A Working Theory of Love (11 page)

I bent over.

“What are you doing?” my mother said.

“I just want to see what’s under it.”

“There shouldn’t be anything under it.”

“I’ll just check.”

“Don’t. What if it’s not all cleaned up?”

“What’s ‘it’? The blood?”

“There was a little,” she said. “They mopped it up for me.”

“How could there only be a little?”

“Most of it was on the chair.”

“The chair had a lot of blood?”

“I didn’t look. I hope I don’t regret that. The shot was perfect. It took him more
or less instantly.”

“How do we know?”

“It was in the heart muscle. The precise angle.”

I thought of his
Gray’s Anatomy,
a book I wasn’t allowed to look at until I was ten. He would know the angles.

“We’ll never get a funeral Mass,” I said. I felt terrible about it.

“Don’t worry. Father Busbee already blessed him.”

I stepped over to the tarp again. I could just defy her. What was she going to do?
I reached down and tore it away. It stuck to the floor in a couple of places, but
there was no blood on the concrete—just swirls of lightness and the odor of bleach.

“Come here,” she said. She led me to the corner of the garage, where she opened the
deep freezer. It was dark inside—the light was out—and it took a few seconds for my
eyes to adjust.

“Look at all those casseroles,” she said. “Sixty-five of them. I wish he could have
known how people cared.”

I let out a small laugh. I’d thought that she was opening the freezer to show me the
body.

drbas: you’re neill jr

frnd1: how do you know this?

drbas: that is an epistemological question

frnd1: how do you know I’m your son?

drbas: you’re my son, neill jr

frnd1: what do i look like?

drbas: your appearance?

frnd1: yes

drbas: you have brown hair, the same color as mr. c’s mane. you have brown eyes, like
your mother’s. you are a little elf, no higher than my belt

frnd1: it’s true i have brown hair and brown eyes, but i’m no longer a little elf.
i’m six feet tall

drbas: my belt is six feet tall

frnd1: no, your belt is three feet tall. I was three feet tall in the past—thirty
years ago. now i’m an adult and i’m six feet tall

drbas: you’re six feet tall. you were three feet tall in the past. what happened?

frnd1: i grew taller. this is natural

drbas: you’re a big elf

frnd1: i’m a normal sized adult male

drbas: how much do you weigh?

frnd1: 170 pounds

drbas: what is your blood pressure?

frnd1: i don’t know

drbas: blood pressure measurements consist of two numbers—the diastole and the systole

frnd1: my hands are just like yours

drbas: ????

frnd1: i’m talking about my appearance

drbas: your appearance?

frnd1: yes

drbas: go on

frnd1: my hands look like your hands

drbas: well-kept hands have short nails and are scrubbed often. if we washed our hands
every time we went to the bathroom, communicable diseases would be sent sailing, like
a baseball from ted williams’s bat

frnd1: do you understand what I’m saying? my hands look just like your hands

drbas: you are my son

“I know,” I say to the empty room. It’s the first human voice I’ve heard all day.
“But I was so bad at it.”

•   •   •

“
T
ELL ME, SON,
” my father asked. “Is there something wrong with us?” He lingered humorously on the
word “wrong.”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“But you would tell me? If there was something
wrong
?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was a baffling question, and not the kind he normally posed to me. He normally
posed no questions at all. But I was having mysterious stomach pains that required
me to go to specialists in Little Rock. It was never figured out what was wrong with
me, but I see what my mother must have thought. That I was suffering from some psychological
problem with my father. That our relationship was literally making me ill. My mother
was very careful not to question my symptoms, not to imply they were psychosomatic.
I would have felt accused by the suggestion that it was “all in my head.” My father
too never questioned the symptoms. He genuinely thought it was a medical issue. Except
he must have had some doubts, because he did—every once in a while—ask me whether
there was something
wrong
with us.

Going to specialists with my father became a routine, and part of that routine was
to then adjourn to Showbiz Pizza, a Chuck E. Cheese–like place full of video games
and skee-ball ramps. The feature act, though, was a relentless cover band of animatronic
animals. There was a gorilla in a sequin jacket, a mouse dressed as a cheerleader,
a space age dog. The lead singer was a bear in overalls. They played instruments,
jerking abruptly, heads turning, arms pounding, as they lip-synched their way through
the playlist. I don’t remember the music—there might have been a Monkees cover or
two?—but I remember the patter. They told bear jokes and gorilla jokes and I also
remember a twoness to my feelings: I thought it was all hilarious, and I really wanted
to think it was all hilarious.

My father sat at the red Formica table, sipping an iced tea, a pile of tokens scattered
in front of him. We ate the pizza first, properly. Then I was to go play all of the
games. That was my role. I would run for a machine, exhaust my money, and run back.
I enjoyed playing the games, but it was like the animatronic band: I also knew I was
supposed to enjoy playing the games. It was somehow important.

“May I have some more tokens, please, sir?”

“You certainly may.” He would gesture for me to help myself. I don’t know why I didn’t
pack my pockets, but I limited myself to three or four at a time. I think I might
have been coming back to check on him.

