Rock, Meet Window

by Jason Good

  Mom finally looks up and smiles naïvely. The red smudge of lipstick on her tooth is still there, but faded.

  “You’ve got a thing on your . . . ,” I say, motioning to her mouth. She takes out her compact, looks at her teeth, and wipes off the lipstick with her index finger.

  A nearby door opens and a head peeks out. “Mr. Good?”

  It’s our turn.

  Before this visit, it had been twenty-two years since the three of us were in a hospital together. In 1989 we rushed to Grady Memorial in Delaware, Ohio, because I was getting a nose job. This was not elective plastic surgery. A fellow classmate gripped a roll of quarters in his fist and shattered my nose with one punch. And I deserved it.

  Delaware was a socially and economically divided town. I was smart enough to excel in school, but I opted instead to make fart noises and draw pot leaves on my desk. When the bell rang and school ended, I would hurl insults from the passenger window of a friend’s car as we drove around aimlessly. It was cowardly, and I was one of the very best at it, but I didn’t always choose the safest targets. I forget the exact heckle I used on Jeff Doolittle, but I imagine it was something about his clothes or hair. Those were my go-to topics. Jeff found me the next day and said something to the tune of “You and me, motherfucker.” It was all very Three O’Clock High.

  The fight was set, and the whole school knew about it. Jason Good vs. Jeff Doolittle: Lincoln Field. A symbolic battle between the haves and the have-nots in which I was the snotty, sheltered villain and my nemesis was the fatherless son of a waitress.

  I was taller and had a longer reach. Jeff was physically dense and emotionally worn from beatings he’d received at the hands of his vicious older brother. I had no intention of going through with this fight. Clearly, Jeff would bludgeon me, so when it was time to rumble, I swallowed what little pride I had, apologized, reasoned, and bonded with my foe. The crowd jeered as I shook Jeff’s rough, clammy hand. I think he was embarrassed to have backed down from a fight. I, however, was relieved that my heart rate had dipped below two hundred for the first time in hours.

  I thought I’d avoided the conflict. Then, in my peripheral vision, I saw someone running toward me. Gary Maynard’s long greasy hair followed him like a cape. He was a small man, but a man, nonetheless—a senior of legal drinking age. I ran from him in a zigzag pattern as if fleeing an alligator. Within a minute, Gary succumbed to a coughing fit. “Fuckin’ pussy,” he yelled, wheezing. I continued to dart about the field until my best friend, Jeremy, caught up to me. “Dude, it’s fine. He’s gone.”

  Leaving our school bloodthirsty, Jeremy and I walked back to my house. Mom was sitting on the front porch. “Someone named Jeff stopped by and said he wanted to see you,” she said, confused.

  “Oh, okay. Cool.” I assumed Jeff just wanted to connect with his newest pal. He only lived a couple blocks away, so Jeremy and I walked over. When I knocked on the door, his older brother answered, turned his head back into the house, and yelled, “Hey, pussy! That pussy’s here.”

  Jeff rhino-ed his way through the front door, pushed me down the steps, spun me around, and cold-cocked me. I fell to my knees. Not knowing what happened, only that my face was numb and bloody, I heard Jeff yell, “Your nose is broke, motherfucker! You want some more?”

  “No, thank you,” I answered politely. With that, Jeff stormed back onto the porch, where his brother patted him on the back. A job well done.

  In shock himself, Jeremy handed me a bandanna he had tied around his head. I used it to absorb the red fountain of karma that flowed from my nose as we walked back to my house.

  Mom was gardening in the front yard. “Oh my God. What happened?” she asked.

  When I removed the bandanna, she nearly fainted. My face was a Picasso.

  “Michael!” she screamed.

  When Dad appeared, I saw no fear on his face, only determination. “Get in the car,” he said.

  The four of us arrived at the hospital, and after a short intake, we sat down with a police officer.

  “I assume you’ll be pressing charges?” he asked. “I would encourage you to pursue this as an assault.”

  “Of course he will,” Mom asserted.

  “No. That’ll only make everything worse. I want this to be over,” I insisted.

