EAST

3

SATURDAY MORNING, QUEENS

The long PINNNGGG of a doorbell rudely pealed through the fog in my brain. My face all pressed up against the armrest of the couch, Dad’s knees slowly went by. At some point in the night I’d apparently wrapped myself in the sheet. Cats were resting on my back. The doorbell pinged again. I wanted a tremendous orange juice. Voices in the front hall, feet shuffling, and then blurry sounds coming from the kitchen …

“Have a good day, Mr. Laudermilk.”

Dad shouted: “It’s a good morning, Junior, so let’s take advantage!” The front door closed. “I made us some coffee!”

My face was mashed against the armrest and it felt just right until the part of my brain in charge of such things suddenly woke. The whole face hurt, pressure on every pore and wrinkle. I turned over, cats darting from the sofa. I stretched with a loud groan, causing an animal chain reaction where, beside the table, two fat cats, one first, then another, bowed up like stuffed feline stoles, stretching their spines. They yawned and fell back asleep.

I pulled aside the draping a bit, squinting at the outside day, and watched a deliveryman drop two garbage bags on the curb before hopping into a brown double-parked truck. Still in the head-melt of sleep, I saw an empty wine bottle on the table, a shallow bowl littered with cigarette stubs, and my phone, open, dead. The thought of smoking made me nauseated. I walked toward the kitchen and became aware, and weirdly okay with the fact, that I, too, was now walking barefoot, instinctively avoiding the cat turds and everything else. Dad was framed by a beige window shade behind him. He was wearing his loincloth and a white T-shirt. A large box lay on the table.

I pointed to the window shade. “Why not let some day in here?”

“Days are finished, Junior.”

He was drinking coffee from an oversized mug emblazoned with a screaming image of Max Headroom. He sipped, Max all glaring teeth and white plastic shades. I had to look away.

He said, “I love a cup of coffee in the morning. One cup.”

“Who was your visitor?”

“Delivery.”

A haze and muffle between my ears.

“You found the wine.” He pointed to yet another empty bottle on the counter.

“Jesus. Sorry.”

“No, it’s good. I’m glad.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m fine. What?” I was a palm-sized man climbing my own insides like a cave.

“What I say?”

“I thought you said something,” I said.

“Not me,” he said. “And I gotta say I’m glad you’re not feeling so hot.”

Another Max Headroom mug sat beside the coffeemaker. It was already filled with coffee. “That’s a terrible thing to say.” I picked it up. My right palm was pulsing; I switched hands and took a sip.

“Means you’re no professional, which makes me glad. Never was either, myself. You hungry?”

“There is no food in this house.”

“Bread and butter, Junior. Food of the gods.” He looked toward the counter where the bread, the butter semiwrapped in waxy paper, and a knife lay. A pallid still life.

He stood, took the knife in his hand, and cut.

“What’s in the box?”

He smiled like, Wouldn’t you like to know, and handed me a buttered slice.

“You’re not eating?” I said.

“Hours before my time.” Knife still in hand, he walked to the box, bare feet hardly lifting from the floor.

“The old man keeps me in suspense. So when do you eat, exactly?”

“Ha!” He cut the tape and pulled back the flap. Styrofoam popcorn popped from the box. “I’m running low,” he said, and pulled from inside a ridiculously large pack of Post-it Notes. More popcorn packing fell across the table like champagne from a glass. “There’s more,” he said eagerly. He pulled out a pack of two toothbrushes. “I’m glad you’re here, Junior.” A three-pack of toothpaste, and a carton of dry cat food.

“Me, too.”

“Good.”

The coffee was burning its way into my belly, a slight spike in my bloodstream. I went all different directions inside. The coffeepot was empty.

“I need more.”

He pointed to a green Thermos by the sink.

“Good thing I don’t take milk.”

“Milk’s for babies.”

I pulled at the loaf of bread. Balled up a piece and put it in my mouth.

“Eat all you want,” he said.

He pulled two large loaves of bread from the box. He placed them on the counter, felt around inside the box, and pushed it aside. He pulled a chair from under the table, and there a second box lay, long and flat. He cut the clear tape seam and took from the box something wrapped in bubble wrap. Foam kernels on its surface; he wiped them away to the floor. He placed the object on the table and began to undo the bubbling, cutting it away with his knife. He took from the bubble wrap a thing, I don’t know what, and held it up for me to see.

“See?”

It looked like a shield. “Is it a shield?”

“It is.” He walked to the other end of the kitchen, by the back door, and held it to the wall. A small, decorative shield, an ornamental thing, not very elaborate. It couldn’t haven been very heavy. The day before, he’d struggled with the fridge.

“What’s it for?”

He ignored me and began feeling along the wall, all around the wooden cross, the plate painted with a Star of David. “Looking for a nail,” he said.

I put down the mug and started over, but he stopped me with his palm. “Drink your coffee. Leave me be. I’m fine.” He found one, pulled at the nail, and hung the shield from it. “Not the right kind, but she’ll do.”

I sipped my coffee. “The royal family crest?”

He wiped the surface clean.

He turned around and came closer, he was slow, but then he was standing right in front of me. Staring into my eyes. His face was so old. Too old-looking for his age.

“Do you believe in anything at all anymore?”

I rubbed my eyes, my temples.

He said, “Part of what makes people stop is because they think He’s invisible. Think we don’t know what He looks like. He’s not invisible.”

“It’s a bit early for me.…”

“Right there in black and white, and the world looks everywhere but smack in front of their faces!” He placed his hand on the left side of his chest. “It’s in our hearts! Telescopes looking over Mars and the moon. Microscopes looking in our blood…” He walked back to the table, across from me, and smiled like a man with a secret.

I said, “You know the heart is actually dead center in the middle of the chest.” I pressed my finger there. “And not to the left.”

“I know damn well where the heart is.”

A shower or a cold bath would be perfect.

“Because this is where it feels.” He prompted me to touch my own chest. “See?” He came closer again. “It feels like your heart’s right here.” He put his hand on my chest.

“Okay.”

“Now hold on to your coffee mug, because what I’m gonna say next.”

I couldn’t help but love him talking like this. This was Dad, this I recognized. Maybe he was feeling better?

“The Psalmist sayeth, Junior, and I say it thus. Psalm 84:11.” He turned and looked to the wall. “‘For your Lord God is a shield.’” He looked back at me. “In black and white.”

There wasn’t much sun coming through the windows, but enough, and it made my eyes pulse. I stepped back into the dark hall. “I’m listening. God is a shield. But I think actually the scripture says he’s a sun and a shield.”

He shuffled into the dining room, looking like he might fall over at any moment. “The Hebrews used leather,” he said, “and animal fat for shields. Painted red with blood.” He paused. “Who wants something like that in the kitchen?” He threw up his hands, like, What are you gonna do.

I coughed into my hand. The tip of my thumb itched. There was a small puncture, and it was sore. I shook my head.

He looked at the only bare wall in the dining room; no pictures, no shelves. It seemed naked. “Some were bronze, a circle. But this is no circle. You saw.” He sat down.

I needed more butter. “How are you feeling? You sleep okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“I was thinking last night.”

“Good, sit.” He tapped the chair beside him. “Look at you. I almost forgot what you look like. How’s business? How many stores?”

I sat. “The stores are fine. Listen. I think we should see a doctor. Just to talk.”

It wasn’t quite a look of condescension, but his face definitely said, You don’t know what you’re talking about.

He said, “I saw your mother last night. And let’s just say she disagrees.”

“Ah! You dreamt of her, you mean.”

“Of course.” He looked at me sideways. “Sometimes I find her in the day.” He stood. “I try to keep moving, keep the blood flowing.…” He padded into the dining room, and I wondered from where he got his loincloth, what websites he happened onto looking for a “modern loincloth.”

“Dad.”

“Yup.”

“I need you to tell me.” I followed him to the couch.

“What?”

“Tell me you’re eating. I need you to tell me you’re eating.”

“Not hungry. Empty, fit as a fiddle.”

“I mean are you eating at all.”

He sat, pulled the lamp chain. “It’s complicated.”

“Talk.”

He showed me his hand. “Stay there. I’m fine, and you’re there.”

“Talk.”

He peered over the computer screen. “I promise I’m happy you’re here.”

“And I’m happy you’re happy.”

“We’re okay, you and I.”

“We are.”

He hid behind the screen. “I take bread and wine on Sundays.”

He showed me his hand again. “There are rules. And fasting is one of the rules.”

