Mean Dads for a Better America

by Tom Shillue

  Catherine was now my serious girlfriend, but I still had that senior self-absorption going on. One Friday night Jennifer’s parents were away and she invited a bunch of the “art majors” over for a party. Catherine wanted me to go with her, but I told her to go by herself and I would meet her there—I was determined to arrive as an individual, not as a couple.

  When I got to Jennifer’s house, Catherine was there, but she didn’t say hello to me. She had a kind of hollow expression, and when I saw her I remember thinking that she looked like a sleepwalker, like she had just seen a ghost. I thought she was a little miffed that I had wanted to arrive alone. I went to another room to see who was at the party and say my hellos. When I returned a few minutes later she was gone. I looked around for her.

  “Oh, she’s gone,” I was told. “She was acting weird. She left.” So I got in my mom’s car and drove out to find her.

  This is what I wrote about that night in my diary:

  March 14th, I must say, Catherine is really the best thing I’ve had in my life. Just looking at her photograph right now makes me feel a lot of things. Last night, she had what I think is called a nervous breakdown. What a scary word. It looks scary just to write it. I was at the party. I ran out. I saw her walking down the side of the road very fast looking straight ahead, not focusing on anything. I pulled my car up on the island. I got out and ran to her, but she didn’t turn her head. I had to grab her arm. She began crying immediately.

  I hugged her and asked her why, why she didn’t look at me, why she wasn’t talking to me. “I don’t know,” she said. She must have said that 15 times straight in a row. She went on and on talking about how she hated parties, hated this and that, and was afraid of the moon because it was cut in half. When I heard her talk like that, I was definitely scared. I didn’t know what to think. If somebody else had heard her they would have been sure that she was mentally ill. Technically, she might be. So, I stayed out with her all that night.

  I knew something was very wrong with her, but I didn’t know exactly what. I got her back in the car and drove and rolled the windows down, letting the cool air blow on us. I thought to myself, maybe if she gets some fresh air, it will wake her up and she will snap out of it. When it got too cold, I rolled up the windows, and Catherine began to talk in very fast bursts. She made no sense to me. I rolled the windows down again and let the cold air rush through the car. Although I wasn’t sure why, I put a lot of faith in fresh air.

  Eventually I drove back to my house and parked in my driveway. I turned off the engine and focused on her. I tried to listen.

  Her fast talking become slow talking, and eventually she put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep for a few minutes at a time. Then she’d wake up and start talking again. I stayed in the Chevy Monza with her in my driveway until sunrise. By then she was calm, and we were both delirious. I thought about taking her into my kitchen and making her some breakfast, explaining everything to my parents, but I wasn’t sure I knew enough about what was happening to explain anything. I should have done this. Instead, I backed the car up and pulled away, and drove her home. I walked her to her door and told her to get some rest. She promised she would. I didn’t kiss her good-bye. She slipped in quietly and closed the door behind her. Maybe she would sleep it all off, I thought. Maybe it was all over. But I knew it wasn’t.

  When I returned home my parents were in their bathrobes making coffee in the kitchen. My father wanted to know where the hell I had been all night. And what the hell I thought I was doing. That we’d been over this before and that he’d said no more late nights. I understood his ire.

  “I was in the driveway until about thirty minutes ago,” I said.

  “You were in our driveway?”

  “Just sitting there, with Catherine. We were talking.”

  “And you stayed here in our driveway, just talking until seven in the morning and you just drove her home . . . that’s your story?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t believe it, but it doesn’t matter because you’re not going out again. You’re done.”

  My mother was puzzled. “You were in our driveway? What were you doing out there?” she asked.

  “Go to bed,” said my dad, cutting her off. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what I was doing out there all night. Probably something that resembled the lyrics of a certain Meat Loaf song. I wanted to correct the record, but felt I couldn’t because I would have had to explain what had happened to Catherine, and I wasn’t sure myself. It was too complicated. I went upstairs to sleep. Maybe when I woke up the whole thing would be over, and I could just be grounded like a normal kid.

