by Megan Boyle
some time in may or june 2012 i got my new york driver’s license transferred to a pennsylvania driver’s license. they had a new computer system and ‘margaret megan’ wouldn’t fit under ‘first name.’ the DMV woman urged me to list ‘megan’ as my middle name, which i foresaw leading to future hells of confusedly explaining what my name is ‘technically’ to frustrated desk clerks behind bulletproof glass. i said “margaretmegan’ is really fine, no space, it’s really really okay, i just want to be sure it says the same thing everywhere, on everything.’
6:39PM: sitting at desk in my room at mom’s. oh shit i forgot to mail masha’s package. i will fedex that ass. i forgot i decided to enlist in the navy.
8:00pm: asked mom what movie she was going to watch tonight while fumbling around the kitchen and dining room table, gathering things. She said ‘maybe the Abe lincoln vampire one, but I don’t want to be scared.’ I went ‘ooooooh.’ Walked to my room and picked up my phone and walked back to the main room. I said ‘I can’t believe I figured it out. I’ll just do space.’ mom said something positive about college and NASA. I walked to her bathroom and applied deodorant. Pictured something vague about ‘the steps ahead of me’ and felt a pang of fear and loss. Mom said ‘driving trucks just didn’t seem like you, I don’t know, somehow.’ I said ‘y-eah, now I’ll be driving spaceships. Flying jets and spaceships’ and heard slightly forced childish enthusiasm in my voice. Mom said ‘well or whatever.’ I said ‘I’ll have something new to concentrate on.’ mom said ‘you should never stop writing though, but you don’t have to, you can always come back to it.’ I said ‘I’ll write in space. If I feel like it.’ she said ‘and who knows where you’ll go. They’ll be going to mars, in your lifetime. You could go to mars!’ I put on my shoes. Mom said ‘did you hear about Angelina Jolie? She’s gotten her breasts and ovaries removed.’ I said ‘she did it on purpose? Without cancer?’ mom said ‘well, apparently her mother had this type of cancer.’ I said ‘talk about attention-seeking.’ mom said ‘I know, really’ and laughed. I said ‘I don’t like her. She’ll never make it in space. Especially without her boobs.’ mom laughed and I smiled and walked downstairs and out to my car.
8:16pm: driving to dad’s office for dinner. Not hungry yet
8:17–8:45PM: dad gave me a tour of his new offices. they built them really fast and he’s rented out most of them. i’ve seen the tour before but i didn’t want to mention it.
dad told a story about how he put $200 in the building contractor’s hand when he shook it for the first time the other day. the contractor refused the money. dad said ‘wait, but don’t you have a friend?’ the contractor said ‘yeah.’ my dad said ‘this is for your friend, buy something for your friend.’ i said ‘oh man’ and grinned. dad’s nose scrunched up and he ‘cackled’ giddily, ‘my dad-style,’ in a way he does rarely.
dad showed me an area which he and mary (other landlord) are converting into a ‘meditation/relaxation room.’ it used to be an office. he said ‘and i’m putting my elliptical machine in here, dr. oaken says ‘forty-five minutes a day on that thing, if you wanna live until you die.”
i said ‘i’m so happy for you’ and things like that and asked questions which would normally sound ‘fake’ but i was sincere asking, and interested in his answers. i was happy to see dad acting so happy.
dad gave me a headset for talking on the phone while driving. i put it in my car and dad said ‘are you driving?’ i said ‘oh i don’t know, i was just putting the headset in. or. i’ll drive, do you want me to drive?’ he opened the passenger-side door and paused a moment, looking down, then said ‘no, i think i’ll drive.’
we walked to his car. there was a toolbox on my seat. dad said ‘i got you tools, here are your tools!’ i said ‘oh boy, oh tools, thank you. tools in a toolbox. does it have a drill?’ he said ‘no, well. this one, this box doesn’t have a drill. but you can borrow mine.’ i said ‘no no no, i’ll just hammer the thing i was thinking of drilling, hammering is fine.’ dad said ‘i thought i bought you this toolbox a while ago!’ i said ‘i’m pretty sure you did. yeah i think you did, it looks familiar, from my old apartment.’
dad pulled into the parking lot of the seafood restaurant where we had planned to eat. a handful of agelessly old-looking, ‘active lifestyle’ people in silk shirts and jewelry were milling around outside. dad slowed as we passed them. i said ‘what if there’s a wait, looks like a wait.’ dad said ‘is there a wait?’ the people looked ‘bleakly unfamiliarly acquainted’ to me. i said ‘seems fancy.’ dad said ‘yeah, it might be.’ i said ‘let’s do the double T instead. this seems too fancy.’ dad said ‘yeah, long wait, too fancy.’
