Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  He had bought himself a brand-new Honda Gold Wing motorcycle that had room enough to strap a dog carrier on the back—for his newly adopted rescue sheepdog, Ralph. He was taking off west to California, a dream he had had since he was thirteen. He hoped I understood.

  I tried to match my tone to the ease of his. I didn’t want to scare him with my wild enthusiasm and respect. Sure, Dad. Did I think he was awful? No, Dad. Granted, it sounded a little unbalanced, but he was at an age when a midlife crisis provided positively levelheaded reason for blowing up one’s life. I put the phone down, chanting “Go, Dad, Go.”

  Two months later, Dad called again. He had moved to Indianapolis following a “fateful moment in Nebraska.” A fateful moment? “A moment of great epiphany,” he called it.

  He told me on the second night of his journey, he was camped out in a cornfield under the stars, cuddled up with Ralph. He was contemplating his trip west, where booze and wild women waited, when suddenly the sky began to cloud. He continued to contemplate the lifestyle in front of him, the lifestyle he had dreamt of since thirteen and opted out of at twenty-two for fatherhood, marriage, and the American Dream, but then—it began to rain. And rain. And then it began to storm. And it was under this cascading heaven that he was suddenly seized with the absurdity of his situation.

  There he was, a forty-five-year-old man, his four daughters having grown, with a wife who had left him after begging for ten years to live in a town that had a major highway within fifty miles—drenched and cold, hugging a soggy mutt.

  The next morning he woke, covered with corn pollen, to a fresh early dawn, turned south to join his cousins who were running a Bible camp for juvenile delinquents, volunteered for a month, and moved to Indianapolis to start over, a humbled man. I imagined his silhouette appearing back over the horizon on his Gold Wing—the dog in goggles behind him.

  It was shortly after this that Mom moved to Indianapolis, and the two of them picked up where they left off.

  In Which I Consult with the Philosophers on Mental Health

  Oxford, 1997—So, yes, I had to give it to Mom—there was that one period of Dad’s life when he may have been manic. Or it may have been a courageous decision to free himself from an unhappy life, followed by a fear reaction. But whatever Mom was trying to imply about him being fiscally irresponsible, Dad’s monetary management was admirable.

  He’d made a financial comeback, even though he was forced to sell the home where they had invested all their savings at a time when the rural Iowa economy had collapsed. The number of farm foreclosures around Laurens had been brutal, and even grain and corn transport had moved to trucks after the train stopped coming through. Within three years of setting up his own industrial sales business, he was out of debt and back in the housing market and, as I just heard, had bought a vacation retreat.

  Meanwhile, my mother had retired and was enjoying three months on a private beach with a balcony view. I asked her if Dad’s “manic spending spree” of two years might be a disagreement about doodads, not cause for a bipolar diagnosis. She greeted this with silence. But it was important. I had nothing but respect for her mastery at dialing up our feelings of mental instability. But rather than pick a further fight with her about Dad’s medical diagnosis, I asked if I’d be able to speak to him at the hospital if I called. She provided a phone number.

  Before dialing, I thought about Dad’s broader picture, the larger stresses. His parents, Katherine and Arlo, were no longer able to live on their own and had recently moved from Des Moines to an assisted care unit in Indianapolis. Dad stopped in to see them before and after work. Even then, my grandmother, who was suffering from dementia, would sometimes call Dad as many as five times a day. Meanwhile, his mother-in-law, Vivian, had just undergone chemotherapy treatment for cancer, and he had remodeled two bedrooms into comfortable in-law quarters for her after she had to leave her apartment in Washington, D.C.

  Mom hardly left the house. She did the bookkeeping for the business from home and spent endless hours playing solitaire. I knew Dad’s greatest sense of joy came from playing the role of second father to his grandson, who was living with Gayle in a house across the street. And to add to his responsibilities, his business was growing. He had eight full-time staff whom he managed.

  If I was worried about him before I called, I was devastated when I spoke to him. He didn’t sound present. In fact, he hardly appeared to understand what I was saying. He shared that he was taking sodium valproate, the same drug I was on, but double the dose, and said he was sleeping a lot. He thought that he’d be going home soon. It was like talking to a sad robot.

