Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  I know that there is still time left in the day and that I have no good excuse.

  I know where I must go.

  * * *

  I am greeted at the door by Mozart. Not the man, of course, but his music. It is a symphony I know to be one of my father’s favorites. It is playing louder than my mother would ever tolerate and a sure sign that she is not home. It is a swelling, breathing, beating, lilting, soaring sound that is too big for the structure in which I was raised and the memories that it holds. It is an uncontainable sound with such force that it nearly takes my breath away when I open the door.

  I am reminded, of all people, of Brittany Kline, on the first day of school, nominating Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as her favorite historical figure because he made the world beautiful in a way no one ever had before. I wonder where she is and what has happened to her. For the first time, I worry about her.

  I call out to announce myself, but the music is too loud and there is no answer. I close the door and kick off my shoes. My father’s voice is in the kitchen and I head that direction. It turns out that they are not in the kitchen but out on the back deck, which adjoins the kitchen through a sliding door that has been left wide open. It explains why the music is so loud.

  I am reminded of the running battle between my father and Tilly over the volume of her stereo. It was Tilly’s preferred way of picking a fight and my father’s best excuse for screaming at her for everything that was wrong between them when nothing was overtly wrong between them.

  Tilly’s weapons of choice often came from the classic, proto-punk, genre. Frequently, whenever I returned from Tulane for the summers or on Christmas break, the good china along with the rest of the house was vibrating to the Ramones or the Clash or the Sex Pistols exploding down the hallway from my sister’s bedroom. On these occasions, my father could be found fully engaged in one of two primary battle modes: naked aggression and passive aggression.

  The naked aggression mode entailed mostly screaming at Tilly in her doorway, bracing himself against the sonic maelstrom as she reclined calmly on her bed or sat with her arms crossed, ensconced in her hand-me-down yellow vinyl beanbag. My father’s naked aggression campaign found its apotheosis when he finally stormed into Tilly’s room, seized her amplifier, yanked the power cord out of the wall, and clipped off the plug with a pair of pliers, an incident which prompted Tilly to leave home for the first time and sent my mother into paroxysms of worry, guilt and rage and which, in turn, set my parents at each other with an extra zeal for accusation and blame laying. I was blissfully back in school at the time, probably stoned and marveling at what a wonderful world we live in. But I know the event as if I had been there; Operation Sudden De-amplification has found a permanent place in the unspoken lore of my family.

  Nevertheless, aside from Operation Sudden De-Amplification, my father’s naked aggression tactics – mainly yelling and arm-waving – rarely accomplished anything other than giving Tilly all of the satisfaction she could have ever asked for.

  My father’s passive aggressive mode was not, in the end, a great deal more effective than the naked aggression, but was infinitely more entertaining. It was psychological combat at its most insidious; right out of the Black Ops playbook for child rearing. Rather than fighting his daughter and her music, he did his best to embrace them, or to at least to look as though he was embracing them. The passive-aggressive strategy entailed relaxed, hands-in-the-pockets, forays into enemy territory for the single purpose of expressing approval of Tilly’s musical identity and, worse, asking questions of keen interest.

  “What’s the name of this song?! I said… what’s the name of this song?! I like it! Yeah, it’s a real toe-tapper! Is this them?! The Clash?! I might have to listen to this on my own some time! Do you mind if I borrow it so I can make a tape of it?! Yeah, man! I’d like to play this in the car on the way to work!”

  The early results were impressive. Tilly began to keep the music down to a level that was at least a compromise, if not a capitulation. Encouraged, one night my father rather greedily pushed for more territory and began singing the Rock the Casbah chorus as he opened up the wine for dinner. Tilly hated it.

  “It’s fuck the Casbah, dad. They’re really singing fuck the Casbah, okay? They just can’t print the words on the album like they really are ‘cause they want the radio play. Okay? If you don’t know the words, you shouldn’t even sing the song. Okay?”

