decades, he spoke to me as an adult from that point forward.
Slightly Less Bad
The next morning, while the boys “help” Lindsay and Mom make pancakes, I see Dad in the bedroom, not yet dressed. He waves for me to come in.
“I want to give you something,” he says.
“Oh jeez. Are we doing this already?”
He laughs, opens the top drawer of his dresser, and pulls out a pen case.
This makes three Montblanc pens he has given me over the past twenty years, each to commemorate the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one. The first two he gave me when I was donning a cap and gown. I lost both. This one he gave me when we were both in our underwear, and I’ll keep it forever. Or at least until Silas graduates from high school and has proven to me that he’s mature enough to carry on the family tradition of losing it.
I’ll give it to Silas, and he’ll wonder, as I did at eighteen years old, why the hell his father is giving him a pen. He’ll put it in his beat-up back-pack, slide into the passenger seat of his best friend’s car, and they’ll head off to a Grateful Dead concert, or whatever the equivalent of that might be in 2026. A few years later, I’ll ask him, “Hey, whatever happened to that pen I gave you,” and he’ll lie, telling me that it’s “somewhere in the apartment,” and I’ll pretend to believe him and try not to care that it’s gone.
After Dad puts on his Levi’s, Vans, and a navy blue T-shirt, we take pictures of him with his grandsons. They pose as requested, but neither of the boys has a good photo smile. Silas underdoes it and Arlo overdoes it, creating a digital memory of a sick man flanked on one side by ecstasy and on the other by melancholy. At home, Lindsay and I struggle to get candid shots of the boys. Somehow, the moment one of us pulls out an iPhone, they stop being sweet to each other, and we’re left with a camera full of blurry action shots of Arlo in the midst of climbing on top of his brother. We often hide around corners and tiptoe from room to room. Our floors are creaky, so we slide in our stocking feet to avoid detection, but they almost always hear us coming.
The carpeting in my parents’ apartment allows for easy stalking, and, eventually, we click off a couple of winners. Children miss things like fatigue and pallor, and we need to take advantage of that before Dad morphs into a gaunt bald man: an appearance even animals can’t help but acknowledge.
We decide to take BART into downtown San Francisco to have lunch at the gourmet food court inside the Westfield shopping center. Dad likes the Korean barbecue counter, and we figure the kids might have some fun pounding on electronics at the various cell-phone kiosks. Dad feels strong after his small meal, so we head out onto busy Market Street. Across the way, at the base of Powell Street, is a Rice-a-Roni cable car, but the line of tourists in windbreakers makes it too daunting to consider. Silas points to it. “What’s that train over there?” Dad jumps in. “It’s a train no one’s allowed to ride on.”
“There’s some shopping just up the hill,” Mom offers. “I think there’s an Urban Outfitters. Yay!”
“Oh, I wonder if they have the bed shorts I like. I need to replace mine,” Lindsay says, as the rest of us wonder how one might wear out bed shorts.
I glance over at Dad for approval. “Yes, I can walk up the damn hill,” he says. “Would you all stop worrying about me? Jesus Christ.”
Lindsay shoots me her “I don’t like it when your Dad talks like that” look.
After decades of practice, Mom and I have learned to endure Dad’s acerbic quips by remaining calm and staring off into the middle distance, like dental patients during a cleaning. Tolerance pays off; these episodes are usually followed by spells of guilt, during which he offers to make coffee cake or change our water filters.
As we trudge past the white-shoed cable car hopefuls, the sun makes a rare appearance, providing just enough heat to release the aroma of San Francisco street piss. Arlo is already too tired to walk, so I scoop him onto my shoulders. Dad is struggling, too. Pale and winded, he leans against the side of a building, and then steadies himself by grabbing onto my elbow. We all hurry inside Urban Outfitters, where Dad sits on the wooden steps leading down to the men’s department, head hanging between his legs like an NBA player catching his breath on the bench. Arlo, now suspiciously revitalized, takes off to join his brother, who is already fiddling with various products in the “Ironic Stuff from the Eighties” section.