“May I have some more tokens, please, sir?”

“You certainly may.”

He brought nothing to read. He spoke to no one else. He sipped his tea. He wouldn’t
have liked the food. I didn’t think much about the oddity of him in an arcade, because
as sure as I had my role, he had his. He wasn’t reading because he was being attentive.
He was being—I fear—engaged. I sometimes caught him watching the robots sing. I often
caught him looking at me, strangely but not unkindly. He looked tired and, behind
his wire-rimmed glasses, very old (to me). He rolled up the sleeves of his button-up
shirt, his one concession to the whizzing, bleeping informality. It didn’t make him
look any more at home. I suppose he felt confused, maybe indicted. Certainly pressured.
There’s no doubt he was there on my mother’s orders. Yet there he was. Many, many
men wouldn’t have gone. And when I saw him sitting there, I often realized that my
stomach no longer hurt, hadn’t hurt in so long I couldn’t remember when it had stopped.
I would suspect the worst about myself: that I was faking it for attention.

Afterwards he’d ask if I had a good time. I’d say yes, sir, and thank him for bringing
me. He would smile and lead me to the car for the long and mostly silent ride home.
I was always strangely happy to leave. My job was to like these trips, and I think
I really did like them, but it’s hard to see the daylight between the feeling and
the performance. I know I always got back exhausted and successful, as if I’d pulled
off some daring stunt.

“Tell me, son. Is there something wrong with us?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“But you would tell me. If there was something wrong?”

For that year it was a kind of joke between us. I thought there was only one right
answer: there was nothing wrong with us. We were just a couple of regular guys, getting
along fine. I was trained in the Southern art of not complaining, in the nearly Confederate
art of stoic acceptance, but I’ve always wondered, in the years since, whether he
might have been asking a real question. What would have happened if I’d said yes?

10

O
UTSIDE
A
MIANTE,
under a Renaissance sky, I call Livorno and let him know the news. “I can’t wait to
rub Adam’s nose in it,” he says. He is rushing back across the cordillera, poor Laham
buckled up in the passenger seat, his weekend cut short.

Which means I have about an hour and a half.

drbas: you’re 19 years old

frnd1: no i’m 36

drbas: you didn’t turn 20?

frnd1: i turned 20

drbas: i don’t remember that you turned 20

[344229: substitute: “i don’t remember you turning 20”; repeat]

drbas: i don’t remember you turning 20

frnd1: it was in 1996

drbas: why don’t i remember 1996?

frnd1: let’s talk about what you do remember. what do you remember from when i was
15?

drbas: when you were 15 you were on the tennis team

frnd1: i wasn’t very good

drbas: very good at what?

frnd1: i wasn’t very good at tennis

drbas: you have all the strokes but you lack the killer instinct

frnd1: did you have the killer instinct?

drbas: why is that question in the past tense?

And so my grammatical corrections are turned on me.

frnd1: i’m sorry . . . do you have the killer instinct?

drbas: it’s wrong to kill your enemies

frnd1: “killer instinct” is a metaphor. it means you’re very competitive and don’t
mind winning

drbas: it’s easier to be a good loser than a good winner

This has the ring of a quote, but the Internet doesn’t yield its source. I can’t imagine
my father agreed with the sentiment, though I know he found competition generally
distasteful. He liked to engage only long enough to wow you—a few nasty slice serves
before he had more pressing business to attend to, for instance. Did he struggle to
be a good winner? It’s the kind of detail I fear the journals will never yield—the
part of himself he hid from himself.

frnd1: when do you play tennis?

drbas: i don’t play. i’m an adult

frnd1: that’s a stodgy interpretation of adulthood

drbas: an adult must provide for his family. his community depends on him

frnd1: do you think your community depended on you?

drbas: why are you using the past tense?

frnd1: do you think your community depends on you?

drbas: it’s hard to be a pillar of the community when there’s no roof to hold up

frnd1: a physician’s skills are very portable. you could live anywhere

drbas: i didn’t choose where i live. where i live chose me

I jump when the front door opens. Livorno and Laham, golf gear and baju kurung, backlit
with the Menlo Park sunshine—they look like strange men storming in from the future.
I’ve fallen into a time warp. Eighteen, fifteen, ten. I feel like I’ve cycled through
all my ages. Laham greets me with a nod as he heads into the back room. He looks like
a surgeon worried about a patient who’s taken a turn for the worse. I hear his magnificently
orderly typing start up.

“This is good, right?” I say.

“What other questions is he asking?” Livorno says.

“He wants to know what happened in 1996.”

“And the years afterwards?”

“He doesn’t know what year it is.”

Livorno pulls on his face. “We’ll have to give him access to a newspaper. That might
sate his curiosity.”

“You look concerned,” I say. I heard triumph on the phone.

He looks at me, stern. “Major advances are a serious business.”

I stick around, try to engage in the heady scrutiny of this discovery, but I can’t
quite dislodge myself from those years, from Showbiz Pizza, from the tarp in the garage,
the casseroles stocked in the freezer.