  I hung up the phone feeling thoroughly down, and spent the next week painstakingly crafting an eight-page, single-spaced anti-psychiatry rant, pleading with him not to let them convince him his strengths—his instincts, his creativity, his joi de vivre— were weaknesses. I shared with him everything I had learned about the mind-body connection, about diagnosis, when and why the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was helpful, and why the insurance companies needed it. I provided a list of reading material of my top fifteen thinkers on the subject. Threw a few R. D. Laing books in there, even a little Nietzsche. I wanted to heal him, fix him, fight for him—for us. Mostly, I told him I loved him and he wasn’t weak. He just needed time and sleep. And I still couldn’t help but think the answer was so simple—if he would just leave my mother.

  But the agreements two people work out in a lifelong marriage aren’t always apparent to those of us who watch from the outside. Maybe it was time I began to support their decision to remain together. After all, their marriage had survived continual dramatic episodes that played their way out through hospital depressive wards, couple’s therapy sessions, pharmaceutical drug regimes, and other practices that aided the late twentieth-century institution of marriage.

  As I dropped the letter into the mail, it suddenly occurred to me I’d spent so many years being scared of turning into my mother—that there might be another reason, other than our soul-felt connection, that I was my father’s daughter.

  In Which I Make the Most Important Sales Call of My Life

  Omaha, 1978—I listened to the different tones as I pushed the telephone buttons, registering that Mr. K’s pupils were hugely dilated. It rang. Dad picked up with his usual work greeting, “Jim Cackler,” and any last bubble of denial I had was pierced.

  “Hi Dad, it’s Deb.” I felt the huge soul-wracking sob of my heart breaking.

  “Hey, where are you? Are you at a friend’s house?”

  My heart was hammering in my ears. “I’ve been kidnapped, Dad.” I wanted to spare him as much pain as I could while throwing a reassuring look at Mr. K, who had the nervous energy of a kid who had drunk twenty coffees. “The man needs ten thousand dollars.” It came out unexpectedly light, like I was asking for a chocolate bar. The sudden change in Mr. K’s pupils made it clear it wasn’t the gravitas of delivery he expected.

  “Where are you?” Dad said, on the edge of getting impatient. “I’ve been worried—I’ve been on the phone, calling everyone I could think of.”

  I continued, trying to keep confident, raising my eyebrows and holding eye contact with Mr. K—like I was a trainee looking for an approving nod.

  “No, Dad, I need you to understand I am standing in a phone booth with a man who has a knife at my throat and . . .”

  “Tell him this is no fucking joke!” Mr. K contributed.

  Dad’s silence made it clear he had overheard, but it was too late. I sucked back tears. “Dad, I know this is difficult to believe.” I began to tremble. “If you want to see me again, you are going to have to get this guy some money.”

  Mr. K grabbed the phone, the muscles of his brow flexed in fury, and I immediately shrank, expecting a blow, my shoulders up to my ears as he yelled into the receiver.

  “LISTEN ASSHOLE, THIS IS REAL. THIS IS SERIOUS. IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR DAUGHTER ALIVE, YOU BETTER GET ME SOME GODDAMN MONEY.” He sl
ammed the receiver on top of the box as a display of he-man force.

  It was clear he now had Dad’s full attention, and as Mr. K spelled out his instructions, I began to understand I was immaterial to this transaction, really—that it was my father this man was most interested in—that I was of no importance other than simply serving as an asset, the leverage to ensure the deal took place.

  He instructed Dad to bring the money to the Center Shopping Center parking garage, ground-floor level, in thirty minutes. He added that if my father called the cops, he would track him down and kill him, too. At this threat, my heart nearly broke with fear. He slammed the phone down. “Now we’re going to see what kind of asshole your father is.”

