Dad's Maybe Book

by Tim O'Brien

  “Good point,” I said. “Thinking wasn’t easy. That’s what I mean by complicated.”

  “Boy, I’ll bet,” said Timmy.

  And then, over the next twenty minutes or so, I told my sons the story of what had happened to me in the summer of 1968, the summer I was drafted, the summer I became a soldier. One of my heads—located, let’s say, atop my right shoulder—had been fiercely patriotic, loved its country, respected authority, respected tradition, and believed in such things as duty, sacrifice, and service. The other head—teetering precariously above my left shoulder—had also believed in these things, but at the same time found itself opposed to the war in Vietnam and wanted nothing to do with it, certainly not the killing part and more certainly not the dying part. I was twenty-one years old. I was terrified. And through the summer of 1968 those two heads endlessly confronted each other, challenging, mocking, debating, taunting, cussing, cackling, praying their contradictory prayers, invoking God, invoking the names of LBJ and Richard Nixon and Jane Fonda and Abbie Hoffman and Patrick Henry and Donald Duck. At times the two heads spoke softly and rationally. Other times the heads screamed the most hateful and outlandish obscenities at each other, much as people were screaming in the streets all across our republic during that red-hot summer.

  By this point, both Tad and Timmy were asleep. Yet even then, for a long, long while, I lay there in the dark, flanked by these precious little boys, still telling and retelling the story—not aloud, of course—telling it in my thoughts, in the pit of my stomach—just as I have been telling it now for forty-some years and just as I will be telling it and telling it and telling it until I’m gone and cannot ever tell it again—those two heads yapping away across the decades, never shutting up, never at peace, still embittered, still unforgiving and unforgetful. Now and then, the first head will score some sterile rhetorical victory. Other times head number two wins the moment. Sometimes one head might say, “What a coward you were for going to that war,” and the other head will shake itself and say, “You did what your country asked you to do,” and the first head will let out a bitter chuckle and say, “Yeah, right, and what if my country asked me to blow up Toronto tomorrow? Am I obligated to do it? Do I saddle up and start killing Canadians?” and the head on my right shoulder will say, “Hey, man, that’s totally ridiculous. You live in a good and great country, a country that would never issue such an order,” and the other head will say, “What about the Mexican-American War? What about Manifest Destiny? What about the American Indian? What about three million dead Vietnamese? What about those weapons of mass destruction that never turned up?” and the first head will say, “Everybody makes mistakes,” and the other head will say, “Exactly my point,” and so on and on and on, until eventually one head might say to the other, “Come on, pal, I’m exhausted, let’s get some sleep,” and the first head will say, “Okay, but I shouldn’t have gone to that crummy war, I should’ve said no,” and the other head will say, “You were young, you were afraid,” and then off they go again, yapping until dawn, everything slithering back to everything else.

  As I lie in the bedroom dark with Tad and Timmy—not only two nights ago but every night—I’m swamped by this ceaseless two-headed bewilderment. I feel so helpless. I feel so hapless. Right and wrong do not announce themselves to me as right and wrong, and if ever they were to do so, I would not know which, if either, to believe. Eat your broccoli, I’ll tell the kids, then instantly worry about becoming a broccoli tyrant. Are the vitamins worth the resentment? Who knows? Who knows for sure? Two heads can be a curse. Two heads can lead to late-night second-guessing, wee-hour remorse, endless speculation about prayers not prayed, deeds not done, words of sympathy or love or understanding never uttered. And one day, I’m almost (but never quite) certain, Timmy and Tad will also find themselves entangled in the fearful uncertainties of uncertainty. Should I marry Jane or should I marry Jill? Or should I dump them both and marry Phil? Should I keep plugging away at this hateful job or should I seek a brand-new future in Fiji? Should I march off to war or should I not? Part of being human—as opposed to being, say, a rattlesnake—is the awkward burden of carrying on our shoulders multiple heads, sometimes two, oftentimes many more. And while the load may be heavy, I nonetheless feel an exhilarating, almost explosive happiness to be witnessing the first stirrings of moral awareness in Timmy and Tad. Carrying one or two extra heads through life, however troublesome, however confusing and dispiriting, is to carry a little armor against the soul-killing, people-killing horrors of absolutism.

