Father's Day

by Buzz Bissinger

  It is impossible for Pete not to love Zach. It is impossible for Zach not to love Pete. It’s like a sixties love-in, with me in charge of finding the munchies but otherwise outside the bong circle. It does strike me that two of my children, Caleb and Zach, would be perfectly content to live with Pete in Hollywood and leave me behind in Philadelphia. (What goes around always does come around.)

  —Peter how old are you Peter?

  —Me, I’m forty-five.

  —When will you turn forty-six?

  —March 11.

  —It will be a Tuesday.

  —How do you know that?

  —In my head.

  —Remember Peter we spent Thanksgiving on Nantucket.

  —I remember.

  —Ninety-three November 25 remember we took a walk remember.

  —You know why I remember?

  —Why?

  —Because you have a crazy memory.

  —Peter I think I saw you remember at the movies remember in Manayunk.

  —What date was that?

  —It was September 30 2004 for Friday Night Lights you came to Philly.

  —You remember that? What theater was it?

  —It was called Main Street remember you met my dog.

  —Your dog was there?

  —In the parking lot you met her her name is Maddy.

  Peter is disoriented at this point. Too many memories and moments and Zach hasn’t even warmed up yet.

  —You know what, Zach?

  —What?

  —Nobody can lie to you.

  IV

  Pete is taking us to a party in Malibu for those from NBC who have been nominated for Emmys. Pete is among them for the pilot of Friday Night Lights, which he wrote and directed. I’m dreading it, a walking scowl, a nobody there only because of his cousin. Zach loves parties, any party—birthday, holiday, bowling, pre-funeral, post-funeral. He goes into them without any of the habit-formed anxiety, anger, jealousy, and competition that I go into them with, this person is an asshole, stay away from that person, this person by some miracle made a hit, how is it possible for him to have a career better than mine? He goes because he likes food. He goes because he wants to see people he knows or to figure out some tangential connection with somebody he doesn’t know, listening carefully for a single word that suggests a link to his hard drive. He has no qualms talking to strangers, nor is he put off by strained interaction. If this moment at this party doesn’t work out, then on to the next moment and the next party.

  Pete takes Zach under his wing.

  —I’m going to introduce you to everyone I know. You stay with me, okay? You and me together. We’ll get through this together. If there are any cute girls, you introduce me.

  —Will they have good food?

  —I think they will.

  —Like caterers they’ll walk around with trays.

  —Yup.

  Zach disappears into the sea of chatter. I suddenly feel more self-conscious than ever. I talk about the television show a little bit, as if I have something to do with it, when I don’t other than selling the rights to my book. Or else I ask people I vaguely recognize questions I could care less about, trying to keep up conversation until I figure out my exit strategy. I am acutely aware of my male pattern baldness. I feel bloated, a helium balloon being filled with air. Everyone else is thin and works out six times a day. Showoff assholes . . .

  Around me, the chitchat has descended into profound inanity. I actually hear someone say, “Women and wine was something I just couldn’t feel passionate about anymore.”

  I find Zach on the outdoor deck overlooking the Pacific folding and unfolding a map. I ask him if he has talked with anyone. He says a woman. I ask him if he knows who she is. He says he has no idea. It turns out to be the wife of Brian Grazer (since divorced), the hugely successful film producer who runs the company Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard. I ask him what they talked about. He said he asked her if she had a house on Nantucket. I guess he asked her that because based on his observation she had the glamorous polish of a woman who looked like she was from Nantucket. She said no, and the conversation ended. He is much more concerned with the food servers.

  —They’re coming with something good.

  Zach plucks a strange little object from a tray and wolfs it down. So do I. I have no idea what it is, but it is good. Zach disappears. I find him hovering over the raw bar. There are crab claws and oysters and shrimp so big they must have been on steroids. Zach takes an oyster before making a beeline for the table where a chef is carving up tenderloin. On the way, he plucks a lobster salad appetizer. The food is so good that Zach decides he’d like to learn how to cater a party. He asks me what the job would be like. I tell him he’d have to work quickly and not be allowed to talk to anybody.

  —Maybe then it would be better maybe if I just eat.

  Pete doesn’t feel like staying at the party very long, Zach is gastronomically satiated after the tenderloin run, and I never wanted to be there. We leave and drive back to Pete’s house. Pete asks Zach about Gerry, who is on the plane now. Here comes the flood.

  —When he was in college you know up by Harrisburg I didn’t see him as much and actually it was his junior year he lived in Australia from February to June I didn’t see him for months he was living last year up in New Canaan Connecticut because he was teaching at a school up in Connecticut so I missed him a lot and his girlfriend actually his girlfriend’s family is in Chicago but it was funny Peter his girlfriend last year well she was up in Middlebury Vermont at a college up there and she couldn’t speak she couldn’t speak we couldn’t talk to her because she had to speak a different language Spanish now that Gerry is in Philly Peter I’ll see him a lot more because he’s only twenty minutes from me.

  Peter gets that disoriented look on his face again. I think he may have regretted asking the question.

  Zach isn’t finished.

  —Peter do you like horses?

