FAMILY ALBUM
Greg Ames
My father runs naked through the underbrush. We can hear him grunting and yelping as the brambles slap his bare skin. We are gaining on him, following the trail of blood. He is wounded, we know that for certain, but we’re leery of following him into the darkness. Afather is a dangerous creature when he’s injured. And canny. He may only be luring us into a deadly ambush. We would gladly beat in his brains out in the open, under the hoary night sky, but nobody is foolish enough to—
—chuckle at a joke he’s just told at the dinner table. He grins, repeating the punch line. “That’s good,” he says, nodding and wiping his glasses on his tie. “That’s real good.” The ice cubes clinking in his lowball glass sound like teeth falling from a cartoon character’s mouth on Saturday morning TV, and you turn to him and say—
His gentility has ossified into fear. He is nervous, that’s all, which you have misconstrued as anger. You have never understood him. But you want him to know that despite all the differences of opinion, all the arguments, you love him and—
He’s struggling under the weight of the couch you’re both carrying down the stairs. “Pick up your end, goddamnit.” He wheezes. “Jesus Christ!” His face is flushed, an artery pulsing in his forehead. Your end is not a problem. “Should we take a break?” you ask him timidly. He glares at you over the flowery arm of the couch. “Nonsense! I’ve been moving furniture since you—”
—haven’t said a word in ten minutes. You don’t feel like talking any more. The kiddie psychologist, a skinny-armed Democrat in a beige turtleneck, shoots pool with you in his office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, courting you with cold Sprites and probing for answers about your True Feelings. He sincerely wants to know What It’s Like To Be Twelve Years Old, and you shrug, sinking shots in corner pockets, and can’t even remember the last time you—
—are crying in the garage loft, after school, punching the splintered wooden crossbeam with a bloody fist, and your father stands below, hands on hips, bald head bowed, racking his brains for something comforting to say. “It doesn’t matter,” he says at last. “Son, you’re—”
—pulling your pants down in class to show Kristen Thomas your penis. You are the biggest third grader in the class. Mrs. Dewey has her back to the students, she’s scrawling multiplication problems on the blackboard, and Kristen raises her hand, saying, “Mrs. Dewey, Mrs. Dewey,” and—
Hairy-legged men are loitering in the driveway, drinking keg beer from red plastic cups. Your father, sunburned and jovial in his prescription sunglasses, likes Buffalo’s chances in the upcoming season. “That’s a solid defense,” he says ardently. “Great linebackers. Best in football.” You approach him for a hug, a kiss. You wrap your chubby arms around his legs and he gently pushes you away. “You’re too old for that now. Shake hands,” he suggests. “Men shake hands with other men.” You’re five years old. You’ve done something wrong again. He squeezes your little hand firmly. “Good, that’s a good strong—”
—bag of marijuana. Grudgingly, he slips it into the pocket of his suit coat. The high school principal, Mr. Markbright, returns to the office, looking grave. “He had nothing in his pockets,” your father lies for you. On the drive home, he glares out the windshield, silent. At last, he turns to you and says—
No matter how many times you end up in detention, you continue to fight after school with Luis and Eric and Glenn. Bloody noses and skinned knees. Nothing personal. You’ve all got the energy and the time. Sometimes you pretend you’re a TV wrestler who has metal chairs smashed over his head with regularity, and you pick up a twig and ram it into Mitch Iten’s left eye. He doesn’t cry at first, but the pain is sudden, whiplash hot, and undeniable, and—
—you hear the shrill buzzing of a tattoo needle. Through heavy-lidded eyes you look down at the ugly tattoo forming on your left biceps: a flaming orange crucifix — the word SLAYER scrawled in arterial-red ink below it — and you manage to slur, “That’s ridiculous,” before—
—being accepted into an art school in Brooklyn. Alone in the cramped cell of a Fort Greene studio — a video camera trained on you at all times — you have what you call a “nervous breakthrough”: smashing everything you own with a little hammer and then running naked into the street. You are arrested and, due to the extremity of your reaction — the biting and kicking, mostly — you are taken to a state hospital in Albany. Your conservative father, a man who only ever wanted you to look presentable, brings clean sweatpants for you to wear. Each night you strip off all your clothes and run through the corridors naked. He returns every Saturday with another pair of sweatpants. Eventually each patient on your floor is wearing a clean pair of the sweatpants your father intends for you. You are dressed in a long gown tied with a dirty rope. “I see them raking the leaves!” you tell him, and it makes you feel so hollow when—
The cold wind rattles the window, late October, and you see a medicated boy raking leaves on the lawn of the hospital. He seems to know things about this life that you can never learn. He seems to know that—
Your dad just wants you to dress better. “Son,” he says soft-voiced in his pretty suit, “why do you keep taking off your clothes?” He says he wants to understand you. He wants to help you. I know he does, He loves me. “Doctor Rosman says you’re friendly and intelligent. Ayoung man with great potential.” His cloud-heavy face is scrubbed and tired. He’s deep inside his old man’s body looking out at me, and I can’t imagine how to rescue him. “Dad.” My voice is rusty and damaged, like something dredged from the bottom of the ocean. “Listen.” At night he reads in bed. He wades through thick library books on nautical disasters. His wife died inelegantly two years ago. He lives alone in a museum of memories. And that’s why nobody nobody can stop him when—
Dad combs my long, greasy hair. I can smell his breath. Just the two of us here, sharing our genes. Momma bird and baby bird. Always says, “Be good, OK?” before he leaves my room. Standing at the barred window, watching the helpful kid carry the leaves in the blue tarp, I think about what I’ll tell him the next time he visits. “Remember Indian Guides? Remember we made a car in the basement out of balsa wood?” I don’t blame you for anything. “Our car lost every race.”