She glanced up and said, “We still have a couple of things that we have to do today. Someone has to go identify the body.” I found myself volunteering for the job. I’d do anything to get outside the claustrophobic house.
“Are you sure?” Jill asked. The image of my father’s dead body at the hospital would never leave my skull. I could at least spare my sisters the same assault.
A few hours passed, and I began to lose my nerve. I started to panic about walking into the morgue alone. Jasper sat in the living room with his head down. He had been a staple around the house but was ever mindful of fading into the background. I asked him what book he was reading, and he told me it wasn’t important. No other information really matters in the days after a death. I think he knew what was about to come next. I asked if he would drive me into the city and help me identify the body. I couldn’t do it alone. He said of course, though I could sense he was deeply uncomfortable.
As I got into Jasper’s car I patted myself down for my phone, knowing I’d be unable to do anything without it. Unlike at the hospital, today the phone felt like armor, with its constant buzzing as friends and acquaintances reached out to tell me how much my dad meant to them. It felt like a slot machine; every time I unlocked it I got a small dose of dopamine. It was one of the only things keeping me intact. I was opting out of the present in favor of a digital realm where I didn’t have to call the doctor or figure out what I needed for the morgue. I could just be comforted.
We typed “NYC morgue” into Google Maps and I stifled a small laugh—how comedically awful our lives had become in a single day. We put on a Spotify playlist of my dad’s favorite songs, of which there were thousands. The day before, Jasper and I had shortened it to those we could remember: fifty-six songs, three hours and forty-five minutes’ worth.
“The Ghost in You” by Robyn Hitchcock hummed through the speakers.
Inside you the time moves and she don’t fade
The ghost in you, she don’t fade
He’d sent me the song eleven days before he died when he’d requested my presence at the family home in New Jersey for the Super Bowl. I had spaced and wound up without wheels that day. He told me he would pay for half of a Zipcar, but it was just important that I get there and soon. When I told him we were en route, he’d attached the song to his return email, writing “Great. Please put this on in the car.”
I cursed myself as we made our way to the morgue. As if on cue, a tear leaked out of my eye as we rolled up to East Twenty-sixth Street to what seemed to me to be one of the sadder buildings in New York: a block-long behemoth with a sign out front that reads OFFICE OF CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER.
I crept up to the front desk and saw a clipboard. Instinctively, I knew that I wouldn’t need to talk if I just filled out the attached form. My dad’s body was in this building. I wondered if I’d be looking at an image of him or his actual body. I filled out his date of birth, and felt like screaming when I did the math.
58.
58.
58.
Who dies that young? No one had ever prepared me for his dying that young.
I turned in the clipboard. I sat and stared at my shoes, cheap black boots against the beige linoleum, caked with dirt. I hugged myself with my arms and closed my eyes. When I looked up, I saw people in the same zombified state. The morgue is not a place you want to spend your Saturday.
After five long minutes, they called my name, and I was led by an administrator into a small room with a computer screen. A woman seated behind a wooden desk asked me several questions, and I was completely mystified as to how someone could perform this job day after day. “How are you today?” “How do you know the deceased?” My mind trailed off thinking about it until she asked if I was ready. This is it. I will see him for one last time on this screen. Jasper reached for my hand and squeezed it.
“I guess.” She swiveled the monitor toward me and asked me if this was David Carr, my dad and relative. I cried first and then nodded. He was on a metal gurney with a white sheet draped over the lower half of his body. His face, ever the same, was his, but lifeless. His mouth was still open.
“Yes, that’s him,” I told her, and with that, the business was done.
5
It All Starts Somewhere
“You are a Carr, and that is a complicated, wondrous inheritance.”
No one gets to choose the traits they inherit from their parents. I was blessed with a semblance of smarts, blue eyes, and giant, man-sized feet. When I was thirteen, a kind, elderly pediatrician remarked that with feet like these, I was sure to grow in height.
At twenty-seven years old I’m still five feet, four inches. But other promised inheritances have come true. Some darker than others, like a fondness for the drink.
When I was growing up, my dad often whispered to us, “Everything good started with you.” I realized the converse truth—that there must’ve been an “everything bad” before there was an everything good.
When I was in third grade, living in Washington, D.C., a friend came over after school one day. Let me preface this by saying this wasn’t a typical event in my life. I was an awkward kid who had no clue as to what was “cool,” and the savvy kids knew to stay the hell away from me. Finally, after many failed attempts, I made a friend. Her name was Alex.
Jill picked us up from school, and I remember Alex gave me a funny look when I called Jill by her first name, instead of “Mom,” and later asked me about it when we were alone in my room. I explained to her what had been explained to me, that my parents used to be drug addicts, but my dad no longer did drugs and was now married to Jill. You know, basic eight-year-old stuff.
A couple of hours later, my dad popped his head in and asked: “Do you girls want to go to McDonald’s?”
“Yesssss,” we screamed automatically. We ambled toward our family’s junky Ford Explorer, and when Alex could see that it would just be my dad, the two of us, and my sister, she crossed her arms and refused to get in.
“Do you need help getting in?” my dad asked patiently.
