Crazy (10 page)

"No, do you?"

"Last time, they tied him down. They locked him up. No way! And what do you mean,
I
need help?
I'm
not crazy, if that's what you're thinking. Just because of a little eyeliner..."

"And you should call the police," Shelby says, as
if she hasn't heard a thing I've said. "What if he's out there somewhere in this cold, freezing to death? The police could be looking for him right now. They might have found him by now. They could get dogs out looking..."

"Stop! Just stop it, will you?" I storm out of the room with my hands over my ears, just like a kid—just like Dad blocking out the Furies. A moment later I spin around and glare at her. "If they did find him, what would they do to him? Put him away? No! I'm not calling them."

Shelby sets her hands on her hips. "What exactly are you so afraid of? So, you'd rather find him frozen to death somewhere than have the police find him and discover that maybe, just maybe, he's a little nuts?" She widens her eyes and shakes her head.

"Just shut up, Shelby!" I shout. "I don't want to hear it."

The doorbell rings.

AUNT BEE
:
Oh, thank goodness.

I go to the door and fling it open, hoping against hope to see my dad, but it's Haze, standing on the stoop with a grocery bag in his arms.

"Whoa, man, I could hear you guys yelling all the way down the block."

"Did you drive here?" I ask, not even bothering to say hello.

"Yeah, what do ya think? I had to park down the street a ways, though."

"Good," I say. "Let's go." I brush past him and trot down the steps, not caring if they're slippery and I fall and break my neck.

"Okay," Haze says, turning around and following me. "But where are we going, dude?"

"To look for his father," Shelby says. I turn and see her in the doorway. She smiles at me and shrugs.

"Right." Haze nods.

"Come on—close the door and let's go," I say, trying my best to return the smile.

Haze has to be the worst driver in the world. He owns a 1967 eight-passenger cargo van with a major muffler problem. He tears up the roads like he's driving a Porsche. Every time I tell him to slow down because I want to check someone out, he slams on the brakes and we skid like a hundred feet before stopping. Then he goes slowly for a while but gradually picks up speed again, getting right on the tail of any car in front of us until they move out of his way.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Dude doesn't know the meaning of the words "slow down." We're gonna get killed in this tin can of his.

Shelby is sitting in the one back seat that has a seat belt and is rummaging through the sack of food Haze brought with him. She calls out, "Anyone want some Doritos?"

"Most definitely," Haze says. She tosses the bag up to the front. I catch it, then open and hand it to Haze. He takes a few and hands it back to me. "Here, take some."

"No, thanks. I'm not hungry."

CRAZY GLUE
:
The way he's driving, you'd be tossing them right back up, anyway.

"Dude, you gotta eat. You'll feel better. I bet you haven't eaten since that stale burger you had at lunch today, and it's almost seven thirty, so eat, eat!"

I take a chip just to shut him up, but it tastes so good, I take another one and then another. By the time we reach downtown Washington, D.C., I've finished the bag along with some Twizzlers and a can of Pepsi.

CRAZY GLUE
:
That's it, swallow that burp down, goob. There's a lady in the car.

I haven't had much in the way of junk food in forever. It tastes like heaven.

My parents used to love to visit the Smithsonian, so even though it's closed, we drive around the area just in case Dad's there. Then we drive over to Georgetown, where he and my mom first lived as newlyweds. They rented the basement of a townhouse near Dumbarton Oaks Park, so we drive over there to look and then to the Georgetown University campus, where my parents first met and went to school. I don't know where to go after that, so we just wander the streets, stopping and speeding up, stopping and speeding up in Haze's old
van while Haze tells us about his father's latest trick of spray-painting the word "whore" on the front of their brick house.

"It's in big black letters, right? A story and a half high, at least—spray-painted right on the front of our house. Whore! So my sister calls my dad on his cell, and she's screaming at him for calling her a whore, because she lives there, too, and so maybe he meant to call her a whore and not my mother, or maybe he meant it for the both of them. And my dad's trying to explain that it was just meant for my mother, like that makes it okay. And he's a lawyer!" He shakes his head. "What an asshole. Anyway, who's gonna know who it was meant for? Right? Sooo, the school bus stops in front of our house and like, man, everybody's howling when they see the house, and when my sister gets on, they start calling her a whore. She's in the fifth grade. She doesn't need that shit, man."