I sit down next to Dad, but he’s either too tired or too busy trouble-shooting to acknowledge me. I want to tell him how tragically out of place he looks sitting next to a stack of “Naked Co-ed Rocket Party” T-shirts, but I know he’s not in the mood. I have to get him the hell out of here.
After a few minutes, Mom and Lindsay appear with the bed shorts she wanted. The shrieking from across the store indicates that the boys have started fighting over what turns out to be an ABBA eight-track tape. It’s time to head home. Dad has no trouble walking downhill, but he falls asleep within minutes of boarding the train back to San Leandro.
When we return to the apartment, Dad’s phone rings.
“Hello? Oh, hello, Dr. Levine,” he says.
Mom, Lindsay, and I huddle around him. He waves us off, but we are undeterred.
After a torturous number of “Okays,” “Uh-huhs,” and “Thankyous,” Dad puts the phone down.
“Good news,” he says. “Well, not good, but slightly less bad, I guess. I don’t have to go in for chemo right away. My doctor looked at my blood and thinks my case is borderline. He’d rather treat me for this other condition called myelodysplasia.” Dad pauses to catch his breath. “Honestly, I think he didn’t believe I’d survive the other kind of chemo, so he’s just going to give this a shot and keep his fingers crossed.”
“Wait, so when do you start chemo, then?” Mom asks.
“He said in a few weeks. He also said that the prognosis isn’t really any better for this condition than the other one.”
“So still nine months?” I ask. “I don’t understand that. What’s the point?”
“But this new chemo won’t kill you?” Mom seems hopeful.
“He says it won’t.” Dad pauses again, and I know what’s coming next.
“Jesus, I’m really sorry I made you guys come out here like this. We really thought I might be dead in a week.”
A few hours later, as I scrounge the makings of a sandwich, I hear Mom and Dad talking softly in their bedroom. Neither of them understands how loud their quiet voices are, and I’ve never told them. I’ve always been desperate to hear their secrets. I close the fridge gently and hear Dad say, “Well, this is my fault.”
Mom appears in the kitchen and hands me a check for our plane tickets. “We’re not accepting no for an answer.” I slide it into my wallet and tell her that I’m coming back when Dad starts chemotherapy. She smiles. “Yes, that would be nice.”
After three more days of playing, napping, laughing, and filling out online retirement documents, we have a plane to catch. Silas has to get back to school, Arlo misses his favorite cheese crackers, Lindsay needs the quasi-sanity of her routine, and I need some space, too. Knowing that I’ll return by myself in the next couple of weeks makes the good-byes more tolerable. Dad doesn’t like seeing his grandsons go, but thankfully we know he
will be able to do it again.
Melanchoholic
At home. I feel off—disconnected from the world and everyone in it, including Dad. Waking up the first morning back, I’m uncomfortably aware of my own body. When I think of the blood in my veins, about my heart, brain, lungs, and bone marrow, I’m not struck by what a magical machine the human body is, but rather how it’s designed to malfunction.
This is not a healthy path for me to wander. While in graduate school, I was convinced I was dying. Freckles were all melanomas. A sore neck was Lyme disease. Routine tinnitus? A common symptom of inoperable brain cancer. At the worst of it, a tingling sensation in my shins caused me to seek counsel from a neurologist, who was nice enough to send me home with the name of a psychiatrist. Now I fear that a fresh bout with hypochondria might become one of the emotional manifestations of my stress over Dad’s illness. I’m anxious enough that my anxiety could trigger more anxiety, leading to a condition that is itself caused by anxiety. More than worrying about being sick, I’m worried about worrying about being sick. One might call this tertiary anxiety, or, more accurately, the pinnacle of narcissism.
I assume this all stems from my guilt over leaving California. Lindsay and the boys need me (I think), and Dad has Mom to care for him. Over the past few days, we’ve been texting and video chatting, but it’s not the same. I can’t sit next to him on the sofa and rest my head on his shoulder until it gets weird. I would ask them to move closer to us, but after a decade on the West Coast, they are convinced the New Jersey winters would kill them. They’re delicate, tropical lizards: Mom the species that can only eat lettuce, Dad the kind that survives exclusively on unusual meats.