Things were clearly not better. He was not better. And I saw how silly I’d been thinking that we’d wake up and everything would be fine. A soft lip of light lined the edge of the curtains. He said, “Sometimes I find your mother in the day. I go to sleep and I find her.”

 

 

 

 

Ten o’clock in the morning, I was going through my things. Clearing some personal space for me around the sofa, trying not to get overly worried. What exactly should I do next about Dad? I decided on a shower. I would think in there. Plus Dad was in the bathroom again, the red light flaring from under the door. He said he’d been up since five.

I went to the second floor, and took each step up slowly.

Upstairs, the dark hallway was free of clutter and the four doors were closed and the long thick carpet runner lay on the slatted floor like a dead paisley tongue. No windows. The hall was dark and damp, and it smelled of soft wet wood, of mold, but there was also a welcome comfort in the stink.

The first door on the left led to the upstairs bathroom.

There was a shallow pool of browning water in the tub and a floating, speckled mass of bug. Dead flecks of fly and mosquito and gnat made a dark freckling shadow on the surface. A gauzy light came in through the clouded glass. No shower curtain or door, and a mass of moist towels lay on the floor. I opened the window, pulled away the drain stopper, and the water gurgled in a spinning fall. I turned on the light.

In the linen closet, I found sheets and pillowcases, washcloths and bath towels squarely folded and placed in flush columns on the wallpapered shelves. I was afraid to look at the toilet, but it was actually in pretty good shape. I turned on the shower and twisted the spray nozzle toward the wall so I wouldn’t make too much of a mess. I gathered all the towels into one damp sop, stuffed them into a yellow pillowcase. The shower ran rivery lines along the grout between the tiles, and washed away what bug waste it could. The shower still running, I stepped back into the hall.

The second door was mine, or used to be mine, and this seemed way too easy, entering the room that used to be my room. I opened the door and saw light sluicing in ribbons through the louvered blinds and painting the wall with pale stripes. I saw the bedspread neatly tucked under the mattress, and I was sure this had to be my handiwork from twenty years prior. Impossible. I saw the empty closet. Clear tape in ripped fragments stuck to the walls and to the ghosts of Star Wars posters. Water bugs lay flat on their backs at the foot of a bed leg. A sticky mix of dust and oils skimmed the carpet like a hairpiece. I went back into the hall.

The next room was a large walk-in closet. And I often imagined, as a kid, that a demon lived among the board games on the highest shelf, and it could fit a small child in its mouth. This probably came from secretly watching Poltergeist, a definite no-no in the Laudermilk home, and from the subsequent nightmares of sinister closets opening up like demonic maws. I remembered telling my mother about the closet and she scolded me, said that was what I got for watching devil movies. She left me in the closet until I cried out for her. Then she came in, and we stood there in the dark holding hands. She said anytime you’re scared call on me, or your Heavenly Father, and nothing bad can happen.

My parents’ room was next, and I half expected to find my mother in pajamas stretched out on the comforter. The door was sticking. The trick was to lift slightly, turn the knob, and push.

The room was dark, and a hot smother of air came pouring out. The bed was made, and a thin webbing of dust crawled the walls like ivy. The curtains were drawn. I saw the closet was full of clothing, mostly my mother’s. There were also garbage bags on the floor, stuffed with what appeared to be her things. I bent down and found a yellow jacket. I put the jacket on a hanger, and hung it from the back of the door. I tried to imagine my mother, her arms filling the sleeves, her head. I took the jacket from the hanger, smelled it, and my stomach reeled. Stale and oppressive, it stank of age, of years and days and minutes of sloughing skin.

I flipped the light switch.

The quilted surface was scattered with short stacks of papers and more spiral notebooks. Barely noticeable at first, but they were in a sort of order, separate and organized. A pile of handwritten pages, scrawlings, and drawings. There were dated pages, like journal entries, and I recognized the uncanny logic and language of dreams. These were my father’s dreams. He was writing out his nightly visions. Flying, teeth falling out, being swept from a hilltop by God’s great palm, and taking heavenly tours. There were birth certificates and death certificates. Photo albums, and a pile of loose photos. I quickly flipped through the pictures. They were mostly old, ancient even, brown-and-whites, black-and-whites. There was the family photo album, but also albums I’d never seen before, pictures of people I didn’t recognize. I saw one of two men standing in front of a Spanish-style house, I figured southern California. They stood beside a long and beautiful car, like a Rolls-Royce, their feet on the running board. They hooked their thumbs back, making like two lucky hitchhikers. On the back was a handwritten note, “C. Russell and O. Laudermilk, Beth Sarim, San Diego, 1930.” The wooden cross in the kitchen. Beth Sarim. It seemed O. Laudermilk was the man at right in the photo, a youngish man about my age, his features partly blocked by the slanted brim of a dapper hat. Was this my grandfather? I’d never seen the photo before in my life.

I took the family album and the strange Laudermilk photo into the hall and set them on the floor by the bathroom door. I washed the wall and the tub. Stepping into the shower, I put my face in the cold rush of water. The spray and the water needling on my skin, I thought of rain, how different and dirty a falling rain on my body would feel. A barbed gray headache was starting.

 

 

 

 

Amad answered in just two rings.

“A big hello, my Josie! You did not call me yesterday. You forgot. What happened?”

“I miss you,” I said. “Believe it or not.”

“Where are you? You are in New York?”

“I’m standing here completely naked in my father’s bathroom, right out of the shower.”

Amad bit into what sounded like an apple. “The open-air lingam.”

“You’re eating an apple.”

“I am.”

“What’s an open-air what?”

“You right now are an open-air lingam.”

“My skinny business in the open air.”

“Exactly. Like a stalagmite.” Another bite. “Or stalactite, depending on your good mood, or bad mood. How long will you be staying?”

“Very nice,” I said.

“So short-tempered.”

“What’s the weather like out there?” I poked through the linen closet and picked a clean white towel.

“Perfect. Like every day in California. My least favorite thing about this place, no bad days.”

“How’s business?” I said.

“What business?”

“Very funny.”

“Very bad.”

“I’ll be back soon, and we’ll have that dinner. I promise.”

“My wife is not so impatient, but she wants to know what are we doing now. And I’m not sure what to tell her.”

“Tell her the storeroom is glorious.”

“How is your father?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean? He says he’s fine, and he’s clearly not. I’m not sure of my role here. The man looks like he’s been hiding away in the hills.”

“It can be very nice in the hills.”

“Not what I mean.” I wiped at the mirror, clearing away the steam. “He says he’s fine.”

“I spent summers as a boy in the Zamuri hills, took my bath in the river. Wore only a light wrap at the waist. Turban. It was very pleasant.”

I dried myself with the towel, cell phone wedged at my bent neck. “Anyway. He’s fine, and he’s not fine. I’m fine. Are you fine without me?”

“Tip-top.” I heard something downstairs, Dad walking around; it made me think of a ghost and I wondered if people who believed in ghosts always believed in ghosts, or was it just something you felt one day and so you started believing.

I asked him, “What are you looking at right now, exactly?”

“A completely empty store.”

“Numbskull. Go outside. What do you see?”

“Hold on. Wait. I’m walking. I’m going outside as we speak and, like I said, it’s a beautiful day. Big deal. The pretty blond girl on her skateboard. Seagulls on the bench picking at a muffin.”

“You need anything at all, you call me. I gotta go and dry my godly member. I’ll call you.”

“Be praiseworthy, Josie.”

I wrapped my waist with the towel and walked back downstairs with the photo album under my arm. Litter grit stuck to my wet feet on every last step, and I saw my duffel bag was now with the garbage bags by the front door. I couldn’t remember if I’d drunkenly left it there, or maybe Dad thought it wasn’t worth keeping. I put the album on a step, opened my bag, and took out some undershorts. Towel around my waist, I tried pulling on the shorts but a large fly was buzzing around my face like a live wire. My foot got caught in the crotch of the shorts. I lost my balance, reached for the banister—

“What are you doing?”

My towel fell to the floor.

He was standing there, now wearing sandals and wide Bermuda shorts, which made his legs look storklike.

I pulled on my shorts. “Lost my balance.”

He went back for the kitchen, shaking his head.

I was suddenly very annoyed, and everything I’d been thinking boiled over and out of me.