  —I’m allergic to them.

  —You don’t like them?

  —I love them but I sneeze. Do you like them?

  —Yeah I like them.

  —What else do you like?

  —I like e-mail.

  —Do you have a BlackBerry?

  —I don’t have a BlackBerry but I have e-mail and Peter I’m also working at a grocery store and a law firm have you ever had to worn ties when you’ve had to be an actor?

  —Yeah, a bunch of times. Do you like to wear ties?

  —I love to wear ties.

  —I’m shooting in downtown LA. We’ll walk off the set when you see me and go to Brooks Brothers.

  —How many ties can I get?

  —Two.

  —Remember the last gift you gave me?

  —No.

  —It was the Playboy key chain showing a woman’s butt.

  —This is gonna be ties, Zach. No Playboy nothing. We’re going classy now.

  Pete checks his e-mail. But Zach’s memory fascinates him. He probes it from a different direction, testing Zach’s knowledge of historical events.

  —When was George Washington elected?

  —I wasn’t alive then.

  We arrive at Pete’s house. We pick up the minivan and drive back to the hotel. Zach is still in the clouds. Like an alcoholic still feeling the booze, he goes on a memory bender—the parties he has been to that have been catered, with dates and name of the caterer, a shirt and tie we bought at Tommy Hilfiger’s store in Los Angeles so Zach could look sharp for a friend’s surprise birthday, the time we went to the La Brea Tar Pits.

  —You’ve been so happy since we left Vegas, Zach.

  —Yeah.

  —Why?

  —Because Gerry’s almost here.

  V

  I am awoken by the giddy squeal of Zach at midnight.

  Gerry has arrived. I go into their room.

  Gerry and I hug. The pull is strong. I have forgotten how much I miss him, his laugh, his earnest presence, the po
ssibility of extended conversation. He is tired, exhausted, a full day of graduate classes before flying here. He listens as Zach gushes about the trip but his eyes are slits. He slides into sleep in the queen-size bed in the room. Zach, in a cot next to the bed so he can be as close to Gerry as possible, ratchets down.

  I go back and, just like Gerry, slide into a queen-size bed. I am exhausted as well, but for a brief moment before drifting off I think of the room next to me. I think of my twins, so night and day, the gap too great to ever be closed, and yet wishing, in a way I have not wished for in years, that I will wake up tomorrow and there will be no space between them, the imagined no longer imaginary.

  17. Picture Perfect

  I

  ZACH EMBARKS ON HIS usual morning inspection of the hotel pool. Then to the restaurant for a hearty breakfast he “put on the room bill.” Gerry and I are left alone upstairs. Zach, before he left, told Gerry what resonated with him the most on the trip. It turns out to be Odessa, where he spent the night with the Chavez family. Gerry says he mentioned it four times.

  —In other words the best part of the trip was when he wasn’t with me.

  —He was just really proud of doing something on his own.

  —I know. I missed him. I went to bed at eight.

  —What was the best part for you?

  I relish retelling every detail:

  —He saw the bungee jump at Six Flags. I said, “Zach, do you want to do it?” He said, “Yeah, I want to do it.” Then I knew I was in deep shit and then I got mad at him on purpose to try to talk him out of it—“Zach, this is really dangerous, someone’s gonna get hurt, you have no idea what you’re doing, you could get sick. I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s REALLY STUPID.” He looked at me and said, “No, I would really like to do it.” So I looked at the guy working the thing and gave him the money, and I was scared shitless, and they put us in these rubber body suits with all these straps sticking out of you. It’s like a bondage costume. You’re in the prone position and they lift you 153 feet off the ground. And then who’s going to pull the ripcord? Well, he’s not gonna pull it because he’s too scared. If he had to pull it, we’d still be up there. So I have to pull the ripcord. As I’m getting on, a woman is getting off and she says, “Boy, the one thing I would never do again is pull the ripcord. It’s much better when someone else pulls it.” So you get hoisted up and hoisted up and pretty far off the ground. You pull the ripcord, you know you’re descending to your death. But we were totally bonded we were just arm in arm and he held my arm and you’re swinging back and forth through the air, and it’s one of those memories that I’ll have forever, that you want to last forever.

  Gerry gives that laugh of his I love. It is a laugh from the deepest part of the belly, without fake or fraud, as unconsciously honest as his brother is unconsciously honest.

  Gerry looks like me. He has inherited my short stature, although he’s a smidgen taller. He has my sturdy cheekbones and trim-lined nose. And he shares my moods, the something-stinks scowl passed from generation to generation of Bissingers. He has the same reaction to adversity that I do, a house-of-cards collapse where it’s over, just fucking over, and leave me the fuck alone, and then an equally determined rebuilding. He also has within him his mother, her open-door, midwestern accessibility.

  I know that Gerry and I are going to talk now about Zach. It is still the refrain of the trip, to talk to my children seriously and broach taboo topics whatever the repercussions. I was hoping the setting would be more cinematic, an empty church on a weekday maybe, outdoor steps at dusk, the kitchen table after dinner where we are the only ones left, and we pass a bottle of wine back and forth. A small room at the Beverly Hills Hilton is not what I had in mind. Gerry is also fiddling away at his laptop, checking e-mail while he talks, and I kind of wish he would fucking stop, but it’s become habitual for anyone born after 1920.

