You were eight and your mother got sick with multiple sclerosis. She laid around quite a lot after that. She had a few little remissions, not much. She just laid there all the time. Broke my fucking heart. I think of your mother every day. I loved her.
At the time, you were complaining that you had to empty her bucket of pee and so forth. Bear in mind, we must have changed her diapers hundreds of times. That’s the way it went. You had to look after her when I wasn’t home because I had to go look after the real estate. Also, I had to do research into multiple sclerosis and possible therapies for it.
At the same time she was sick, I was getting sick also. I had a prostate condition and I was losing my temper all the time. I would call people names and make personal attacks on my daughter and son, who I loved more than anything in the world. I guess I thought they could take it, but I was mistaken. They were just children, and it was brutal. It made their home such an unpleasant place. Homes are supposed to be a place of refuge, where you come in and feel comfort and at ease and so forth.
We went on like that for five years. I tried to find a therapy that would work for her. There was one that gave her a month’s remission and her incontinence a remission that lasted five years, but otherwise nothing helped. And eventually she died. She said, “If this is life, I’d want it. But this is not life.” She really wanted to move on to the next world. She was very unhappy, as you know.
I think we were in the living room when I told you your mother had died. I’d already taken her body to the funeral home, I’m pretty sure. Maybe I should have held a service or something, but I don’t know. I’m just not a guy who knows what the fuck he’s doing all the time. I’ve always had a hard time with social dynamics and so forth. Death cuts everything off like a knife. I thought I was prepared, but I wasn’t.
I took her ashes to England, spread them in the valley, because that’s what she told me she wanted. And then I came home. I forget if I was yelling at you or cursing you or some other thing. You were thirteen and just walked out of the house and stayed away all night. That was the first time, probably November. When you came back, I said, “I’m not going to hit you. Our door is always open. If you’re not happy here, you can leave.”
I still didn’t have a clue if there was something wrong with me. It’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Looking back on it, I should have said, “Son, you have to spend every night here. That’s the law until you’re eighteen.” I should have made it definite that you can’t do anything illegal, can’t smoke dope in the house. But I thought, If he’s not happy here, there’s nothing I can do about it. For the last month you were with me, I made a serious attempt to be calm and quiet and speak nicely to you and so forth. But the damage had been done already, and one month was not sufficient to fix the schism, the weariness that I created in you. You were depressed over your appearance. You matured early, grew a beard when you were eleven or something. I was yelling, calling you names, running you down, making you feel small. You could not find a quiet refuge in our house. And then John was around, who to you seemed like a glamorous figure. All the girls liked him. He was living on the streets, and you wanted to copy him. So you were driven out by me and attracted out by him.
You wanted to lark about, show off to your pals. The drugs probably made you feel good. But of course that’s my analysis. I might be wrong. I can’t pretend to be objective or omniscient at this late stage. It’s funny because I loved you more than anything, but I was crazy.
You turned fourteen on December 3. I was looking back on myself at fourteen. I was basically independent, and I thought, Fourteen is not too young if he wants to live outside. I was not too familiar with the law. You took my ultra-light suitcase, which I’d had for twenty years or so, and took your belongings and went.
Other parents make all the right decisions.
I started seeing Kit in the spring before your mother died, or the winter. She was in a soccer class I was teaching. She came over and met your mother and loaned her a book. Kit and your mother were great friends. Kit and I were aligned boyfriend–girlfriend or whatever, but your mother had no objections. She said she hoped I would marry Kit when she passed on.
I can’t say it was a bad thing. De facto I was a single parent with a disabled adult and two children. Your mother was not a wife in any way. I had to carry her everywhere. I didn’t have any ill will for that. I still don’t. I’m just saying. I was a single parent. That’s the truth of the matter.
I forget when we got married, but Kit wanted to live in Evanston, and I had no objection. Coyle had been bad luck for us. I found a house that was a good investment, but I had to sell the house on Coyle. It was a very difficult time to sell. I did not expect to profit. In the meantime I’m running my other buildings on the South Side, trying to keep them up.
