Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz

by Chris Lynch

  By the time I rinsed the shampoo away, watched as I washed that Nardo, and that Frankie, and that Alex, too, right out of my hair and down the drain, I felt like a new man. I also felt like I couldn’t stop humming that song, “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,” because once you think of it, it’s in there like a tick. I stood and dried my head vigorously with a towel. Then I picked up the bottle of green shampoo and brought it right up to my nose and breathed deeply.

  Honestly, it made me feel so good, so cool and collected.

  I read the bottle of my new favorite grooming secret.

  “For a shiny and flea-free coat.”

  This kind of bothered me at first. I started barking out loud at the bottle in my hand. “Dog shampoo! Flea shampoo! I was already shiny and flea free. Everything else was a mess, but I was definitely shiny, and I was definitely flea free.”

  “Aloe Vera and Apple Mint Flea-Repelling Aromatherapy for Dogs.”

  “What is apple mint? There is no such thing as an apple mint. Aromatherapy? Dogs don’t need aromatherapy because everything is aromatherapy as far as a dog is concerned.”

  There was an urgent banging on the bathroom door and an urgency to my mother’s voice behind it. “Elvin? What’s going on? Are you all right? Who is in there with you?”

  What do you say?

  “I am fine. There is nobody in here. I am talking to the aromatherapy dog shampoo. You forgot to tell me that you bought aloe vera and apple mint aromatherapy dog shampoo, and so we are just in here getting to know each other now.”

  There began some muttering on the other side of the door as my mother tried to explain my erratic behavior to my uncle.

  As they talked, I finished towel drying my head, then checked the mirror.

  Why do I check mirrors? Why do I subject myself?

  Something not unlike a dog whimper came out of me as I took in the results of my long, busy day of careful attention to my hair.

  “Are you shampooing Grog, Elvin? Please tell me you are shampooing Grog.”

  She was hoping against any possibility of hope. No matter how creative she got with the aromas, if I had Grog in the bathroom, and if she had come in contact with even a drop of water, the whole house would smell as if the toilet was backing up.

  “No, Mother. I will show you what I’ve been doing.”

  I reached for the door, but not before pausing and taking one last good, long, fortifying sniff of aloe vera and apple mint.

  “Hi,” I said as I slung open the door.

  It was really kind of a treat, the little squeal of horror that came out of my mother at the sight of me.

  I pressed my advantage. “You see what happens when you leave me alone on a Sunday?”

  “Jee-yeez,” Alex said. “What happened to you?”

  “This is what the dog shampoo did to me,” I said. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t get sniffy about anybody else’s hair.”

  “Well,” he snickered back, “up until now I’d have agreed with you.”

  I decided to focus instead on my mother’s face. It was frozen, a squinched-up mask of crisscross lines peeking through her fingers.

  “Elvin Bishop,” she muffled through her hands, “no dog shampoo did that to you.”

  “Ah-ah,” I said. “Flea-repelling aromatherapy.”

  “I am afraid it is going to repel a lot more than fleas.”

  She slowly allowed her hands to slide down her face to reveal... a mighty effort to keep from laughing. She was biting so hard on her lip it looked like it might burst.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She stopped fighting. “Elvin, sweetheart,” she spluttered, and rushed me with open arms.

  I ducked, and squirmed past her into the hallway.

  “Come here,” she said, pursuing me.

  Alex wisely got out of the way, flattening himself to the wall before I did it for him.

  When she finally caught up to me, I was a quarter of the way up the stairs and she brought me down like a wildebeest.

  But once she had me, she was a little kinder. She grabbed me, hugged and held on to me in a way that not only surprised me, it made me feel suddenly very, very important, and warmed. And worried.

  “Why do you have to do these things to yourself, ya big nut,” she said.

  “Well, duh,” I said, talking over my shoulder at her because she still had me tackled and pinned from behind. “I think the big nut bit should be your first clue.”

  It was getting just a bit difficult to breathe. My arms were pinned to my sides, the edge of one step was creasing my chest, and another dangerously close to my groin. I wasn’t in a great rush to get up, however.

