How I Learned to Hate in Ohio

by David Stuart MacLean

  Mom and I spent the next morning shoveling our driveway. When the roads had been plowed to be passable we went down and saw him.

  He started crying as soon as he saw us. His face and hands had waxy black patches from the frostbite. His leg was in traction, like one of those devices Daffy Duck ends up in in the cartoons. His head was in a halo supporting his head while the repair that had been done on his spine healed. He was broken, bloodied, infirm and it was all my fault.

  My mom and I hugged him and then got scolded by a nurse for not being careful of the miasma of tubes sprouting from him. Visiting hours were really tight in the ICU and we were shooed out after fifteen minutes. My mom and I walked silently out into the cold bright white day. She reached out to grab my hand and gripped it tightly as we found our car in the parking lot.

  He was slated for at least four more surgeries and he was going to be in the hospital for nearly a month.

  And this is how I got to spend Christmas break with my mom.

  CHAPTER 20

  For the next month we had a ritual of visiting Dad, then going out to Chinese and a movie, and then coming home and ignoring the phone as it rang on and on.

  Mr. Singh was indefatigable in his attempts to connect. There were gift baskets left to freeze on the porch (the little bottles of fancy syrups and mustards shattering in the cold), floral arrangements wilting in the winter sun (frozen orchids!), and so many messages that the little two-tape machine was topped-off with his pleading, confusion, and desire. Mom and I never talked about his messages, their relationship, or her absence. There are times when you don’t want to ask if you are dreaming for the very real fear that as soon as you ask it, you’ll wake up. So we played Scrabble, ate Chinese, watched movies, and ignored the little blinking light on the answering machine, flashing forlornly in the corner of the living room.

  I’d stopped running. It was too cold to leave the house without gear that I couldn’t afford and, now that Dad was in the hospital, had no way of procuring. Mom and Dad spent the visiting hours like they were happy with each other and had always been so. In terms of his dead girlfriend, Dad never said a word not brimming with circumspect acceptance and polite regret. Nothing is as unsettling as people who have a healthy perspective on things. The police showed up for the first week or so. And it was during one of their visits I heard my father say that her death was “regrettable.” Somehow nothing seemed as awful as that. I wanted to take the opposite of a Polaroid of that moment—a memory that I wanted to instantly fade and disappear.

  CHAPTER 21

  They delivered Dad’s bed three days before they delivered Dad. They set it up in the living room which struck me as wrong—he had an office, didn’t he? They gave Mom and me a tutorial on the straps and buttons and cranks and counterweights and drop-down railings and bedsores and ways to make a bed when someone is still in it. The whole thing was funny.

  The two guys were showing us how to recline the bed. They stressed that we shouldn’t mash down hard on the button, that it was a delicate piece of machinery. But when they pushed on the button to show us how easy it was, nothing happened. It was a real comedy there as they both pushed harder and harder on the remote and it all came to a head when the nurse asked if the bed had to be plugged in. We all had a howl. And the rest of the instruction period we’d keep going back to it. Someone would say, “But does it need to be plugged in?” or “Can’t pull the plug when it’s never been put in in the first place” and we’d all giggle like idiots. It was almost like we were flirting with each other. Not as individuals but as groups. The two women flirting with the three men. The mother/son flirting with the technicians/nurse. It was like the last day of camp when you meet the person you should have spent the whole of camp with.

  The two men and a nurse accepted coffee before they left. The fun had stopped once we’d had everything set up correctly and Mom and I were tested on its possibilities and procedures. Now that we were all seated and supposed to talk to one another, we came up blank. I suddenly noticed that one of the men was missing his left hand (how did I miss that?) and that the other man dyed his hair (gray roots) and that the nurse smelled like the chicken salad sandwich she had for lunch. The empty bed now had a gravity and all of our best attentions were pulled into it.