  Gerry is so affable anyway that I can’t be mad at him. We’ve been in alignment all our lives except for that one year when I was working in Los Angeles. Because he spent much of his youth living with me, I made a major contribution to his growing up. I am proud of that. And yet for all his feet-to-the-floor mentality, every time I see him I can’t quite believe he is here the way he is here.

  In all the focus on Zach, I have often felt that the miracle of Gerry, perhaps a greater miracle than his brother in terms of survival and subsequent thriving, was never given the proper coming-out party. Because Zach weighed so little, Gerry’s birth size of one pound and fourteen ounces made him seem like a behemoth. He too had severe complications at birth. His breathing was more advanced than his brother’s, but he still needed supplemental oxygen and endured bouts on the ventilator. Yet he was so chubby when he came home that in a moment of acute parental paranoia, I fretted that maybe he was too chubby and would grow up to be chubby. I was afraid to ask the question, so my wife wearily asked it for me, knowing how pathetic it was. The doctors mercifully responded with dignity, spiked with a touch of their own weariness: “No, he’s not too fat.”

  Gerry’s learning curve was not always smooth. But he did reasonably well in elementary school and proved himself to be a very good athlete at youth soccer and Little League and tennis. I cheered him on with loud pride and burdened him with car-ride-home admonishment that left both of us sulky. I did feel better when he played on a travel soccer team and the Irish coach, a man of generally sweet temperament, morphed into such a monster that he simply left the team one game during halftime so disgusted by the play of twelve-year-olds. We parents coached the team ourselves, and I think it was the only fun all of us had the entire season.

  Gerry’s athletic skill created a false sense that he had overcome his birth trauma with no residual effects. Another universal ritual of fatherhood. There was no neglect in tracking his learning: he was tested on a regular basis. We did discover that he was one of those children who could grasp concepts as long as he had extra one-on-one, and not just the whirl of the classroom. But every time he scored a goal in soccer, or hit a home run, or made a spectacular catch in right field in the Little League all-star game, I was convinced that it would all be fine. I was frantic that it would be fine: if Gerry carried the fear of becoming his brother in even the slightest way, I carried the same fear. I needed a child who had inherited my traits of work and ambition and drive. I needed that certification as a parent. Children are our voyeuristic porno, the stuff of our parental fantasies. Instead of applauding all that Gerry had done, I only put pressure on him to do more.

  When he was thirteen, he didn’t do his math homework for two weeks. I only found out because of a note from the teacher. He was drowning at the private school he attended in Philadelphia. He had problems of processing that could no longer be buried in the backyard.

  The hardest conversation I ever had with Gerry took place when I told him that I thought he might need to go to a specialized high school for slow learners. My opinion was sacred to Gerry. He always trusted me to protect his best interests. I did have his best interests. I gently gave him all the arguments. I told him it would not be fair to place him in a situation where he was set up for failure. The new school would give him time to process the vagaries of math and science and the grammatical strictures of writing. I told him kids there went on to college. I told him not to take it as a sign of weakness. I told him nobody was giving in or giving up.

  But I was giving up to a degree. It was surrender, an admission that he too was a product of being thirteen weeks premature and weighing less than two pounds. He had gained three extra minutes, but he hadn’t gained enough.

  We got an application. We started filling it out at home on the dining room table. We called and made plans to visit. He then spoke up quietly, but with urgency. And it wasn’t just urgency. There was anguish in his voice, that whether you know this or not, Dad, you are going to destroy every image I have of myself and need for myself.

  —It isn’t the right place for me.

 
—I think it is, sweetheart.

  —I don’t want to go. I don’t want to change schools.

  —I think you have to.

  —I don’t. I can do this.

  —I am worried you will be set up for failure.

  —Please let me do this.

  —You will need tutors.

  —I don’t care.

  We joined the ranks of three billion other parents and put him on Ritalin. I have no idea what good it did. Maybe it was just a placebo. Maybe it was penny candy, like the multicolored dots I had licked off white paper as a kid that tasted like sweetened chalk.

  Gerry’s determination changed him. He began to work harder. He conquered math. He went on to take calculus in college. I had never taken calculus. It sounded like a foot disease. It was a foot disease.

  Some drug didn’t motivate Gerry. It was his resolve to prove that I was wrong and that parents don’t know everything about their children. He later told me he never felt as much pain in his life as he did when I suggested the special school, except perhaps for when I abandoned him to go to Los Angeles. He said he didn’t want to disappoint me by having to change schools. He said he did not want to disappoint himself. What he did not say, but I knew, is that he didn’t want to be remotely like his brother no matter how much he loved him.

  II

  Gerry and I talk some more in the cramped hotel room where it feels like tiptoeing around land mines, clothing and towels and bedspreads everywhere. He has stopped using the laptop. He is interested in what I learned on the trip not because it is my perspective, but because it adds another layer to his own perspective on his complicated brother. I go first.