by Han Nolan
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: It wasn't so bad. Jason took care of it. He handled it.
"Dad?" I step from the hallway into the living room. "Dad? Where are you?" I head back to the kitchen, passing through the dining room on my way. He's not there. I check his study off the dining room and go around to the front of his desk to make sure he's not hiding under it the way he does sometimes. The room is small and square and jammed with books and stacks of folders filled with writing projects my dad has yet to complete. He's written two books. Both are about Greece. They don't make him much money and he hasn't completed anything new in more than a year. We lived off the money my mom got photographing weddings and occasionally birds. The birds were for a bird watching magazine.
"Dad?" I call again. No answer.
LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh! (Nervous laughter).
I run upstairs and I hear voices coming from the bathroom at the other end of the hallway.
"Dad?"
AUNT BEE: He's all right. Take it easy, Jason.
I hurry down the narrow hallway to the bathroom and push open the door.
CRAZY GLUE: Oh shit!
My dad's sitting up fully dressed with his helmet on in a tub full of water. His radio is plugged into the outlet above our sink, and it's resting on the edge of a plank he's laid across the top of the tub, ready to fall into the water and electrocute him.
CRAZY GLUE: Shit to hell!
"Dad, what are you doing?" I yank the plug out of the wall. "Huh? What are you doing? Are you crazy?" I grab the radio and set it on the toilet lid.
LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh!
CRAZY GLUE: Time to go to the nut house.
AUNT BEE: He's going to kill himself one day.
Dad looks up at me, blinking. I shake my head. "Dad, you can't put the radio near the water. You could kill yourself! Jeez! What were you thinking?"
"I got cold. It's warm in here," he says, unconcerned.
He looks me over. "So you're back from the wars, are you, Apollo? What news have you from the front? Any Furies lurking about?" He presses the sides of his helmet as if to make sure no Furies can get in. "And Athena? Have you brought her with you this time?"
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Tell him Athena's dead. Your mom's dead. That's who he means, isn't it?
AUNT BEE: Tell him no such thing. Tell him you brought him some food.
CRAZY GLUE: Man, your bird heart is flapping like a hundred flaps a second. Sure it's not a hummingbird you've got in your chest?
"Did you hear me, Dad? You can't have a radio on in here."
"But I need the music. I need the violins. It's the only sound that blocks the Furies' voices. They're singing. They're wanting to eat away my brain. Can you hear them?"
Dad presses his hands against his helmet and tries to squeeze it tighter about his head. His round gray eyes stare out at me from behind the masklike pieces of metal that hide his nose and cheeks. "Their song is ear piercing. They're tuned too high. Chalk on a chalkboard, metal scraping stone. You know it. You know their song. You know they're after me." He begins to chant:
"Now by the altar,
Over the victim,
Ripe for the ritual,
Sing this enchantment:
A song without music,
A sword in the senses,
A storm in the heart,
And afire in the brain;
A clamour of Furies
To paralyse reason,
A tune full of terror,
A drought in the soul!"
Dad hugs himself and rocks back and forth, repeating this, faster, and again, faster. A wave of water sloshes onto the floor.
CRAZY GLUE: Here we go! He's revved up now! You'll have to slap him to get him to stop.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Pull the plug! Pull the plug!
AUNT BEE: Shove some food in his mouth!
I kneel down and pull the plug to drain the tub. I shake off my backpack and open it. I pull out Pete's sack lunch and yank it away just before another wave sloshes over the rim. "Dad, would you stop it already?"
"'A clamour of Furies to paralyse reason!' To paralyse reason! To paralyse reason!"
I shove Pete's sandwich toward him. "Here. Eat this."
Dad takes the sandwich and shoves it into his mouth, plastic wrap and all.
LAUGH TRACK: (Laughter).
***
Twenty minutes later Dad has eaten Pete's lunch. The good food calms him. I help him out of his wet clothes, and when I get to his undershirt and pull it off, I find a long red zigzag running the length of his chest. I touch it. It looks like my mom's nail polish.
"Dad? What is this?"
"A wound," he says. He puts his hand over his chest.
"What wound?"