  It got dark but nobody moved to switch on the light. I suddenly realized that it was because of me that Dad’s girlfriend is dead. I was leaned far back in my chair and I had a glass of Dr Pepper and ice against my chest. The perspiration from the glass made a damp ring on my shirt. When the two men and the nurse left it was so late that I said goodbye and shook hands with their silhouettes, their features obscured by shadows. Somebody tried a “plug” joke at the very end but it was too late, the humor too dated. The dead leaves spun in curlicues in the red of their taillights as their van dipped down at the end of our driveway and humped up onto the road.

  Dad was coming home. It was real. When he came home did Mom go back to Mr. Singh? I didn’t ask Mom. She didn’t tell me. We’d never been a big feeling-sharing family. We worked best as planets orbiting each other.

  In the dark.

  And cold.

  For two days, Mom and I perfected the art of walking into a room and not reacting to finding the other one in tears. I think family is just another word for the discipline of ignoring everyone’s emotions and acting like everything at every moment was fine. We aspired to those crustaceans that live with their shells attached to the cliff exposed to the sea spray. Sharing the cliff, each in our own shell.

  This was the best way forward.

  CHAPTER 22

  You wonder why people don’t see it sooner but dads just ruin everything.

  For example, I know this girl Margie Carrboro. We were never friends or anything. But we were in third through fifth grades together. Her dad made her sit on the stove. It left these concentric scars on her bottom. At the neighborhood pool one summer, for twenty-five cents she’d lift up the bottom edge of her swimsuit and let you see them. Supposedly for five dollars you could feel them but I never knew anybody who had that kind of money.

  And then there’s one of Mom’s coworkers and they came over (because they were on their way to Cedar Point or something) and the daughter spilled her milk onto the dad’s lap and he made her kneel in front of him and beg forgiveness in front of everyone. We were so embarrassed we didn’t know where to look.

  And then there was the heavy weight of Vietnam among my classmates’ fathers. Some were catatonic, some were violent, some had no real filter on the shit they told or gave their kids. Kids would come to show-and-tell with bullets, land mines, and what might have been either a sprig of beef jerky or a dried human ear. Some didn’t care what they taught their kids. Kids in elementary school knew how to build tripwires, pipe bombs, and how to keep your wrist supple as you performed the delicate movements to open a butterfly knife.

  Some dads did damage so severe that you never heard about it.

  Dads in jail, dads who hurt their kids, dads who go off to war, dads who come home from war, sullen dads, morose dads, dads and their jokes, dads and their libidos, dads who don’t close the door when they shower, dads who don’t pay attention, dads who sleep with other dads’ wives, dads who resent their wife’s success, dads who drag their son to every town Marriott has a regional office, dads who sleep with waitresses, dads who lure somebody’s mom away from their kid, dads who kill waitresses in a driving accident which was in no way at all the son’s fault, even though he’ll feel like it was his fault forever.

  Yeah.

  Fuck dads.

  CHAPTER 23

  Mom and I were having the last breakfast alone. She’d made eggs with kimchi and bread smeared with Vegemite. Her array of exotic condiments kept most people from noticing she wasn’t much of a cook.

  “Coffee?” she asked with a show of brightness.

  “I’ll take a Dr Pepper instead, please,” I said.

  My mom laughed. “My dad used to drink Dr Pepp
er every day. He had them at ten, two, and four just like the commercials. He started drinking them to help him quit smoking and then he found out cigarettes and Dr Peppers are delicious together.”

  There are some people who are so afraid that they have nothing to offer that they become peripatetic, constantly moving on before anyone figures out they have nothing to give. I’m not sure what happened in my mom’s life growing up (other than the broad strokes) but I think something happened which told her she was worthless inside. And while I never met either of her parents, I blame her dad. He was one of those Midwest guys who was poor before the stock market crashed so it wasn’t that big of a change. He had a patchwork of at least three jobs his entire life except for during the war when he was just a soldier. My dad’s mom’s family had been rich and so she never recovered from the Depression. She’d been called back from her fancy New England college and ended up working at the library because that’s where all of the cute guys called for dates. She made everyone know that where she was at in her life was her Plan B. Her husband, her only son, were just some things she had to grudgingly accept.