  “I agree,” Dad said. “There’s no reason to make this kid’s life any harder than it already is. Sending him away will only turn him into a criminal.”

  The officer was reticent, but he didn’t press us. Neither did Mom.

  Jeremy said he needed a ride home, and since there was a lot of paperwork to be done before a surgeon returned my nose to its proper location between my eyes, Dad agreed to drive him.

  As Jeremy told me a few days later, Dad quizzed him on the specifics of the situation: who was involved, why it happened, and most important, what I might have done to cause it.

  I spent days recuperating at home with a giant bandage covering my nose and gauze stuffed up my nostrils. Dad and I talked about my injury but never about the incident. I know this sounds very Atticus Finch of him, but maybe he thought these were lessons I had to learn. There are dangerous people in the world, and if you want to stay out of trouble, don’t be a dick to them. Try to have empathy for those who have less than you. He knew I understood that it was time to be a grown-up and start taking responsibility for my actions. I didn’t, but change is a slow process.

  Socioeconomic status, race, creed, sexual preference, none of them matter here in the oncology ward. Everyone is treated the same, exactly as it should be. American hospitals are the best in the world if you’re deathly ill with some kind of terminal disease. It helps if that disease is rare, previously eradicated, or exotically named after its origins in an African village. Of course, if your malady doesn’t fit into a funded research agenda or qualify as a public health hazard, that same medical establishment is often no better than a Serbian clinic. Luckily, Dad’s condition is worthy of the hospital’s A-game.

  The nurses scurry about in their Reeboks, holding Starbucks cups in one hand and clipboards in the other. The pockets of their floral-printed scrubs overflow with stethoscopes, bandages, tourniquets, and reading glasses. Written on a large whiteboard is each patient’s name and assigned nurse. In the morning I imagine this is a tense time for the staff. “I had Constance on Friday, and she spit on me. Betsy, please switch with me.” But Betsy refuses. She has a new guy, and new guys are always easy.

  It’s against hospital policy for more than one family member to accompany a patient, so Betsy gives us a private room. “We don’t want anyone to notice and get jealous,” she says with a wink. After the typical chitchat and taking of blood pressure, I escape to the bathroom. On the way, I check out the other patients. There are two whom I imagine are professors of philosophy at Berkeley—gaunt and profound-looking as Michel Foucault. Precancer, of course, these guys could have been lumberjacks. The others are a smattering of different ages and ethnicities. Most are alone and looking comfortable with, if not blasé about, their new routines. I’m back at the zoo, and I catch myself gawking.

  Inside the bathroom, a sign hangs above the toilet:

  CHEMOTHERAPY PATIENTS MUST FLUSH TWICE.

  TOXINS REMAIN IN URINE AND FECES FOR 48 HOURS.

  Reminded that everyone here is sick enough to require poison, I flush with my foot and use the hand sanitizer on the wall. There are dispensers all over the place in the ward, and I pause to use each one on the way back to Dad’s room.

  “And look, my son even dressed up for the occasion,” he tells Betsy as I walk in.

  “Yup, I put on my nice shirt,” I add.

  Betsy smiles, not quite sure whether to take us seriously yet. “I like the snaps,” she says, before fiddling with something on the computer and disappearing.

  “Oh, I like her,” Mom says.

  “Me, too,” I agree. “She reminds me of people from Ohio. Just real, like she’s not trying to be someone she isn’t.”
/>   Dad nods. “Yup, that’s Oakland for ya.”

  Betsy walks back in with a few pills in her hand. “Okay, Mr. Good.”

  “Please. Call me Michael.”

  “Okay, Michael, I have your cortisone and antinausea medication for you.”

  “Now what’s that for exactly?” Dad asks.

  “One’s so you don’t vomit and, hmmm, I forget what the cortisone is for.” She pokes her head out the door. “Nancy, what’s the cortisone for?”

  “Swelling and appetite,” says a voice from behind the wall.

  Betsy turns back to us. “Swelling and appetite.”

  “Well, we don’t want problems with either of those!” Mom asserts, all chipper-like.

  Betsy hands Dad a plastic cup of water and the two pills. Dad swallows them. “Wow, you know what, Betsy, I’ve never felt less nauseated in my life.”