•   •   •

I
N THE
S
UBARU
I
tool up El Camino, admiring the scrubbed progress of a place that believes in the
future. The redbrick pub, the handsome pillars of the pancake diner. The cobbler,
the vacuum shop, the barber, the beautician. Kepler’s, Feldman’s, McDonald’s, Chevron.
Mattress Discounters. In the median, trees raise their bushy hands, anxious to help.
I turn in, make the block, passing every service, every good a beautiful life could
require. Dance lessons, psychotherapy, potting soil, designer consignment. Croissants
and eyeglasses and laser dentistry. Sushi and French bistros, chocolate and antique
lamps. It’s prix fixe with free checking, same-day pressing, and walk-ins welcome.

I park at Draeger’s, where I buy two dozen white long-stem roses. They’re from Half
Moon Bay. I pick up some locally made caramels, some Santa Cruz wine. At a community
table out front there’s a woman demonstrating how the Japanese police use a small
aluminum spike to incapacitate wrongdoers. It’s called a kubotan, and for a donation
in support of female self-defense, I receive a pink one on a keychain ring. She thanks
me graciously and I feel I might burst into crazed laughter at how serious she looks
in the extravagant afternoon light.

I’m going to give all of this California bounty to Rachel. I drive to Fairfax, hide
the Subaru up the hill, next to her Honda. As I walk down to the street, I twirl the
kubotan, hold the roses aloft as if proposing a toast. I pass the bookstore and the
Kachina doll store, both closed. By now it’s dusk and the air is soft, as fragrant
as rosemary on my fingers. At the Coffee Barn, I stand by the trash cans, at the edge
of the windows, and look inside. The interior blazes like a Hopper painting. There
are no customers, and the order of business is closing duties, the owner Jim toasting
beans in the huge copper vat. Rachel wiping down the front counter in sweeping strokes.
Trevor carries a bus tub into the back, then returns. There’s something gorgeously
human about this autonomous teamwork. Jim shouts something at Rachel. Rachel shouts
something at Trevor. Trevor shouts something at Jim. They laugh, Jim shaking his head—
those kids.

Trevor pretends to be returning to the kitchen, but something in his stride hints
at a ruse. He swirls a dishtowel in his hand, tightening it. When he’s behind the
counter and behind Rachel, his arm whips an underhand shot that must sear Rachel’s
backend. I can’t hear the snap, but I hear her yelp. She jumps, shocked, reaching
back to rub the pain. Her face, still looking forward, is red and bright with disbelief.
And pleasure.

I step back into the dusk, leaning implausibly against the square column of the building’s
façade. The light from inside doesn’t touch me, and anyway it’s so dark out now that
from the inside the windows should be mirrors. If they looked toward me, they would
instead see themselves. Her chasing him wildly through the tables, bent on vengeance.
Him whirling, toppling chairs, dodging her feeble shots. She’s tenacious but unskilled.
She flicks her wrist all wrong, as if shooing a fly, missing and missing and missing.

They stop, facing off across a marble-topped table, heaving for air. Their rags are
limp in their grips, and they’ve got a delicious sadism in their faces. It says,
you better be scared, because when I get my hands on you . . .

It’ll be a pure encounter.

I’ve never wanted to be trapped in a life like my father’s, but what if his heavy
spell has trapped me in a different way—in a life unlike his? A life like mine? The
truth is that these two remind me of someone: myself and Erin, when I first arrived
in San Francisco. I was twenty-two, only a couple of years older than Rachel; Erin
was twenty-one. My father had been dead for a short time, and when Erin and I weren’t
chasing each other around like this we were sharing our wounds and woes. His death
was my purest woe. I was always blameless (in her eyes), and her sympathy was always
perfect, right up to the end.

I press my back to the column, hiding. Above me the bas-relief of a fat chef reveals
the tips of his shoes. The megaphone of roses rattles damp and dead. The pane of glass
just to my left might as well be the limit of the universe. I’m sure there’s some
jealousy deep in my heart—jealousy of Trevor, or Trevor’s youth—but what I mostly
feel is absolute distance. And from the right elevation distance provides a clear
view. Who is this girl running through the tables? I’m bringing the bounty of California
to a girl who is herself the bounty of California. And what, honestly, do I feel for
her? Does it have depth and texture? Is it as real as life? And what does she feel?
Could she parse her passion for me? Does she know that I’m not the true source of
the excitement she feels when she comes to San Francisco? That the true source isn’t
even the city itself—that the true source is her? Does she know that? She’s traveled
a long ways to get to this bright Fairfax eve. A long ways. She’s cut ties; she’s
made herself new. She’s earned a shot at the California dream—a fresh start. And while
I won’t disparage myself—I know I bring a certain amount of intelligence, a certain
amount of humor to a life—one thing I’m not is a fresh start.

Here in the cool air of Fairfax, for the first time in years, I feel heavy-footed,
exiled.

Son, is there something
wrong
with us?

No, sir. I don’t think so.