Mr. Wonderful

by Daniel Smith

  I grab some coffee and a day-old donut as my dad throws a big suitcase and backpack into the car. He looks like he’s in a foul mood. And who wouldn’t be? Having to travel to visit your old man as he nears the grim end of things cannot be a good time for anybody. I try to cheer him up as we tool away for the eight-mile ride to Lambert Field. I bring up some of my memories of Grandpa, especially the good ones. (And, yes, there are definitely some bad ones—like the way he basically made me work half a day every day I was visiting him in the summer when I was a teenager. I don’t think he liked it when I called him out on it: “Hey, Grandpa,” I said, “aren’t there, like, child labor laws?”) So I focus on the good stuff. Like how when I was six or seven, he’d let me sit on his lap and drive his tractor around the massive wooded lot out behind the house. He loved to put up little street signs at various turns in the pathway he’d made—like we were pioneers or something laying out the path in the wilderness—and one of little signs he made, I swear to God, was called Danny Drive.

  I don’t get much of a smile out of Pops, but at least he seems more at peace with the trip. He asks about me and Dawn and what’s going to happen there. I tell him good things will happen, which he at least pretends like he might believe is possible. No doubt his mind is on the hell he’ll be landing into when he arrives in Texas. God, I hate to think what I’ll feel like the day I have to go visit Pops when he can’t really dress himself or know who—and where—he is. The last time I saw Grandpa was maybe five years ago, and though he could hardly hear, he sure as hell knew what he wanted to say and he told you in no uncertain terms. I distinctly remember him yelling at Grandma Claire on what was the exact route and proper speed for driving us to the ice cream place. Grandpa was going to get him some chocolate chip ice cream or World War III was fucking breaking out!

  At the airport, Pops grabs his bags and gives me the usual Fenton stiff, manly handshake—no shoulder hug or knuckle bump—just the awkward traditional “time to go, see ya later,” farewell. But before he leaves he looks me in the eye and says, “This is probably not going to go well; be a good son to Corinne.” I nod and smile but I’m thinking what a weird goodbye.

  On the way home, I listen to some dope tunes on the car radio’s oldies channel. They’re playing a lot of Springsteen who my dad has always listened to like he was the second coming. Though it’s a little slow, I sort of like “I’m a Jack of All Trades,” a song about a regular handyman kind of guy who can barely scrape together a living but keeps telling his wife, despite it all, “we’ll be all right.” At the end, though, he says “if I had me a gun, I’d shoot the bastards on sight.” Wow, Boss, what a tone shift. I sometimes wonder what would happen if me or Dawn had a gun. It’s one thing to have my knife collection, but a gun is a different animal. I’m afraid one or both of us would be dead.

  Back at the house, Mom’s finishing breakfast when I wander in singing about being a “jack of all trades.” Dawn’s still asleep—big surprise—so I have a cup of java with Mom. Pops, I can’t help but report, is not feeling too optimistic about this trip.

  “Your dad’s going through a tough patch, Danny.”

  “Yeah, I know, what with the shit-canning at school and Grandpa going down and all.”

  “Nobody’s being ‘shit-canned,’ for Chrissakes,” she insists.

  “Okay. But it doesn’t sound good.” She just sips her coffee, saying nothing. “I told him not to give up. I mean, what will he do if he stops being a professor?”

  “If he does, he’ll be all right,” she says. “And what about you, Danny? What are you going to do, what are you going to be?”

  “I’m here to support you and Dad, Mom.” She looks like she wants to smile.

  “Really?”

  “You don’t think I can?”

  “Well, there’s always a first time.”

  I don’t say a word. Part of my new support game plan is that I’m not going to fire back after hearing Mom’s occasional snarky bullshit like this. Gonna throw a little chill shade at her. But just then I hear a voice coming from upstairs. “Is that Dawn?” I wonder.

  “She’s been on the phone several times this morning,” Mom says.

  “Who’s she talking to?” I ask as I get up to go check things out.

  “I don’t know. But whoever it is, it’s pretty intense.”