  Mohamed Atta, the hijacker and final pilot of one of the airliners that struck the World Trade Center a few years ago, had but one head—a bonehead, at that—an absolutist of the most consummate and deadly sort. How, I wonder, can a human being be so sure of things? Custer, too. John Wilkes Booth, too. Brutus, too, and Jonathan Edwards, and hooded executioners, and schoolyard bullies, and Joseph Goebbels, and the churchgoing waitress in Tuscaloosa who refuses to deliver French fries to a hungry black man and his hungry children. The bizarre vanity of killer certainty scares me. And now as I watch my children sleep, I can’t help but fear that Timmy and Tad may someday become the bloody victims of zealous, self-righteous, I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong one-headedness. I also fear that they may become the perpetrators. Through some parenting blunder of my own—an ill-chosen word passing from my lips, an inappropriate chuckle at an inappropriate moment—I worry that I may somehow ignite an inextinguishable fuse of intolerance and hypocrisy in my children. I do not want Timmy and Tad ever to say, or ever to think, “I am so right, and you are so wrong, that I will kill you.”

  After the events of recent years, I have come to fear that our own nation, as much as any other nation, is endangered by self-righteous, absolutist rhetoric that celebrates our glories while erasing our shortcomings and pooh-poohing our ethical and moral failures—torture, for example.

  I love my children. I do not love all they do.

  I love my country. I do not love all it does.

  Surely any parent or any rational patriot can understand the endless two-headed adjudications we must make between love and moral duty.

  We are at war right now. And once again, much like four decades ago in the midst of another war, the contradictions and complications of our universe have been reduced to black-and-white battle cries and a stockpile of pathetic old truisms, none of which is wholly true but each of which is framed in the language of hyperconfident certainty, without qualifiers, without historical amendment, without educative function, without humility, without skepticism, without the tempering tones of doubt or ordinary modesty. No one says, “I think I’m right,” or “I hope I’m right,” or “Maybe I’m right.” Instead, once again, the war rhetoric has the blaring, single-note sound of absolutism.

  “No doubt,” said George W. Bush about his decision to go to war in Iraq. “I have no doubt.”

  Similarly, from Dick Cheney: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”

  No doubt?

  No doubt about killing people for a reason that did not then and does not now exist?

  My point is personal, not partisan. Plenty of Democrats, plenty of liberals, bought into the falsehood (maybe not the outright lie, but very plainly the falsehood) of Cheney’s “no doubt” absolutism, and I am sickened by the thought that ten or twenty years from now, as we still try to wiggle our way out of the Middle East, my precious sons, and yours, may be shot in the head or blown to pieces as a consequence of arrogant, one-headed, I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong, dead-sure, fear-mongering demagoguery.

  Listen, Timmy. Listen, Tad.

  It is important to be faithful to your values and to your opinions, but remember that your opinions are opinions. And remember that your values may reorganize themselves over time.

  Watch out, in particular, for opinions that involve killing peo
ple, because one day you may change your mind, and if that day comes, as it has come for me, I do not want you lying awake at two in the morning wishing to Christ you could wake up a slim, dead, dainty-looking young man sprawled now and forever along a trail in Quang Ngai Province. Your two heads will be heavy. But carry them high. And use them.

  12

  Hygiene

  Near bedtime one evening, when I was complaining to Meredith about still another book banning, Tad overheard and said, “I’ve got a good idea. Promise them you’ll wash out your mouth with soap. But then the book-banning people have to wash all the dead soldiers with soap.”