  “Why did you get permed?” she said close into my ear.

  “It’s not a perm; it’s a wave.”

  “Why did you get waved?”

  “Because I was afraid my hair was going to look like Alex’s hair because of genetics, genetics that you have been deviously and quite sensibly hiding from me for all these years, and I wanted to head it off at the pass.”

  “That’s not what Alex’s hair looks like naturally.”

  “Why would somebody do that to themselves on purpose?”

  “You did yours on purpose.”

  “No, I didn’t, actually.”

  “Whew,” she said. “That’s good. And neither did Alex.”

  Just then the phone rang. From the other room Alex offered to get it, but Ma said no. She kissed me on the back of the head, then got up. “It’s like kissing a Nerf ball,” she said.

  Next thing I knew, Alex was there. I had flopped myself over and was sort of sitting, sort of lying on the stairs.

  “How’s it going?” he said cautiously.

  “Fine. Where’d you take my mother all this time?”

  “We went to church, as you know. Then we went out for some lunch. Then for a walk at the water.”

  I could hear my mother’s phone call going on in the background, weaving in and out of our conversation and making concentration a bit iffy.

  Ya, Brenda, he was here when we got here. I know... horrendous...

  “Out for some lunch, huh? And for a walk by the water? Water is nice. I like water.”

  No, no, he’s fine. As fine as he gets, anyway. You know... he doesn’t tend to cope well....

  “We tried to call you, to invite you, but you weren’t here.”

  I know he does. What can you do about it, though? Oh God, I remember, you cried and cried....

  “Elvin, I want to spend some time with you,” Alex said, interrupting himself, and myself and my mother and Brenda. Compound rudeness.

  “Why would you want to do that?” I said because, really, I wondered why he would want to do that.

  “Because,” he said, but he hesitated too long and I wasn’t about to give him the chance to make up something on the spot.

  “Because maybe what you actually want is to spend time with my mother. Because maybe that is why you came here at all. I don’t have anything to offer you. Maybe you just need to get through me in order to get to my mother and spend time with her.”

  “Elvin?” Ma said as she came back into the room. Her tone was both indignant and sympathetic. She was one of the great multitaskers, my ma. “Are you grilling Alex, just because we were gone for a while today?”

  “You were gone for much more than a little while, I’ll have you know.”

  “You know, it is all right for me to actually go out and do something every once in a while, Elvin. Believe it or not, I do have a life, you know. Or I used to, anyway.”

  “Don’t say that. You did not. You didn’t have a life; you had me.”

  It was getting more serious, my habit of saying things that did not in any way help my cause. I did manage to raise a good hearty laugh out of my uncle, however, which then began my mother laughing, which blended into a comfortable sound that made me uncomfortable, so I joined in just to spoil things.

  The three of us were there laughing, and I
think Ma believed it to be a big, sweet family moment for us because she came right up to me and squeezed me hard and warm, then went over to Alex and squeezed him not so hard but every bit as warm.

  What was going on here, with them? This was giving me the shivers.

  “Anyway,” Ma said, “you’ll be getting your turn tomorrow. Alex wants to take you out for the day.”

  “What?” I asked with too much vigor. “What? Anyway, I can’t. I have school tomorrow, remember?”

  “Not tomorrow. I don’t want you to go to school. I want you to go with Alex.”

  Oh my word.

  She couldn’t want me to skip school. How could she want that? No mother wants that, not even my mother.

  “Mother,” I said dramatically, “you know I cannot skip school tomorrow. I have band tomorrow. You know full well that the band cannot go on without me. So thank you but no thank you; my music is my life. Good night and good-bye and have a safe drive home.”

  “Band?” Alex said, enthused. “Band? You’re in a band? I knew it. You have music in your blood, you know. I was in a band, me and your dad, when we were around twenty, twenty-one, called the Hairy-Handed Gents. We were great. We warmed up once at an outdoor summer concert before a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition. And now you... I just knew it... your dad would be...”