“Why are there dirty plates beside the door? And why is there a sponge”—I saw a sponge—“a disgusting sponge, is it milk? It looks like milk. Why is there a wet, milky sponge on the floor?” I put on pants as quickly as possible, socks and a T-shirt; where were my shoes? I cursed the fact that I hadn’t brought sandals. Even he had sandals. I rubbed at my wet head and hair as I entered the kitchen, blinded by my hands, knocking against a wall. “You have nothing to say about this? The trash in this house? I mean, we haven’t even talked about the trash in this house.” I kept rubbing at my head. “It smells like a garbage strike in here.” The headache was back, my bones were sore, and all the worry I’d been feeling was mixing with my frustration at his refusal or maybe his inability to see the desperate state he was in. I was overflowing with anger and confusion and a terrible sense of helplessness, more than anything else, when I think about it, which masked itself as more anger and confusion.

I looked up—nobody there.

I pulled the window shade and it snapped up like a waking eyelid. The sunlight surprised me. I raised my arms against it and pulled the shade back down.

“There’s a dead mouse on your windowsill. Just so you know.”

I flipped the light switch. The bulb buzzed, it flickered. I crossed the kitchen and looked at the shield hanging on the wall. Nothing special, far as I could see.

I said, “And you have good water pressure!”

“I installed that shower!”

“So you can hear me.” I walked to the dining room, draped my towel on the back of a chair. “Do you have any aspirin? I’m starving. And it’s pretty ridiculous that we’re sitting around like there’s nothing wrong. I’m supposed to be doing something! You know I am.”

He was sitting at the computer. Lights out, drapes pulled shut, a bluish glow was painting him the colors of aquarium water. The light in the room lessened from dim and dimmer to dark, from kitchen, to dining room, then to living room. He was typing, one finger at a time.

“Dad.”

My bedsheet was balled up under the sofa. I dove to my knees and snatched it, snapped it, shaking it wide and white. Crumbs dropped like sand on the coffee table. I folded it, neatly, and set it on the back of the sofa. A cat tried to sit and make it its bed, but I smacked at its fat crispy bottom.

“Dad. Please.”

“What?”

“The house—look at me. This place is making you sick. I’m not kidding.”

“Don’t be mean to the cats. How was your shower?”

“Why?” I was going through my pockets; where were my cigarettes?

“They’re on the dining table. You can smoke inside, you know.”

“Oh, can I?” I came back lighting a cigarette, and from the side of my mouth, I said, “Because I don’t want to make a mess and dirty up your beautiful home.”

He looked up. “I don’t remember you being this funny.” He clapped his hands together. “I found it!”

I sat beside him in the marine light, the screen framed by yellow-going-green sticky notes.

“Read it,” he said.

“What?”

“They have it.” He pointed at what looked like an auction website. “Read it.”

I read out loud, “The Apocryphal Scripture.” The word “apocryphal” was vaguely familiar.

“Of the Old Testament. By R. Charles.” He beamed bluish in the light. “First edition, 1913.”

“You’re buying this.”

“I’m trying. It’s inscribed!”

This struck me as strange, from a man who refused to own an answering machine. But it also made sense that he’d be attracted to the book.

“I haven’t done this yet,” he said. “How do you do it? I order mostly groceries so far.”

I tapped the ash on the rug, and I didn’t give one shit about doing it. He looked at the white ash on the dark floor, and then at me. He gave me a cheeky smile, like he very much approved.

He said, “I haven’t done this yet on the computer. You make an offer, I think.”

“You’ve been looking for this book.”

“Junior, the computer is a miracle. Look inside and find what you need. And don’t worry, I know what else is in there, too.”

“You’ve read this book?”

“I showed you.” He pointed back to the dining room. “The big one on the table.”

“You have it already.” I was confused.

“But this is from 1913, the real deal first one. Inscribed! By Charles’s own hand! Mine’s brand-new; I ordered from a college bookstore.”

“Since when does my father collect books? Or anything. Wine bottles, toothbrushes.”

“This is scripture! God’s Word, older than most of the Bible, bet you never knew.” He looked at me. “If I could crawl inside and find this book and bring it back, I would.”

Sarah had talked to me about this, and I had no idea at the time what she was talking about. I don’t think she did, either. She was reporting whole sentences he’d said, telling me that he told her during one of his recent phone calls that he was no longer interested in “endings,” only in “the first things,” “beginnings.” What first things? He said he was reading about Gnosticism, and Judaism, and he was intrigued, because what’s a first thing if not Judaism, right? He wanted to know if she would help him facilitate some kind of understanding if not a full conversion to Judaism because he was sure she knew someone on the inside.

I stood up, and said: “No more. Enough! This house isn’t good for you. It’s bad for me, and I’m only here two days. We’re going on a trip, a quick trip. And I’m gonna call up a doctor. I can’t take this sitting around anymore.” I was moving in small circles, not going anywhere. “What if you have symptoms and you don’t even know? What if you’re sick, if you have something? God forbid, but look at you! This is ridiculous. And I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

“I’m going the way of all flesh.” He fell back down to the sofa.

I said, “This isn’t normal.”

“Physician, heal thyself!” He was very proud of this line.

I put out the cigarette on my shoe and threw it on the table.

He took the cigarette butt from the table and tossed it across the room. He grinned at me. “Hah!”

“What?”

“Let go, Junior!” He tried standing again. I helped him. “Just let go!”

“I need to make a call.”

He was laughing. “You think I’m nuts. It’s perfect, really, perfect!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Revelation!”

“I can’t do this.”

“If anyone can talk Revelation, it’s my boy.”

He was standing there, swaying as if a crosswind were blowing through the room. I thought he’d fall any second now. And I’m not sure if I said it to hurt him, or really just to get his attention, like slapping somebody in the wild throes of a breakdown. Either way, I just said it: “I was a kid. I made that shit up. And you know it.”

He reached out for the computer screen, and steadied himself. He held fast to it, for support, and his chin fell into a tremor.

“I’m not stupid,” he said, and waved me away. “Just tired.”

I followed him to the bathroom, asking him, “Please, just please let me in.” I tried to follow him inside. I wanted to help. He pushed me away. I threatened to remove the door from its hinges, to which he said: “I am still your father.”

*   *   *

I sat at the kitchen table flipping through one of the photo albums. I saw pictures of our family at the park; on vacation; at church services and congregation barbecues. I saw school portraits of me from kindergarten on through high school, nearly every year, on two pages, my hair longer and less conservative from junior high on, a taxonomy of coiffured rebellion. There was one year, eleventh grade, when I briefly sported a meek attempt at a Mohawk, the sides not entirely shaved. I lacked nerve. The photographer had to tamp down the central tuft. This was soon repaired by way of Dad’s electric clippers.

And there were pictures of my mother. I chose two, peeled them out from under the laminate, one of her in a high 1960s beehive, beaming like a supremely happy young woman in the passenger seat of a white convertible. She looked like a real lady of her day, ecstatic. Must’ve been taken before Dad. The other was a mom I knew, sitting in the sun with an arm around each of her boys, Dad and me, holding on to us like she’d never let go, no matter what, forcing a smile. I used to get the feeling that Mom wasn’t afraid of anything at all, and that as long as she was here Dad and I would be well taken care of, that she kept us grounded. But really, I think Mom was afraid of something, of Dad’s insatiable hunger for God, and if not for her and her fear I believe we all would have spun off into space and lost our minds already. It occurred to me that maybe Dad knew this, too.

I kept looking through the album, at the faces of people long gone, at cousins I’d never see again, at the faces of fellow congregants playing Frisbee at Bible-study picnics. And then I saw the face of little Issy. It sent a chill through me, literally. It was a class photo from elementary school, along with other class pictures of kids I knew from church. He was a boy, just a kid, seated next to an American flag respectfully draped over a globe, a golden curtain behind him. Of course I’d seen the photo before, but I’d completely forgotten about it, and somehow it was immediately the distillation of my every memory of him. This was Issy. His lips partially constricted, his hair a little mussed like he had just scratched at the back of his head. Everything about the face suggested a little boy, thoughtful and completely lost. Yet here he was. Right here. I peeled away the photo and put it with the others. I still wanted an aspirin.

I looked at the phone on the wall. It was avocado green and right where it should’ve been. This was the phone Mom answered when the school called saying I was absent. Yet again, your son isn’t here. I used to wonder what made her angrier: that I was cutting school or that I was spending my time with the “Hindu girl.” I wanted more bread and butter. The weary and wine-sugared brain cells were in need of funneling. I needed focus. So I poured a glass of cool water and took out the butter dish and bread.