  13

  The Magic Show (I)

  As a kid, through grade school and into high school, my hobby was magic. I liked making miracles happen. In the basement, where I practiced in front of a stand-up mirror, I caused my mother’s silk scarves to change color. I used scissors to cut my father’s best tie in half, displaying the pieces, and then restored it whole. I placed a penny in the palm of my hand, made my hand into a fist, made the penny into a white mouse. This was not true magic. It was trickery. But I sometimes pretended otherwise, because I was a kid then, and because pretending was the thrill of magic, and because what seemed to happen became a happening in itself. I was a dreamer. I would watch my hands in the mirror, imagining how someday I might perform much grander magic, tigers becoming giraffes, beautiful girls levitating like angels in the high yellow spotlights, no wires or strings, just floating.

  It was illusion, of course—the creation of a glorious new reality. White mice could fly, and dollar bills could be plucked from thin air, and a boy’s father could say, “I love you, Tim.”

  What I enjoyed about this peculiar hobby, at least in part, was the craft of it: learning the techniques of magic and then practicing those techniques, alone in the basement, for many hours and days. That was another thing about magic. I liked the aloneness, as God and other miracle makers must also like it—not lonely, just alone. I liked shaping the universe around me. Back then, things were not always happy in our house, especially when my dad was drinking, and the basement was a place where I could bring some peace into my little-boy world, a place where I could make the sadness and terror vanish.

  When performed well, magic goes beyond a mere sequence of discrete tricks. As an eight-year-old I was certainly no master magician, but I tried my best to blend separate illusions into a coherent whole, hoping to cast a spell, hoping to create a unified and undifferentiated world of magic. I dreamed, for instance, that someone in the audience might select a card from a shuffled deck—the ace of diamonds. The card might be made to vanish, then a rabbit might be pulled from a hat, and the hat might collapse into a fan, and the fan might be used to fan the rabbit, transforming it into a white mouse, and the white mouse might then grow wings and soar up into the spotlights and return a moment later with a playing card in its mouth—the ace of diamonds.

  There were other pleasures, too. I liked the secrecy. I liked the power. I liked showing my empty hands when my hands were not empty. I liked the expression on my father’s face when I asked him to slip his head into my magical guillotine.

  More than anything, my youthful fascination with magic had to do with a sense of participation in the overall mystery of things. At the age of seven or eight, when I learned my first few tricks, virtually everything around me was still a great mystery—the moon, mathematics, butterflies, my father. The whole universe seemed inexplicable. Why did adults laugh at unfunny things? Why did my dad get drunk? Why did everybody have to die, and why could not the laws of nature permit one or two exceptions? All things were mysterious; all things seemed possible. If my father’s tie could be restored whole, why not one day use my wand to wake up the dead?

  After high school, I stopped doing magic—at least of that sort. I took up a new hobby, writing stories. But without straining too much, I can say that the fundamentals seemed very much the same. Writing stories is a solitary endeavor. You shape your own universe. You deal in illusion. You depend on the willful suspension of disbelief. You practice all the time, then practice some more. You pay attention to craft. You learn to show your hands to be empty when they are not empty. You aim for tension and suspense, as when a character named Betty slips her finger into a wedding ring, knowing she is not in love and never will be. You try to make beauty. You strive for wholeness, seeking unity and flow, each movement of plot linked both to the past and to the future, always hoping to create or to re-create the great illusions of life. “Abracadabra,” says the magician, and a silk scarf changes color. “By and by,” says Huck Finn, and you are with him as he boards his timeless raft. “Forgive me,” says your father, without ever quite saying it, and you do.

  * * *

  After an intermission of many decades, I’ve taken up magic again in a pretty serious way. Timmy and Tad live in a house cluttered with birdcages, top hats, wands, explosive devices, floating steel rings, spotlights, dancing canes, and innumerable decks of playing cards.