  If she’s talking to Shithead, I’m going to go ballistic on her. As I bound upstairs, I hear her finishing a conversation with “Don’t fucking call me again!”

  I walk into the bedroom and she’s still in her night shirt standing by the window looking out. “What is going on, Dawn?’

  “Ricky Baker.”

  “That’s the guy who collects for Raymond—that punk who likes to run around waving a gun?! What does he want? He’s not coming back up here, is he?”

  “I don’t think so. But he just broke into my little sister’s apartment and stole her TV. That’s not much value compared to what was owed him for everything.”

  “I cannot believe you’ve got that kind of habit. Jesus!”

  “I don’t. Most of that was Calvin.”

  “Then let Shithead pay up.”

  “Normally, I would. But now—ever since you kicked his ass—he’s telling Raymond to collect from me ‘cause I’ve got his money.”

  “Which is a lie.”

  “Well, technically, now that I’m here with you, no, it isn’t.”

  I glare at her dumbfounded.

  “My half of our joint account you ran off with? Most of that was Calvin’s drug money.”

  I sit on the bed, totally bummed out. It’s like I don’t have to look for trouble; it pretty easily rounds me up whenever it wants and wherever I am. “So what do we do now?”

  Dawn comes and sits next to me on the bed. “Well, one thing we don’t do is show up back in Boaz any time soon.”

  I look at her like that’s a really shitty plan, surely you got something else. But she just sits there like I should be wallowing in the brilliance of simply staying out of east Arkansas. “So where are we supposed to go, Dawn?”

  “Look around.”

  “Oh, wait. You don’t mean . . . you aren’t thinking about staying here?!”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” I ask. I can’t decide if she’s simply taking advantage of the situation or maybe somewhere in the dark shadows of her pea brain, this idea of trying to hang out with my parents is secretly super clever. “You realize we’re supposed to be leaving here today. Hell, you already announced it yourself, remember?”

  “Yeah, well, things change, darling,” she says now starting to get dressed. We go downstairs and run into Mom as she’s finishing up some breakfast dishes. And then much to my shock, Dawn proceeds to ask her, if, well, “we” wonder if it might be possible for us to stay just a tad longer? Not because we fear getting attacked by Raymond and his thugs in Boaz. No, because, as Dawn so cleverly puts it, “we don’t believe in walking out on people who are in the middle of a crisis.”

  I nearly gag at the lie she just told, but then that shock morphs into admiration at the set of balls on the woman I live with. Do we have four balls between us or is it just her two huge ones? Mom looks surprised—who wouldn’t be?—at hearing Dawn’s comment. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work. “That’s so very kind of you, Dawn,” Mom says. “I’m not sure we have a crisis but I really appreciate you thinking of Brian’s situation, especially since you don’t really know his father, do you?” God, no wonder Mom’s a good lawyer—she manages to give you a pat on the back, and a little punch to the gut, all at the same time. Amazingly, Mom tells us, sure, stay a few days more. Are we living large or what?

  10 | brian

  The worst part about flying is all the waiting. There are simply not enough food court choices, magazines, newspapers, books on kindle, songs on my iPhone, email to check, and fascinating people-watching to truly escape the boredom that is the modern airport. And then you add t
he fear of flying—a silver coffin speeding along at 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet—especially if there’s bad weather and the threat of turbulence, and I’m walking around the airport in a state of barely-suppressed panic.

  I know: These are modern, top-of-the-line jets with superbly trained, experienced pilots—far from the single engine Beechcraft Bonanza in which my dad flew us all over the country back when I was a kid. For years I lived with the terror of yet another family vacation featuring a flight in Dad’s four-seater plane. Though he was, no doubt, wonderfully trained to fly in the Navy, Robert treated flight as a great adventure instead of the assorted apocalyptic fears I contemplated as our little plane bounced wildly around storm clouds at 7,000 feet while Jeff would be tossing his cookies in the back seat. Terrible weather, low ceilings and poor visibility, were for Dad simply challenging hurdles to overcome in his relentless determination to fly us from point A to point B, come hell or high water. Caving in to our fears or worrying about difficult weather was a character flaw that no self-respecting pilot would allow. “We’ll get up on top of all these clouds and rain, and it’ll be fine, so quit your whining,” he told us countless times. So you’d think that all those years of dread in the air would accustom me to the far safer and imminently more comfortable experience of jet travel, where customer comfort reigns supreme. But you’d be wrong. The difference is I now have to hide my fears from other travelers who don’t want my dread of flight awakening their own anxieties.

