Amp'd (19 page)

I look to Dad for rebuttal, but there's none coming.

“So you just walk away from this.”

“I already walked away. My occasional friendly interaction with your father is not the same thing as bearing the burden of responsibility for him. I left because I knew this was coming.”

“You can see the future,” I say, unkindly.

“Some futures are apparent. If you lie down on railroad tracks and refuse to move, your future is clear. I had the sense to get out of the way. I shouldn't have to be hit by the train regardless.”

“So tell me my future.”

“Your future is mutable. It can still go any one of several possible ways. But your immediate future no doubt will be taking care of your father, whether you do it yourself or delegate it to some capable outside agency.”

“And you'd be okay with that?”

“It's impossible to know what to do here. And your recent decision making has been remarkably poor. You've probably managed to do the wrong thing about half the time … which means you've been right the other half,” she surprises me, patting me on the head, gently sliding her hand to cup my face. “Even odds are the best most of us can hope for in a crisis.”

And Jackie, for all her tears and long-distance anguish, has a career and a family and a life two thousand miles away. She thinks she'll lose her job—the precious thing that gives her purpose and validation—if she takes any more time away from work, and I reassure her that another trip at this time won't be useful anyway. She asks me to hold the phone to Dad's ear, and I do, and as she sobs her love for him, I half hope that my cell battery explodes, killing him instantly and taking my remaining hand so I can bleed out next to his headless body here in the hospital, and all our problems will be over. When she hangs up, head and hand are still intact and both Dad and I stare off into a future that may be “mutable” but looks pretty shitty from here.

*   *   *

After a long day at the hospital I finally come home to crash—a poor choice of words since that's also something I almost do twice in Dad's van from a near-lethal mix of fatigue and one-handedness. The front door to the house is wide open—if a couple of meth addicts are waiting inside to kill me, they'll find me surprisingly cooperative. While I don't quite welcome death's sweet embrace, I'd be happy to dodge the awfulness of my looming circumstances.

I'm actually disappointed to realize that I probably left the front door open when I raced in and out for a blanket. I'm peeing a long time before I notice that the bathtub is empty, that in our long absence Ali must have gone roaming in search of food. A quick room-to-room search leads me to conclude that the insufficient nourishment provided by our empty house has led him, hungrily, out the open front door.

Mom would no doubt consider the future outcome of this particular situation immutably bad—Ali either winds up feasting on neighborhood pets or hunted down by law enforcement, possibly both. What she possibly could not foresee is that
I don't give a shit.
The universe has hurled one too many trials at me, and my response is to ascend to the attic and
thunk
the world behind me and disappear in an ill-advised combination of med mar and an odd-numbered dose of Vicodin washed down with the remaining Fleischmann's I plucked from under the kitchen sink that I plan on draining to its final eleven drops. Fuck me, Universe? Fuck. You.

 

THINGS THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT

Rogue alligators

The neighbors' pets

A good man's brain

A small boy's cancer

Being told, “Fuck you”

Fairness

Irony

Genocide

Fish

 

CLARITY

I awaken more than fourteen hours later knowing two things with absolute certainty: (1) The trajectory of things already in motion will not stop just because I lock myself in the attic and get stoned beyond all reason, and (2) I guess I already knew that.

After a breakfast of instant coffee and toaster waffles poorly and laboriously managed under the twin hardships of handicap and hangover, I get to work on a
LOST
flyer for Ali, settling on the following language:

LOST
: 90-pound alligator, Muhammad Ali Gator, answers (sort of) to “Ali.” Sweet disposition!
WARNING
: May be hungry. Capable of running quite fast in a straight line. Zigzagging recommended if he appears uncooperative.

I add contact information and paste a photo of Ali with his mouth closed that looks as if he's smiling, although I wish it looked more like the funny cartoon smile of a Disney gator than the menacing grin of Killer Croc. I'll stuff a few nearby mailboxes with these and hope I don't attract too many cranks and/or law enforcement. (In the balance between the survival of our neighborhood's small pet population or losing Dad's alligator to Animal Control, Dad, having lost so much already, wins.)

Next I jump over to Craigslist, the perfect place to find qualified home care if you're resigned as I am to accomplishment via the least possible effort. I craft an ad asking for experience, references, and a recent photo, the last of which may strike some as odd but that just helps me cull applicants with an aversion to odd. While I'm there, I also put my car up for sale, which will help pay to convert Dad's van into a handicapped vehicle for both driver and passenger, leading to the next call I make to come pick up the van. After inhaling a goodly amount of Herbtastic
,
I call Ick Ick and request time off from my job, choking on a bong hit, which they mistake for crying and assure me I am welcome to return any time I'm ready and to please take care of myself, both of which seem unlikely.

At the hospital, Dad is just how I left him, with the exception of his position, propped sitting up to stare forward into space instead of up at the ceiling—a tiny improvement in his situation if not his condition. According to the doctors, of whom I've had quite enough, the brain is a funny thing, although by “funny” they seem to mean its exact opposite. Dad's condition may over time “change” (which is not to imply “improve”), or it may not; despite the prognostications of Mom, it appears his future is “mutable” in that he might regain his speech (or not), movement (or not), memory and awareness (or neither), the ability to walk (or not) and completely care for himself (unlikely), and/or complete cognizance. (Or none of the above.) He may with physical therapy regain much of his former strength and ability, but not his mental faculties; or he might remain physically disabled while his brain slowly rewires itself, bypassing the damaged areas and compensating with other parts of the brain until he emerges, at some indeterminate time, some modified version of the self he used to be. Or someone markedly different. Impossible to say.

It's all very similar, I cannot help but think, to my own condition: I may learn to do things differently, like shuffle cards one-handed or drive a car with a spinner or allow myself to be flipped on my back for intercourse; but none of those are the same thing as my arm growing back. Nor will the damaged parts of Dad's brain recover so much as his brain will learn to do things differently. (Or not.)

