It’s remarkable how loud the world is when you’re sitting in a room with your father, neither of you speaking for a long time. I can hear the air molecules themselves, knocking around against each other.
We’re in his den. It’s Saturday afternoon, the day after all the fun. Why are they home a day early with no warning?
“I was concerned about a patient.”
Of course.
Patrick and Terri departed midmorning in his beater Camry. Josh, whose face is all lumpy and purple, has been cleaning the house all day under the unsympathetic supervision of my mother. Lisa is resting, already on the penicillin that my dad picked up from the pharmacy. He briefly switched duties with my mom at midday so she could deliver a very hung-over Eric back to his house. As far as his parents knew, he was just sleeping over.
“Please don’t tell my mom,” Eric begged as they were leaving.
“Eric,” said my mom, “do you think I’m a goddamned retard?”
When my mom got back, my dad took me into his den and asked me to sit down. He was very quiet and formal when he did it, and I imagined it’s how he talks to his patients. “Isaac, can you come in here for a moment? I’d like to speak with you.”
“Isaac,” he said after we’d both settled, “I’d like you to tell me what happened over these past two weeks.”
I thought for a while, then said, “Actually, I’d prefer not to talk about it.”
Right after Eric threw up, my dad went into triage mode. I could see it happen: He flipped a switch, sent whatever personal feelings he had on a minivacation, and became Dr. Kaplan in the trauma ward. It was completely cool, actually. Boom: “Judy, take Eric to the bathroom and clean him up.” Boom: “Josh, get off your ass, get paper towels and the mop, and take care of the vomit.” Josh, still crying, complied. Incredible. Boom: “You, come here.” He got down on a knee and examined my face, turning my head from side to side.
“The window!” wailed my mom from the bathroom. My dad looked accusingly at Josh, who had just returned with a roll of paper towels.
“No, that one’s on me,” I said. “I broke the window.”
“We are going to need to talk,” said my dad.
He sent Josh and me downstairs to their bathroom while he checked on Lisa.
“Strep?” I said when he came in.
“Yes.”
I raised an eyebrow at Josh.
“You were right,” said Josh. “Isaac was right, Dad.”
Because Lisa is his daughter, my dad keeps strep tests on hand. Because Josh is his son, he also has a supply of stitches and anesthetic. My dad ended up giving me three stitches in my eyebrow. He gave Josh six—two on his forehead and four over his right cheekbone. He wasn’t particularly gentle with Josh as he scrubbed his face and cleaned out the wounds.
My dad was silent as he worked, expressionless, still in doctor mode. He’d been shaking with anger before, and looked exhausted and jet-lagged, and must have been overwhelmed by all the chaos that greeted him on arrival. But I couldn’t see any of that. All I could see was pure focus. And I thought, my dad can’t ride a motorcycle or throw a punch or shoot a gun, but he could take the bullet out of you, and he could do it while the house was on fire around him. I liked him a lot right then.
Afterward there was some contention as our mom and dad huddled and discussed what should happen next, what to do with Lisa, what to do with Eric, and whether to boot out Patrick and Terri.
This conversation was interrupted by a brief visit from our friends Officers Thomke and Federson, responding an hour late to a noise complaint (Thomke to my dad: “Boy, I feel like we’ve been here a lot this week! Well, good night!” leaving my dad with an expression somewhere between stunned and resigned).
When the fuzz left, my parents restarted their discussion/argument, even more heatedly. This time I interjected.
“Listen: Here’s what’s going to happen. Leave Terri and Patrick in my room, because I told them they could use it. I’ll sleep on the sofa. Eric sleeps on the downstairs sofa. We can deal with everything and clean up in the morning.”
And you know what? They actually listened to me.
So now here we are in his den, my dad trying to make sense of the past two weeks.
“What do you mean, you prefer not to talk about it?” he asks.
“I’d just rather not talk about it.”
“Isaac, I’m sorry, but that’s unacceptable. I’d like to know what happened, and what happened between you and Josh.”
I don’t answer.
“Isaac, did he threaten you?”
I snort. I can’t help it. It just slips out. Josh has threatened me so many times it’s like background noise.
“What? What does that mean? Has he told you not to talk? Are you afraid of him?”
I think about that. Am I afraid of him? Not anymore. I’m not sure what else he could really do to me.
“Isaac?” says my dad.
“No. I just don’t feel like talking about it.”
“I guess we can just wait until you do,” says my dad.
It takes some effort not to smile. It’s what he used to say when I was a child and didn’t want to cooperate: We’ll just wait until you do. No yelling, no grabbing me and forcing me to do something. He would just out-patience me until I caved. But I’m not a child anymore. It makes me feel proud and sad all at once, and like I want to give my father a consolation hug, because he doesn’t know that era is gone. Instead we both lapse back into our current silence. We’ve been sitting like this for several minutes now.
He sighs. “Isaac . . .” he says. He’s given up, the first time that has ever happened. “Will you at least explain to me why you won’t tell me?”
“Because,” I say, “it’s between me and Josh. It’s between me and my brother.”
He doesn’t say anything, but he nods. He doesn’t like the explanation, but he doesn’t press me any further.
“Okay,” he says, and gets up, the process labored, like he’s exhausted. He rubs his face. “I’m really sorry, Isaac. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have left you at home with Josh. You were right.”
“It’s okay.”
“Sounds like it was quite a time.”
My hand goes up to the stitches on my eyebrow. I reconsider what I said in the car to Josh last night, about it all being bullshit.
“Worst two weeks of my life,” I say. “And the best.”