"Yeah, for sure," I say, remembering my fifth grade.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Jason got a swirlie! Jason got a swirlie!

It's ten o'clock and Haze is almost out of gas, so we head back to my house. Haze pulls into the same spot he had parked in before and turns off the engine. The whole van shakes and rattles and coughs so much, we're sure it's going to explode. The three of us leap out of the car and make a slippery run for my house. It's freezing out, so we run huddled together.

As we draw closer to the house, I notice my dad's bedroom light is on and I stop and just stand there, staring, not believing my eyes.

"What? What is it?" Shelby asks. She and Haze have halted beside me.

"My—my dad's light." I point to the front room upstairs.

"He's home?" Shelby asks.

"I—I think, maybe."

CRAZY GLUE
:
Well, don't just stand there getting all choked up. Move, goob. Move.

I can't bear to be wrong. What if he's not there?

Haze slaps my back. "Come on, dude—let's go find out if he's in there."

Shelby grabs my arm and pulls me forward, and the three of us run down the street and into the house. I call out to my dad as soon as we cross the threshold. "Dad? Dad, are you here? Where are you?"

I hear violin music coming from upstairs. It stops, and then I hear a voice: "Is that Apollo home from the war? What news have you from the front?"

The music starts up again, and I feel something in my chest give way, as if my heart, my bird heart, so pumped up with fear and dread, has at last collapsed back to its normal size. My dad has come home.

I
TACKLE THE STAIRS
two at a time with Haze and Shelby right behind me.

AUNT BEE
:
Ah, what a relief.

FBG WITH A MUSTACHE
:
Buck up, son. He's all right. Everything's back under control.

I run to my dad's room and there he is. He's standing in front of the full-length mirror built into his closet door, wearing a wool scarf tied around his head with bits of aluminum foil peeking out from his ears. He's in Greek costume, wearing a dark blue shirt and embroidered vest, red sash, a pair of funny-looking, baggy black pants, and tall boots that come up to his knees. I know this outfit came from his Greek memories box. He looks noble in it, and very Greek with his beard and olive complexion. He's holding a violin, which must have come from the box as well, and he's playing it. We used to have, hanging on our walls, pictures of Dad playing the violin. He even won a major competition once, but that was before he got sick. That was before I was even born. This is the first time I've ever heard him play, and I'm surprised because he sounds
pretty good—actually, really good. He's staring at himself, as though he's trying to recognize the person he sees in the mirror. As I rush toward him to give him a hug, I catch sight of the mirror over the chest of drawers still in a million splinters.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Did you think they'd magically glue themselves back together?

AUNT BEE
:
Oh dear, you're so ashamed.

FBG WITH A MUSTACHE
:
He's frightened by it.

"Dad!" I give him a hug and squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying. "Jeez, where have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you."

AUNT BEE
:
Now, don't be angry with him.

SEXY LADY
:
Of course he's not angry. He's a good son.

Dad holds the violin above his head while I hug him. I let go and he starts to tuck the violin back under his chin, when he notices Shelby and Haze, and in a flash he drops to the floor behind the bed. He tugs on my pants leg. "Apollo, they're here. The Furies. Get down," he says in a loud whisper. He moans and begins his chant:

"
Now by the altar,
Over the victim,
Ripe for the ritual,
Sing this enchantment:
A song without music,
A sword in the senses...
"

"Whoa!" Haze says. "We can just wait downstairs, dude."

I squat down. "No, Dad, it's okay. These are my—my—these are the Argonauts, here to help me capture the Golden Fleece. They're our friends."

Dad sets his violin and bow on the floor, then covers his ears. His voice trembling and his face turning red, he continues:

"
A storm in the heart,
And afire in the brain;
A clamour of Furies
To paralyse reason...
"

"Come on—let's go down," Shelby says.

"It's—it's Athena, here to help you," I say. "She's here to defend you against the Furies."

Thankfully, Dad stops chanting. He looks at me a second and I nod. His eyes are bloodshot, his nose is running and red, and his cheek is bruised and swollen on the side where he had pulled his tooth. He wipes his nose on the sleeve of his shirt and peeks over the top of the bed at Shelby and Haze, who are standing just inside the door of the room.