i showed him the e-cigarette. he tried it, nodded, matter-of-factly said ‘it hits you.’ i said stuff about the batteries not working well and ordering new ones. he said ‘where do they sell those things?’ i said ‘like CVS, rite aid.’ he said ‘wanna go to CVS and get a new one before we eat? so you’re not thinking about it at dinner?’ surprised he would think to ask/offer that. i said ‘oh no, it’s okay.’ he said ‘are you sure? it’s right next to the double T.’ i said ‘okay.’ i said anxious things about how it’s not really smoking and dad would respond with a ‘padding’ comment, like a repetition or slightly different phrasing of whatever i had said. he pulled into a parking spot at CVS. i said ‘thanks for offering to do this, i wouldn’t have even thought to.’ he said ‘well now you won’t be wondering about it all night. plus, i think they’re a stress reliever, cigarettes can be stress relievers.’ continued anxiously saying things, walking fast into CVS with dad behind me, increasingly aware that i was about to ask for an e-cigarette battery with my dad, and there was maybe something socially ‘off’ about this.
the man behind the counter said they didn’t sell ‘blu’ or any brand of e-cigarettes. i said ‘thank you’ and started walking away. turned my head to see if dad was following. saw him gesturing vaguely and saying ‘do you know where else they’re sold’ to the man behind the counter, whose head seemed like it could’ve been politely shaking ‘no’ from the moment we walked in CVS.
dad seemed ready to abandon dinner to hunt for an e-cigarette battery. i remember him doing stuff like this when i was little. one time at the beach we were in an arcade, taking turns maneuvering a joystick controlling a ‘grabbing claw’ in one of those impossible toy machines. we were aiming for a stuffed ‘dino’ dinosaur toy from the flintsones. there were two or three non-traditionally colored ‘dinos’ in the machine. the claw wasn’t picking up anything. i wanted a ‘dino’ really bad. dad gave me quarters and told me to keep trying while he used the bathroom. a little later he returned to the machine with a man holding a set of keys. the man opened the machine and gave me three ‘dinos.’ i was so happy. i think even then i knew ‘this doesn’t happen to most people.’ over the years my dad got really good at getting things from claw machines. it’s like his ‘thing.’ he and my mom went to the movies every thursday and he would almost always bring home a stuffed toy for me. by the time he got really good at it i was in high school.
8:57pm: typed ‘8:57pm: diner’ in phone while exiting dad’s car outside the diner.
8:58–10:33PM: as we walked inside i continued a story i had started in the car about chris hadfield (astronaut in ‘space oddity’ video). he was answering a class of sixth grader’s questions from the international space station. someone asked him why he wanted to be an astronaut. he said something like ‘just after my tenth birthday they landed on the moon.’ dad opened the door to the diner. i said ‘how old were you when they landed on the moon? nineteen sixty-nine?’ dad thought a minute and said ‘i was…twenty-seven. whoa-ho-ho-ho! twenty-seven! you’re picking up where i left off.’
a waiter approached our table and said his name was danny. my dad said ‘dana?’ the waiter and i said ‘danny.’ dad said ‘oh, oh, i have a bad ear, i’m sorry. i’m mike’ and shook danny’s hand. it used to embarrass me that he’d introduce himself to waiters. i o
rdered a spinach salad and maryland crab soup. dad ordered some kind of chicken pasta dish and a salad and matzah ball soup.
mostly talked about the navy. i asked a lot of questions.
the most interesting things my dad had to say about when he was in the navy (1958-1962):
• when he got off the bus of enlisted guys the first thing they did was shave everyone’s head. then they took them to a room where everyone got naked and their clothes and belongings were stored in bags. they were issued uniforms. on the ship, he shared a room with 50 guys. there was a table, a garbage bucket, and a radio in the middle of the room.
• he showed me how to salute. you put the tips of the fingers of your right hand to your temple and move it fast to chest-height. the marines make a more exaggerated chopping downwards motion. dad said the general rule was ‘if it’s moving: salute it. if it’s not moving: paint it’ (they did a lot of painting on the ship).
• dad worked his way up to be an officer in charge of 13 guys (i said ‘you told them what to do? how did that work?’ he made a face and said ‘not very well’). he was a radar technician. he had a tiny office with a door sealed with ten latches. sometimes he would go to his office to nap, which wasn’t allowed. if someone was about to catch him, by the time all the latches opened he would be awake enough to pretend he had been working the whole time.
