He doesn’t just know stuff; he can fix stuff, and he can build stuff. He can pound a nail all the way in with one stroke of the hammer. He can hang a door in your house just so—it’ll swing shut on its own if that’s what you want, or it’ll swing open on its own if that’s what you want, or it’ll just stay put if that’s what you want. He’s one of the old breed. My old man is like leather! My old man is like steel! No, he’s not like leather or steel because leather dries out and cracks and steel rusts. My dad . . . my dad is like an old, liquor-soaked Christmas fruitcake: he never goes bad; he just gets older and drier and harder and heavier and more potent. My dad will outlive me, he will outlive you, he will outlive all of us.
Like the computer he introduced me to as a small kid, my dad can answer almost any question. And also like that computer, my dad does not know how he works. My father’s son is the same way. So be it. He’s more good than bad. He knows lots of stuff. Not everything, but then nobody gets to know all the stuff.
Leon launches and then pilots a remote controlled glider, making big lazy loops in the sky with it before landing it roughly on the tarmac to skid on its belly and then bump in the grass. Ron takes his turn, piloting a miniature electric Styrofoam biplane buzzing like a hornet in the sky.
As I sit in the sun, drinking my coffee, it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve come out to fly model airplanes with my dad. He’s been doing this my entire life, longer than I’ve been alive. He’s been designing and flying his own airplanes since he was sixteen, and this is the first time I’ve ventured onto his turf, the first time I’ve engaged with him about this weird hobby that is somehow incredibly important to him. What else don’t I know about him? What else haven’t we shared?
Behind me, my father has assembled an egregiously large model airplane—at least five feet long, gleaming teal and red and silver. No way can that thing actually fly. And if it can, well, no way it can do much. It’s so big and unwieldy, like a tuna with wings. I look at my dad: What is he thinking? He’s wearing the gray hoodie that he wears all the time now, a habit I think he picked up after borrowing one of mine. Jesus, we have come a long way. Does that mean we’re nearing the end? We’ve lost so much time. Quick, Dad, don’t let the sun go down on you, on us. I still have so much to learn.
Now he’s wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. And he’s strapped on one kneepad. Really, Dad? Only one? I try to stanch the feeling, but it’s too quick for me: I pity him. It’s a loathsome thing, to feel pity for your parents. This will end in his defeat, in our defeat.
He gently places his monstrosity on the ground, secures its tail, then starts the prop. It’s loud as hell, like a two-stroke street bike, a little frightening. The silver fiberglass propeller whirls, and I wonder what it would do to my legs if I walked into it. Then he frees the tail and navigates the plane carefully with the remote control along a little concrete strip to the runway.
“Murray, taking off here, left to right,” he calls out, but he doesn’t need to. It’s impossible not to watch the winged chainsaw in front of us. Then he guns the throttle.
The plane hurtles along the runway for a second, gaining speed, then unexpectedly flings itself into the air and rockets straight up. Up, up, up, and it rolls over, once, twice, three times, then climbs further into the sky, four hundred feet, five hundred feet, then slows and slows, till it stops dead in a stall. Fuck. Dad.
The plane falls neatly to its left, hurtles groundward, then noses up and careens toward the far end of the runway. A gorgeous, sexy, swooping turn, then back over the tarmac, rolling, climbing, falling, Jesus, flying upside down. I smile, gasp, laugh, and keep laughing, amazement bubbling out of me uncontrollably.
Only once do I glance over at my father. He is gone. Utterly still, his face turned to the sky, motionless save for the small twitching movements of his hands on the controls as if he were immersed in a particularly engaging dream. I turn away. My dad’s not there. The body next to me, with its chromium knees, the missing prostate, the divots out of the red, veiny nose where the skin cancer has been removed, the improperly mended clavicle from going over the handlebars on his motorcycle, the gray hair, the age spots: it’s only a shell. His soul is elsewhere.
This isn’t some kitschy old man’s hobby. This is astral projection. This is fucking magic, dude. My father is up there in the untroubled blue, gleaming in the sunlight, banking, accelerating, pitching, stalling, arcing, then roaring back to life, blazing across the sky.
Dad executes a perfect landing, his plane hitting the tarmac squarely, braking neatly, looping slightly right for a sharp left turn to return to us for refueling. I’m careful to stand behind a metal gate, but that’s for my dad’s benefit, not mine. If I stood directly in the plane’s path, my father could skillfully pilot it around me. And if he wanted me to stand in the middle of the tarmac so he could fly it right into me at full speed, well, I would let him.
He shuts down the motor and looks at me, waiting for my reaction.
“Dad! That was fucking awesome! I had no idea. Those aerials, man . . .”
He chuckles.
“Funnily enough, the hardest thing is flying straight and level. You know, just not making any mistakes.”
“No shit, Dad.”
He nods his head. Then he looks at me, and he smiles.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my parents, Elaine Lalonde and Murray Shubaly; my sisters, Tatyana Beath and Tashina Lalonde; my brother-in-law Bill Beath, my stepbrother Jesse Fuchs, my foster brother Chuong Dinh, my not-my-real-Mom-so-she-can’t-yell-at-me Theresa Shubaly. Thanks to Byrd Leavell, Ben Adams at PublicAffairs, and David Blum. Thanks to Lawrence Weschler, Lucia Berlin, Sidney Goldfarb, and Alan Ziegler. Thank you, Zachary Lipez. Thank you, Bill Whitten. Thank you, Aaron Lazar. Thanks to James Sparber, Damien Paris, Tim Murray, Karl Myers, Jonathan Rauberts, Erik Nickerson, Michael Dean Damron, Alex Steininger, Charles Kennedy. Thanks to Cynthia Ellis, Caitlin Flanagan, Ellen Twaddell, Tim Kreider, Sarah Bradley, Emily Mah Tippetts, Chris Parris-Lamb, Hilary Jordan, Molly Gaudry, and Jeff Bezos. Thanks to Paul Fuchs, Joe Purdy, JT Habersaat, Rasha Proctor, Greg Chaille, Brian Hennigan, Ben Lebovitz, Ryan McKee, Jennifer Bryant, Tina Lipsky, Natalie Rogers, Bob Bodkin, Mike Doughty, Chris Thomson, John Prine, Cáit O’Riordan, and Mark Lanegan for inspiration. Thanks to Peter and Ginger Sparber, GeGe Kingston, Tim and Charlotte Kent, Jennifer George, Jed Collins and Marseille Markham, Eben Burr, Jessica Roach, Ben Bertocci, Mariko Suzuki-Bertocci, Kelly Lum, Scott Winland, Chris Sturiano, Ann Beeder, Jenifer Hixson, everyone at The Moth, everyone at Amazon, and everyone I’ve forgotten.
Music, T-shirts, posters, and tour dates at www.mishkashubaly.com.
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MISHKA SHUBALY began drinking at thirteen and college at fifteen. At twenty-two, he received the Dean’s Fellowship from the Master’s Writing Program at Columbia University. Upon receiving his expensive MFA, he promptly moved into a Toyota minivan to tour the country nonstop as a singer-songwriter. At thirty-two, he got sober and shortly thereafter began publishing a string of best-selling Kindle Singles through Amazon. His third solo album, Coward’s Path, was released in 2015 by Invisible Hands Music.
Photograph courtesy of Leslie Hassler
PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.
I. F. STONE, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published The Trial of Socrates, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.
BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of The Washington Post. It was Ben who gave the Post the range and courage to pursue such historic
issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.
ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.
For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by The Washington Post as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.
Peter Osnos, Founder and Editor-at-Large
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