I’m not a butter person, and yes there are what can be called butter people. French food, to this day, makes my stomach rumble. I know it’s because of the butter. I don’t like the slick it leaves in my mouth. Sarah used to say food is the truest mirror, and never trust the man reveling in Buffalo wings, with no regard for sauce on his fingers, with the pile of red-soaked Handi Wipes beside him as if emptied from an autopsy bin. I don’t like things too rich. Yet I lavished the stiff bread with butter, knifed it on smooth and soft. I put a small pat in the freezer and let it harden. I ate the pat whole and started to feel a little bit better. Dark marbles of cat shit and white foam kernels of packing littered the floor like monstrous nodules of salt and pepper, and entire populations of cellular villages in my blood were running, ecstatic, as planes dropped boxes of butter from the sky. I opened the window shade as my father walked in.

“Good morning, sir. Again.” I sipped from a glass of water. “You know it’s nearly noon.”

Hands at his eyes, and batting for the light switch, he said, “What’s this?”

“It’s called daylight. And as long as I’m here and you insist on living in a cave, I will have one room where I can go and live like a person.”

“I was sleeping.”

“I should have called a psychiatrist by now.”

He rubbed at his eyes.

I held up my bread. “Can I please make you something to eat?”

He was considering something, looking up to the ceiling, biting his lip. His shirt was wrinkled and situated oddly on his torso. His stomach peeked from under the hem, the skin shiny and stretched. And yet I swear he’d lost even more weight in the last two hours. He started forward. And he wavered there for a moment. What little color he had was draining from his face.

Then he fell over, catching himself on the counter.

“Hey. Whoa. Come here.” I took him by an arm.

“I’m fine!”

I lifted him anyway, and brought him to a chair. I looked at him and wondered what my own kid would have looked like: part me, part Sarah, and, somewhere in the mix, partly this skinny old man.…

“Ankle’s just tricky, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” I jogged to the living room, thinking now I would not take no for an answer. This was too urgent, and I would call for a doctor. On the floor beside a sofa leg, a cat was sniffing at my phone. I kicked at the cat and she cried out.

“Get in here,” he called out. “Just follow me.”

I found him pulling himself along the hallway. “You’re like your mother. So protective, and when you get grumpy, everybody watch out.” He was clutching the bathroom doorknob now. The red light was leaking from under.

He said, “You like eggs?”

How do you answer a question like this?

He pointed at my mouth, at something on my face. “You like butter, that’s obvious, but do you like eggs?”

He opened the bathroom door.

 

 

 

 

It was dark inside, except for the plump red night-light plugged in above the sink. He nodded, prompting me to enter. It was very much like a darkroom. Negatives should’ve been dangling from clothespins affixed to the shower rod. And I have to say the red glow became spookily attractive pretty fast. The bathtub was full of water, clean and clear red water. A short cot, raised not six inches from the floor, was next to the tub. A thin mattress. A pillow. A black spiral notebook. He followed me into the red room and closed the door. I couldn’t help but think of horror movies: I would now be bludgeoned. My father standing in the dark Martian light was shorter than I thought he should be. He was delicate and looked so fragile. I wanted to lift him and lay him on the cot. I wanted to pat his head with a wet cloth and read the man to sleep.

He perched himself on the side of the tub and said, “My head is the egg in here. I keep it warm and wait for dreams.”

“You have dreams.”

“I have dreams. And then I go looking for your mother.”

He put out his hand, I took it, and he pulled himself to a standing position. I wondered how much trouble he’d had before, having to lift himself, all by himself, from the cot. He opened the door and went back in the hallway. I stayed there for a moment, surrounded by the red walls of another man’s insides, his stomach, his heart and lungs. I was foreign matter in my father’s blood and I almost knew every secret, just this side of the blood–brain barrier. Somewhere just beyond the red walls, in who knows what other invisible place, I would find the dreaming brain of my father. I found him sitting at the dining room table.

He was looking away to the bare wall, coughing. He wiped at his mouth. “I don’t care about church anymore. Not even the first church, first century. I wanna go back before that. I wanna go where we found God. And that’s not here, I can promise you.” He made a twirling with his fingers, and snorted.

“You’re angry,” I said.

“I’ve wasted too much time.”

“You have not. Don’t say that.”

His face shone out all white: “This is not your body. Don’t tell me what I’ve done.”

I nodded.

“There are rules. Lay by a body of water. And the bath works out just fine.” He shook his head like he was trying to stop himself from dozing off. “Pharaoh had dreams. Joseph read dreams. Daniel, Ezekiel, Enoch.” He pointed toward the book on the table. I remembered our family Bible studies, and those names came at me like thrown ghosts. I practically had to duck. We’d spent almost an entire year, as a family, reading the books of Daniel and Ezekiel. At one point Dad had a large sketch pad set on a wooden easel—he’d bought these from a hobby shop—propped beside the dining room table. He drew childish drawings, stick figure versions of the visions found in these books, hoping they would make it all come more alive as he taught us. The Four Horsemen on stick figure horses. A throne looking like a geriatric shower chair for the elderly, floating over a typical cartoon cloud; everyone knows how to draw a cloud. I’d never heard of the book of Enoch.

“The first revelation,” he said. “The very first, Enoch’s dream in the apocryphal scripture. And that right there is the kernel.” He hooked his thumb in the direction of the open book on the table. “This is hundreds of years before Revelation, before St. John comes along, before his blanket on Patmos beach.”

“You need water? I need water.” He waved, No.

I excused myself and went to the kitchen. And I knew he meant the kernel like in corn or a seed that grows, but I also thought of Amad, and how he’d be so proud of his little Josie for remembering his lessons over the years: a kernel is also the computing center, the core of any system, the small essential thing that remains in fixed memory forever. I breathed and went back to the table.

He took the water from my hand and he drank it.

He said, “John lay on a beach and he fasted. Another rule. No food, not a bite. So really I’m cheating on Sundays.” He sipped again and handed back the glass. “And God gives John his revelation in a dream. But this is John’s dream, it’s not mine.”

I drank from the water.

“Revelation, chapter twenty-two,” he said. “Just before he’s finished. ‘If any man adds or takes away from these words then God will erase his name from the Book of Life.’ Kaput. He’s saying, Don’t put words in my mouth. And don’t go messing with my dream.” He reached for the glass again. It was empty. I made to get up for more water and he gestured for me not to. He said, “What thou seest, write it down in a book. What thou hast seen, and what things there will be thereafter. You have to write it down.”

“Okay.”

He was looking at his lap now. “Tertullian fasted.” He looked up at me, like it was time to finally say this, and we both knew it, so let’s just go ahead and say it. “I understand why we don’t—why you and I don’t ever talk about some things.”

“We’re fine. You and I are fine.”

“Why we are the way we are.” He pushed down on the table and lifted himself. He said, “Have I embarrassed you? If I do, or I ever have, just be good enough to forgive me. Would you do that for me? I think every father does this to his son.”

I had quick flashes of remembered moments that exactly fit the expression. Of course, I’d been embarrassed by my father, but what son can say this never happened? I knew no more about how to be a son than he did about being a father, and we’d had our respective jobs for the same amount of years. We’d had these idealized visions of each other that we loved, but they weren’t us. I’d always loved Dad, but always a more palatable version of the man. This was embarrassing. I was the one who should’ve been embarrassed.

“I feel close to you,” he said, and I saw his eyes change.

“I should’ve been here more,” I said, “checking up on you.”

“Oh, no, no. I give you a hard time, but look at you! I’m so proud of you making your way. Your own way. And on your own. You’re way stronger than I ever was.”

I never expected to hear something like this from him, never. How easily we forget how love works, that we love in the only way we know how. He was right there in front of me—but then he went gone in his eyes. It was the first time I saw this, and it frightened me.

I said, “Dad, you’re so strong, it scares me. Even when you’re wrong.” I laughed.

The light suddenly came back alive, and he stood there steadily.

He said: “I have walked in Heaven, and I have seen your mother. I saw her just this morning.” His eyes were glassing over, and getting full. “I have been in the presence of the Lord because He walks in the halls of my head. He takes me up! I’ve seen everything there is, and whatever is left for me after.” He touched my face. “Suicide is a terrible sin, but this is not the taking of a life. I swear it’s not. I’m just giving it back.”

He wiped at his eyes.

Leaving the room, and holding his side, he said, “I’ll eat with you later, tonight, I promise. I think I’m done for today. Talk later tonight, okay? I’ll get some sleep.”

