Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation (3 page)

Booker glanced at his watch.

The sky was turning overcast as we journeyed south across Front Street, parallel to the Susquehanna River, leisurely making our way toward the hospital.

“I do two hundred and fifty push-ups every morning,” my dad informed Booker as he ignited another cigarette. “My doctor looks at me like I’m a freak. He gave me a stress test and I almost burned the fucking machine out.”

Booker’s shoulders had fallen into a mild slump—the posture of a man on a bus ride from Bangor to Corpus Christi.

“But I’ve always maintained my body,” Merv went on. “It’s my natural instinct. I remember once when I was a kid, I hugged my grandmother so hard I broke three of her ribs. See, I don’t know how to regulate my strength. If I hold a canary in my hand, I’ll crush it. It’s heartbreaking.”

“Ol’ grandma,” a drained Booker murmured, now phoning it in.

“I got in so many fights the social worker came to my mother and told her I was going to wind up either in reform school or the electric chair.

“Almos’ had you choppin’ rocks.”

“I never started a fight in my life, but I took shit from no one. See, everyone was pissed off back then. No one had money. We were all fucking starving.”

Merv delicately spat a loose piece of tobacco from his tongue.

“I remember I beat the shit out of this one prick who shot my cat with a BB gun. He said, ‘I don’t like Jews and I don’t like Jew cats.’ I told him very sweetly, ‘Well, this Jew’s about to shove that fucking gun up your ass.’ It was a Daisy—I can still picture it.”

“Uh-oh. So Daisy got it, huh?” Booker remarked, his attention span justifiably on the wane.

“No, the gun was a Daisy,” my father clarified.

“Yeah, ol’ Daisy did the jump and run,” Booker responded, still on autopilot.

“No, the name of the gun, the outfit that made it, was Daisy.”

“Daisy say, ‘I’m gonna find me a tree and set there.’ Heh-heh.”

“Well, again, Daisy wasn’t the name of the cat. I’m speaking purely of the BB gun.”

I detected a hint of irritability in my father’s voice. Mike and I exchanged worried glances, imagining where this might be headed:

Merv: “For the last fucking time, Daisy was not the name of
the fucking cat! It was the company that made the gun. Are we clear now, Booker?”

Booker: “Oh, we clear. We certainly clear, ’cept on one thing: Why you keep callin’ me Booker, motherfucker?”

Thankfully, such an exchange never took place. Merv continued to display an incredible reserve of patience with our guest, something he would not have afforded me in a similar conversation. It kind of pissed me off. As they went back and forth with their little vaudeville routine (likely known as “The Daisy Bit” on the circuit), I could take no more.

“Jeez, Dad, forget about the gun!” I blurted out. “What was the name of your cat?”

“What the fuck difference does it make?” Merv snapped. “I called him Red. He didn’t have a name!”

“If you called him Red, then he
did
have a name.”

“Are you being a wiseass? ’Cause I’ll put this fucking car in the river right now.”

I detected a fatigued sigh from Booker. If he had cracked opened a fortune cookie at that moment, it would’ve read
Be wary of rides from strangers
.

Roadwork slowed us to a crawl for the next mile or two, and the car grew quiet. My dad had talked himself out, and Booker’s head was leaning against the window. In the reflection I could see he was resting his eyes. Every now and then,
Merv would glance over at him like a mother checking on her newborn.

I gazed into the ashen waters of the comatose Susquehanna, and I found myself meditating on my relationship with my father. If only, I thought, it could be more like the one he enjoyed with the stranger in the front seat whom he’d known for less than half an hour. I tried desperately to identify the elusive qualities the man possessed, hoping perhaps I could emulate them, but all I could come up with was:

1. He was pleasant.
   
2. He was colored.
   
3. He’d been walking alongside the road.
   

Clearly there was no cracking it.

The congestion finally let up, and we were flagged into a detour lane. Naturally, Merv saw this as an opportunity to jump on the gas, because only a schmuck would do something like ease back into traffic. The Olds made a head-snapping lurch, startling Booker from his catnap. His eyes shot open and he appeared disoriented and anxious, as if he were stuck in the middle of a bad dream.

“This is where I’m going,” he said in a panicked voice.
“I’m getting out right here!” His hand gripped the door handle, and for a moment it looked like he might jump from the moving car. My father gently took hold of his arm.

“We’re almost at the hospital, Booker. Hold on, pal,” he said calmly.

