by Paul Hawkins
The bicycle also had blinking front and rear lights which alerted drivers to my presence in the dim light of morning, although the generator used to illuminate them made the pedals harder to pump than as if I were riding through wet cement, and I was already not in great shape as it was. We rode across the overpass with our bike lights on and narrowly avoided being hit by SUV’s. The riding got better once we crossed the bridge and the bike lane began.
“Robert really should be coming in with us,” Ed said. “He teaches today.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He’s been missing a lot lately. He’s been in a funk since his girlfriend left him.”
“Why did she leave him?”
There was a long pause. “It’s hard to explain,” Ed said.
I let it go for now because he seemed uncomfortable talking about it, like he was betraying a confidence, but I intended to follow up later.
As we got closer to campus, the bike ride became exhilarating because there were young people around. We were soon rolling across the green campus grounds with other bikers zipping to and fro and not a one of them giving me a second glance because it seemed so natural for someone like me to be there, like maybe they thought I was a professor.
I tried to enjoy myself but the mystery of my son was bothering me. Ed and I had breakfast at the Student Union and then he took me to his class on Comparative Religions, but I couldn’t get interested. I recognized the professor as a priest from years ago, but he had changed – he sported a neck beard and wore a billowy shirt like it was made out of burlap and wore a yin-yang symbol around his neck. And now he preached the historical Jesus. Jesus as the great teacher but without the miracles. He talked about it like it was something shocking, but it only bored me. He preached it so fervently that I thought he must feel guilty about something, but I wasn’t even interested enough to imagine what his sin was.
Then we went to the film class Ed taught. He looked in his element, striding in the front of the classroom, not quite the hippy he looked. He had is class well behaved; some looked at him adoringly. God, how young they all looked, I thought.
One student was presenting his paper, which was titled, “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger: Apollonian and Dionysian Elements in Discourses of Otherhood: A Lacanian Perspective on Self-Construction in the Forest.” I could see the apples did not fall from the tree in Ed’s class. I remembered the parroting kids did to get good grades. After the young man’s presentation there was sage nodding of heads and a smattering of applause.
After Ed’s class he we dropped by the auditorium where Robert should be teaching. A few students still sat there waiting, but it was maybe twenty minutes after the class should have started and Robert wasn’t there. Ed excused himself and made a phone call, and then he gave me a slip of paper. “Go and see this man,” he said. “He’s Robert’s faculty advisor, and he’d like to talk with you. I think he and you should discuss a few things. I promise I’m not sending you into the lion’s den.”
After Ed slipped me the paper, I rode my bike over to the old brick building that housed the Classics and Philosophy departments. It was a shabby building – the kind of building where the low dollar departments were shelved. I suddenly felt as if I’d much rather have walked over there. I needed time to collect my thoughts. A slow walk under the old oaks would have helped me clear my head.
I walked past the bike rack and through the building’s heavy wooden doors and up to the second floor office whose number Ed had written on the note. The name plate read “Professor Kruger.” There was a flyer for a foreign film on the door, but the date of its showing had come and gone. I raised my hand and knocked. I heard a rustling and then heard the knob turn and soon a tall white-haired man was introducing himself. He reminded me of pictures I had seen of Sigmund Freud except his face was warm. His blue eyes drooped gracefully at the edges.
“Mr. Westbrooke – I’m so glad you could come. Ed called and said you were on campus today.”
I entered his small, book-cluttered office. He cleared a stack of papers off of a chair and then offered it to me. I sat down facing his desk.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said.
He shifted in his chair, stretched out his legs, then drew them back under his chair and looked at me. “Mr. Westbrooke, I’m worried about your son.”
“Look,” I said, “I understand that he and his girlfriend just broke up, and that has made him really depressed, but he’s a good kid. I know he’s missed a lot of school and that he has teaching obligations, but give me a chance to get him back on track.”
He cleared his throat and paused a long while. “I want to preface this by saying that it’s probably going to be as hard for me to say as it is for you to listen.”
I immediately thought there must be a girl involved. “Just tell me,” I said.
“Your son claims to have overheard voices in the teacher’s lounge conspiring to get him expelled.”
“Well, aren’t you trying to get him expelled? Isn’t that why you’re talking to me?”
“No – he’s one of my favorite students. But he’s not himself. He says we send spies to his classrooms, looking for reasons to take away his teaching assistantship. He made quite an outburst about it at the last faculty meeting.”
“Well, are you?”
“No.”
I sat back and thought. I felt my insides tremble with an energy I couldn’t focus. “He’s been under a lot of stress…”
“I took the liberty of discussing the symptoms with my own psychiatrist. I did not name names. I think he may be showing early signs of schizophrenia.”
“Nonsense! He’s just stressed. Why, I remember my own mother…” I paused.
He leaned forward. “I only want the best for him. No one’s going to hold what’s happening against his progress toward a degree. He’s one of the nicest, most determined students I’ve ever had. But he needs help.”