I licked my teeth.

“And tomorrow,” he said. “You can call your doctor. I don’t mean to scare you like this.”

He opened the bathroom door, and then the door closed quietly.

I decided I needed a walk, and that I could not spend the remainder of the day indoors. He’d be sleeping anyway. I needed air and light. A low and dour rumbling in my stomach. I wanted to be far from that house, and so I headed for the train, walking as if my legs alone knew the destination, but my head had no idea.

 

 

 

 

The elevated train snaked along over the rooftops and the laundry lines strung between fire escapes, past the graffiti-covered houses and the wide-open top-floor windows, old women in pink scratchy hair curlers and soiled tank tops with their arms over sills, taking me to yet another train, and then to yet another which took me underground and way across town. I sat there looking at the photos of my mother, of a halfway anonymous O. Laudermilk mock-hitching a ride in old-time San Diego, and of Issy on grade school picture day.

I got off the train in Astoria.

I walked up the stairs to the sidewalk. Latin dance music played from the speakers of an old souped-up Toyota, the sound bigger than the car. On the corner a man served halal sandwiches from a large kitchen cart that looked like a freight elevator yanked from its shaft. I found myself staring at a Spanish bodega sandwiched between two Greek restaurants. Yellow awning, red letters. Posters on the windows for phone cards. I needed more coffee.

The woman behind the cash register had a round face. And behind the deli counter window was a stack of random deli meat nubs, elbow knots of ham wadded up in cellophane, a white dish presenting nothing but a mound of decorative green plastic garnish. I asked if she had any soy milk.

In a totally surprising and dragging Slavic drawl she said, “You are kidding, correct?”

“Yes. I’m kidding. Plain milk, no sugar. And a bagel.”

She winked. “With butter?”

My stomach gurgled. “Absolutely not.” I pointed to a packet of aspirin.

I sipped the coffee and swallowed the four aspirin, walked outside, and studied the building’s exterior. It was a yellow brick four-story walk-up. Next door, a sign over a 99¢ store read “Poco Poco.” A table out front was piled with plain white T-shirts and a tilting stack of pink and blue scrub sponges. From the open door blew a nimbus stink of chemical dyes.

Across the street was a small garage with a sign that read “Fix-a-Flat.” On the oil-stained sidewalk in front of the garage a box radio on a torn leather recliner played fast English metal. High operatic vocals. An older man in a Motörhead T-shirt came out of the garage and saw me. He lowered the volume, and waved in a vague way. He looked a few years younger than Dad. I imagined he had just one child, a son about my age, and they shared an expensive set of custom tools, they lived on the block. They drank beer together and even came to blows once, ten years before, at a cousin’s wedding. And now they worked in the same garage and were always arguing over the radio station. Dad shakes his head saying I don’t care if they do come from Queens, it doesn’t get any better than Motörhead. They never speak of God, of devils and demons, of Armageddon, they never speak of any life but this one, and never once have they figured that the mystery of love and hate, and war and peace, and sex and food and Motörhead should not be enough for us on Earth. It felt good to be out of the dark house, and to be out walking in the sun.

I looked at the photos again and felt that somehow they made for some weird metaphysical equation that resulted in my eventual going back. Then, one block away, there it was: the Queens Howard Theater. The mammoth overhang of the copper marquee shined like a billion flattened pennies. Spelled out in big block letters: “The Landmark Queens Howard Theater.” I stood under it. A large bronze plaque between the two front doorways read, “Placed on the National Register of Historic Places.” Beneath that, black letters on a shiny new gray-metal sign, “Tours Given.” I got queasy as I remembered standing in that very same spot holding my mother’s hand. She had a brand-new perm, and Dad wore dark maroon penny loafers. Sermon notes were folded in my suit coat pocket, a Star Wars figure somewhere on my person.

I opened the doors.

Inside, the place was old and stately, but crumbling, once majestic, like the foyer of some failing antebellum estate. The ceiling still arched high above and a chandelier gently rocked there like a cracked crystal palace above an empty marble fountain. A rusting sign beside the fountain pool read “The Looking Glass.” At either side of the pool, alabaster columns stood at the base of opposing marble stairways that rounded outward and upward. They looked like a pair of smooth white bull’s horns leading to the second floor. The foyer walls were separated into rectangular paneled sections, with an elaborate molded framing for each. Within each frame were fading murals, depictions of famous biblical scenes. The Binding of Isaac. The Four Horsemen, white, red, black, and pale. Some of the murals were cracked, some vandalized, others surrounded by scaffolding. A handful of people were on the scaffolding lightly brushing at the walls.

No one seemed to mind me taking the stairs.

At the top, I turned and saw the rigging that held the chandelier in place. I pulled the bagel from my pocket, unwrapped it from the napkin, and bit off a soft chewy lump. There were voices behind me.

A small group of ten or twelve people; about half were young children and teenagers. The kids looked bored and restless. Some wore headphones. A man in a light pink seersucker suit and oversized horn-rimmed glasses was leading them. He said to me, “Did you want to join us? We’ve not yet seen the Great Room.”

I made an embarrassing animal grunt, my mouth stuffed with bagel, and I nodded, Yes, please. Taking my place in the back, I puffed out my cheeks, making a funny face at a small boy who had a furrowed brow and wispy eyelashes. He turned away. Who was this kid?

“The chandelier weighs six hundred and fifty pounds,” the guide said. “And if you wonder how in the world they do this kind of thing, the flowers and candle shapes, the entire piece is made of soda glass.”

The small boy said, “What kind of soda?”

The guide went on as if he’d not heard the kid’s question. “She’ll be back in working order soon enough. The fancy parts all fixed. But it’s a slow and very expensive process.”

A freckled boy of about sixteen quickly took off his headphones. “How much?”

“A lot.”

“But how much? A million?”

I was sure at this moment that raising a teenager must be a hellish thing.

The guide brushed at the arms of his suit, facing away from the group. “The chandelier, I’m afraid, is a nagging question. It’s not of Howard origin, and we’re not sure where it comes from.” He turned and faced us. “We’re in the business of restoring the original state and spirit of a place.” He waved us toward two doors in the center of a rounded wall. “And now we have the Great Room.”

He opened the doors. And there it was. I swooned.

How many times in a life do we swoon? I can think of only a few, and this was one of those: a major swoon. I had to grab hold of the wall because my stomach was flipping and I thought I might vomit. Then it stopped. I realized it was also because of the stink. Burning hair.

I asked him, “What’s that stink?”

“Sulfur. We’re raising the foundation some. Found a pocket way below. Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Room. Feel free to move about the balcony.”

This was beyond déjà vu. It was dream leakage and it physically moved me. I had to step back out into the hall for a second. And then I stepped back onto the balcony of the Great Room. And that same odd rush of memory and oversensation rivered all around me: the ceiling, the stage—I saw him clearly down there, little boy Josiah, little me. Behind the microphone, and standing still. The audience wondering if I’ll finish. Is the boy finished? I watch him lower his arms and bow. A long second passes and it’s clear: It is finished, the boy is finished, and the audience explodes with applause, four thousand clapping their hands, and they raise their arms, clapping above their heads …

“Sir?” The guide was standing next to me.

“I’m fine. I’m just—” I knocked on the door, inspecting its hinges. “Beautiful work.” The headache reared up, reminding me it was still there.

Satisfied, he pressed his hands together in a prayer formation. He bowed. “We do our best.” He approached the edge of the balcony and gripped the brass handrail. “The ceiling, of course, is why we’re here. Note the surface.”

We all looked up, fifteen or twenty feet above our heads, where the ceiling was a steely gray. It had really faded. Some roundish silver and white static stars like milk splashes decorated the surface, a chipping and powdery plaster shown in blanched swaths from underneath. Then the stars began to glimmer and glow. They shook with a slight and unstable radiance, and they went out.

The guide was waving a large flashlight at the ceiling.

He said, “Voilà! You get the general idea.”

He turned and cast the light onto a greater expanse of the ceiling, where it dissipated into an ecliptic glow. “Now imagine the entire ceiling all lit up with stars and planets and shooting stars. All semifunctional until about fifteen years ago. And by then the Skyrograph, our very wonderful projector, was already sixty years old. She is right now, even as we stand here, being restored off premises. One of very few in the world, and did basically, very basically, what I just did with this flashlight. Only more. Who sees the moon?” He pulled the pant fabric up from his knees, and crouched. He said in higher register to the small children, “Hmm? Who sees the moon?”