  “Oh,” he would say casually, not taking the profanity as bait and not looking at his daughter as he popped the cork out of the bottle and filled his glass. “Sorry, Sweetie. So the words are… ‘The sharee-ee-ee-eef don’t like it. Fuck the Casbah! Fuck the Casbah!’ Hmmm. You’re right. That’s much better. Much angrier. Really adds some punch. Reminds me a little of the Sex Pistols. At least some of their earlier stuff.”

  Tilly stormed out of the kitchen and skipped dinner. She spent the rest of the night sulking in her room depriving my father of the opportunity to appreciate her taste in music by using her headphones. Aside from the understated shit-eating grin, my father took his victory in stride, communicating to us in all of his usual unspoken ways – his expressions, his manner, his abstention from full participation in ordinary conversation – that he and he alone among us understood life’s mysteries.

  But my sister proved impervious to manipulation and my father’s victory was short-lived. The next morning Tilly treated us to a high-decibel dose of my father’s new favorite song, Rock the Casbah, spliced with snippets from one of his older favorite toe-tappers, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; the chorus of one – Fuck the Casbah! Fuck the Casbah! – handing off, again and again, to the chorus of the other – Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Freude, schöner Götterfunken! (Joy, beautiful spark of Gods! Daughter of Elysium, Joy, beautiful spark of Gods!) – in a bone-rattling nihilistically spiritual, toxically sarcastic train wreck that prompted my father’s abrupt return to the tactics of naked aggression and a transference of the satisfied, shit-eating grin from him back to her.

  No one was less a daughter of Elysium than my sister. Elysium was a different address entirely, maybe someplace a little closer to Cleveland. Certainly not our house. No one reveled in that fact more than Tilly. No one resented it more than my father. It has always been my suspicion that it was somewhere in the Casbah-Elysium defeat that the seeds of Operation Sudden De-amplification, still months away, were sown.

  I stop at the kitchen sink and look out at them through the window. Ben is hunched over the grill wearing one of mom’s aprons. Dad is looming over his shoulder, one hand behind his back, the other holding a glass of wine.

  “Just slather it on, Ben. Just… that’s it. More. Just like you’re painting a fence.”

  “More whiskey? Mom will be mad if I have whiskey.”

  “Whiskey sauce. It’s not whiskey, exactly.”

  “It says whiskey, dad. It says so. It says whiskey. W-H-I-S…”

  “That means it has a whiskey flavor. Go ahead and cover the whole steak, now.”

  “Okay, dad.”

  “Good job. That’s the way. When did you become a professional grill man?”

  “Dad. I’m not a grill man. I’m a boy man.”

  “Okay, boy man. Let’s flip these puppies over.”

  “Dad, these are cows. These are not puppies.”

  “I know that, son. Just an expression. Take the tongs. Here. Just like they’re scissors. That’s it. Now, grab onto the steak and turn it over.”

  Flames leap out of the grill with a loud hissing and Ben leaps back four feet.

  “Whoa! Dad! You didn’t tell me!”

  “Oh, now, you’re okay, you’re okay. Step back up here with me. That’s it.”

  “Ha ha!” Ben is bouncing with excitement. “More, more, more.”

  “Okay, Grill Man. Do the next one and get ready.”

  Ben turns the steak over, stretching forward carefully. He is so far back, that he can barely reach the grill and alm
ost drops the steak on the deck. Dad grabs his wrist and pushes the meat onto the grill. Again with the leaping flames.

  “Whoa! Ha ha!” Ben bounces. “Dad, do we have French fries?”

  “You put them in the oven yourself. You know we have French fries.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  “Do we have enough French fries for you and for me? For both of us?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. We’ve got enough fries to last us ‘til Christmas.”

  “Christmas?!”

  “Oh, shit…shoot…me and my big mouth. That’s a long time from now, Benny.” He takes the tongs from Ben and pushes the steaks around on the grill. “Tonight is bachelors’ night. Yessir, a couple of man-sized whiskey barbequed steaks and some golden French fries and we will be living like kings!”