In August of that year, we closed on our new house and moved. I didn’t know where the fuck you were. At one point I ran into you coming out of Roger’s grandparents’, and you ran from me. I wanted to bring you to our new house on Michigan, but you wouldn’t even talk to me. The grandparents called the police. I tried to explain that you were a runaway and I wanted to talk to you and I was your dad. But the police got in the way. They wouldn’t let me talk to you. And you insisted you didn’t want to talk to me.
Any time we tried to bring you in, there was an objection on your part. You didn’t want to live with Kit. You didn’t want to live with your uncle. You made it clear you didn’t want to hang out with me. You had no curiosity about where we lived, what we were doing. I left a notice of our new address with the post office. You say that’s not good enough for a fourteen-year-old. Well, of course not, but I didn’t know where you were, and even if I did, would I want to give you our new address? It’s hard to say. I didn’t have firm ideas about it. I went through the motions anyway.
So I’m trying to sell this house on Coyle, and after a hard day’s work, I come in there and I find you put out a cigarette on the windowsill. You’ve been in there. I’m trying to sell this goddamn house, and I’m a janitor. I’m not giving a three-bedroom house to a fourteen-year-old boy. I went down to the video-game parlor, and I warned you not to go in that house anymore. I was not rich. I’m not rich. And I needed the money. You didn’t want to live with us when I was there, and now that it’s empty, you want to make yourself at home. Well, it’s not acceptable. And one Sunday I came in and you were there, and that’s when I pulled you up and you started swinging on me. I restrained you with the force necessary to make the arrest that I was taught in the sheriff’s department. Did I hit you? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think anybody’s ever seen you with a bruise or a cut lip. I restrained you, no question, as forcefully as I had to. And if I did it angrily, it’s because I was upset. When you tell people I shaved your head, that’s fair enough, I guess. Everybody else said I shaved your head. I was just so angry I couldn’t get control of the situation. I was just crazy crazy crazy. Afterward I came upon you sitting on a bus bench and asked you what your plans were, and you said, “Well, I guess I’ll just commit suicide.” I had to go to work or something, and I didn’t know what the hell to do about that. I do know that if you had committed suicide, I would have been haunted for the rest of my life. I would have never recovered. So fortunately you didn’t.
That was not the first time I shaved your head. That was probably the second time. The first was when you had been telling people at school that I was abusive. That must have been spring, when you were out on the street with John. But you were still going to school. They asked me to come to school, and you were called into the meeting, and I said, “Tell these people, How is it you mean I am abusive?” And you shook your head, leaving the impression that there was sexual abuse of some kind. Anyway, that’s the way I thought.
I was so angry you had told people I was an abusive dad that I brought you home and hit you and cut your hair. You had hair down your back. I wish I had never hit you and cut your hair. I can’t begin to tell y
ou what a terrible memory that is for me. Afterward you were sitting in the bathtub crying.
That’s the first time I cut your hair. I still have pictures of it. But that haircut was not quite so close. The second time I did it to stop you from going into that house. I’m still unhappy about it. I probably shouldn’t say these things, but I’m going to anyway, because I might not have much time left in this world. If you want it, I’m going to be cooperative. The hell with it. I’m not worried about how I look anymore. Doesn’t matter.
One time I handcuffed you. I had been under tremendous pressure from people who said I should have you institutionalized. So you were living on the street with John. I must have taken you from the video-game parlor. People were saying you should be locked up, given to a psychologist, but I had a feeling that would last only so long as we had insurance to cover it. I had a feeling it was a racket. I brought you home, handcuffed you to a pipe for about thirty minutes while I tried to figure in my own mind, reach a decision, about what I wanted to do. Fortunately, after thirty minutes, I decided, Fuck all those people. I took the handcuffs off and said, “You go and do whatever you want.”