Alex shook her head, then stated matter-of-factly, “I am not getting in the car with a drug person.”
The words stung my ears, and my heart quickened in a frightening way. Without missing a beat my dad quietly replied, “Well, then, I guess we won’t be going.” Within an hour, Alex was gone, picked up and driven away by her mom, who was not a drug person. I sat in my room, upset that my first real playdate was such a failure.
I heard my dad bellow from downstairs: “Erin, get down here!” He motioned for me to sit down on the maroon couch where Meagan was already seated, looking confused. He told us it was time to discuss our story and how to tell it. First of all, it was not information to be traded for affection. My dad carefully explained what drugs were, and why, in the past, he had used them. He reiterated that he was sober now and would remain so as long as he went to his “meetings.” I asked him why our mom, who had exited our lives years earlier, wasn’t sober. He looked at Jill, unsure what to say.
It was hard for my eight-year-old brain to grasp the true dark story of what had happened, but I eventually learned that my parents’ appetite for cocaine was monstrous, quickly moving from recreational use into freebasing, all on top of their regular abuse of alcohol. A toxic mix. No one celebrated when my mom found out she was pregnant, but the show went on. My mother claims she used only a couple of times while we were in utero, though she is the only one who knows this for sure. After six and a half months of pregnancy, her water broke and she went into labor. It was the spring of 1988, and the math did not look good.
Our premature little bodies were placed in incubators. I imagine the hospital staff just looked the other way when my parents came to visit. What to say? My dad and mom continued to use, and the relationship dissolved when the coke business was done. We were a product of the union but als
o a reminder that they were not good together; they split after we were born.
I have been told that my dad’s moment of reckoning, as captured in his memoir, came when he left us in the dead of winter, strapped into our snowsuits in the car, to go score and get high in a nearby crack house. We could have frozen to death.
In our first year he and my mom took turns taking care of us, these little babies. She had two previous kids of her own, and it was obviously a lot to handle. Once again she turned to drugs. It was clear that she was not a viable option in terms of guardianship, nor was my dad. Who was left?
In December 1988, when we were eight months old, my dad entered an inpatient rehabilitation facility whose name was held in a sort of reverence in our home: Eden House. My sister and I were placed temporarily in foster care through Catholic Charities. Our caretakers were Zelda and Bob, kind Minnesotans whose kids were all grown up. When my dad was writing The Night of the Gun, he interviewed them, and they recounted his erratic behavior. Direct, intense, falling over. He wanted us to receive perfect care, but he looked desperately unable to provide any. Zelda recalled feeling horrified and glad to scoop us up into her arms. My grandmother was with him when he dropped us off. She didn’t have high hopes. It would be his fifth time in treatment.
My dad was the fourth of seven kids. He outlived both of his parents, John and Joan Carr, but barely. His dad was a smart, well-dressed Minnesotan with a fondness for speaking in his own homegrown idioms. His mom, Joan, whom we called JoJo for short, was a loud, friendly, loving creature who became deeply involved in Catholic Charities and the local St. Patrick’s Day parade. I’m told that my dad was a wryly funny kid, a voracious reader, and very much a middle child. His brothers picked on him, but challenged anyone that tried to do the same at school. He loved mischief and would try to get away with as much trouble as possible.
After much hard work on his part, we were returned to our dad after he successfully finished his six-month program. He had the reason for recovery right there in front of him. What would happen to us if he picked up a drink or used again? I can only imagine how unmanageable it must have felt for him at times, single-parenting two babies that needed every goddamn thing from you.
When we were growing up, my dad spoke to us often about the joy and terror that took hold in those years. He made sure to show us the finer places in town, even though we had very little money. That meant the lunch special at the local Vietnamese restaurant known to us as Quang Deli. Giant, steaming bowls of pho soup would arrive at our table. The cilantro, onions, and beef swirled around to create a magnificent concoction. We were taught to use chopsticks from the earliest of ages, no forks for these kids. The waiters smiled at what must have been an odd sight, this large bearded man accompanied by two animated cherubs. My dad would lean in close to us and whisper before motioning to our waiter. When he approached the table, Meagan or I (let’s be real, mainly me) would pipe up and say, “More meat please!” What a con artist, using a baby to get some free grub. He played the game well.
We developed a life, in small, finite ways. Grocery store, walk home, dinner, bath, story, bed. A routine is what we all craved after the chaos early on. His lawyer Barbara asked him to keep a journal of our life together, in case the judge needed proof that he knew what he was doing. How many times he changed us, what he fed us, what bedtime looked like. While the diary started off as the ramblings of an incoherent and sleep-deprived addict in early recovery, it became the written testament of a single parent who fiercely loved his children. And we loved him back.
Oct. 1, 1990
It is a Fall monday and they both are as sweet as only little girls can be, different as only sisters can be. We spend the quickly darkening fall evening wheeling up and down on your plastic trikes—one purple and one red.
Erin knows how to work the pedals as she rolls by, pointing to her feet and saying “Watch.” I sit on the steps and listen to the chatter. “My bike. Two bikes.” Erin talks constantly. “No touch,” she says, wagging a finger at me.