If he understands any of this, Dad gives no indication. Perhaps he's just playing possum. After a lifetime of caring for ungrateful children and a wife who left him to seek selfish fulfillment in a yurt, maybe it's his turn to be taken care of; after an appropriate period of time, he'll leap from his wheelchair like a cartoon stripper from a cake and shout, “April Fool!” and we'll laugh …

But for now I'll play along.

 

HOME

It turns out my car is worth more than I'd expected and while that extra money could prove useful in any number of ways, I like the symmetry of devoting the entire sum to the refurbishing of Dad's flesh-colored van; as I see it, the best way to do that is to transform it into a van that is not flesh-colored. I have it painted a stunning metallic purple, a color best suited for a Plymouth Prowler or a prostitute's fingernails, and turn things up a notch by hiring an airbrush artist to paint a side panel mural of a Viking battling a giant, angry ferret. All that's missing is a bumper sticker reading,
“IF THIS VAN'S ROCKIN' PLEASE KNOCK, BECAUSE DAD COULD BE HAVING A SEIZURE IN HERE.”
(I'm dismayed to learn that the vanity license plate “
“VAN GO
” is already taken.)

I hire Consuela based on her references (which in summary paint her as an adequate caregiver who, to quote her most recent employer, “never stole nothing”), and her photo of a vaguely pretty but unsmiling plump, Guatemalan woman (it would distress me to hire a smiling applicant for a job that will offer little to smile about). It's disconcerting to discover on her arrival that she doesn't speak a word of English, but that little speed bump actually seems inconsequential when measured against the enormity of everything else I'm facing. I point and gesture and grin stupidly like a man inordinately happy to be landing small aircraft, and somehow it works.

Dad never spoke in the hospital and still has not after returning home. His difficulty with speech seems not to be the result of the brain no longer knowing how to direct mouth, tongue, and teeth to shape sounds into words, but a deeper disconnect. Although he seems almost completely unaware of his surroundings, I pretend to detect a glimmer of recognition when
SportsCenter
is on. He's also able to respond to cues to eat (he'll open his mouth to accept food, chew it and swallow, only occasionally choking in a manner where I'm pretty sure he's about to expire), and he'll actually stand as Consuela—astonishingly strong for this compact woman—helps him into bed, doubtlessly grateful to put another day behind him. I manage to avoid the more debasing moments when his diaper is changed, praying on my own behalf that if some blood-clot complication races from my stump to my own brain that it explodes upon contact, leaving nothing intact in the white flash that kills me.

Sunday morning I think Dad could use a treat, so Consuela and I load him into the rockin' van to head to the Four Corners. As we begin to accelerate Dad yelps, the high-pitched squeal of a small dog, the first sound I've heard him make since his stroke. I pull over to the side and his body visibly relaxes, but when we start to move, he yelps again.

In his afflicted state there is clearly something about swift movement he cannot abide; this man who had once traveled effortlessly back and forth through time now finds a trip to the diner equivalent to hurtling through space at light speed. Pulling over again, it strikes me that if we can shut out the world instead of seeing it fly past, Dad might be okay. Pantomiming this idea with Consuela elicits an affirmative nod, pretty much the only response I've been able to muster since her arrival and one I take as agreement, although in her native culture it could mean anything, including
I think this is a terrible idea.
Pulling a reusable canvas grocery bag over Dad's head not only calms him but has the same effect as placing a cover on a birdcage: he thinks it's night and goes to sleep.

If the arrival at the Four Corners in our pimped-out eighties van leads anyone to expect a hair metal band to leap from its confines, they must be disappointed to see instead a weary one-armed man, a Guatemalan caregiver, and the incontinent elder lowered mechanically to the ground in his wheelchair with a bag over his head. I anticipate our entry to be greeted with swiveled heads and stopped conversation, frozen stares and coffee suspended midair; instead I'm surprised by the overall warm greeting, and then Fred Weber, arms open, stoops to hug Dad like he might a bundled-up toddler. This is the first time Mr. Weber has seen him out of the hospital, and he doesn't let go for a long while. Dad seems not to respond, but at least he doesn't yelp.

They slip the Lumberjack Special in front of this man for whom the jacking of lumber remains forever out of reach. (Michelle ignores that we've missed the 11:00
A.M.
cutoff, and silences any customer complaints of unfairness with a deadly glare and the implied threat of hot coffee.) Consuela expertly slices and dices Dad's breakfast and feeds manageable forkfuls to him, alternating between his and her own meal.

“About time you turned up,” Mr. Weber admonishes me.

“Been a little busy.”

“I understand,” he doesn't. “I also understand you stopped working?”

“Well, I need to take care of Dad.”

“Look, you've got a full-time caregiver now,” Mr. Weber grins at Consuela, who does not smile back. “You need to get back to your own recovery.”

“Thanks for helping me get the job, really. But I might not go back. I actually liked counting fish, but I'm not good in an office.”

“Who's good in an office? You think I liked going to an office every day after years in the Merchant Marine? Or your father, coming off the slopes half a world away—at the Olympics, for Chrissake!—to find himself behind a desk? My contacts at the center told me you were doing good work there.”

“I left teeth marks in the file folders and had sex with a coworker. I don't think the Employee-of-the-Month parking spot was in my near future.”

“You were getting out, meeting people, doing work that matters, engaging in the world again.”

“I did make a good friend. He also had one arm. I was thinking we might form a club of similarly stump-limbed members, but then I was afraid we'd get sued for discriminating against the able-bodied.”

“I'm sure your father would agree with me.”

“That's not really fair,” I protest. “He's dormant. And shouldn't be used to back up an opinion he clearly can't express.”