Now it’s August of that same year, and the state takes you to Read Mental Health Center. They must have picked you up the next day, after I caught you sleeping in the house. I’m notified one way or another and invited to Read. I made appointments with the therapists, and they always stood me up. Always. Those cock-suckers. And I never once saw the psychologist who wrote up the report on us. DCFS* never had anyone visit us in our home. Nobody ever saw us together, period. To say we were dysfunctional is just made up out of their heads. I never even had an interview with anybody. It’s just bullshit they made up.
I went to see you a few times, but you didn’t want me, and the state tried to take you. You obviously wanted to go with the state, and at some point I said, OK, the state wants him, the state can have him.
I don’t know when you ran away from Read or whatever. By November you were totally lost to me. Finally, some social worker slipped or was a good enough guy and told me that you were in a home on the South Side. The home was near my building. I brought you over to the building and gave you some work painting. John also did some work.
That December we started to get friendly again, or not friendly, but I knew where to find you. We were in association. Then you went to JCB Home on Campbell. A nice home, as far as I could tell. It wasn’t too crowded. You said you once asked to live with me on Michigan. I believe you, but I can’t recall it offhand. It was probably good you lived on Campbell. We were separate. I still had my moods. I was still yelling at the little kids that Kit and me were having.
Rich kids go away to boarding schools. Prince Charles was not raised by his own mother. So it’s not terrible you were in a home and I was in another house nearby. Nobody bothered you on Campbell. Nobody yelled. They gave you free room and board. I was still a crazy person. From my standpoint it turned out to be ideal, because we could become friends. And we did too. We started going to poetry readings together. We went to the No Exit Café. Even after you left JCB, we were still together quite a lot. So I think we were friendly. There was always a little bit of weariness because I didn’t quite understand you. I was always afraid I’d lose track of you. That was my biggest fear.
Then at some point you went to college, then graduate school. We continued to be friendly over the years. We’d have coffee together.
Victoria says you dance like me. Dancing and writing, that’s what we do in our family. I used to be really good before I lost my legs. Real athletic. I wish I could have played an instrument. I’ve got a good voice for singing. Could have been a rock star.
—Chicago, 2009
Neil Elliott died of a heart attack on September 4, 2015.
* Department of Children and Family Services
A Place
in This
World
Now a row of log cabins, now a road with no cars, now a field waiting for the season to return.
Jimmy Wallet Is Buried Alive
Here is a photograph, undated. Jimmy Wallet is seated, his face turned, the sharp lines of his chin and jaw like an alligator that doesn’t bite. He’s terrifically handsome, with a boyish nose and cheeks, a sly smile, a little patch of beard below his lip, long black dreadlocks past his shoulders. His oldest daughter, Jasmine, sits next to him. People say she should be a model. Hannah is sprawled across Jimmy’s lap, looking at the camera, laughing, Jimmy’s hand covering her stomach. Behind him are his two younger girls, Raven and Paloma, and his wife, Mechelle. Raven looks up to her mother, who is turned and kissing the baby, her lips against Paloma’s mouth and nose. It’s a perfect picture, and soon it will be all over the news.
Jimmy Wallet is in motion now. He’s walking to the store. He has a loping, lazy, long-legged walk, arms bouncing near his waist. He’s wearing baggy jeans, a red sweatshirt, and a sleeveless leather vest. The day is serene. Jimmy breathes deep, smells the Pacific, the sage from the hillside, the jasmine from the yard. When he left Mechelle, she was cleaning up the house, packing boxes, organizing the children’s things. There’ve been tornado warnings, and Mechelle is worried they’ll have to evacuate. The three younger girls were on the sofa when he left. Jasmine is in Ventura with her boyfriend. Mechelle told him on his way out, “I need some milk crates or something so we can organize.”