  “Christmas presents for the kings!” shouts Ben.

  My father laughs and takes another drink and reclaims his vantage point over Ben’s shoulder. “What say we just keep focused on these steaks? Okay?” He pats Ben on the back and points to the bowl of marinade on the railing. “Get goin’ on that sauce, Grill Man. Gotta’ do both sides.”

  I want to turn and walk quietly back to the door, grab my shoes and slip out undetected. Not because I do not want to see them, but because I feel like I have stumbled onto a perfect moment between father and son. It is something reverential in me that makes me want to leave and, at the same time, that keeps me silent in the doorway. I have my own memories like this. They are precious and delicate slices of time frozen in my mind. It would have taken so little – the smallest intrusion – to ruin the intimacy of those moments. What now transpires before me at the grill is not my memory, it is Ben’s memory. It is my father’s memory. I am not a part of it. And yet I am part of it, and it is my memory too. This is home. This is my father and my brother cooking steaks out on the back deck. Tell me about your family, someone will ask one day. Tell me about your father. This is one memory to answer those questions and it is perfect just the way it is.

  “David!”

  It is Ben who sees me first, dropping the basting brush with a full load of whiskey sauce marinade. It ricochets off the edge of the grill and sends a fat, orange tongue of goop across the deck.

  “Well, well,” says dad. “Look who’s here.”

  My brother is all over me with his irrepressible exuberance. It is like wrestling a small bear and I cannot help but think of Mae with some compassion. His strength is unusual for Downs Syndrome teens, who tend to be underdeveloped in the upper body. Among his very few physical blessings are my father’s shoulders. After some predictable bullying at school, my father has insisted on weight training at least twice a week since Ben was ten. By God, no one is going to push my boy around without getting what’s coming to them. The problem is that Ben does not know what to do with his arms and shoulders except hug people. Aggression can be a problem with Downs Syndrome kids, but never with Ben. If he ever kills anyone, it will be by loving them to death.

  “Presents! Presents!” He leaps and claps and wraps himself around me again.

  “Presents?”

  “Christmas presents! I get a guitar! Mom is giving me a guitar!”

  “A guitar? What are you talking about, Grill Man? This is bachelor’s night. You don’t get presents on bachelor’s night!” I wink at my father who raises his glass in salute. “You get grilled steaks and French fries on bachelor’s night. Have you made my steak?”

  Ben lets go of me and stares as the machinery grinds my words into meaning.

  “Well have you?”

  Ben steps in and pulls my face close to his. His cheek is soft and doughy.

  “They have whiskey on them,” he whispers. “Don’t tell mom. Okay, David?” His slanted eyes are as big and round as he can make them, as if his entire future rides on my cooperation.

  “You’re the Grill Man. I won’t tell. But we bachelors love our whiskey sauce.”

  My brother is suddenly incandescent. He bounces twice and leaps back to the grill, looking for the basting brush. Dad wipes up the mess and hands him the brush.

  “I hope you like a little dust with your whiskey sauce,” dad says.

  “That’s the only way to eat steak.”

  “There’s only two, but they’re big ones.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Glass of wine?”

  “Set me up.”

  “Good. You can report back to your mother that I’m serving an excellent Shiraz.”

  “Dad…”

  “Relax,” he chuckles. “She tells you to check up on me and she tells me that I need to invite you for dinner because you seem…how did she put it…odd lately. It’s her way of taking care of everyone I suppose.” He hands me a glass of wine. “It’s all really about feeling guilty for just picking up and leaving.”

  “You seem to be managing fine.”

  “You betcha’. Ben and I are having a hell of time. Aren’t we Ben?”