"All wounds. The world's wounds. I'm all wound up in the wounds of the world. They told me to do it."
I ease the helmet off his head, and Dad draws in his breath as if he's in great pain.
"Don't listen to those Furies, Dad. Just because you hear them doesn't mean you have to obey."
He puts his hands over his ears. "They were on the radio. They're in the airwaves. They got through. I had to purify myself with water and a wound, for your mother's sake."
CRAZY GLUE: At least he didn't use a knife. Be grateful for small miracles.
"Mom doesn't need you to do anything for her sake."
"For my sake, I mean. For my sake, to cleanse my sins against your mother."
CRAZY GLUE: Here we go again.
"You didn't kill Mom. I keep telling you. Don't listen to the Furies. You didn't do it. She had a stroke. You weren't even there."
"I should have been there."
"Dad, let's just drop it."
AUNT BEE: You need to talk about it sometime. I worry about you. A boy should cry for his mother.
CRAZY GLUE: Aunt Bee, I mean this in the nicest way—shut up!
I refill the tub with hot water and Dad has the first bath he's had in about a month. He looks better when he's all scrubbed and in a set of clean clothes. He's lost about twenty pounds, though, so his chest is lean and pale, and I can count all his ribs.
CRAZY GLUE: Have you taken a look at your own rib cage lately?
My dad's cheeks and eyes are hollowed out, and his hair has grown up and out—a white flame consuming his fragile skull. He has the look of someone who is being hunted, a wide-eyed, wary, hungry look. He creeps, slightly hunched, along the hallway, stopping at each doorway and tensing as if he's expecting something to jump out at him.
I get him comfortable on the living room couch and cover him up in lots of blankets. Then I sit down in a chair nearby, wrapped in my own pile of blankets, and read to him. I'm reading him The Odyssey, the same book he read to me when I was nine.
After I've been reading for a while, Dad interrupts me. "Did you see what I wrote today?" he asks.
I look up from the book. He sits across from me wearing aluminum foil over his ears because I've hidden the helmet.
"No. Did you write something?"
AUNT BEE: Thank goodness! Maybe the meds are starting to work. He's writing!
CRAZY GLUE: Hold your horses! We don't know what he's written yet.
"It's on my desk in my study." Dad nods and one of his foil ears drops off. "Didn't you see it? It's the story of everything." He quickly wraps the foil back around his ear.
I get to my feet and head for the study. I hold my breath. Is he really writing again?
SEXY LADY: I just know it's going to be good, whatever it is.
I grab Dad's old work-in-progress folder off the top of his desk and take it out to the living room. I hold it up. "Is this it?"
Dad's eyes light up. "Yes! That's the story of what happened—how I had to finish writing my book and how I couldn't go to the mountain." He swats the air. "So you Furies had better read it and leave me alone." He gets onto his knees on the couch, tangling himself with the blankets. While he wrestles with them and shouts at the Furies, I open the folder and read the top page. It's written in pe
ncil. It begins: Word whaf fork mountain mouth rain fraibe frube. I scan the page. It doesn't get any better. My heart sinks. I look at my dad. His eyes shine with hope.
"What do you think? Will it save me? Will they leave me alone now?"
I've never lied to my dad before, but I look him straight in the eyes and say, "It's perfect, Dad. It explains everything."
Chapter Six
I KNOW WHAT you're thinking. Man, is that dude crazy or what? Jason's dad needs a doctor. He needs help.
CRAZY GLUE: Good guess, Sherlock.
He's really not that bad. He'll get better. He always does. It's just that he was off his meds too long. Now he's back on them, so he'll be fine. It's okay. I mean, what else can I do, right? If he doesn't get better, he has to stay in the hospital, permanently. That's what my mom told me. So I ask you, could you put your dad away like that? Yeah, I didn't think so. And I'm guessing you think I'm a little crazy, too.
CRAZY GLUE: Because you talk to us.
Right.
AUNT BEE: But you know we're just a figment of your imagination, so it's okay.
That's right.
SEXY LADY: We're just voices in your head.
Right again.
CRAZY GLUE: Just like your dad's.