Meagan is less specifically interested in riding, unless she gets some distance between me and her. As soon as I yell and begin to run after, she goes like the wind in the other direction. A white kitty stalks both girls as they ride.
Both girls insist on a bath when we get upstairs, bolting naked as soon as their clothes are removed. Long peals of laughter trail behind them like vapor, hovering even as the bare footfalls fade.
Right this minute, the girls are playing a game of their invention in the tub. Like so many others, it involves one accomplishing some little task and the other cheering like there’s no tomorrow when it is accomplished. They take turns…mostly.
It’s near 8 and they will soon both be in bed and I will be grateful. Grateful they are mine, grateful they are so precious, and very grateful they are finally out of my hair. bye for now.
Jill came into our lives in 1994. She was blond, stylish, and basically my dad’s exact opposite. Her beauty was outmatched only by her smarts, and he was instantly smitten. Jill was a former director of administration for the Republican National Convention and in 1994 was headed back to her home state of Minnesota to apply to grad school to become a teacher. They met at a bar at a gathering of mutual friends. Sarah, a woman my dad had waited tables with, thought they might hit it off and had invited them both out. True to knucklehead form, my dad brought a date with him. When Sarah walked over to make the introduction, she sized up my dad’s date and said he should come over solo. My dad rolled his eyes but followed her. He walked into the next room and there was Jill. They shook hands and everything melted away. He asked her out immediately. True, she did not resemble the women he had dated in the past—often brunette and a bit rough around the edges—but he had a feeling that Jill was something else, something quite singular.
Our dad made it clear to Meagan and me that Jill was not a replacement for our mother. As a six-year-old, I didn’t know quite what to make of her. Upon our initial meeting I eyed her curiously. I knew what “girlfriend” meant—that they liked each other. I liked her short, blunt blond bob and her smile. I liked the fact that she had a goofy chocolate-colored dog that she named Eileen because the dog, well, leaned. But I sometimes found our interactions with her confusing. She didn’t hug or cuddle us the way Grandma or Dad did. Instead, she waited for us to come to her.
They married quickly; he proposed on Christmas Eve—they hadn’t even been dating a year. He knew he had a good thing. Their parents threw a boisterous, loud wedding. Meagan and I were appointed flower girls and wore petite white dresses with flat-brimmed hats. The wedding photos elicit a type of fairy-tale narrative. I don’t remember feeling scared about my family changing; I was just happy to have an occasion where I could eat multiple pieces of cake.
In September 1995, a year after they got married, we moved from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., where my dad had accepted a job working as an editor for the respected alternative weekly Washington City Paper. Jill was pregnant and less than thrilled to be moving so far away from her mom and family. But my dad had a mission and that involved being in D.C. She trusted him. So away we went.
Dad nicknamed me Beefaroni. You might be able to see why.
Meagan, angelic in comparison to me, sleeping in her baby bucket.
Grandma JoJo made us wear bonnets on a daily basis.
We were nothing if not fashionable.
We made the perfect eighties trio. Dad was the drummer.
Jill joins the gang.
6
The Other Woman
There was, of course, another woman in my dad’s life—one who came before Jill. My mother, Anna.
Our relationship is a painful topic to think about, and I try to avoid it. I know that she wasn’t dealt the best hand in life. Her own mother had her when she was forty and was worn out by the time my mom ca
me along. My mom told me in a Facebook message (one of the few ways we currently communicate) that her mother was a quiet person who taught herself to paint. Her father was an alcoholic, and my mother was scared to death of him. He spent the last twenty years of his life a sober man and she grew to love him, but she never forgot who he used to be. Her brother fought in Vietnam and came back different. She told me he had major PTSD, and no one said anything about it; you didn’t back then. His parents buried him in his mid-fifties. My mother moved away as soon as she could to start her own life, dreaming of love, if not wealth. She would find something else entirely.
When I look at photos of my mom, I search for the woman my dad fell in love with. She already had kids of her own when my father introduced her to smoking crack. He could be violent with her, and there were things that happened during their time together that she could not forgive. She’s told me she feared for her life, but my dad said she left us with him to pursue her drug habit. He eventually filed for sole custody, citing child abandonment. There is no record of her contesting the paperwork or responding in any way. My dad became our sole guardian, a rarity back then for a father in child custody disputes.
I know I am like my dad in a variety of ways. But what about her? I am short, like her. Funny, caustic, same smile. I am a hustler just like she is.
While he raised and cared for us, he still wanted us to know our mother as we grew up. Her financial situation changed as often as her phone number (it’s never the same; when I want to reach her I have to scroll through a long series of missed calls), and she usually asked my father for the money to send us to see her. We’d spend five days in the Arizona or Mexico heat living in her double-wide trailer, its chrome gleaming in the sun. I would devour books in the shade while my sisters frolicked in the ocean. It was a simple time, but the darkness of her life leaked out at the edges. Even as a child, I knew something was off. A boyfriend who shouted, money that vanished, the dog eaten by the local band of coyotes. The time she fell asleep and burned me with her cigarette. I was ten years old.
All That You Leave Behind Page 3