  After checking the weather in Dallas for the third time—mostly cloudy with a chance of storms, damn!—doubtless raising my blood pressure, I mercifully get a call to distract me from my air travel phobia. It’s a university number I don’t recognize, but I take it anyway. It’s Dean Verley, of all people. He wants me to know that despite the “vulgarity” at my departure, he remains confident that we can work something out that’s in our “mutual interest.” I tell him I’m flying off on a family emergency and can’t really deal with his faculty buyout crisis right now. To his credit, he understands that such a “personal emergency” trumps everything else, and he’ll speak with me when I get back to St. Louis. Just what I want: another audience with Fred the Dean. Maybe he’s trying to win by attrition instead of intimidation. It’s not a bad strategy.

  Once we get in the air, despite the pilot’s comforting voice alerting us to the likelihood of “a few bumps on the way,” the flight turns out to be quite smooth and painless. I’ve often thought that the airlines deliberately prepare you for the worst just so you’ll be all the more relieved (even thankful) at an uneventful outcome.

  As planned, Jeff meets me in baggage claim. He looks more upbeat than I had imagined. In fact, instead of alarming me with how terrible things are with Dad, he’s eager to show me the new deck on his house. Jeff’s made a very good living selling homes and now running a big real estate firm in north Dallas. And you know all this from the get-go: he drives a big new Lexus with all the bells and whistles.

  Over dinner on his super-sized deck (which I have to admit is pretty impressive, complete with a built-in hot tub), Jeff and his 30-something second wife, Rhonda, detail all their recent trips to Hawaii, Costa Rica, and the Caribbean. This summer, they’re flying to Spain. Dad always respected the money Jeff has made (“anybody who tells you money is superficial,” Dad told both of us boys, “must not have any.”). Making a good living, from Dad’s point of view, was a testimony to a good work ethic and excellent business sense. My getting a doctorate and teaching college, on the other hand, showed impressive book learning but little else.

  By his third glass of wine, Jeff turns dark and reflective. “I’m glad you came, bro’,” he says, “because we’re all in a bad place now with Dad.”

  “Are you sure it’s that bad?”

  “He’s getting aggressive, Brian.”

  “Aggressive’?”

  “He’s started hitting Claire, biting, cussing her out. Like she’s some mean strange, home health care worker. I’m not sure he knows who she is anymore. It’s demeaning and upsetting to her.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’ve put your dad and Claire on all our prayer lists, Brian,” Rhonda says earnestly. I’ve seen some of her Facebook postings asking for prayers. (“Prayers up!” Joe from Dallas replies with a like. “You’re on my list,” Sally from Mineral Wells promises). I appreciate the concern but I do not understand why somebody would ask a lot of strangers to pray for someone they’ve never met.

  “When I was talking to Claire yesterday,” Jeff says, “for the first time I could tell she found dealing with him, I don’t know, humiliating and just plain sad.”

  “And so you think it’s time to put him in a nursing home?”

  “That’s the big decision, isn’t it? But I’m not making it by myself.”

  “Is that what Claire wants to do?”

  “I’m getting that feeling, yeah, but she doesn’t want to do anything we disapprove of.”

  That’s Claire, always thinking beyond herself and her own needs. Although, in this case, looking beyond her own self helps broaden the blame: if we all decide to put him in a nursing home and things go south quickly—as they’re likely to do—nobody will be pointing fingers at Claire. I can’t blame her for looking for backup on something like this. But I’m guessing I’m already in the role of tiebreaker: Claire doesn’t want to give up on Robert just yet; meanwhile Jeff has grown tired of the caregiving ordeal. So I fly down and whatever I vote to do makes it a majority decision. “So Jeff, are you coming over to the house tomorrow with me?”