I asked him, “What about the bridge?”

“Well.” He straightened. “It’s a real bridge, a small-scale replica of a famous bridge, the Rialto in Venice. There were clouds.” He pointed with the flashlight. “Usually there and over there.”

A real bridge, the Rialto. All this time I had no idea.

The freckled boy asked, “Can we walk on it?”

“Insurance says not right now. But soon.” Like the boy, I wanted to walk on it.

The guide continued, “The Howard has passed through many hands. The last owners being a church group who lovingly restored much of the interior and exterior, I have to say. And to whom we are much indebted.”

I felt like some of them were eyeing me suspiciously. I thought of Dad; was he sleeping, was he awake?

“Unfortunately, said group was no longer able to afford the building and so they sold the Howard to the city. We wish them well. It should also be said the original murals downstairs in the foyer were summarily, and dare I say unnecessarily, painted over when said group purchased the property. Previously, the panels beautifully depicted scenes from classical mythologies. We have promotional literature from the original period with detailed pictures. And we’re handling the issue as we speak. You saw the scaffolding, and so…” He motioned toward a tall scaffold erected in the Great Room over the seats.

I saw that the balcony was bookended by a pair of opposing red velvet ropes, blocking access to two closed doors.

“Now, prior to the Howard’s previous owners, the site was primarily used for entertainment. Onstage theater, and of course”—he presented the stage with an outstretched hand; in that hand was a remote control—“they showed movies.” On cue, a massive white screen descended from the ceiling above the bridge. “The last showing was in 1977, the fantabulous age of grindhouse.” He paused, appeared to make some decision, and continued speaking. “Do we know the term ‘grindhouse,’ hmmm?”

I wanted to know everything, all of it, and I was sure the more I knew about this place the more I would know about me. I saw the bridge was hidden behind the screen.

He said, “The last showing was a typical double feature. Deodato’s super-gruesome cannibal horror, The Last Survivor. And a sci-fi classic, Logan’s Run.”

The children looked at each other. There was visible interest in the word “cannibal.” I edged away from the group, physically compelled to see the bridge.

“Who here has seen Logan’s Run? Hmm? Anyone?”

I dropped to one knee behind a row of seats, and pretended to tie my shoe. I untied the laces for effect.

“Let’s take a look from the main room floor, and we’ll get the full picture from there.”

There was a shuffling of feet. Busy noises from the foyer came in through the open doors as I played with my laces.

“Every last inch of copper has been hand buffed by toothbrush.…”

Heels clicked on the marble stairs.

I looked around, stood up after tying my shoe. I rushed to the right side, sidling behind the red velvet rope, where the way led into a narrow hall that ramped upward and curved leftward so I couldn’t make out exactly where I was headed. The hall maybe went where I wanted, I was hoping, and I continued along the rise of the ramp in the narrow white hall and I kept on walking until I saw a great wash of whiteness: the movie screen.

It was enormous, a giant’s bedsheet.

It dawned on me: I’m out there. Now. I’m standing on the bridge right now. I lightly stamped my feet. I leaned forward and looked down at the decorative wood, at the latticework.

Then there was a crash of loud static.

A pure static sound came flooding from everywhere and filling up the hall and the whole Great Room, and the white screen suddenly went gray. There were flecks of black and gray, dark, and some darker, all of them dancing on the screen. Then the lights in the Great Room went out. And what was maybe a thread, or a maybe stray hair on a film cel, lashed across my vision like a long whip or a black lightning bolt from above. And the screen filled up with a giant image: a tall cross inside a large circle at least two stories tall. The image joggled and it jerked. There was a loud clicking sound in the static. The cross was there in the circle, and then it was gone.

Then just as fast, the image next took the form of a number, the number 5, a monstrous and backward 5, looming there twenty feet tall.

Then there was a 4, a backward 4 …

3 …

2 …

I didn’t look away. I extended my arm and stood on my toes. I slung a leg over the bridge. I reached out, trying to touch the screen, which now was just a few feet away and hanging from the ceiling. I stretched myself and saw the individual white nylon fibers. I stretched myself and touched the colossal on-screen image of the 1. The lights came on, showing everything, the bridge beneath my feet, and the countersunk screws holding all of this together, the formed wooden joists above my head. Right there, beyond the reach of my hand, on the very outer edge of the ceiling, where the ceiling abutted the wall, and not so far from a small Saturn’s wobbly faux rings, was the neatly scripted signature: Harold Lowell, 1965. One of the painters had signed his name. Then the screen slowly lifted until every seat below sneaked into view. And then I could see the rest of the ceiling, and every faded body of light, every last crack in the plaster, the scratches, bruises, and pockmarks that inevitably come with age.

 

 

 

 

I walked along the sidewalk sipping yet another coffee, wanting to share with someone the strange dreamy feeling I was having. I got her voice mail and didn’t leave a message.

I walked for a long time through the neighborhoods, past the apartment buildings and the two-family walk-ups, the brick houses so close beside each other, a border space of six thin inches between, the pigeon shit in dry white drips staining the ribbed aluminum drainpipes. Past the cell-phone shops and the Laundromats, the overcrowded railroad apartments one flight up and overhead, and Stinking Lizaveta’s Famous Best Russian Emporium. I walked by a large gated mosque, aqua-blue minaret and dome shining, and I remembered there was a Russian Orthodox church just a few blocks away.

As I walked by the church, the doors slowly opened and out came a mass of people, some laughing and cheering down the stairs. It was a wedding. I stopped and watched them for a while. The white flowers adorning the railing and the long limousine parked at the curb. Bells were ringing, and the bride and groom wore red ornate crowns on their heads and they were both quite serious and also just short of cracking up. The older ones were stoic and congratulatory and appropriately delighted, and the younger ones in dress shirts with no ties or jackets, collars open at the neck, carousing and acting so healthy and happy, so outwardly and openly, that the whole street came alive with new life. The trees tossed pale green and yellow flowers from their arms and the light breeze made my hair move. I walked on past the Irish bars and the Italian delis until I found myself under the elevated N train.

I stood there beneath the high-up tracks. Shadow planks on the street and sidewalk as the train rattled by overhead blocking the sun and letting the sun through intermittently between the railcars. I thought again of my father, and of how many different kinds of people there are in the world, and I felt terrible for enjoying being away from the house for so long. Across the street was an abattoir for chickens in an extra-wide two-car garage. Steel shutter doors were rolled down halfway. There were feathers in the hot air, limp floating on the exhaust fumes, spinning and darting about in the traffic gales. I smelled metal and blood, and heard the buzz of bone saws, but not the cluck of a single chicken.

There was a buzzing at my waist. It was Sarah, and I broke into a sweat.

I said, “Okay. First. Let me say I’m sorry, but it’s been an emotional trip. And I keep calling and hanging up and calling again because I know I need to stop calling you. And I was going to leave a message—”

“Forget it. I’m calling because I want to know about your father.”

“So far, a very odd trip.” A tall, zaftig woman in peach velour crossed the street while nibbling on a hot dog. I was still hungry, and this made me think of a knish. I wanted a knish. And maybe another aspirin.

“So talk,” she said.

A city bus bulleted beside me, only inches from the curb.

“Well, to begin with, he’s sleeping in the bathroom.”

“What does that even mean? You need to give me more information.”

“Sorry, it’s noisy. Hold on.” I left from under the train and walked along the block. “He sleeps in a little red cave.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Everything’s gone to shit. And I mean shit. The house is, I don’t know what.” I took a breath. “A giant litter box, cat shit everywhere.”

“He has cats?”

“He’s become one of those cat ladies with crap and litter on the floor.”

“What else?”

“The house is a wreck, I can’t do it justice. He weighs fifty pounds. You were totally right. He’s in a very bad way. Never goes upstairs, I don’t think he even has the strength to go upstairs, and he’s living in the downstairs bathroom. I know this sounds like, What am I talking about? Give me more information. But I don’t have much more information. Are you there?”

“Okay, slow down, slow down. You okay? I don’t want to worry about you, too.”

“He sleeps on a cot in the bathroom. All day. With a cute red night-light so it’s extra fucked. And he says he talks to God in his dreams. They have conversations. He sits in His lap. He sees my mother, and kisses my mother. He’s sleeping all day. And it’s not like I think he’s crazy. I don’t know what I think. And he’s buying things on the Internet, I don’t know what besides toothbrushes and wine and cat food, and I had an experience today like I’ve never had before, like I’m the one going crazy.”