No!
LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh!
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: He doesn't actually hear us. That's the difference. We're not coming out of the radio or rising up out of the ground. Exactly!
CRAZY GLUE: Glad we got that all straightened out—again. Yeah! Me too.
So, I'm supposed to go to those shrink-wrap lunch sessions twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. I go two more times, and both times I don't say much of anything. Shelby's so irritated, she looks ready to choke me, and even Haze and Pete, I think, are getting frustrated. Dr. Gomez is harder to read. I don't know what she's thinking, but I refuse to talk. They can't make me, can they?
CRAZY GLUE: I'm with you, buddy.
AUNT BEE: You can't get help if you won't speak up and ask for it.
CRAZY GLUE: Who says he needs help? He's fine. He's handling it.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Oh, is he really? He's falling asleep in all his classes because of those suffocating nightmares he keeps having that scare the bejeezus out of him and keep him awake the rest of the night.
CRAZY GLUE: He wets the bed every time he has one of those dreams. That's what keeps him up—doing the laundry.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Whatever. He's not sleeping, he's not getting all his homework done, and now he's gone and told Mr. O'Hagan in front of the entire class that an isosceles triangle is a private matter between his Greek cousin, Isosceles, and his wife and mistress.
LAUGH TRACK: Ha, ha.
Crazy Glue pushed me! I never should have said that. O'Hagan looked like he wanted to kill me.
CRAZY GLUE: It got a laugh, didn't it? The boy did it. He got a laugh!
SEXY LADY: Funny men are hot.
If I weren't so tired and cranky these days, I wouldn't have said it. And what was that mathematical equation O'Hagan was doing on the board? Something about falling bodies? Falling bodies? I totally slept through that.
Now I'm pushing through the cafeteria line, hurrying to get my food because Shelby has called an emergency meeting. It's Wednesday. Dr. Gomez is at another school on Wednesdays, but Shelby says she lets us meet in her office if we want to. I have half a mind not to show up.
AUNT BEE: Shelby, Pete, and Haze are the closest thing to friends you have, Jason. Don't blow it. Just try to say something in there besides "I agree with you on that." Smile, at least.
CRAZY GLUE: Jason's pissed because the paper came out today and he wants to stay in the cafeteria to hear what kids have to say about his Mouse column.
AUNT BEE: Just go on, Jason.
I hustle down the long corridor toward Dr. Gomez's office. When I get there, I find I'm the last one to arrive. Pete and Haze are reading the school paper over Shelby's shoulders. Pete's in his usual white T-shirt and jeans, only the shirt has a large purple peace sign on it, and Haze is wearing a sombrero and a striped poncho that looks a hundred years old and like it's never been washed. I've discovered he loves costumes. Shelby's dressed all in green and looks like a pixie with boobs. All three look up when I enter.
"I was just saying I don't think it's Pete," Shelby says when she sees me.
I step inside. "Huh?" I lower myself onto a pillow, trying not to spill my tray of food. I've missed having dinner three nights in a row 'cause of dealing with Dad, and I'm starving.
"Mouse," Shelby says. "I no longer think Pete's Mouse. If he were Mouse, he would have told Mortified Guy to join this group. He would have told him to talk to his dad."
"Why? What's it say? I haven't picked up the paper yet."
CRAZY GLUE: Very clever, Mouse. And you look so innocent, too.
Haze laughs. "Oh man, you've got to hear this. It's so screwball." He notices his jeans are sliding off his butt and uses the wall to support his back while he pulls his pants up and tightens his belt.
"It's not screwball," Pete says. "It's just different."
"Guys, just let me read it, okay?" Shelby adjusts the paper, holding it higher and out from her face more. Then she squiggles her butt on the pillow the way she does when she's about to make an announcement or say something important about herself. She begins:
"Dear Mouse:
I was coming back from somewhere (I won't say where or you'd maybe guess who I am), and I got home early. I headed upstairs to my room—I'm real quiet, not on purpose or anything, but our house is carpeted, so you can't hear anybody walking around—and when I pass my parents' room, I see my dad through the opening in the door. He's got women's clothes on. I don't know what to think. He doesn't know I saw him. Now I can't look him in the face. He disgusts me. I hate him. I don't want to live in the same house with him anymore.