  “He plays the tuba, Alex,” Ma said, as if she were straightening him out.

  He was undeterred. “Tuba, cool, that’s great. I was a bass player, you know, so we’re kind of in that same area there, you and me, giving the music some body.”

  Nothing is more embarrassing than taking praise that is way off the mark. Like fish that comes to your table with a whiff of ammonia, you have to send it back or it will come to haunt you later. Trust me on that.

  “The body they wanted me to bring to the music was the one that fit snugly inside the brass anaconda that is the tuba. I have the traditional tuba body, rather than any aptitude for it. I oom about six times per song, and I pah about five. Sometimes if I’m bored I don’t even blow, I just grunt into the mouthpiece and it sounds pretty much the same. And I can’t even count how many times I have been told that I make virtually the same music every day after lunch without a tuba in sight, and so I should sell the horn and just march along with the band a capella, so to speak.”

  This prompted my mother to swoop toward me with her great mother wingspan extended majestically to come and comfort me whether I liked it or not. Only Alex got to me first.

  He stepped right up to me, stood for a few seconds staring at me with smiling, sad, glassy eyes. Then he put both his hands—which were rather hairy, in fact—on my shoulders and squeezed very hard. Very hard.

  “Ouch,” I said, but very politely since even I could recognize that this was supposed to be a positive thing. I said it like I was just checking. “Ouch?”

  “You are a fine guy, Elvin, and I’m sure a fine musician. The Hairy-Handed Gents would have been proud as proud to have you. Proud as proud.”

  Me and my tuba sounds had silenced a few rooms before. Even brought a few to tears. But the feeling I was getting now, and what I was almost seeing, was beyond that. Ma looked like she was simultaneously having a tooth pulled and watching me accept a Grammy Award. Alex was suddenly choked out of speech altogether.

  “No school tomorrow,” she said softly.

  “Okay,” I said, as much out of fear as anything.

  5 Unmonday

  I WOKE MYSELF UP. I could not remember that ever happening on a school Monday before. When I came down to breakfast, my mother was already gone. That alone was enough of a shock to my system to have me jittering.

  I found my uncle at the kitchen table. He was sitting in front of a plate that held a virtual army of pills and capsules, and half a grapefruit.

  He looked up from his feast. “Hi,” he said, and gestured for me to take my place in front of another plate, which held toast, grapes, orange and grapefruit wedges, and what appeared to be a bowl of plain yogurt.

  “Hi,” I said, and stared at his plate.

  “They are vitamins,” he said. “Vitamins and mineral supplements and herbal stuff and antidepressants, antihistamines and anticoagulants that all combine to keep me ticking. As for your meal, sorry I didn’t whip you up one of my truly legendary pepper and sausage frittatas or my cinnamon nutmeg maple French toast, or my banana lemon fritters, or my—”

  “Stop it,” I said as clearly as I could through the rapids of free-flowing saliva.

  “Sorry,” Alex said, bearing down on his plate and his big glass of water again. “I’m not quite all there yet until I finish my plate in the morning. I hope you’ll bear with me.”

  “I guess,” I said, looking away from his plate toward mine. I thought I might like to trade. “As long as you bear with me. I don’t usually have fruit much before lunchtime. Or at least until I’ve had something dead or inorganic first.”

  He gulped a small fistful of candy-colored capsules. He gulped a big chug of water. “Right. That can’t happen today, though. It’s part of what we’re at. See, if you had your regular breakfast, you’d probably honk.”

  Oh, that didn’t sound good. That could not lead anywhere good. Because anything on the agenda that might clash with my breakfast... would frankly clash with me.

  The best course of action, as in all cases of nasty things we don’t want to confront, was to duck.

  I developed a sudden passion for fruit. I started scoffing orange pieces.

  “We are going to the gym first, Elvin,” Alex said, then immediately consumed more tablets.

  I slowly looked up. I did not stop chewing, but it was an effort. The effort became too much, and I stopped chewing.