• he described all the stripes and things that get added to your uniform the higher you rank, with ‘tour guide’-like interest, miming stripes on his sleeve. he said ‘and then when you’re an e-six you get a chevron with an eagle coming out of it, you know, which is what i had, you’ve seen that picture of me.’ i thought of the photo of him in uniform on the top of his bookcase by the plastic flowers, that would be there when he came home from dinner. he inhaled and held it a moment, then shook his head like he had surrendered something and said ‘oh no, i don’t know why i’m crying, why do i do this.’ i said ‘it’s okay.’ he said ‘i don’t even know why’ and chuckled a little, crying less as he continued describing the stripes and chevrons.
• most of the time at sea was spent playing ‘war games.’ dad’s ship would leave from rhode island and a submarine would leave from connecticut at the same time. dad’s job was to use radar to track the submarine as if it was the enemy. if the submarine crew detected someone tracking them, they were supposed to turn off the submarine to appear invisible to the radar. if the ship crew ‘caught’ the submarine before the submarine crew knew about it, they’d send depth charges (‘cap gun missiles that just made noise’) down to it. the submarine would surface and they’d say ‘hi, good job’ to each other. one time the submarine went off the radar for a long time. dad’s ship continued sending depth charges but it stayed dormant. they got worried and stopped. the submarine surfaced. it was russian. dad said ‘and then they blinked their lights, you know, morse code, they said: ‘hi how are you.’ we said ‘hi we are fine.’ and it went along on its way. it was just there, in connecticut, a russian submarine!’
• john f. kennedy and jackie kennedy and walter cronkite were on dad’s ship, the joseph p. kennedy (‘john was on the ship because he wanted his brother’s name to be historic’), during the blockade. there were a lot of ships and jets. the whole navy, maybe. sounded really exciting, i’m not describing it well. russian ships were moving towards cuba so they could attack the u.s. and the u.s. found out. all the russian ships retreated but one merchant ship. dad said four or five guys from his ship got on a small boat (he described as ‘from here to the other side of the room’ i said ‘like one of the lifeboats on the cruise ship?’ he said ‘yeah, yeah, almost exactly like that, yeah. a little smaller’) to make sure there were no missiles on the russian merchant ship. he said ‘and then we told them to go back to russia, and they did. they didn’t really do a thorough check of the ship, the guys. everyone was nervous.’ he said something about khrushchev. jesus, wonder if i can describe…he ‘acted’ the conversation between JFK and khrushchev with a lot of attitude, like this: ‘khrushchev said ‘look at our ships, look at what we can do.’ and we said ‘oh yeah? well look at our ships, think about what we can do.’ the merchant ship was just khrushchev saying ‘don’t forget, i’m not afraid to do this, too.’ so we said ‘oh we see that you can do that. you’d better not do any more though, because look at us.’ he was giggling kind of, seemed really happy to tell this story.
• by the time the cuban missile crisis started, dad didn’t need to be in the navy anymore, but they made everyone stay an extra six months. he really didn’t want to be there. he started growing a beard. cleanliness was big. you were not supposed to grow beards. he told his friends he was growing the beard so when he got off the boat ‘castro would be able to recognize whose side he was on.’ the guy in charge of my dad noticed and called him into his office. he said ‘boyle? get that goddamned thing off your face.’
• drill thing: after the missile crisis, they started doing this circle thing for practice. the u.s. owns an island in the carribean near the panama canal. they test bombs there. dad’s ship was in a circular line with a lot of other ships. there were jets, too. just…it was everyone, moving in a circle around the island and the panama canal. whenever your ship or whatever reached the island you just ‘gave it all you got.’ you shot everything. some ships contained marines who would run onto the island while it was getting ‘practice-shot’ at, who would then shoot ‘giving it all they got’ at nothing (when i asked about this dad said ‘they were marines, they just knew how to not get shot’ which i don’t…jesus, i don’t know about this one). i said ‘seems like a thing kurt vonnegut would put in a book, going around in a circle to take turns shooting at nothing.’ dad did his ‘dad-style’ nose-scrunch cackle and said ‘yes! yes that’s exactly what it was like! a kurt vonnegut thing.’ he looked happy. later he said ‘it was really something, to do that. it was like all the fourth of julys, just going off, shooooom.’