  “I’ll try, but I’ve got a couple of showings I can’t really get out of.”

  “Really? You can’t find someone to show some houses so you can be there with Dad and Claire?”

  “Look, bro’, I’ve been the local go-to son for years now, so I don’t need a lecture on sacrificing to spend time with Dad. I’ll lend you one of our cars so you can drive over. If I can get free, I’ll be there,” he says as he gets up from the table and heads inside.

  I stay a moment alone on Jeff’s gigantic new deck sipping the last of the wine and taking in the Dallas night air. In the distance a long line of lights are shimmering from highway 75, one of the main north-south arteries that runs through Dallas. The storm that was predicted for this afternoon never arrived but it’s hot and humid and there’s a blustery feel in the air. Far off to the west I hear a little rumble of thunder. I see a plane that just took off from DFW airport passing right over the house. As much as I’d like to be headed back home now, I’m happy it’s not me up in the air.

  After breakfast the next morning, I drive Rhonda’s car the forty minutes to Juniper. The little town where I went to school, developed friendships, played sports, and made initial sense of the world, Juniper looks and feels much smaller now than when I was growing up. The population is about the same—around 1500 folks—but everything about the place now screams rundown, impoverished small town America. Once a thriving little cotton-growing community thanks to its rich black land soil, Juniper is now a dying small town with nothing to offer except cheap, old, frame homes for people with jobs in places as far away as Dallas or Ft. Worth. The sidewalks buckle, the streets are full of pot holes, and for every new local business—a modest Mexican restaurant or a convenient store—there are three or four abandoned or dilapidated stores. When I was a kid, within twenty minutes I could walk from our house to school, downtown, church, the football or baseball field, or any place imaginable. I literally rode my bike all day long to every part of town—except, of course, the “colored” north part of town—although I became good friends with several African-American jocks with whom I played sports. I may not have known everyone in Juniper but as Dr. Fenton’s son, I felt like everyone must have known me. All of which gave me a remarkably expansive sense of myself and the world that happily greeted me. Everything in Juniper seemed open and knowable to me; why wouldn’t everything I would face once I left it feel the same? Race theorists call t
hat white privilege. I called it natural ambition.

  I can’t help myself as I drive through the bumpy streets of Juniper: I find myself heading over to the school. I guess we always must revisit our initial training ground for becoming a member of society. The 100-year-old brick building that was Juniper elementary, junior, and senior high school all rolled into one now has several sprawling out buildings and large trailers, which house additional classrooms, labs, and offices. My senior class, I well remember, consisted of 13 girls and 13 boys. To look at old photos of us from, say, junior high, is to take a trip back to the late 50s TV world of Ozzie and Harriet or the Donna Reed Show: nearly all white, clean cut kids (there was one Hispanic family, the Villereals, whose parents picked cotton), most of the boys sporting flat top hairdos and the girls outfitted primly in floral, print dresses. When the world of civil rights hit in 1964, it meant all the “colored” kids in the north part of town suddenly showed up at our school and on our ball fields. This delighted me, not because I was any sort of integrationist (my dad was a Goldwater Republican, for crying out loud!), but because I got to make friends all through high school with several remarkable African-American athletes who played football and basketball with me. Among the most shocking changes wrought by integration in the mid-60s in our part of north Texas was what happened in the town of Greenville, the “big city” of 15,000 or so we all drove 16 miles to every time we wanted to see a movie or go on a date. Strung across Main Street in downtown Greenville, until late 1964, was a huge white banner in black letters:

  Welcome to Greenville:

  Home of the Blackest Land and the Whitest People

  Since Dad spent a good bit of his time tending to black patients as well as the occasional Hispanic family, it never occurred to me that people of color were viewed in any way less valuable. Growing up, I guess a lot of things never occurred to me.