  Calling Dad an “asshole” felt like a physical punch, and it raised my protective instinct. I wasn’t able to feel ferocious long. When we returned to the van, he told me to get on the floor behind the driver’s seat. When I asked why, he told me to shut the fuck up. He put a burlap bag over my head and tied my hands. As he resumed driving, I told myself we would be at the shopping mall soon and that Dad would have the money and then Mr. K would let me go and I could go home and it would be over. But as we continued to move, I noticed the lights were getting dimmer, that traffic was becoming thinner. It shouldn’t have been that way. We should have been moving toward lights, or at least staying on illuminated roads. But it was getting darker, and it was getting quieter. I heard the van’s motor underneath me as its gears shifted, and we started slowing down, and then I felt the bumpiness of a gravel road. We were no longer on cement, and I wanted to throw up. The van stopped. It was quiet, no sound of traffic and no light, even from a distance.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He came around and slid open the van door, took the bag off my head, untied my hands, told me to get up and sit in the passenger seat.

  “Turn your back against the door,” he ordered.

  I did as he said.

  I could see the whites of his eyes as he stared at me through the holes of the ski mask, heard his breathing. He seemed to be enjoying the fear he provoked. I looked down, too terrified to look at his face. We were next to a brick building that was illuminated by bright lights somewhere in the distance. I noticed graffiti on the wall. I fought back tears. I wondered why we were there and told myself we were waiting to give Dad time. But then he instructed me to take my jacket off.

  In Which I Ponder a Rural Idyll

  Omaha, 1978—Several months into what was meant to be my third and final year at Lewis and Clark Junior High, the ninth grade, Dad called a family meeting. He declared he was missing us all, and he was tired of being without his girls. I almost felt sorry for him. Then he joked that it would be safer to raise four teenage daughters in the middle of nowhere, as there would be less temptation to get into trouble. And in the same jokey, chatty tone, he announced that we were all moving to Laurens, Iowa, in January.

  “What the hell?!” I cried.

  “Debbie-Doogan, don’t cuss.”

  “You can’t be serious. January what? 1979? You can’t be talking about this January. That’s four months away.”

  “Yup.”

  “Are you kidding?” I got up and started pleading. “I’ve been there, remember? It’s in the middle of the biggest hole in the state of Iowa, and you know I’m not exaggerating. Are you trying to end my life? The nearest movie theater is forty miles away.”

  I looked at the rest of “Dad’s girls” for some support. No one was saying a thing. The only noise was the tick-tock of the grandfather clock.

  I looked at Mom. What was she going to do about law school? She had just been accepted to Creighton University in Omaha. Even though it was her achievement, it was about me, too. Helping her study, even with her drinking, was the one way I had found we could be together. I felt empowered by her example. I had picked up her passion for politics in the same way I picked up her love for Jesus the night she brought him home. And she was giving it up. There was no sign she felt disappointed at all.

  Gayle and Jenifer were just picking up on Dad’s feigned excitement. They had no idea what they were being deprived of yet. Genie wasn’t saying a word.

  “January?!” I cried in further disbelief. “Can’t we at least finish the school year out?”

  “I’m sorry. The decision has been made.”

  “I’ve got human rights, you know.”

  Mom chipped in then. “If you have another family that will take you, then go for it.”

  In Which I Enjoy My Last Day of Childhood

  Omaha, 1978—The morning of November 22, 1978, I boarded the school bus at seven-thirty A.M. on Leavenworth Street, no differently than I did every other morning. As I climbed in, holding my Hinky Dinky grocery bag, our driver, Bev, a woman in her sixties, asked me where my hat and gloves were. “What do you want to do, die of pneumonia? And zip up that coat.” But I couldn’t because my zipper was broken. Although the National Weather Service had warned about a storm with record-breaking temperatures on its way that morning, it wasn’t even freezing yet.

  Bev was just one of those people who always had an opinion to offer. But the only thing I cared about that morning as Bev recited her daily platitude was whether I had everything I needed. It was Picture Day, a seriously important day, with no shortage of reasons. Imagine, for instance, that this photo might be needed for television. If I was to become the first woman president of the United States, or a serial killer, they would need a picture to project on the blue screen behind the news presenter.

  There was a high probability that this would be the only photo of me taken at the age of fourteen. Though my parents had a Kodak Polaroid camera, they rarely took pictures because they never thought to buy film or flashbulbs.