  Dinner with my dad and brother provides the first genuine distraction from my life that I have had all day. Ben, sans apron, is wearing his Buckeye athletic ensemble – the red sweatpants with that determined-looking legume on the ass, the Go Buckeyes! tee shirt, and the Ohio State baseball hat mom will never let him wear at the table. He wants to talk football and so we do. He talks about Jim Tressel like he is Ben’s personal fairy godmother. Names like Tony Gonzales, Stanley White, and Rob Schoenhoft roll off his tongue like the apostles. The Schoenhofter! Ben likes to say in his best Austrian accent. I am confident that in Ben’s head, he sounds just like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  In any other context, this is a subject that makes me want to poke my own eyes out just so there will be something else to talk about. But Ben is so enthusiastic and so animated in giving me the low down on his favorite players, that the conversation is irresistible and so thoroughly engaging that I successfully resist over-indulging the notion that my father has found in Ben what he was never able to find in me. Ben has become the son who loves to camp and fish, the son who loves touch football in the back yard, the son who talks a mean game of armchair quarterback. He’s even learning to golf. The familiar feelings of inadequacy are sure to hit me later. But for now, it is the best I have felt all day. When Ben starts referring to himself in the third person – Grill Man is gonna get himself some more fries! – Dad and I cannot stop laughing.

  After dinner Ben and I do the dishes. Dad opens another bottle of wine and goes out back to clean the grill. I look at him through the kitchen window, glass in one hand, wire brush in the other, calmly doing his work, pausing to take in the evening, back to work, pausing to take an interest in a lone chickadee alighting on the feeder, back to work. I watch him, letting the water run, letting Ben prattle on as he stacks dirty dishes in the sink. I am unable to pry my attention from this iconic scene, so ancient and enduring in my memory. And then the grill is clean and the lid is closed and he stands there, like some marbleized monument, his back to me, soaking greater meaning in from all corners of darkened creation beyond the back yard and appreciating it like no other human alive can appreciate it. This is my father and I am home.

  “You’re falling behind, David.” Ben dumps a handful of silverware in the sink.

  “Sorry. I’ll catch up. How’s school going?”

  “Good. Miss Daley says I’m smart.”

  “You are smart.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “You are. Does she have you reading something good?”

  “Books. We read books when I’m there, David.”

  “Oh. Books.”

  “David?”

  “Yes? Hand me that plate there.”

  “When is Tilly coming back?”

  “I don’t know, Ben. Someday.”

  “Someday soon?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  “Will she be here tomorrow, David?”

  “No.”

  “Will she be here when Christmas comes?”r />
  “I don’t know. Do you miss her?”

  “Yes. Grill Man misses her a lot!”

  “Me too.”

  “Does mom miss her too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does dad miss her too?”

  “I’m sure he does. In his own way.”

  “Not as much as Grill Man does, that’s for darn sure!”

  Ben disappears to watch television. I amble out to the deck and lean against the railing, surveying the yard awash in the warm yellow glow of the house lights.

  “Your swallow house is crooked,” I say, pointing at a pole at the edge of the yard, rising at a seventy-degree angle out of the cotoneasters.

  “Mmm hmm. How are things going, David?”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “Well, your mother thinks that there is something wrong.”

  “She likes to worry.”

  “That she does. That she does. She’s very good at that. More wine?”

  “No. Thanks. I’m driving.”

  “Mmm. … How’s Mae?”

  “Good, good. Working a lot on this really big case. I talked to her earlier today. We were going to come over together but she’s just slammed.”

  “Mmm. … Her head healing okay?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s fine.”

  “Good. … How’s the school?”

  “Oh. It’s okay.”

  “Problems?”

  I can feel the words coming together in my head, the sounds pooling on my tongue, ready to come out. Problems? Holy shit do I have problems. Do you want me to begin with getting fired or maybe my impending indictment for possession of narcotics, or maybe I could just jump straight into the suspicions of sexually assaulting a student who is now missing. Did I mention this is all going to cost a fucking fortune? I feel like I am standing on the edge of a cliff and it is a very, very long way down.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” I say with a false but believable confidence, desperately wanting to believe my own words.