  My mom’s mom died when mom was in community college. She had quit to raise her younger siblings. They all got to go off to college. There wasn’t money for her to go to college so she married a PhD candidate.

  You marry someone, you marry their problems and their parents’ problems and their grandparents’ problems. You cleave generations of fuck-ups together under the guise of a religious ceremony and salt with as much hope as possible to keep the dead meat from rotting. If you thought buying a hundred-year-old house was the provenance of those who wanted to inherit someone else’s makeshift patchwork solutions to load-bearing issues, you should see the people who marry other people. It’s a fucking shitshow.

  I heard Mom grunt behind me. Mom always had problems with opening soda cans. I took the can from her and got it open in a second.

  “I remember when you had to use a church key to open those up,” she said like she always said.

  I sat down and took a swig.

  “Oh, Barry. Could you use a glass, please?”

  “Why?”

  “I want our breakfast today to be special.”

  “Why does it need to be special?” I asked warily.

  “Because your dad is coming home and I want our time together just you and me to be as special as possible. The end of our little time together.”

  I piled some of the eggs onto the bread and stuffed them into my mouth. It was too many flavors: Vegemite, kimchi, and Dr Pepper. My mouth felt like a strip mall’s shared dumpster. I was trying too hard to make it all fit into something digestible. I spit it out in my napkin.

  “You never talk about Grandpa,” I said to pull attention away from my never gonna touch another single bite off this plate behavior.

  “I don’t know what there is to tell.” Mom wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Well, you know he was a war hero.”

  “He was at Pearl Harbor, right?”

  “No. You’re thinking of your great aunt. No, he was infantry, a grunt. But his unit, or whatever, was recognized by name by MacArthur himself at one of his big speeches.” Mom ate around her kimchi and she didn’t have any Vegemite on her bread. “He went in a private and came out a private. He used to say that getting promoted when you weren’t career military was putting on airs. He didn’t use the GI Bill, never went to the VA or the VFW. He didn’t want the government to spend any more money on an education he’d never use and he could pay for his own medical care.”

  “Why didn’t he ever go to the VFW?”

  Mom laughed. “He never understood why people would want to sit around and get drunk with each other when the only thing you’ve got in common is the worst thing in your lives.”

  She pulled a cigarette out and lit it with a tiny gold lighter that I’d never seen before. There were letters engraved on the side of it and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize they were my mom’s initials. She laughed at her dad’s (I guess we’ll call it a) joke.

  “So he was a war hero because his unit was mentioned in a speech?”

  Mom blew smoke at me and said, “You know, it’s true. American kids have no respect for their elders.”

  “Who says ‘elders’?” I laughed.

  My mom blushed and got up from the table, which was an answer of sorts.

  “Right,” I said. “The same kind of person who says ‘American kids.’ ” I pushed my plate on the floor, where it shattered.

  “Pick that up,” she said.

  “Sorry.” I shrugged, not unmeanly, at her. “Maybe you should get your non-American one to clean up.”

  “Let’s not be nasty,” she said to me, stabbing her cigarette out in the sink and then running water over it.

  “Maybe you should find someone else to give a shit. I figured you’re only here to pick up some stuff you left behind. Stuff that you want. Unlike me.” I desperately wanted to walk away like they do in the movies. She could leave the family, I couldn’t leave the room.

  It didn’t feel better to think of all the money in therapist bills I’d saved by this next little observation: The people who leave have all of the power. They can set any demands they want. “It’s fine. You can love Mr. Singh more than you love me.” It was the first time I’d ever said his name out loud in front of her. It was awful. I felt dirty and gross and vindictive and shitty.

  Mom was facing out of the window over the sink. Her shoulders shook and let me know she was crying. “Oh shit,” she said, and over her shoulder I saw the ambulance roll to a stop in the driveway. “Your father’s home.”