  So now you might understand what was at risk this day, and why, while Bev the bus driver was warning us about the perils of prairie living, I was counting everything I had in that bag on my lap, which included the outfit I had planned all week, my curling iron, and a comb.

  Later, I stood in my English classroom with my thirty other classmates, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Before we began class, our teacher reminded us it was the fifteenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death. And even though I had no reason for it to feel personal, I felt a sense of grief. I looked out the window and noticed the sky had turned so dark that the streetlights were flickering on and off. I looked up at the teacher, who was writing notes for that day’s lesson on the blackboard, the chalk clicking against green slate as my classmates worked on the assigned essay. Every hour or so, a voice would boom over the intercom like some Orwellian Big Brother, directing all those whose last name started with G to J or P to T to the gymnasium to have their school picture taken. Since I was a C, my turn came early.

  I was relieved, as I wanted to get it over with and was concerned about my feathered hair. I stopped in the bathroom for a quick fix with my curling iron. I stuck the plug in, grabbed my bangs, rolled them under, pushed the steam button, then brushed them out to the side with the big-toothed handle comb. Then I snuck on a little mascara that I borrowed from one of the girls doing the same thing I was. Arranged the fashionable cowl-neck I was wearing under my dark green sweater, pulled the tights I was wearing under my light green gauchos up from inside my high-cut brown leather boots—it was a sort of cowgirl look. I glanced at myself in the mirror and wondered what my family and friends would see. I thought about the picture being in the year-book, when my classmates signed the back with platitudes like “May the sun always shine on your face and the wind blow on your back” and “May you find happiness wherever you go.”

  Feeling awkward and overly self-conscious, I left the bathroom and headed toward the gymnasium. There, I found my place in the picture line, filed through, took my spot on the wooden crate with the blue backdrop, and, after the man tilted my chin up to the perfect angle, smiled.

  “Hold it, look into the camera now, that’s it, SMILE.” Flash explosion. It was done.
Looks and age on that day captured forever in time.

  After my picture was taken, I headed back to class for what was the longest day of my school career. It was impossible to focus, as it was also the last day before our four-day Thanksgiving break. When the bell finally did ring, I walked back to drop my things in my locker. Wednesdays were the day I got to meet my favorite teacher, Kent Friesen, for the weekly math tutoring session, but he wasn’t there, which was unusual for him. I found a bag of popcorn on his desk instead and a note lying next to it. He apologized and said he had been asked to fill in for a referee who couldn’t get to the wrestling match, then left a funny scribbled face with its tongue stuck out. I drooped on a stool, ate the popcorn, and licked the salt off my fingers while thinking ahead to my next move. Choir practice didn’t begin until four P.M., so I decided to check out the wrestling match taking place in the school gym.

  On the way down the hall, I saw Ken Sorenson, skinny with a brown shag haircut, freckles, and bell-bottom pants. He told me he was going to the Crossroads Shopping Mall to buy tickets for the upcoming Kiss concert. Going to the mall sounded better than going to the wrestling match. I asked if he would mind if I went with him.

  “Sure, no problem,” he said enthusiastically.

  Ken zipped up his gray down winter jacket, pulled his wool hat over his ears, put on thick leather gloves, punched his fist into his hand, and swung his arms as if to say, let’s go. And then I caught a glimpse outside. It wasn’t snowing; instead, it was doing a weird rain/sleet/flurry combination, and there were signs of ice. I had no hat, no gloves, and a coat that still would not zip, so I began to think twice about the plan. The glass doors opened and the wind hit. It was cold enough to freeze a flying bird.

  But I thought myself indestructible at this age, as one does. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my thin coat, brought my shoulders up to my ears. The parking lot was like an ice-skating rink, so we walked like Frankenstein’s monster. Once we reached the top of the hill, I sat and slid down the slope. Even the blades of grass were covered in ice. Ken flew ahead of me, laughing and flailing his arms in every direction. We finally reached bottom, waited for the traffic light, crossed the street, and arrived at J. C. Penney, where they sold tickets. It felt unbelievably good to be warm again.