“It’s okay, Booker,” I heard myself say, addressing him by his appointed alias. “We’re almost there.”

Booker collected himself and allowed the cobwebs to clear. He kept looking back and forth between my father and the passing street signs that brought him closer to his destination. Then he seemed to relax.

“Almos’ there,” he said with a long exhale. “We almos’ there.”

A sort of calmness came over the car. Even Mike and I started to breathe easy for the first time. You could almost hear the soothing whistle of an aimless wind, as if we were high on a Tibetan mountain.

Then a Chevy El Camino passed us and my father’s back noticeably stiffened. “Did you see that, Booker?” he asked. “That thing that looks like it’s half car, half truck?” Booker hesitated, perhaps wondering if he could get away without answering.

“Oh yeah, I see him,” he finally replied.

“Okay, well, let me tell you something—and please listen
carefully.” He took a beat. “Anyone who drives a car like that is an automatic asshole.”

For the next several moments, Booker bowed his head, quietly absorbing my father’s remark. It was as if he had heard something that required great deliberation.

Then, suddenly, he erupted in laughter.

It wasn’t the polite Booker “heh-heh” we’d all come to know, but a body-quaking horselaugh that caused the entire front seat to shake. Booker was probably laughing harder than he’d ever laughed in his life, as though he’d been liberated from something that had troubled him to the point of exhaustion. Mike and I immediately recognized what had taken place. We’d seen it before. This was how people often reacted once they finally “got” our father. Confusion, fear, and even revulsion gave way to acceptance and a sort of enjoyment. Sometimes it took years. Booker got it in under an hour.

Merv was clearly pleased by the response. It fueled his engine.

“I mean, look at that fucking thing,” he continued about the El Camino. “What kind of simp walks onto a car lot, looks around, and points to
that
?”

Booker was doubled over, adding his two cents while gasping for air. “Seems like it don’t know what it want to be!”

“‘Excuse me, Mr. Salesman, do you have something that makes no fucking sense? ’Cause I’ve got my checkbook out.’”

The front seat was on a roll, so I decided to jump in. “Yeah, Dad, that El Camino guy’s a real asshole!” Mike followed up with “I bet you could beat the shit out of him in five seconds!”

“Ah, he’s harmless,” Merv said. “You don’t beat people up for no reason. He’s just an idiot.”

Atticus had spoken.

We arrived at the hospital parking lot as a light drizzle appeared on the windshield. “And here we are, sir!” my father announced as he wove between two flashing barricades and settled along a section of painted curb marked
ABSOLUTELY NO PARKING
. He stepped out of the car, walked around to the other side, and opened the door for Booker. Mike and I slid out of the backseat.

This was the clearest look we’d had of our guest all day. It was like standing on the lakeshore and finally seeing the face of a strange fish we’d spent years trying to catch. The man was tall and long-limbed and the waist of his work pants drooped loosely to one hip. He was older and less nimble than the real Booker, and his eyes were fanned with deep lines that retreated into his temples. He smiled at my brother
and me and clapped our backs as if we were old comrades who’d once stood side by side in a harrowing battle.

“Y’all look after your pops, hear?” he said.

Then he turned to my dad, shaking off one last chuckle like a chill, and extended his hand. “My man, Jersey Joe. Next time we’ll get us one of them truck-cars. Ha!” Merv pulled him into a hug that seemed awkward and unnecessary but fortunately didn’t break any ribs.

“Thanks for everything you do for these kids, Booker. They think the world of you. I hope you know that.”

I winced. Drop it, already! But Booker just nodded and said, “I ain’t worried ’bout these boys. Jus’ keep ’em away from ol’ Daisy.” He let out a hoot. Then he shook my father’s hand and walked toward the hospital. He was a few feet away when he stopped and turned around.

“Just call me Sam. Everyone calls me Sam.”

“You got it,” my dad replied, as if a great honor had been bestowed on him.

As we watched Sam disappear through the revolving door, Merv’s enormous paws were on our shoulders, squeezing the tendons so hard that we were hunched over like cripples receiving a savage blessing.

“You guys did a good thing today,” he said.

Back on Front Street, Al Hirt had been replaced with the
faint drone of AM radio and a drifting advertisement for Joe, the Motorists’ Friend. Mike and I were enjoying a fresh pack of Beemans gum that my dad had pulled from the glove compartment.