  CHAPTER 24

  It took them (three nurses) about forty minutes—clicking, one-two-threeing, and setting counterweights—to transfer from gurney to bed my father, who was in the pajamas that Mom had bought for him two days after he ended up in the hospital. It was his only pair, since he normally slept in his underwear. Mom was embarrassed that he was in danger of showing his ass to everyone, like maybe she thought people thought she was a bad wife because he was so poorly attired. There were little jars of honey in rows across a navy blue field, two sizes too big. My mom said they were the most adult pajamas she could find.

  I’m pretty sure she was lying.

  And when the secretary of the head of the philosophy program sent a very tasteful pajama set with matching robe (“I’ve been in the hospital myself, as you know, and the two things that you’ve gotta have in the hospital is Jesus and some nice pajamas.”) he stayed in the honey jar ones.

  A form was pushed in front of my mom on a thick metal clipboard. “Push hard, it’s gotta go through the carbon and three copies.” After Mom signed, the nurse tore a copy from the middle of the stack and handed it to her. Then in a swirl of motion the nurses were gone.

  Mom stood there with the copy in her hand, like a receipt for her husband, probably feeling some sort of buyer’s remorse.

  Dad was trying his best, despite the pain medication, to glower at the two of us. He was angry that his girlfriend died while they were looking for me. He was angry that his wife had left him for another man. And he was angriest that he had to depend on us to take care of him. He’d been amenable while he was in the hospital, polite instead of loving. Now that he was home, he felt licensed to enact his vengeance on us.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” he said.

  Mom and I looked at each other trying to figure out who was going to help him out. For the rest of the year, we’d have similar staring contests. Dad’s injuries had given him a leash and placed choke chains on Mom and me. Mom tried her best to be solicitous. I developed very specific hearing defects, unable to hear him or his bell. We left the TV on for him and he watched it constantly. The living room became his fort, his igloo, his quinzhee.

  My dad was mourning his girlfriend. My mom was mourning her relationship with Mr. Singh. I was mourning the death of the idea of my dad as anything but an asshole.

  And it was i
n this way that December 1985 became January 1986.

  CHAPTER 25

  When I was back in school, I was hit with the news that Gary and Ottilie had run away together. Instantly they became folk heroes at school. People were coming up to ask me if I had any news, unaware of course that I hated him. When I didn’t pony up any new information, the enquirer would tell me, “Thanks for nothing, Yo-Yo Fag.”

  Their wild adventure came to an end in the snack aisle of an Albertsons in Truckee, California. Ottilie was caught with a box of Oreos in the pouch of her anorak and the manager wasn’t about to let a black girl steal from him with no consequences. The police were called. Fake names were given. Then they were taken to the police department and separated and correct names were winched out of them. Parents were called. Mr. Singh booked a ticket to San Francisco and got a rent-a-wreck for the drive up to Truckee.

  When I got home I told Mom to listen to the messages that had piled up on our answering machine. The first four of them were sodden lovelorn Mr. Singh messages missing my mom, the rest were about Gurbaksh and Ottilie running away.

  The problem with answering machines is that everyone within earshot hears them—it’s a real design flaw. I watched Dad watch Mom listen to her boyfriend explaining how her leaving hurt him and then I watched her, studied her, as she listened to the messages about Gurbaksh, her new son.

  CHAPTER 26

  The first shuttle launch of 1986 was on January 12.

  Space shuttle Columbia was supposed to launch on December 18, 1985. It was rescheduled for the nineteenth because of an rpm reading that was too hot (turned out to be a bad gauge). The next shot was scheduled on January 6 but all the liquid oxygen leaked out. On the seventh the weather was crap. On the ninth the liquid oxygen sensor was broken. And then there were heavy rains necessitating a two-day delay. Everything went gold on the twelfth. Space shuttle Columbia stayed in space for six days and came back down safely.