He picks up the violin and bow and slowly stands. I stand, too.

Shelby steps forward and I can see doubt in her eyes. She says hello. Then Haze says, "Yeah, hey, man,"
and steps into the room. "Cool violin. You sound real good." Haze coughs and shrugs, and I see him glancing at all the buckets and wastepaper baskets we have placed around the room to catch the water when it rains.

AUNT BEE
:
It's all right. So what. Now they know the worst of it.

FBG WITH A MUSTACHE
:
Buck up, son.

Dad hides behind me. I feel his breath on the back of my head.

Haze looks at the ceiling. He points at the missing plaster. "I could fix that for you if you wanted. I'm pretty good." He looks at me. "I work with my uncle's construction crew in the summers."

"Our whole roof leaks," I say. "If you fixed the ceiling, it would only leak through again." I reach back for Dad's hand. I know I need to comfort him, reassure him, so he doesn't get all worked up. His hand feels ice cold, but he's home and he's alive; that's all that matters.

"Well," Shelby says, her voice a little too loud, "I'd love to hear some more violin music. Mr. Papadopoulos, would you play something for us?"

CRAZY GLUE
:
She thinks your dad's crazy
and
deaf.

LAUGH TRACK
:
(Laughter).

Dad steps out from behind me, hugging the violin to his chest. "I found it. I thought I lost it, but I found it in the maze of quadraphonic sound." He turns around to face the mirror again, and tucks the instrument under his chin. He lifts the bow, hesitating
for a minute, then plays his music, and he sounds so—so...

CRAZY GLUE
:
Sane. The word is sane.

AUNT BEE
:
I forgot he could play the violin.

SEXY LADY
:
You should play, too, Jason. You'd be so hot.

Looking at Shelby and Haze, I smile and shrug. They smile, too, but I catch Shelby checking out the broken mirror, and I know she's thinking my dad broke it. I know she's thinking he's so crazy.

I'
M SURPRISED
at how comfortable it turns out to be with Haze and Shelby and my dad. Maybe because they're used to dealing with difficult parents themselves, they aren't freaking, and Dad just seems calmer with the violin. He uses it like a shield. As long as he has it in his arms or on his lap, he's quiet; when he gets nervous about the Furies, he plays, and he feels better. Maybe the meds are starting to work, too. Maybe he really will be okay.

CRAZY GLUE
:
And maybe you won't have a bad dream and maybe

you won't wet the bed and maybe...

LAUGH TRACK
:
Shut up!

CRAZY GLUE
:
Are they allowed to say that? That's not in their script.

Shelby and Haze offer to order Chinese take-out. I try to protest, but they insist.

CRAZY GLUE
:
Yeah, we all notice how lame your protest is.

AUNT BEE
:
He's starving, poor boy.

Okay, so I don't put up much of a fight. Who can resist? We have sweet and sour soup, fried rice, beef and broccoli, moo shu pork, Kung Pao chicken, and lots of egg rolls and oolong tea.

Dad eats so much, I'm sure he's going to get sick since he's unused to so much food, but except for a few burps he holds it all in.

It's almost midnight by the time we've finished eating, and even though I tell them they don't have to stay, Shelby and Haze insist on spending the night with us.

LAUGH TRACK
:
Uh-oh!

Haze, Dad, and I will sleep in Dad's king-size bed and Shelby will sleep in mine. I show Shelby my room.

She looks around. "All right! I like it. You sure like the color blue, don't you?" Before I can say anything she says, "Who took all the pictures in here? Your mom?"

I have black-and-white photographs of Greece on the walls all around the room. Most of them are of Crete, where my dad's family is from. I go over to the wall. "I did these. My mom mostly liked photographing faces." I point to one of the photos. "This cave here is supposedly where Zeus, the Greek god, was born. There's another cave where he's supposed to have been born, too, but I like this one because it's not all touristy the way the other one is. I love caves. I love black-and-white photos of stones, like stone walls and these rocky mountains, and the caves. Oh, and I love taking pictures of snow. It's all about light and shadows with black-and-white film and snow. It's really cool. I only use film. I don't do digital. My mom has—had a darkroom in our basement. I haven't been down there since..."