As was often the case when he was driving, he was lost in thought. Merv had a habit of looking far away, beyond everything in front of him, contemplating things he would never disclose. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine what they were, to zone in on the mysterious man behind the wheel.

A few seconds later he glanced back and said, “Do you have to chew so fucking loud?”

Full disclosure: Ever since I was a child, I’ve loathed all things Disney. There are currently more than three hundred Disney characters, and I hate every one of them. Mickey, Minnie, Tigger, the dwarfs—it’s all the same shit to me. “Even J. Worthington Foulfellow from
Pinocchio
?” you gasp. Yup, throw him on the pile. Along with Uncle Walt and his peach-syrup grin, brought on, no doubt, by dreamy reveries of rapidly developing pubescent Mouseketeers.

The plot was hatched hundreds of miles away by my wife’s sister, a demanding woman of shrill voice and disagreeable temperament. Diane was a pediatric nurse by trade, and my heart ached for the children under her care. In an act of pure
cunning, she called my wife, Lorrie, one evening, and after the usual chitchat about the Anthropologie catalog and their mother’s hemophilia, the conversation turned to the kids and spring break.

Diane and her family had been to Disney World several times in the past, and despite her best efforts, she’d been unable to convince us to join them. But now she employed a new slant, a simple brushstroke of propaganda that caught my wife off guard in a weak moment: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have the cousins spend time together while they’re still young?” It was a clever angle, subtly playing on the “we’ll all be dead one day” thing. Personally, I’d rather throw myself in front of the D train than go along on one of these family clambakes, but when my six-year-old daughter, Sadie, begged me, I knew I was fucked. Anything for that kid.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the horrors that awaited me in the Sunshine State.

For the record, a person doesn’t “visit” Disney World; Disney World sucks you into its digestive tract. Like an anaconda swallowing a wild pig. From the moment you step onto the shuttle at the Orlando airport, they own your stupid ass. Once inside the compound, there will be no escape. All sense of life beyond the park borders fades away. The state of Florida is gone. You are immediately tagged and released into the system. There, you will be scanned, tracked, and relieved
of your money via a wristband and a magnetic ID card. Make no mistake, you are here to eat, breathe, sleep, and acquire all that is Disney. Remove your wristband at your own peril. If you thirst, you will not drink. If you wish to meet Princess Jasmine, she will not be receiving.

Diane had us booked at a place called the Wilderness Lodge, located in the Magic Kingdom sector of the compound, abutting the shores of the foreboding Bay Lake. I was grateful to have arrived by bus. I can only assume that a water approach at nighttime, as the fog thickens on the loch, is not unlike Edward Prendick’s arrival at the island of Doctor Moreau, with the eyes of queer creatures peering at him through the darkness. Fear not, weary travelers—it’s probably just Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

The aesthetics of the hotel were purportedly “inspired by the Great National Park lodges from the turn of the 20th century” and “celebrate the majesty of the unspoiled wilderness.” Or, in this case, the architect vomited plastic logs. I detected no natural wood anywhere. If a termite walked in, he’d just say, “Fuck it,” and catch the shuttle back to the airport. To be fair, however, the lobby is a giant blow job for aficionados of sacrilegious Native American iconography. So, if you’re having night sweats, worried that there might not be a totem pole featuring Disney characters, get some sleep, pal.

Still, I don’t think I realized how truly grave my situation was until my first meal on the compound—one of many events Diane would organize without consulting us. A quick heads-up: If you eat on Walt’s turf, you eat by his rules. That means the Disney shtick will be rammed down your throat with each tentative bite of Baloo’s Maple-Glazed Trout—something I highly suggest avoiding unless you’re a fan of fish soaked in pancake syrup.

The Whispering Canyon Cafe is a cavernous shitbox located in the polyurethaned bowels of the Wilderness Lodge. Our server that evening, a stout lass with a wide face seized by rosacea, was decked out in cornball cowgirl attire—a getup she wore as if it had been her destiny since birth. She clomped over to our table and, with a thick Texas drawl worthy of a starring role in the finest production ever put on by a mental institution, loudly announced, “Hi, y’all! I’m Sawdust Sally!” I immediately wanted to kill her.