Mortified Guy."
Shelby stops and looks over the paper at me.
"Oh wow," I say. I feel myself starting to blush, so I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth.
"Yeah, and here's what Mouse wrote," Shelby continues.
"Dear Mort:
I don't know why you're writing to me. I'm nobody. I'm just Mouse, but since you did write, Ill answer. Yeah, so that's messed up! I know I should probably tell you to talk to your dad about what you saw. If you want to do the right thing, I guess that's what you should do, but if some one told me to do that, I'd probably tell them to blow it out their—. If he was ready to talk about it, he'd come to you, right? But you do have to live in the same house. It's probably good if you could talk to him, you know, like at least say, "Pass the butter," that kind of thing, without wanting to strangle him for not being the guy you thought he was. Do you hate him because he dresses in women's clothes, or do you hate him just in a general sort of way because he stands for everything that you don't, or do you hate him because maybe you're afraid this could be you in another twenty years? Have you always hated him? Did you ever get along? When you were a little kid, did you love him? If you did, whatever reason you loved him is still there inside you and inside him. So I don't know. I'd just remember that. I'd just hold on to that memory if you can.
Mouse."
Shelby slaps the paper on her lap and Pete and Haze both startle. "What kind of stupid answer is that? Telling Mortified Guy his father's messed up!" She looks around at all of us. "He should talk to his father, no maybes about it. Mortified saw him, so the father doesn't get a choice about when he should 'come out.' It's not when the dad's ready to talk; it's 'Talk to me now, because I saw you. I saw you wearing Mom's clothes!'"
"Whoa!" Haze says. "Take it down a notch, would ya? You're way too intense."
CRAZY GLUE: Yeah she is.
Pete shrugs. "Sometimes there are no easy answers. I think that's what Mouse was trying to say."
"Aha! It is you! I knew it!" Shelby says, turning toward Pete and shoving him with both hands.
Pete falls sideways, laughin
g. Then he sits back up and his round face gets serious. He rubs his hand back and forth over his bald head. "It's not me. I'd tell you if it was."
"Promise?" Shelby kicks off her clogs and wiggles her bare toes.
Pete holds up his right hand. "Promise."
"Hey, why doesn't anyone ever think Mouse is me?" Haze asks. He nods at me. "Or Pope-a-Dope."
CRAZY GLUE: Look real innocent now, Mouse.
"Get serious," Shelby says. Then she stops smiling, brushes a wavy mass of hair out of her face, and wiggles her butt on the pillow again.
CRAZY GLUE: Gotta love that wiggle.
"So, anyway, speaking of no easy answers, I wanted to talk to you all about something, and I couldn't wait because it's bugging me and I can't sleep. Also, I wasn't sure I could say what I wanted to say in front of Gomez."
LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh!
I set down the dry hamburger I had been gnawing on and struggle to my feet. "Look, I know I'm not really a part of you three. I shouldn't be here if you're going to say private stuff. Dr. Gomez isn't here, so ... I think I'm gonna just..." I turn my head toward the door.
Before I can say anything more, Shelby jumps to her feet and blurts, "I'm really, really sorry. I know I come on too strong. I know I've got strong opinions and I scare people off, but I want you to stay. You're a part of us now. And I need all the friends and support I can get. So even if you don't say much—just stay." Shelby's eyes look glassy and her mouth is turned down like she's about to cry.
CRAZY GLUE: Way to go, goob.
AUNT BEE: Bless my soul, she said you're one of them. You've got friends, Jason. It's been so long.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Calm down, calm down—let's not all get too excited.
CRAZY GLUE: There goes that hummingbird heart of his again.
Pete gets onto his knees and sits back on his heels. "Jason, come on—sit back down. Socks just has a big mouth sometimes." He shrugs. "But it's cool. We accept people for who they are in here. That's the rule, and we all say what we think, you know? It goes both ways. You can tell us what you think, too."
CRAZY GLUE: Socks? Her nickname's Socks?