So he’s looking for milk crates, and he plans to buy ice cream for his little girls. Some people say Jimmy gives his children too much ice cream, but he doesn’t care. Every good father knows that children need ice cream. He takes the opportunity to light a cigarette. He’s been trying to quit, but not today. The cigarette tastes good. If he takes his time, he’ll be able to have another one. He checks out the sky, which is mottled in patches of soft blue. It’s been raining for weeks. Dark clouds linger over the ocean and beyond the avocado trees looming six hundred feet high on the edge of the cliff abutting La Conchita, a tiny town of 250 people between Ventura and Santa Barbara. Maybe the good weather is coming back. Maybe he’ll take the girls to look for arrowheads later. This area once belonged to the Chumash, and when rain washes down the hillsides, there are secret pockets where you can find artifacts if you know where to look.
It’s January 10, and the world looks surreal. The sun dips in and out of shadow, casting a filmic light across the town. The lawns are wet and look like they’ve been brushed with glaze. The damp air carries a cool salt breeze. In the distance Jimmy can just make out the Channel Islands and the oil tankers sitting on the water, all of it hooded in fog. And there are no birds. Today all the birds are gone.
Jimmy reaches the store and throws his arms in the air. CLOSED. It’s the only place in town to get liquor, gas, ice cream, the basics. The store is located at the entrance to La Conchita, a precarious left turn off the 101 Highway heading south. The gas pumps are on Surfside, the first of the town’s two streets that run parallel to the highway. Jimmy and his family live on Santa Barbara, one of eleven short streets that crosshatch the town. The house is just below Rincon, the higher of the two long streets, closer to the cliff. Not quite against it. A block up the hill is a row of houses destroyed in a landslide ten years ago. Those houses still stand, never rebuilt, the roofs collapsed, beams poking from hills of dirt.
“Hey, Gator,” says Brie. “What are you doing?”
Her hands are tucked in her sweat jacket, her hood down. She lives with her boyfriend, Isaiah, in the same house as Jimmy, upstairs in the crow’s nest. Isaiah’s father, Charlie, built the room, all four walls made of windows. Brie’s twin sister, Annie, lives with her boyfriend, Griffin, in an Airstream out back. Brie stands with Isaiah and his brother, Orion, and a half dozen others.
“It’s closed,” Jimmy says, jerking his thumb toward the gas station and extracting another cigarette. He gives Brie a look that says: Can you believe it? But then he remembers why everything seems so strange: the highway is closed, which explains the store being clos
ed. The 101 straps against La Conchita like a tight belt, a four-lane concrete barrier between the town and the beach. Normally, the white noise from the thousands of cars rushing between Santa Barbara County and Los Angeles is as constant as a sky without seasons. You live in La Conchita, you learn to ignore the highway. You look west and you see the big blue ocean and maybe some caps from the turning surf, but you never even see the cars.
But today there are no cars at all, and that gets Jimmy’s attention. No cars, no birds. At two points north of town, water accumulated on the upslope faster than it could drain out; the mud funnelled down from the canyons and poured over the railroad tracks, onto the highway. Geologists call it a soil slip, a debris flow no deeper than the roots of plants. Still, the slush is two to four feet high in some places. More than fifty vehicles, including a passenger bus, are stranded. A UPS truck is buried to its window. A Honda minivan that had been floating toward a drainage ditch has been lassoed, its side-view mirror looped with twine and staked to the ground. Three command transports from the fire department are there, including the specialized swift-water rescue team. The swift-water guys wear wet suits and carry a Zodiac in case they decide to do a water evacuation.
In La Conchita it’s like a silent holiday. There are children out, playing in the road. It’s Monday; those children should be in school. But no one’s driving anywhere today. People who would normally be at work in Santa Barbara or Ventura are milling around, riding bicycles, sitting on their porches. A few La Conchitans have crawled through the four-foot drainage tunnel that runs beneath the highway and connects the town to the beach. A group of maybe fifty is down by the tracks, rubbernecking at the rescue site. But by 1:15, after more than six hours, the operation is coming to a close. The stranded motorists have been helped through the mud to a waiting sheriff’s bus and transported to a shelter. The Ventura police department is clearing the cars.
Sometimes I Think About It Page 6