For the next hour and twenty minutes, this woman would not shut up. Nor would she break character. I have never met a person before or since who was that committed to something. Jihad, by contrast, was a mere hobby for Osama bin Laden. More than once, I politely asked her to “please stop talking that way.” But she ignored my request and continued to regale us with tales of “wrasslin’ ki-yotes” and “buckarooin’” this and “buckarooin’” that. Sadie sat there
frozen with the wary expression she reserves for the homeless guy on Broadway who meows in people’s faces. She almost cried when Sally launched into a jaunty tune about branding cattle that had the whole place clapping and singing along. Diane and her kids got so into it, it triggered my acid reflux. Nine days later, when the song finally ended, I kindly asked our lunatic waitress if we’d be eating any time soon, considering we’d ordered the fucking food over an hour ago. She let out a jolly snort and announced to the room, “Yee-ha! We got us a hungry buckaroo here, folks!” Diane and her crew started laughing at me, causing a chain reaction that prompted families from all over the world to laugh at me as well. Humiliated, I decided to pull a one-eighty and join in on the fun. But just as I was about to ask Sally whether it was true that buckaroos were required to soak their cocks in boric acid before trading at the local brothel, the food arrived and I lost interest. I could feel Diane’s angry glare as I spat out my first spoonful of Yukon potato leek soup.

Just to clarify, my sister-in-law and I share a deep mutual dislike for each other. Barely a few hours into this escapade and she was already copping an attitude. This was never about “getting the cousins together”; it was about her sick need for control. We engaged in a brief stare-down that ended when a waiter lit a sparkler and her kids went batshit. What the fuck were we doing down here?

The following day we awoke to the pukified orange glow of a Disney dawn. It was time to see the Holy Land.

The Magic Kingdom, the most notorious of Disney World’s four theme parks, spans a brain-exploding 107 acres made up of six different “lands,” such as Adventureland, Fantasyland, Mickey’s Toontown Fair, and if you search hard enough, Geppetto’s Glory Hole. Soon, Cinderella Castle loomed before us in all its smaller-and-crummier-looking-in-person splendor. The cousins’ eyes lit up instantly. This was their fourth visit to mouse country, and apparently the enchantment comes back like herpes. What really disturbed me was the look on Diane’s face. Suddenly possessed of a mad drooling grin, she, too, seemed bewitched by some mystical force that so far had eluded my family and me.

Which brings me to something else I should make clear: In no way am I suggesting that adults who enjoy Disney World with the same passion as their children are vapid dickwits. I’m stating for a fact and putting it into the record that they are vapid dickwits. I saw grown men—
fathers
—wearing Winnie the Pooh T-shirts and having their pictures taken with genies and giant ducks. The expression “Finding your inner child” is just that—an expression. You’re not literally supposed to act on it, especially in front of your kids, who see you as their protector.

And speaking of genies and their spray-tanned associates—
yes, you will see Aladdin at Disney World. He walked right by me. So close I could smell his Axe shower gel. I saw Pluto, Donald, those fucking parrots with sombreros, all the creepily muted and bigheaded Disney characters throughout history—everyone except good ol’ Uncle Remus from
Song of the South
. I assume the Disney folks considered him a figurative and literal blot on the landscape.

After a few hours of negotiating a host of moldy tent shows and infantile attractions (even by infant standards), I exited the Carousel of Progress with a blinding headache and the sense that I’d lost a third of my intelligence. One thing I did learn, however, is that when kids aren’t being enchanted by the Magic Kingdom, they’re throwing shitfits. Loud, monkey-screeching, snot-flying shitfits. You can try to get away from them, but rest assured you’ll meet again on the plane ride home.

I’d worried about many things over the course of my life, but heatstroke hadn’t been one of them. Nobody ever told me that Orlando in March is like the Congo in August. I assumed it would be a little warm, but it was as if something had gone wrong with the sun and gases were expanding exponentially to announce the arrival of the apocalypse. I was getting cranky. Plus, the only place I had even a mild interest in visiting (for reasons I’ll keep to myself) was Ariel’s Grotto, but apparently the fish-girl was on a five.

It was about this time I realized that Sadie wasn’t having fun. No matter how hard her cousins tried to get her into the spirit of something called Mickey’s PhilharMagic, she seemed ambivalent, perhaps even confused as to why she wasn’t enjoying herself. I think she was also a little put off by the way Diane was screaming at her kids: “Get in that Tiki Room! Don’t elbow the gopher! Speak clearly to John Smith from
Pocahontas
!” I knelt down by my daughter and said, “Honey, is there anything special you’d like to—” She cut me off: “Can we go back to the hotel?”