  “Oh, don’t look at me with that cow face. This is going to be a great experience for you. For both of us. It is a really great gym. Has an excellent Olympic-length pool, which most of them don’t have, every machine and gizmo imaginable, steam, sauna, whirlpool, the works.”

  This is how completely and instantaneously I was fleeing from this idea. Before I could even run, my mind beat my body to the back door and began banging, banging to get the hell out.

  Alex stared at me quizzically. “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

  Even he could hear it.

  “Your mother’s right, you sure are dramatic,” he said before going and opening the door to let my mind out like the cowardly dog it was.

  Or possibly to let Frankie and Mikie in.

  “There, see,” Mikie said, pointing at me. Everybody but me was animated as I remained stationary, waiting for everything to pass me by and leave me alone.

  “What is that on your head?” Frankie spluttered.

  “Hey gents,” Alex said.

  “Hey Alex,” said Mike.

  “What did you do, Elvin?” said Frank.

  “He got a perm,” said Mike.

  “It is not a perm, it’s... Leave me alone.”

  “Why did you do that?” asked Frank, creeping up closer to me, but very cautiously, as if he could catch this. His tone was of deep concern and bewilderment, as if I had been caught punching myself in the face.

  “He wanted to not look like me,” said Alex as he scooped himself a spoonful of grapefruit and a pill.

  “That is not true,” I said.

  Mike helped. “No, he did it because he wanted to look like you, Franko.”

  Frank stopped advancing on me and turned on Mikie. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Ya, he did that to look like you.”

  “To look like me?” It came out kind of like a roar. “Do I look like that? Is that what I look like?”

  I must have been trying to sound as weak and unconvincing as possible. “I was not.”

  “Good,” Frank said. “Because I don’t look like that. Do I look like that, ever?”

  Mikie started laughing at, probably, everyone’s expense. “Take a break, will you, Frank? You should be honored that Elvin would risk screwing himself up
so badly just trying to be you.”

  “I was not.”

  “Elvin.” Frank was sounding concerned again. “After all the work we have put in, trying to make you presentable, trying to pull you up to standard... I mean, okay, we hadn’t really gotten anywhere but we were trying really hard, and then you go and—”

  Alex had cleaned his plate and was now apparently up and running enough to hear what my friends were saying about me.

  “Do they always talk this way with you right there in the same room?”

  “All the time,” I said.

  “Well,” he said seriously, “that just won’t do.” He sipped water. “It’s no wonder he’s a bit of a mess, you guys,” was how he scolded them for talking negatively about me while I was in the room. “What do you say when he isn’t there, is what I’d like to know.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, Uncle Alex. I guess now I will.”

  I dipped pieces of fruit into yogurt, just to be spiteful, but discovered it was not half bad. My day improved, probably as much as it was going to.

  “Listen,” Frankie said, “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to be cruel about your head and everything, but... jeez, look at that head. What are we going to do about it?”

  “I like my head,” I said. Possibly just to drive him nuts, possibly to work up a little fake dignity, but not possibly because I liked my head.

  “You do not,” he said. “But we are going to be late. Hurry and get ready, and we’ll talk about a plan on the way to school.”

  Well, at least there was that.

  “I am not going to school,” I said, and felt pretty chipper about being able to say it.

  “What? Why, where are you going?”

  Then I remembered where I was going.

  Did you ever think that life was just one great big giant evil seesaw that at best was never going to let you get away with one nice lovely up without immediately jerking you back down, and that at worst had an enormous, hairy, toothless, rotten kid on the other end who never had a birthday or a bike and who miraculously weighed three times as much as you and took turns first keeping you suspended in terror up in the air while he picked his nose, then used his awesome thigh muscles to shoot up in the air and bring you smashing down to the ground so your teeth crunched, and then followed up with the rapid, murderous up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down pumping action as he pounded the seesaw between the ground and your groin over and over while you tried desperately, humiliatingly to hang on to what felt like a live concrete pommel horse ramming you up between the legs to the sound of gorgon laughter at the opposing end of the evil seesaw? Did you ever think that? Well, it is.