“Why the bathroom?”

“I don’t know. There are rules. He fills up the tub. And this is why I called you, I mean, why the messages. I want a knish.”

“Mmmm.”

This is the secret for walking in cities against the oncoming crowd: look down and pay no attention to others. Walkers parted like the Red Sea in front of me.

I said, “What’s amazing is I can go for days, weeks in Otter and not see as many people as I’m seeing right now. And I think he’s in pain. He’s not eating, not a bite since I got here.”

“So what exactly is he doing?”

“He sits there next to the tub. He’s talking to me about eggs. There are garbage bags in the hallway, full garbage bags.”

A hot dog cart was on the corner. There was a radio, badly spray-painted white, blaring beneath the umbrella. A game announcer said, “Be sure the Babe is rolling in his grave.” I walked over to an apartment building and sat on the stoop. “I think he’s in pain. And I think I have to call an ambulance or force him to go see a doctor.”

“Or the police.”

“I’m not calling the police. There’s no crime.”

“I mean to help him. Or the hospital for help.”

An elderly woman gave me the stink-eye as she walked by and into the building. “Talk to me about something else,” I said. “Just for a second. What are you doing? What room are you in? Describe the room.”

“I can’t believe now I have to worry about you.”

I said, “I’ve never seen your apartment.”

“I’m in my kitchen, the lightbulb over the stove. I’m dipping, as we speak, a bread heel in tomato sauce.”

“I’m starving. Tell me something else.”

“I’m reading Revelation again. Because it’s my job to read. It feels like a peek inside your brain. Every book in Hebrew is eaten by this book. It leaves nothing. I also happen to be translating a book of Hebrew poems, so I’m especially sensitive. I’m thinking of teaching it next semester.”

“You’re wasting your time with Revelation.”

“William James, by the way, you should read him if you haven’t. You’d love him. He says if you want to see the significance of a thing, you look at the exaggerations. The perversions of a thing. This is your book.”

“It’s not my book. What’s your Greek’s name?” Because I didn’t yet know.

A pause. “His name is Nikos.”

“That’s ridiculous. Are you serious? Totally predictable.”

“He’s a colleague.”

“Well, I hate Nikos.”

“The book is fascistic. And fetishistic.”

I held the phone away for a moment.

I said, “What’d you have for lunch?”

“I had a kiwi smoothie and this. A long run before my flight. We’re going to see my parents.”

“We.”

Another pause.

I said, “We never went and saw your parents.”

“I know.”

Both of us were silent.

“But he’s not there now,” I said. “You’re alone.”

“All alone, just the way you like it.”

“Why say things like that?”

“I happen to be having a very tough year. But why would you know anything about that? I called my father and told him I wanted to see him. I’m trying to replace your dad with my dad.”

“He’s an asshole, your father.”

“I know.”

“And your mother—”

“We’re still fighting. And not to mention the book is kind of beautiful in its own terrible way. Like Texas Chainsaw is beautiful. The lighting is perfect.”

I lit a cigarette, and a fat black pug came sniffing at my feet. She looked up at me, panting, tilting her head. The owner mouthed, “Sorry,” and pulled her away.

“I heard the lighter. Stop smoking. Take this trip as an opportunity.”

I said, “More about the book, please, if this is what keeps you on the phone.”

“I quote, and when the End comes the blood will be as high as the horses’ bridles, or something like that. Why horses?”

“God’s army rides on horses.”

“But why horses? Why not as high as tank treads, if this is supposed to impress me? Or as high as a Chevrolet’s side mirrors, and for two thousand years the faithful are wondering, What’s a side mirror? What’s a Chevy?”

“I’m picturing you behind a pulpit.”

“Think of all those futuristic movies in the sixties and seventies. Everyone’s walking around in a toga like it’s the Roman senate. What togas? Here we are forty years later in the future. Show me a toga. Just one toga.”

“You’re in a mood.”

“It’s my mother. Do you need some help down there? And don’t think I’m offering my services.”

“You mean out there.”

“What out there?”

“Out there. You said down there like I’m in Mexico or Texas. I’m out here, to the right. Pretend you and your hairy boyfriend are facing a road map.”

“Oh, my God.” She hung up the phone.

I bought a knish at the hot dog stand and stood there looking up at the brown wide building, at the fire escapes that climbed and covered its face. I looked down at the food in my hands, a knish nestled in a moist napkin. I totally knew the joy of an artfully knotted potato cake baked by a bearded Orthodox on the Lower East Side, but this was a different thing entirely. Scorchingly hot on the inside, lukewarm chewy breading, a waterlogged wallet smeared with mustard. Perfectly imperfect. Just like marriage, I thought. Then I caught myself. You were an asshole. And so she hung up. I chewed, thinking of her, of her walking, talking on the phone, Sarah with a smoothie spill on the leg of her jeans, her glasses in one hand and rubbing at the bridge of her nose, Sarah in her tiny black socks and neon running shoes, her eyes going red from sad TV movies. Sarah rushing downstairs in an angry huff and slamming our front screen door. Sarah calling me a pitiful, selfish shit, and swinging a steel utensil hard against the back of my neck. I thought of how we hate and love everyone we love. And I thought of her all alone in her new apartment sitting there with her laptop, drinking coffee alone just fine without me, the Greek on his way over for some friendly consoling, and my heart broke open like a sugar bowl fallen from a shelf. I started crying, let it happen for a few seconds, and then I put a swift end to that.

I walked for blocks and watched the blur of passing cars and the people, the overwhelming spectacle of street sounds and color, and I felt not quite a part. Almost, but not quite. Swimming above the city noise somehow, I finished the knish. I stepped around a construction crew and a large black hole in the street. I watched the steel-on-rock stammer of the jackhammer, and the hop of the man’s orange helmet as he broke through rock. A small Asian woman approached a hot dog cart. Shock-white bowl-cut hair. She wore purple sweatpants tucked into black leather cowboy boots and pressed a shoulder bag against her belly.

The vendor waved her off before she got to speak.

She came over to me, pulling something from her bag. She looked at me blankly. “DVD?”

“Excuse me?”

“Good quality.”

I looked at the cover, at the plastic sheathing in her hand, and I saw running along the bottom like blunt baby teeth the tops of block letters spelling out the sentence NOT FOR RESALE. I stared at this until she lost patience.

“Five bucks.” She showed me the palm of her hand.

I continued to look at the case until she snatched it back. She disappeared around a corner down the street.

I shook myself, and called Amad.

He said, “Where are you?”

“I’m sitting on a beige brick step at the foot of a tall apartment building in Queens, not so far from the airport, I think. There’s a hot dog cart in front of me. Construction across the street. A large bug is stuck in the rut of a sidewalk square.” Oily water from who knows where drained along the curb and toward the sewer grating.

“And what is on your mind, my friend?”

“A woman just tried to sell me a pirated DVD. I thought of you.”

“She was Indian?”

“Chinese. I think.”

“The immigrant makes you think of me. The shady newcomer. Very nice.”

“The software, you idiot. How’s today? Any better? I’m trying to be a better boss.”

“I have a cousin on my mother’s side, he disappeared ten years ago muling CPUs in his rectum from Eritrea. This woman with the DVDs, she could be screaming inside for help. Did you buy anything from her? Did you give her any money at all?”

“No.”

“Good. I have regretted almost every purchase from these people. The quality is very often bad.”

“I may be here a while.”

“And I am here.”

“My father’s really sick.”

“I had a feeling.”

“And I really do need you. You know that, right?”

He said, “More than you ever could.”

“Good.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“Josie.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Perfect.”

We were quiet again.

I said, “Make sure you give Teri my love. Rub her belly for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

“So I’ll be here, then,” I said.

“And I am here, my friend.”