I glared at Diane, who was standing ten yards away, clapping like a baboon at a roving magician who’d just separated two silver rings. I approached and curtly briefed her that we were going back to the hotel to pack our bodies in ice. She looked outraged, as if I were walking out of her son’s christening (which I did, by the way). Lorrie stepped in and confirmed that we’d had enough for the day. I detected tension between the sisters, something I considered a personal victory. But just when it seemed the fur might fly, the magician produced a red scarf. Once again, Diane and her tribe were under his spell.

After purchasing three bottles of water that, to my memory, cost nineteen dollars, Lorrie, Sadie, and I began our exodus from the Magic Kingdom.

Somehow, we got lost. The only way back to the
Wilderness Lodge was by shuttle or ferry boat. Traveling by boat was out of the question, as I had a premonition of a bearded man in a striped vest playing the banjo. Yet finding the shuttle proved frustrating. No one seemed able—or perhaps willing—to point us in the right direction.
You’re leaving? But it’s only noon!
I became so desperate I even asked Chip and Dale, but they just shrugged their shoulders like a couple of retards.

Growing panicked, I flagged a security guard and begged him to show us where the buses were located. He gave me a glance and replied, “To the Grand Floridian?” Fun fact: The Grand Floridian is considered by some to be the “Jewish hotel” at Disney World. I guess because it has a spa. I corrected him and said, no, we were staying at the Wilderness Lodge. He scratched the back of his head for a moment, contemplating the unlikelihood of Jews in the wilderness, then gave us some complicated directions he seemed to be making up as he went along. When you’re desperate, you’ll take anything.

What happened next, I believe to this day, was a plot to prevent me from leaving the Magic Kingdom. Word had gotten out; I was being a “difficult guest”—the Disney World equivalent of what Scientologists call a “suppressive person.” As the temperature climbed to roughly 120 degrees, our path to freedom was unexpectedly blocked. We had somehow wandered into the Main Street area as a parade had begun and
were quickly consumed by a throng of frenzied zealots who cheered wildly at a procession of Disney characters led by Tinker Bell. Ms. Bell, by the way, was safely ensconced in a glittery cagelike basket, no doubt meant to keep her safe from the grabby hands of daddies and recently paroled uncles. Suddenly, a surge of electricity shot through the crowd and the place went nuts. Mickey had appeared on the parade route. He stood in an open car, solemnly nodding his giant head as he acknowledged his fanatical followers with an occasional white-gloved wave. I will abstain from making a reference to Leni Riefenstahl, but I will say I half expected to hear the sound of windows being shattered at the Grand Floridian.

With the roar of the mob still ringing in my head, we arrived back at the Wilderness Lodge, physically and emotionally drained. Entering the lobby, we were greeted by a guy in a bear suit dancing with a broom. Sadie shrieked, “Oh God, now they’re here too?” Later I drifted off into a disturbing sleep, dreaming that I was lying in a battlefield with my stomach ripped open and my guts hanging out. A medic with comical buckteeth was kneeling beside me, delicately removing little pigs with fiddles from my body cavity.

The next two days went by in a blur of dread and fatigue. More heat, more noise, bigger crowds, and the Mexico Pavilion. I felt light-headed much of the time and developed a rash from some off-brand sunscreen I’d purchased from a vendor
who, according to the lady behind me, had played the fat kid in
The Bad News Bears
. (“He looks terrible, doesn’t he?”)

By now, the tension between me and Diane was so thick you could cut it with a pickax, the kind a dwarf might sling over his shoulder before departing for work. The fuse had been lit way back at the Whispering Canyon Cafe, which was connected to the original fuse that had been lit the day we’d first met. Something was going to blow.

There’s a phrase the old folks back home like to use when describing one’s distaste for an unpleasant task or chore: “I need that like I need a second asshole.” So it goes without saying that something called the Tomorrowland Terrace Fireworks Dessert Party would be the granddaddy of redundant assholes. Diane announced—as if it were the greatest news since they started crossbreeding pugs with beagles—that she had made reservations for all of us at the Dessert Party that evening. She was fucking with me, baiting me into battle at that very moment. But I denied her the victory. To her utter confusion, I cheerfully agreed to attend the affair and even said something to the effect of “Boy, I bet the desserts are gonna be dynamite.” Ha-ha. No, I would write the final scene in our little playlet, to be performed at a time of my choosing.