  When I woke up it was noon and I had to get to a choral concert at a nearby junior high school, so I put on a hot-pink shirt buttoned to the top and my tux jacket and went off to the concert. But before the concert I drove to Catherine’s. She was awake and alone. Catherine was writing and sketching on a big pad of paper, and trying to explain some theory, something that seemed a little crazy. But I didn’t have time to think about her sketches—I had to get to my concert. I told Catherine to come with me; we got in my car and drove to the school. I walked her into the auditorium and found her a seat.

  I was a little late to the music room, but my director didn’t say anything. I was supposed to wear black and white, but I had worn the hot-pink shirt. I really don’t know why I had made that decision. I suddenly had no desire whatsoever to stand out and be different. Why did I need attention all the time? What good was it? All of a sudden I didn’t want to be unique or exciting or radical or anything at all. I just wanted to be normal, and I wanted Catherine to be normal when that concert was over.

  While we were singing I noticed Catherine get up out of her seat and walk out of the auditorium. I tried to concentrate on the music for the last few songs, but it was nearly impossible, and as soon as the curtain closed I raced off stage left and began searching for her. I went into the choral room, the art room, and then walked down the hallway where I spotted her in the band room. She was rearranging everything, placing the chairs and the instruments in a new configuration. They were in neat rows, the two sections facing each other. Some of the music stands were arranged flat, with their trays horizontal; some were standing vertical. It was all very deliberate.

  “These have to be this way,” she said. “They are better this way. Everything will sound better this way.”

  “Catherine, we have to go,” I said.

  She looked into my eyes, reassuringly, and said, “I liked the way you sang.” I felt humbled by her compliment, mostly because, at that moment, she looked so at peace, so wise. All of a sudden I felt like the manic one, trying so desperately to figure out what had Catherine change and become moody. She was fine now—I was the one on edge.

  Some of the other kids in the chorus were walking by the room, looking in at us. I felt as if I was about to be caught, figured out, so I left the chairs in their strange configuration and walked Catherine to my car.

  I did some more driving around with the windows down. I thought it had worked the first night, but its power was waning. She looked exhausted, so I took her home again. I continued to keep her condition, and my worries about her, a secret.

  I went to her apartment again a few days later without a plan. I thought about my options—perhaps another one of my windy drives. It was still the only remedy at my disposal. Catherine stuck her head out of her door like a squirrel and motioned “Come in” with her hand, then darted back inside, leaving the door open. I went inside and she was standing in the middle of her living room. She had all the shades pulled down. The song “Red, Red Wine” by UB40 was playing softly. Catherine had filled everything glass in her apartment that could hold liquid with red-colored water. All the glasses, bowls, jars—anything glass.

  “They’re clean. Everything’s clean,” she said with conviction.

  This was it. If I doubted it before, I was now sure. She was not well. She had gone crazy, or she was i
n the midst of some kind of crazy spell. My heart was pounding, but I didn’t want to upset the mood she had set: various candles glowed behind her, which she had also carefully arranged.

  “It looks nice,” I said. “Did it take a long time?”

  “No, not at all,” she said, looking at me puzzled. “Not at all. It had to be done. I had to do it. It was easy. I love this song, don’t you? It helped me sleep last night.”

  I moved to the couch and we both sat and talked for a while. Mostly I listened to her talk; she still had many theories to parse. I noticed “Red, Red Wine” was on endless repeat. She had recorded it as a loop onto a cassette tape. Whatever was happening with her, it was certainly making her very resourceful. I wondered about my next move. Could a boyfriend check a girlfriend into a mental hospital?

  Then her dad walked in. He’d been out all day and this was the first he’d seen of her “red” project.

  “What in God’s name is going on? Goddamnit! What in GOD’s NAME?” he screamed.

  “Don’t pour it out, Dad. It’s cleaning everything. Everything has to be cleaned!”