  Betsy is confused, “Oh, it wouldn’t be working yet.” Then, seeing Dad’s wry smile, she laughs. “I like you, Michael. I’m gonna look out for you.”

  We soon learn that some of the other nurses, well, one other nurse, struggles with our humor, especially the dry stuff, which Dad and I seized every inappropriate opportunity to deliver.

  The next day, Dad receives his first blood transfusion. Yesterday’s chemo nuked his hemoglobin, leaving him feeling weaker that usual. But now, with the blood of a healthy person coursing through him, he’s acting quite vital, and everything that goes along with that.

  Our nurse, Amy, looks down at her clipboard. “Hello . . . Mr. Good. How are you feeling?”

  I answer for him. “He feels amazing. This blood must be from a fourteen-year-old Romanian gymnast.”

  Amy is stunned. “Really, you know that?” she asks, head cocked slightly to the side.

  Dad jumps in to rescue me. “He’s making a joke. He’s a comedian. It’s like semen donation. You know when you can look in a book and choose who you want the donor to be?”

  Amy stares at him, compelling Dad to extrapolate: “He’s saying that blood is like semen in that regard, and since I’m feeling a lot better, he’s suggesting that the blood is from someone abnormally energetic, like a young Romanian gymnast.”

  After an awkward pause, Amy manages the kind of forced smile usually reserved for class reunions and DMV transactions. Dad’s explanation had been too liberal with its nouns (particularly the wanton use of “semen”).

  “And that’s why you never explain a joke,” I said, after Amy floated away in a daze. We never saw her again.

  Feeling great, Dad isn’t letting this gaffe deter him. “Normal feels a lot better than it used to,” he says. With Amy off somewhere trying to erase any memory of us, Susan, the social worker, comes and sits down. It was too quick of a turnaround for Susan’s visit to be about Dad and me scaring the young nurses. Her appearance must be part of the routine.

  Normally, I’m turned off by someone wearing clogs. I’ve always experienced them to be the standard footwear of passive-aggressive women. But when I see that Susan’s are Danskos, the same brand Lindsay wears, I’m more at ease. Add to that her soft Zen smile, salt-and-pepper hair, and unadorned face, and it’s clear: Susan is an ex-hippy. After she and Dad compare the years they were born, what they did instead of going to Woodstock, and the role Howdy Doody played in their childhoods (they are both huge fans), Susan shifts the conversation to the reason she’s come.

  “So, how are you feeling about your treatment so far?”

  “Quite good, actually. Everyone has been very nice.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” She pauses, and looks each of us in the eye like only mind-workers can. “I think I already know the answer to this, but should anything happen to you while you’re here, I need to know if you have last rites requests.”

  “You mean, do I want a priest?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she responds.

  “No, but I’d take a Marxist economist if you can find one.”

  Susan laughs. Unlike me, Dad had taken the time to read his audience. “We might be able to work that out for you,” she replies.

  “Really?”

  “Probably not. But I’ll look into it. I’m always around, and my office is just down the hall. Anything you need.”

  I can tell she’s smitten with Dad. When necessary, he can make a Bill Clinton–level first impression.

  “How about a medical marijuana card?” he asks.

  “Yes, I’ll get a letter from your doctor. It was certainly nice to meet you folks.” The sound of Susan’s clogs fades away.

  “Wow,” I say. “That was kind of awesome.”

  Dad smiles. “Yup, that’s Oakland for ya.”

  “Jesus. Would you stop saying that?”

  “Sorry, but this is just all so Oakland.”

  “You just said it again but in a slightly different way.”

  “He’s right, Michael, you did do that,” Mom adds.

  “Jody, stop being so Oakland.”

  “How is that Oakland?” I ask.

  “It’s a joke, Jason.”

  Too Much?

  In 1995, toward the end of our breakup talk, my very-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend became pensive. She took a deep breath, sighed, and said, “You know, the worst part of all this might be never seeing your dad again.” She caught herself and apologized, and though I pretended to be mortified, I had long ago accepted the power of Dad’s charisma.

