“It would have been nice if you had stopped and said hello.”
“I was busy, Edward. I was on my way to somewhere else.”
Clark Avenue is not on the way to somewhere else. It is not a thoroughfare. If my father were on his way to somewhere else, he would have been on Central or Broadwater or Grand, or maybe even Lewis. He would not have been on Clark.
“Three times?”
“Yes, Edward, three times. How come you’re not answering my question?”
My mother speaks up. “Ted, just leave it be.”
“Maureen, all I want is some answers from the boy.” My father is sneering at me.
I look at him and say, “When I have some plans, Father, I will let you know.”
After dinner, I politely decline dessert and bid my parents goodbye.
My mother comes over to me and wraps me in a hug. In my ear, she says softly, “He doesn’t mean it. He’s under a lot of stress right now.”
On my way out, I stop at the entryway to the living room. My father is on the couch, drink in hand, staring.
“Good night, Father.” He doesn’t move or look up.
You know how on an airplane when it’s coming down for a landing and your ears pop and your breathing slows down? That’s how I feel as my Toyota Camry descends the Rimrocks on Twenty-Seventh Street. I have not been as high as an airplane, but it was too high for comfort.
Back at home, on my way in the front door, I fetch what little mail I’ve received out of the box. There are two coupons for local pizza places and a letter with the seal of Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, Attorneys at Law.
There on the front stoop, I open the envelope.
October 21, 2008
Mr. Edward Stanton:
This letter is in regard to your actions at Billings Clinic on the morning of October 19, 2008. We wish to remind you that such action will not be tolerated by your benefactor, Mr. Edward M. Stanton Sr. Any further action that warrants police involvement or puts the reputation of your benefactor at risk will be cause for revisiting the arrangements made for you, up to and including the elimination of all payments and benefits.
On the other end of the phone, I hear my mother’s tired voice. “Stantons’ residence.”
“Mother, put Father on.”
“Oh, hello, dear. Your father is asleep. He has had a difficult night.”
“Put him on the phone.”
“He’s sleeping, dear.”
“Put him on the goddamned phone,” I bark at her.
My mother lets out a small yelp. I hear rustling in the background and her voice, urgent: “It’s Edward. It’s Edward.”
“Edward?” My father sounds groggy.
I am now shouting. “I was just there. Why can’t you talk to me? Why does it always have to be the goddamned lawyer?”
I slam the phone into its cradle.
Tonight’s episode of Dragnet is the first one of the first season, called “The LSD Story,” and it is one of my favorites.
Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon go out on a call because a boy has been seen putting his head in holes and chewing the bark off trees. This strikes Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon as peculiar behavior.
What they find is a boy named Benjy Carver, only nobody calls him that. He is known as “Blue Boy.” His face is painted half blue and half yellow. And he has been taking lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. This presents a quandary for the cops, as the drug is not yet illegal in California.
Soon, Blue Boy is passing the drug all around West Hollywood, and lots of kids are getting sick from it, including two nice teenage girls named Edna May and Sandra. After the California Legislature finally makes LSD illegal, Edna May and Sandra help Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon find Blue Boy. Unfortunately, Blue Boy is already dead, having consumed too much of his own product.
This episode of Dragnet is a morality tale.
I think I would have liked to have had a father like Sergeant Joe Friday. I couldn’t have put one over on him—Sergeant Joe Friday is way too smart for that—but I think he would have tried to understand me and the things I do, and if he didn’t approve, he would tell me himself. Sergeant Joe Friday never would have had a lawyer send me a letter. That’s not how he does business.
But Sergeant Joe Friday never married and never had kids. The man who portrayed him, Jack Webb, married four times—which Sergeant Joe Friday would have never done, I’m sure—and had two children. Sergeant Joe Friday is also off the air, and Jack Webb has been dead for almost twenty-six years.
I am stuck with the father I have.
I now need six green office folders for my letters to my father.
Dear Father:
I can say without reservation that your treatment of me this evening was simply unacceptable. While I can appreciate that you are facing many pressures at work—although I suspect that you are bringing them on yourself, in large measure—I cannot condone your ruining dinner and my chance to visit with Mother by hectoring me over painting the garage.
And yet, all of that paled in comparison to coming home to find a letter from your lawyer castigating me for the events of Saturday at Billings Clinic. I find it hard to believe that this is something that we couldn’t have worked through on our own, without legal involvement.
I don’t know what to do, Father. I don’t know how to please you. I don’t know if you know how I can.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22
When I wake up—at 7:40 a.m., the thirtieth time out of 296 days this year (because it’s a leap year)—it’s because the wind is whipping against the house, rattling windows. My data entered, I strain across the bed and pull aside the curtain on the bedroom window.
The lone white ash tree in the backyard, clinging to its last maroon leaves, is being bent by the high wind. I glance up at the sky, which is a foreboding gray.
I have two thoughts about this: First, I think that Montana in fall is about to deliver confirmation of just how off base a forecast can be. Second, I am glad that I have no plans to paint the garage today.
As the first droplets of rain crash into the window, it occurs to me that I ought to hurry and fetch the newspaper, or else the remainder of my data will be ruined.
At the kitchen table for breakfast, I’m choking down my eighty milligrams of fluoxetine. Here is something I did not tell Dr. Buckley yesterday: When the dreams started, I thought perhaps that I should go off my medication, just to see if that would toggle the dreams away and bring back my peaceful sleep. I can only imagine what Dr. Buckley’s reaction to that would have been. She would have asked me to think about all the trouble I had before we got my dosage right, about all the moments when I felt like an unwilling passenger in a car driven by a madman—only I was the madman.
She would have been right, too. The fluoxetine, in large measure, keeps day-to-day life from being more of a mess than it sometimes is. I get credit for some of that, and Dr. Buckley would not hesitate to give it to me. Using some of the coping strategies she has given me—closing my eyes, counting backward, visualizing the path out of danger—I have often averted situations that, before Dr. Buckley, would have escalated into horrible confrontations that my father would have had to defuse. I think it’s those coping skills plus the medication that have done it for me. I wouldn’t want to try life without either one.