  “You are talking nonsense, and it’s going to stop! You’ve been talking nonsense for two days straight. You’re going to clean all this up right now!”

  “I can’t clean up yet. Not until everything’s clean,” she explained.

  He walked right up to her in the middle of the room. “Snap! The HELL! OUT OF IT!” he yelled, slapping her hard across the face. I stood up but I didn’t move from my spot. I wanted to run and grab him and be the hero, but I froze.

  Catherine looked down to the floor and held her cheek. She didn’t look scared or upset, but like she was thinking intently on a math problem. Then she calmly walked to her bedroom.

  “Goddamnit!” he said. “Look at this place!”

  “I can help clean this up,” I offered.

  “No, you go. I’ll do it.”

  “She needs help,” I blurted out. He looked at me, and his face softened immediately. “I think she needs help,” I repeated.

  He took a deep breath and muttered, “Yeah.”

  *

  Three days later the doctor called me at home and asked me to come in. When I went in to the hospital, Catherine’s family was sitting in the downstairs lobby. I awkwardly told them I was going up to meet with the doctor.

  The doctor had a beautiful, spacious office. She told me that Catherine had experienced a very serious breakdown, and she was going to need a long stay in the hospital, but that she would get better. “Based on the work we’ve done with her, and her writing, you are a source of calm in her life right now, and we would love to make you part of her recovery. Would you be comfortable with that?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. I felt so relieved. I’d never liked hospitals, but this hospital seemed like a beautiful place. A weight had lifted off my shoulders. There was now a whole ward of professionals who were able to do what I thought was an impossible task just a few days before.

  “I’m going to take you in to see her. She is heavily medicated, so it may be a shock to see her in this state. She’s going to be lethargic, but these drugs are needed to help her remain calm and rest.”

  She was sitting in an easy chair in the psych ward when I walked in. She was barely there. She managed a smile when she saw me, but her eyelids were half closed. If I had seen her like this a week before, I would have been horrified. But now I was just glad she was safe.

  Before I left that day, I met with the doctor again. She asked if we could set up a schedule for me to come every day after school to visit, which I was more than happy to do. I felt completely up to the task. I wanted to be of help in any way I could. I would have expected to feel burdened by the responsibility, but it was just the opposite. I was thrilled to be relieved of the ugly burden of self-absorption. All I’d done for two years was think about myself.

  I went home and told my parents everything. About the nervous breakdown, about why I stayed out all night in the driveway with Catherine. About why I’d been sneaking around and taking her for drives, about why I’d been afraid to tell them anything. In what shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but did at the time, they were completely understanding. When I finished, my dad put his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t want him to. He understood. I welled up, nodded my head, and walked to my room. I didn’t burst out crying until I got to the top of the stairs. I slept well for the first time in days.

  When I woke up everything was different. I was so grateful for the support of my parents, for Catherine’s doctor, and for the support of the whole mental health establishment. Adults were pretty cool! I was done with my immature need to be alternative, to strive for attention and push the envelope. How nice it was for those weeks and months to think about nothing except the well-being of another person.

  Catherine and I didn’t last forever obviously, but I was there as she got better. And she did get better. While I know I was of help to her during that brief period in her life, she probably helped me more in the long run. I look at my time with her as the beginning of my adulthood, when I first learned to look beyond myself.

  SO SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE I DECIDED TO BECOME a comedian. I should explain how that happened, I suppose.

  Comedians are often assumed to be tortured souls, or sad clowns, people who were desperately driven to a life making jokes because of their own deep-seeded insecurity, their need to please others because they had overbearing parents, because they were hurt or ignored as a child and need constant attention, or due to an insatiable desire to hide their pain with humor. That’s not quite me, since my childhood was pretty normal and pretty happy. But I was definitely looking for an outlet to express myself, and I definitely liked the limelight. Perhaps comedy came along at the right time. While I was leading my very serious life outside of school with Catherine, I became embroiled in something that will forever be referred to by all who know me as:

  The Gong Show Scandal

  It began, as most of my stories do, at home.