I couldn’t accept it. “He’s just been under a lot of pressure. He stresses himself. He’s been a recluse since his mother died.”
“Please let a doctor see him.”
“I’ll do what I think is best!” I rose to leave.
“Best for him,” the doctor said.
I turned to leave, then remembered myself and turned again and shook his hand roughly. “I didn’t even know he was studying philosophy,” I heard myself say. But then I wished I hadn’t said it and I left abruptly.
I didn’t wait to meet Ed like I said I would. I had to get back and see my son. Thoughts welled up inside me of my own mother cracking up. I unchained the bicycle from the rack and peddled off beyond the campus and down the road. I had to see him. I’d tell him I loved him. I thought of all the times I could have been there for him but hadn’t. “Son,” I’d say, “Let’s get you help. Then let’s get you out of here for a while and help you relax – see the world. Just you and me. The best tour money can buy.”
I found myself daydreaming as I rode. I had drifted into the middle of the lane and corrected myself. I realized that when he had invited me over he had wanted something from me. It must have taken a herculean effort for him to do so. I knew he couldn’t stand me, but he had reached out for something. It wasn’t too late to give it to him.
I had swerved out into the lane again. I felt stupid for not have gotten a taxi. I straightened out and got as close to the curb as I could. I was coming up to the bridge. Would it be so bad, I thought, if I got hit? The beardo in comparative religions had talked about reincarnation. I hadn’t believed in that shit but if I did, I thought, I would come back and make things better this time. I wanted to come back and make things better for my son.
This time I swerved in front of an SUV. There was no place for the driver to turn. I felt myself impact the hood and then slam against the asphalt. I tried to sit up but felt a blinding stabbing in my side and I fell back down and fainted. When I woke back up I found my head cradled in the hands of a paramedic and could hear a voice
in the background saying it wasn’t his fault. The back of my head felt sticky and I was about to faint again.
“Is my son okay?” I said.
“Buddy, no one was with you. You were alone.”
My head felt light and the world shrank down to a small dot of bright light. Then it disappeared.
*
I was in the hospital for about a month with three broken ribs and a skull fracture. I felt so bad I did not think I’d live through it. For the longest time all I was aware of was nurses coming in and out of my room at all hours, and the hours rolling together from dark to light to dark again: taking my blood pressure, taking my temperature, measuring my blood oxygen count – a day nurse, a night nurse – names on a whiteboard. Staring at the TV and not knowing what I was seeing.
One day I noticed that my stepfather Don was sitting at my bedside. He was elderly but appeared in good health.
“I was designing software,” I said.
“No you weren’t – you were riding a bicycle across an overpass, which is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of.”
“I was helping Robert…” I said. Then I thought, “What happened to Robert?”
“Robert’s receiving treatment at the best mental health clinic in the city. He fought every one of us. I still don’t think he believes he’s really sick, but I convinced him he was hurting himself. His friend Ed helped me get him to a doctor. There are effective treatments for schizophrenia. They’re still confirming the diagnosis, by the way, but I’m convinced. There are medicines to control the delusions and psychotic episodes. You never heard what he did to his girlfriend did you? He went about throwing things and accused her of poisoning him.”
“It’s my fault. I should have been there for him.”
“There are two problems with that: first, the condition is likely genetic, and second, you are talking in the past tense. He is going to need you for the rest of his life. You are going to have to be his watchdog. It will be easier if you can make him your friend. The key to long-term recovery will be to make sure he sticks to his regimen his whole life - once he starts feeling better, he will become convinced he’s healed and will make every effort to go off his pills. It will be your job to make sure he stays on them. It will help if you can find him a psychiatrist he can eventually trust. I’m helping you with that. And one more thing: he is under the delusion that you cheated on his mother. That is a delusion, isn’t it, Clayton?”
“Yes.”
“It seems he found a photograph of another woman in your desk, and he remembers how much you were away from your family, and how you and his mother fought.”
“We fought, but I never cheated on her.”
“But were you tempted.”
I said nothing.
“He can tell as much. I know all that was years ago, but not in his mind. In his mind, traumas are present and vivid. Time is not linear – it circles around events and relives them. You are going to have to get used to the perspective of what’s in his mind. It is going to take a great deal to make him trust you.”
I got tired after a few minutes. But the next time I woke up, he was there again, perched in the same chair beside my bed. He told me it was the next day.
“I want to see Robert,” I said.
“I’ve asked, but he does not want to see you.”
“When is he going to want to see me again?”
“He blames you for sending him to the doctor for an illness he does not believe he has. He thinks you stayed at his apartment to spy on him.”
“But he invited me.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It’s going to take forever to bring him around, isn’t it?”
“There’s no telling. He may not ever want to see you again. He may want to see you tomorrow.”
I fell asleep again. I woke up again and again and again, each day a little better. Some days Don was there. Most days no one was there. But Robert was never there. Finally I was well enough to go home.