I crossed the street and walked by the construction workers, by the bright orange cones, the yellow tape. I looked at my phone: six o’clock. It was rush hour. Six o’clock? The day had gone by so fast! No way Dad was still sleeping. I headed toward the main avenue a few blocks away, toward the subway stair that opened like a hell’s mouth down inside the sidewalk, and I saw the bobbing heads. The bobbing rise of people coming from the trains, and they just kept on coming. They were shoulder close and moving fast, on cell phones sharing with their spouses, and they were coming fast my way. I used to look down on them, people like this. I said they were already dead. I said, Let them walk along their walls like rats in search of scraps. But now I saw not some marching millipede, khaki-legged and gruesome—no, I saw the quivering, the miscellaneous, the crowded and alive, busy soul of humanity. They came at me, surrounding me and passing like a stream flows around a fallen tree. I stayed very still—actually, I was in the way, and I enjoyed every last muttered complaint they made. Every curse. Then I turned and joined them, I walked, and I would go wherever they led me. Not because this was the true way, or the right way, but because this was just one way among how many ways alongside other people right here on this planet and, my God, that sounds so dramatic but really it just felt nice. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so fully alive. Everyone’s head was bobbing, and I saw the front doors of every building, and the TVs through first-floor windows. I felt warm air on my skin, wafting up from the sidewalk grates. The sun was going down orange in the alleys. Evening was on its way, and I was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. Six o’clock? Why was I out and about gallivanting? With a sick father at home? Who needed me, more than he knew, and was possibly looking for me, and calling out my name at this very moment? I hailed a taxi, and told the cabbie I was in a hurry.

 

 

 

 

The bathroom door was open and red light poured into the dark hall, the red pooling on the floor and seeping up the opposite wall. My father was on the cot, his arms limp like snapped wings, belly pressing upward like a boil. There was a bottle of wine beside him, an empty glass. He was breathing. It was labored and thin, but he was breathing. I lowered the toilet lid because open it seemed too portentous, too hungry. I sat. I touched his head and his fine hair. It was nearly seven. I told myself I would call an ambulance if he didn’t wake in the next thirty seconds. I’d bought some groceries from the convenience store down the street: a frozen pizza, crackers and cheese, a soft apple. I put the groceries on the floor. I dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance. He opened his eyes.

“How you doing down there?”

He smiled. “You remember?” He stuttered a bit. “Preaching from door to door?”

“I do. Some.”

“You were what?”

“Maybe seven.”

“You were speaking the old language, and that only comes from one place.…”

“Hey, I called for an ambulance.”

He closed his eyes.

I arranged his legs on the cot and folded the pillow under his head, raising his head.

He pressed his hand to his side. “The body doesn’t want to go.”

“Maybe you should listen to it.”

“No reaching God in a monkey suit.”

The red was all around us. Everything was suffused with dark light. He made a look of disgust, and said, “What’s all this to me, anyway?”

“There’s me.”

He touched my knee. “Of course.”

“Good dreams?”

He laughed. “I was standing right there,” he said, pointing with his finger at the tiled wall, up in the corner by the ceiling. But he couldn’t move his arm. “Right there was Rockaway Beach. You remember Rockaway Beach?”

“I do.”

“We went with your mother.”

“I remember. You threw me in the water.”

“I didn’t scare you?”

“Of course not. We were playing.”

He pointed at the ceiling, and it seemed to take all his strength. “I was hot inside, and light in my belly, and a hand comes taking me to Heaven. Your mother’s all light. And you’re all light. And all your kids are light.”

“I don’t have any kids.”

He said, “You were an old man standing next to them.”

“And Sarah’s where?”

“She was light.”

I drank some wine from the bottle and held it up to the red bulb to see how red, my father on the floor, at the bottom of a deep red gorge. I was supposed to save him, to stop anything like this from happening. I had failed.

He asked, “What time is it?”

“About seven.”

“A few more hours till Sunday.” He looked at my glass.

“You promised you’d eat.”

“I will, come Sunday. At midnight.”

“That’s five more hours. The ambulance will be here by then.”

He tried to sit up. “I’m not hungry. Not thirsty. And swallowing hurts.”

“You need food and you need water.” His face looked flushed. There was a dappling of purple spots along his arm. “I think you have a rash.”

“Fine.” His eyes were lazy, starting to loll in their sockets.

“You’re not fine.” The skin around his mouth was cracked.

“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead. Get us some bread. And wine.”

I helped him sit up. “I got groceries.”

“Rip me a piece and bring water. Pour me wine.”

“Not a good idea.”

“You want me to fight when they get here?” He leaned against the side of the tub.

I brought the bread and the pitcher from the kitchen.

“Pour me a glass.” He tried to tear off a piece of the bread. “You do it.”

I poured the wine and tore off a piece of bread. I gave it to him. He took the bread in hand, raised it slightly, and said: “The Body of God.” He tried to take a small bite, pulling at the bread with his jaw. He dipped the bread in water and sucked at it. He raised his glass of wine.

“You really shouldn’t.” I tried to take it from him, and the wine spilled some. I let go of his hand. He straightened with a brief surge of strength, and said: “You will not do that again.”

He looked at the wine, and then he swallowed it all in one gulp. Red streaming from the sides of his mouth, he coughed. His shoulders convulsed and he spat. Then he turned, retching into the tubful of water.

He wiped his mouth, and said, “Your grandfather. We used to stay in hotel rooms. He traveled.”

I tried to give him the water.

He waved it away, and said, “Took us wherever he went. Every room a Bible.” His face was glowing. “Said they came from angels. Angels wore suits, key rings big as hula hoops. A briefcase full of Bibles. Had keys to every room in the city.” His head lolling back and forth. “Where are the wings? Got holes in their jackets?”

“You never talked about him.”

A long pause. “Hotels give me nightmares.”

I took a sip of the wine, and set the bottle on the tub.

“He’s been a constant concern,” he said. “Your grandfather distresses me.”

He was looking at the cloudy bathwater.

“They promised him it was coming.” He coughed. “Light from Heaven, and it’s all over.” He wiped his mouth. “And the faithful will be glorified!” He coughed again. “But then it’s the bread truck. And the birds in the morning, and the milk bottles…”

I put the glass of water to his lips. He sipped from it, and the cot made a snapping-bone noise.

I realized I was crying, and I let it happen.

He was talking now hardly above a whisper. “You’re the last one, a long line of God’s men. American men. You’re the lucky one. Your grandfather, and his father. And his. You should have a boy. He’ll be lucky.”

There are brief glimpses that take you outside, beyond. The last time I smoked marijuana, I was thirty-four and sitting with a good client, poor guy had leukemia. My world opened out like the night-black sky and went on forever, unknowable. There is that long sigh that scoops you out all empty inside from your bowels and all through your soul when you’re standing at the edge of a thing like the Grand Canyon. You wonder at the marvel of a crack, a single crack that opens up turning into something like this, where the world below breaks open and has nothing to do with you, and knows not a thing of what goes on outside its own rocky moon-mountain insides. And your hand is holding someone else’s. Truth comes at you like the floor of an elevator shaft. There are only two good reasons I can think of for God. There is the Good Lord as uncanny family inheritance, a strange great gift from the people who birthed you. Say your prayers before bedtime. Like Dad gave me his God, and his father his, and his father’s father, et cetera. Ad infinitum, for all I know. And of course the Good Lord comes in handy when you first meet the creeping fear of anything unknown, the first time He takes someone away forever.

Dad dropped his legs over the side of the cot and readied his hand at the sink. He took the wine from my hands, and I let him. He drank it all down, in one slow and controlled swallow, and said: “The Blood of God.”

I helped him pull himself up.

He pressed a hand to the tall red wall. His knees were quaking. He whispered, “We’re nothing, you and I, and everyone. Two ways, son, only glory.” He paused. “And frustration.”

He let go of the wall, and he wavered.

“Glory has been patient.” His voice was slurred.

And then he fell.

Everything moved slowly as I reached for him. His arms going around my neck like a lasso, and then it was his weight and my weight together. The pinkish clouds of wine in the water were shifting, and we fell now together, slowly, against the side of the tub. His hand struck the water and our weight knocked hard against the porcelain, and the wine bottle fell in the pool, splashing red water on the walls. A dark blood cloud poured from the bottle, unfurling, rolling, and swirling in the pink dusky storm in the bathwater. The whole sky, all of it, I saw it there like a rippling mirror as we fell back together on the low red floor. I became aware of real time moving around me and beyond me in echoing swirls. I felt we were outside the world somehow, fallen outside and deep inside some borderless moment. It was vast and it was exhilarating. I was aware of my skin, of the very space in my skull, of the infinite space in my skull, of the tidal rush and pull of the so many people we are and can be and ever once were. I was aware of my very own heart, aware in that same way I’d been so many times of my stomach: it was full. My heart was full. I held my father in my arms, and I didn’t want to lose him, and I didn’t want it to be too late, was I too late? I wanted to go back in time, but I couldn’t. And so I became very afraid. Above us, red clouds were poised so still. Then they broke and fell like rain.