  His classes at Ohio Wesleyan were always the most popular on campus. Apparently, Machiavelli is best taught with levity. When I was a kid, maybe ten or twelve years old, I remember students showing up at our house simply wanting to hang out. “Dude, your dad is awesome. What’s it like to live in the same house as Dr. Good?” I shrugged and smiled. I had mixed feelings about his popularity. I enjoyed the residual attention, but I wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about. Dad wasn’t kid-funny. It took a certain amount of maturity and worldliness to get him.

  Halfway through Dad’s first year as director of the Syracuse University study-abroad program in Florence, the first Gulf War began. A group of Italian radicals (with whom I suspect Dad secretly empathized) spray-painted “Yankees GO HOME” on the wall of the old villa that housed our classrooms. The students were nervous, and at the urging of their parents, a few of them did go home. Dad had to address the situation, and he did so epically.

  A staff member posted a flyer in the mailroom (a popular meeting place for students eager to receive letters from their sweethearts). “Director Good will be addressing students in Room 100 at 2 PM. Attendance is mandatory.” Because of his sense of humor and rapport with students, Dad had become a surrogate parent, a godfather, to most of the kids. When people discovered I was his son, I became popular, too.

  I stood in the back with my friends Doug, Rob, and Todd. Just prior, I think we’d been drinking Chianti straight from the jug. Dad walked in and launched into a story.

  “Two years ago, I had a student at Ohio Wesleyan named Brian, whom I was quite fond of. Brian asked me whether I thought he should go abroad, and having taught here myself for a year in 1986, I recommended he attend this program. The director, my predecessor, was a friend, and I felt confident that Brian would enjoy himself and reap the same benefits most of you have. After a successful semester here in Firenze”—Dad struggled to collect himself—“Brian flew home on Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland.” Dad’s voice was trembling but full of resolve. “I only tell you this so that you might believe me when I say that I’m fully committed to making sure all of you are safe.”

  Dad’s words soothed those who needed to hear them. Some were moved to tears. A few minutes later, Doug, Rob, Todd, and I, along with a few others, sat in the mailroom smoking cigarettes (this was Italy, after all). Dad came in, and we all immediately fell silent.

  He looked at us, took in our body language and our eager, nervous faces, paused for a second, and asked, “Too much?”

  We erupted in the kind of laughter that only comes fr
om relief. No one could control a room like Dad.

  Aside from two years in Italy, the rest of my childhood was spent riding my bike to Dairy Queen to stand in line behind kids wearing Iron Maiden T-shirts that smelled like dirty towels. We didn’t have a lavish jet-set lifestyle. There was no “summering” in one part of the world and “wintering” in another.

  As high school kids often do in boring small towns, my friends and I invented ridiculous games that, had we not been somehow blessed, would have led to our deaths or imprisonment. After school one afternoon, Jeremy and I were driving around town in his mother’s Mercury Topaz, throwing tennis balls at cars. More precisely, Jeremy was driving, and I was throwing tennis balls at oncoming cars.

  The goal was to hit the windshield of another vehicle. Success might have resulted in an involuntary manslaughter conviction, but the complicated physics of throwing at a moving target from a moving vehicle proved difficult. That’s not to say I failed. When I finally nailed a minivan, Jeremy and I let out an excited but terrified “Oh shit” and watched in the rearview mirror as the driver pulled over to write down our license plate.

  When Jeremy dropped me off at my house a few hours later, Dad was sitting on the sofa waiting for me.

  “What?” I asked defensively.

  “Throwing tennis balls at cars?”

  “Huh?” This was my response to any question from my parents during that year (and the five surrounding it). I walked into the kitchen to drink whole milk straight from the plastic jug and microwave a few Smok-Y Links.

  Instead of following me, Dad raised his voice. “Jeremy’s mom said the police called her because they got numerous complaints about someone throwing tennis balls out of her car. Funny thing is, she swears it wasn’t her.”

  “Yeah, it was me. So what. What’s the big deal?” At sixteen, I didn’t know it was possible to get in trouble with anyone other than my own parents. I was aware that kids went to juvenile detention, or as they called it, “got sent up,” but their dads weren’t professors.