NOT A NAVY THING BUT INTERESTING:
we had been excitedly talking about my ‘realistic course of action’ that would result in me becoming an astronaut. dad said ‘did i ever tell you about the astronaut who put his thumb—’ i smiled and nodded and made a ‘squinched-out’ thumb gesture. dad continued ‘well, so i guess he became some kind of preacher after this. he has a following. after he figured out you can do that thing, blot out the earth with your thumb, it’s just this tiny dot.’
a little later dad said ‘this story is a little embarrassing but i’ll tell it anyway. so, the astronaut who did the thumb thing, he apparently grew up in chicago in this poor neighborhood where the walls were paper-thin, and his bedroom—he lived next to the mcmanus family—his bedroom was right next to mr. and mrs. mcmanus’ bedroom, so he heard everything. this might’ve been another astronaut, this might’ve been neil armstrong. anyway, so one night he hears mrs. mcmanus [looked away and sort of chuckled], mrs. mcmanus from the bedroom, she says ‘i’ll put that thing in my mouth the day they send a man to the moon!” dad laughed and i laughed a little less. i said ‘oh noooooo. no way. you’re making that up, that’s not real.’ dad was still laughing. he said ‘no, it’s really real—they asked him what he was thinking about when he landed on the moon, so that’s what he [continued laughing].’ i laughed a little more.
10:34pm: throughout dinner waiters added tables to a maybe seven-table ‘spread’ of high school-aged girls in the center of the room. a waiter added a table connecting the seven-table spread to the booth behind dad. the girls were loud. at some point after we had finished eating i was telling dad about how astronauts exercise in the international space station (which was built by people adding onto it, like how the waiters were adding tables, didn’t realize this). dad said ‘how do they do it without weights?’ i explained something poorly about a video i watched, think i was gesturing a lot and saying things like ‘they harnessed the vacuum, it’s negative resistance, they use the space vacuum.’ a waiter added another table and dad and i noticed and i took advanta
ge of the moment to say ‘these bitches are annoying, can we go? plus i have to pee.’ dad made a face like he was also annoyed by the bitches and relieved to be relieved of them.
10:58pm: dad drove us back to his office. i forget what we talked about and what reminded me it was probably a year ago today when i found out i was pregnant. i said something like that. dad said something in a gentle voice. i said ‘it’s may seventeenth, right?’ he said ‘yup, may seventeenth, that’s today.’ i knew i didn’t find out on may 17, i felt that not being true. i remembered ‘may 16’ as something important. dad made a right turn into his office. he said ‘what was that like, finding that out?’ i said ‘i threw up, after i saw it. found out. threw up in the toilet. then i cried a lot. i didn’t know what to do so i called mom. i was just crying a lot. then i called zachary, i think, or no, i waited for him to get home, he was at work.’ dad parked and didn’t turn off the engine. he said ‘i remember we were parked in this very spot, or one like it, when you told me about how you had that done, the d&c. i was happy you told me but i was so sorry you had to go through all that.’ i was embarrassed for having brought it up. i knew we both knew i didn’t have a ‘d&c.,’ and that he was maybe embarrassed too, which is why he’d want to call it that. i said ‘i’m happy i told you too. i wasn’t going to. i thought. something about nana, you’d get mad at me like nana got mad at you.’ i stepped out of the car before he turned off the engine. he said ‘oh no, no, no. i want you to feel like i’m,’ (sensed him stepping out of the car and walking near me but i didn’t want to look), ‘you can say anything, have a seamless, open communication with me.’ he hugged my arm a little. his other arm was holding the toolbox. i did something ‘icky’ that i do sometimes, in situations where the other person seems more emotional than me, i’m embarrassed to type this. i said ‘i do, i feel that.’
dad said i should always feel free to call him or leave him voicemails or emails, he always wants to hear more from me. i said ‘i know you like voicemails and stuff like that. i think i’ve been feeling too ashamed of myself, to talk. like i know you want to hear from me but i’m ashamed to tell you about what my life is like because i’m not doing anything, i haven’t been interested in anything. and it’s always nice that you want to hear from me. it’s just hard to imagine why, for me, like why would anyone be interested when to me it feels so, you know, so it’s hard, yeah it’s felt too shameful to talk about.’ dad nodded a moment. he said ‘you know, i think i get that. i didn’t think about it like that.’ i said ‘but now i’m interested in something, so’ and smiled and we hugged. i said ‘now i’ll get to tell you about space.’ dad said ‘that’s right. oh i can just tell things are getting better now. there’s nowhere to go but up,’ broke the hug to point at the sky, said ‘hey! mars, that’s up, you’ll go to mars, you’re going up!’