  For the past eight months, a roulette table has occupied a substantial portion of our foyer. It’s an illusion I purchased secondhand from a retired Atlantic City magician—a prop that entirely blocks the passageway between our front door and living room. Visitors hesitate. The pizza delivery guy suspects illegal gambling. But Timmy and Tad take it all in stride, as if every father on earth spends his waking hours cussing at candles that fail to appear at his fingertips. (The trick isn’t easy. Six candles. Empty hands.) The boys politely take turns vanishing from a chair atop the roulette table; they tolerate the multiple miseries of contorting themselves inside black boxes; they roll their eyes when I tell them it’s time to be transformed into a gerbil. Magic bores them, I’m afraid. “If it’s really magic,” Tad said a few days ago, “why won’t you let me stand behind you when you make Mom disappear? Afraid I’ll see something?” This ho-hum, slightly hostile attitude sometimes does more than irk me. I get angry. These are children. Children are supposed to love magic. In part, I realize, Timmy and Tad have grown up in a household of appearing hotdogs and disappearing parakeets. They’ve become accustomed to miracles, and over the years, watching me practice, they’ve discovered the dull realities that make miracles appear to be miracles. They know what back-palming is. They know the technique behind a split-fan production. And from their own experience they know that the roulette table in our foyer is somewhat more than a roulette table. Who can blame them for not wanting to choose still another card—any card at all? Who can blame them for balking at another shuffle that isn’t actually a shuffle?

  * * *

  * * *

  For the most part, the boys suffer in good-natured silence. They seem to understand, or at least intuit, that magic fills up an empty space inside me. Many, many years from now, long after I’ve vanished from their lives, Tad and Timmy may have a few blurred memories of their dad standing in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to pluck playing cards from the air, mostly failing, but still trying and trying, which is how it is right now as I try to pluck this maybe book from thin air.

  * * *

  Meredith and I, along with Timmy and Tad and a group of shanghaied friends, stage an elaborate show in our living room every couple of years. We’re amateurs—not great, but getting good. We float tables and children around the house. We appear and we disappear, sometimes in balls of fire, sometimes in large boxes, sometimes right before the eyes of the audience. We dance. We sing. We eat razor blades. A few years ago, we balanced Timmy on the point of a sword, spun him around on it, and then watched the sword penetrate his slim little body. During one disastrous rehearsal, we nearly gave the kid a real-life appendectomy. In other mishaps, we have almost suffocated one of our female magicians, almost decapitated another, and almost burned the house down. Alas, show biz.

  As we prepare for each new show, our troupe of amateurs begins practicing about six months in advance, getting together every two weeks, putting in anywhere from three to seven hours
of hard work at each session. There is a lot of tedium, a lot of frustration, and a lot of failure. (Again, much like writing stories.) Props stop functioning, threads break, secret doors don’t open, Timmy and Tad fall asleep backstage and need to be gently shaken and told it’s time to levitate.

  In general, the members of our cast have amiably tolerated the long hours and numbing repetition. Some of them, I’m quite sure, don’t really care much for magic, but they know I care, and so out of great generosity they’ve thrown themselves into a pursuit that others might find frivolous, childish, and more than a little bizarre. Real-life teachers dress up as showgirls. A nurse practitioner dresses up as a wealthy casino minx. For months on end, at considerable sacrifice, the members of our troupe gamely toil to master their miracles and to perform them with a measure of grace and elegance. It isn’t easy. Angles of vision need to be taken into account. Posture—keeping the shoulders level—can determine success or failure. Too much light, or too little light, can be the difference between applause and grim silence. Despite these stresses, and despite the enormous chunks of time stolen from their lives, the members of our cast have come to appreciate that which I find so beautiful in magic—those moments when a half-dozen colorful parasols appear out of nowhere in swift succession, or when a glass of Beaujolais vanishes beneath a silk cloth, or when the ace of diamonds appears at the tip of a switchblade.

  On show nights, as the living room fills up with ninety or so invited guests, our little troupe feels the jittery tension that any professional magician would feel. Backstage, we pace and mumble to ourselves. We rehearse moves in our heads. We feel dread fizzing up inside exhilaration. Although it’s only a living room magic show, we might as well be opening on Broadway or in Carnegie Hall or in a gilded theater on the Vegas strip.