  As kids we were allowed to watch TV but the content we consumed was regulated by a small agency in the office in our basement. My dad would watch TV down there, and keep an ear on what was playing upstairs in the living room. He didn’t wait for a “viewer discretion is advised” warning; he would decide on his own whether or not something was appropriate. Certain TV shows we knew were automatically off-limits: Maude (glorified divorce), The Love Boat (wrong kind of love), Dallas, and Dynasty (trash).

  We’d hear through the floor that his TV had tuned to the same station we were watching, and we knew our show was “under review.” If after a few minutes he didn’t like what he saw, he’d come upstairs, walk in the living room, and slap the TV’s ON button with the palm of his hand. The picture would go dark, Dad would go back downstairs, and we’d be left sitting in a silent room. We’d grab books.

  My dad used to make us watch all his favorite old movies. Especially musicals. He never sang a note or performed himself, but he was a passionate viewer. He’d announce from below “Kiss Me Kate is on channel five!” and we knew that was the only option for TV that night. He loved all the Rodgers and Hammerstein Technicolor musicals—Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I, State Fair, and South Pacific—and wanted to make sure we loved them, too. Most of these were shown on network TV once a year, and we were expected to watch them every time.

  He loved comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello, and duets like “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate! He always implored me to “watch these guys . . . it’s all about the timing! The timing is the most important part!”

  If this were today, he’d probably be forcing us to watch DVDs and Turner Classic Movies, but as it was, we could only watch what came on TV. Still, he showed impatience when his children weren’t familiar with his favorites. “You never saw Angels with Dirty Faces? Rosemary, did you hear this? These kids have never seen Angels with Dirty Faces! What’s the
matter with you!?” I would just shrug my shoulders, but I probably should have said, “Dad, it’s the 1970s and the options for viewing Angels with Dirty Faces are extremely limited.”

  But all through my childhood I was exposed to so much of this classic entertainment, the greats like Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and the great leading ladies like Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, and Katharine Hepburn.

  We also watched modern shows, mostly the variety shows that were so popular in the ’70s like Flip Wilson, Hee Haw, Donny & Marie, Mac Davis, and especially Carol Burnett. We loved watching the Carol Burnett Show; the whole family could watch and laugh together. There is almost nothing like that on television today—a comedy show that makes everyone laugh, regardless of age. But in those days, everything we watched, whether it was classic screwball comedy films, epics like Ben-Hur, variety shows, or dramas like The Waltons, it was all “fun for the whole family.”

  Because of all the entertainment I was raised on, I was ready that senior year of high school to put my education to good use when it came time for the annual Gong Show. As I said, there was no theater department at our school—the only theatrical outlet of any kind at Norwood High was the Senior Gong Show.

  The TV show The Gong Show with Chuck Barris was a national phenomenon during this time, and I’d venture to guess that most high schools in the 1980s did some version of The Gong Show on stage during that decade. For those readers who aren’t familiar, The Gong Show followed a simple format—talented hopefuls performed, and if they didn’t please the audience and the judges, a gong would be sounded, leading to mortification for the performer and hilarity for the audience, especially if the gong went off only seconds into their act. Ours was an annual tradition at Norwood High, and the lucky guy selected as host was generally considered the funniest guy, the class clown. And if you’re wondering, yes, up to that point it was always guys. The glass ceiling, as it turned out, was to be broken the following year by none other than my art room flame Jennifer Wheeler (yes, Molly Ringwald!). The job of Gong Show host usually went to a big-man-on-campus type—one of the popular ones, one of the class clowns with a big personality. I had seen the Senior Gong Show several times as an underclassman, and I’d always think to myself, I could really nail that. But once I got to my senior year, I wasn’t so sure that I was going to be “that guy.” I just wasn’t popular enough.