*
It turns out the old man from church had been watching my house the whole time. I felt absolutely awful that I had forgotten to contact him, but he did not seem to mind. He showed me a garbage bag full of my mail.
“I heard you’d been injured,” he said. “I had the church pray for you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I guess it worked – I got discharged early.”
I offered him two hundred dollars for his services but he refused. He was glad to have helped. He said he understood how it was to need someone. His wife had been dead for twenty years. He had adult children, all married, scattered all over the country. Some came to visit him from time to time, he said, but never as often as he’d like.
I heard myself say something before I thought. “Would you like to come over for a beer sometime?”
He smiled. “I don’t drink.”
“Oh yes – how about a Coke then? We can watch a game when football season starts.”
“That’d be great. I should warn you I yell at the TV.”
“That’s fine. I yell at the refs mostly.”
“And listen,” he said. “Sometimes the men at church get together and do home repairs for needy families. We could always use more help. I remember how you once said you were pretty good with your hands.”
All of a sudden I felt the fear of getting sucked into a social circle again. “Let me think about it,” I said.
He nodded and left. I would remind him of my invitation when fall rolled around.
*
And one day just like that my son came by. He was with Ed. I looked at the two of them out on the front porch. Robert was blinking as if the light were bright outside, though it was not.
They came into the foyer and I closed the door behind them. Ed stepped into the sunken living room but Robert stood and looked around him.
“Same old house,” he grunted.
“Yes. Come on in.”
He came in and the two of them sat on my brown leather couch. Robert perched forward though Ed leaned back.
“Same old musty smell,” Robert said.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“We can’t stay long,” Robert said. He brushed his black hair back.
“That’s okay. Stay however long you’d like.”
“Dad, I’m sorry you got hurt,” he said.
“I had it coming,” I said. “I hadn’t ridden a bike in twenty years.”
He nodded, and then we had nothing to say for a while, and then my son abruptly asked, "Do you miss Mom?"
“Every day.”
“I do too,” he said. “I think she was my lifeline. I’ve felt lost ever since she’s been gone.”
“I have too.”
He looked at me darkly. “Dad,” he said, “did you ever cheat on her?”
“I swear I never did. We had some bitter times, but I never cheated.”
He cocked his head as if he were testing a perspective in his mind. “I feel a lot of animosity toward you,” Dad, “but maybe someday that will change.”
“Thank you. I’m very proud of you, son. ”
“Ed says that we should do something together, and my doctor agrees.”
“How about a world cruise?”
“How about a ball game?”
“That sounds good.”
Ed looked up the date of the next home game on his phone, and I told them I’d get the tickets. Then they were gone again – but with a promise for the three of us to meet up later. I fully expected Robert to change his mind before the date came.
Once they’d left I thought about my wife, his mother. Immediately her face welled up before me. We had a short courtship because from the very first moment we met we knew we were absolutely right for each other. It had been electric. Something had bonded to the very center of my heart the first moment I saw her face - she was the one for me. What we’d had was real joy, real trust, and real camaraderie. I would say it was as if two became one,
but that seems to diminish how much each one sacrificed for the other. But the two becoming one flesh is in the Bible someplace, so take it from there instead of me. Love can both tear and bind.
*
We went to a ballgame downtown a week or so after later. It was a game of the city’s new professional basketball team – it was the city’s pride. The city had passed a sales tax to build a coliseum and practice facility for it. It was part of the city’s startlingly successful downtown transformation. There was a riverwalk lined with upscale businesses, restaurants and nightclubs. Couples walked hand in hand through a park under twinkling lights. Most the scary elements of the inner city had been chased away, though nobody quite knew where they had gone.
Across the river was my old neighborhood. The city’s next urban renewal plan was to leap the river – to build an office park and a “Great Lawn” and a Central Park with walking and biking trails on the other side, and a new convention center, all linked by a people bridge and light rail joining the new hotels, big businesses, and the State Capitol. Some critics noted that while what the city really needed was better mass transit for the working poor to get to and from their jobs, here was light rail to link the upscale, the rich, and the powerful.
This second phase of urban renewal was to be funded by a recently passed sales tax extension lobbied for under the title “A Bridge to Tomorrow.” The sales tax extension had passed overwhelmingly. The Phase II plans would be approved by the city council, and the next step would be to condemn and acquire the property. The people would be paid the price of their houses as appraised by the county assessor, but the land would be the site of million-dollar development. It was like buying an oil reserve for the price of the shack on top of it.
The church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was to be preserved because it was an “historic building.” Much of its surrounding neighborhood would be made into a fashionable “Mount Carmel Plaza,” to reflect the rich Latino-American heritage that had been historically a part of the area. It was unclear however, how many parishioners would actually be able to afford to live in the new housing development planned to surround it. It was also unclear whether their homeless mission would be allowed to remain. The Salvation Army outreach center was already slated to be moved five miles away.