“Tell me if any of these say anything to you: French chateau, English cottage, Italian villa, German castle, peasant simplicity.”
“Not really.”
“But geometric simplicity, OK? Fundamentally simple, uncluttered, loud, pretentious, and gaudy, without being dispiritingly tasteless.”
“Whatever you like.”
“Above all, I don’t want anything angular, so maybe it should be round.”
“Good idea.”
“You think so? Do you feel like living in an orb?”
“Yeah, that sounds fine.”
“What we want is to blend into the natural surroundings. An organic synthesis, that’s what we’re after. And inside I think two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a dark room, not to develop photos, just so we can sit in the dark. Now, what else? Let’s talk about the threshold.”
“The what?”
“The portal into the home.”
“You mean the front door?”
“How many times do I have to say it?”
“Just once would be good.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed into thin slits and the edges of his mouth curled downward. “If you’re going to be that way about it, we’ll just scrap the whole design. What about living in a cave?”
“A cave?”
“I thought we agreed we’d live in a uterine symbol.”
“Dad.”
“Well, what if we live in the trunk of an old tree, like Merlin? Or wait. I know. We could construct platforms in the trees. What do you say, Jasper- are we tree-dwellers?”
“Not especially.”
“Since when don’t you want to live in leafy sensuality?”
Dr. Greg had come into the room. He was ogling us like a Supreme Court judge watching a couple of neo-Nazis wash his car at traffic lights.
“Dad, let’s just have an ordinary house. Just a nice, normal, ordinary house.”
“You’re right. We don’t need to go over the top. OK. Which do you prefer? A cubical ordinary house or a cylindrical ordinary house?”
I sighed. “Cubical.”
“Have you ever seen the Tower of Samara in Iraq?”
“No. Have you?”
“OK. Here’s a structural dilemma we have to overcome. I want to hear the echo of my own footsteps, but I don’t want to hear yours. What can we do about that?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, then. Let’s talk ceilings. Do you want high ceilings?”
“Of course. Why would anyone want a low ceiling?”
“To hang yourself. OK? Hang on a sec. Let’s see…” Dad rummaged through his books. “Tepee?”
“Come on, Dad, what’s happened to your brain? You’re all over the place.”
“You’re right. You’re right. We need to focus. We need to be sensible. We need to be logical. So let’s be logical. What are the objectives inherent in the design of a house? To meet your physical needs. Eating, sleeping, shitting, and fucking. That translates to comfort, utility, efficiency. But our psychological needs? The same, really. In fact, I don’t see why we should separate ourselves from primitive man in this. Our goal should be to exist in a consistent climate and to keep out predators.”
“Great.”
“Just remember that the form of our habitat will inflict undue influence on our behavior. We have to be smart about this. What about an igloo?”
“No.”
“A house on wheels! A drawbridge! A moat!”
“No! Dad! You’re out of control here!”
“OK! OK! Have it your way. We’ll do something simple. The only thing I insist on, though, is that the ideology behind the design of our house should be the old Italian proverb.”
“What proverb?”
“That the best armor is to keep out of range.”
This idea was clearly backfiring. Dr. Greg looked on quietly through these brainstorming sessions with half-closed, judgmental eyes. Dad had become luminous with ideas, but he’d made the undesirable leap from manic-depressive to obsessive-compulsive.
Meanwhile I decided to play along and be a good provisional orphan, so I returned to the house for lost children. It made sense, because if I played truant they’d be lying in wait for me every time I visited Dad in hospital, and breaking into an insane asylum is just as difficult as breaking out. I also had to return to school. Mrs. French drove me in the mornings, and throughout the school day I scrupulously avoided telling anyone about Dad’s meltdown or about how my father and I were now living in separate homes for cracked eggs- talking about it would have meant surrendering myself to reality. I just went on as if it were business as usual. Of course, returning from school every afternoon was a nightmare, though as it happened, absolutely everyone at the house neglected to sexually abuse me in any way, and nothing of interest occurred there except I eventually gave in to my gnawing curiosity and listened to everyone’s stories, which were far worse than mine. In this way all the abandoned children robbed me of self-pity. That’s when I really bottomed out. Without being able to feel sorry for myself, I had nothing left.
And worse, every now and then the fools at the hospital granted Dad access to a telephone. I’d answer it and suffer through a conversation like this:
My voice: “Hello?”
Dad’s voice: “Here’s a spatial dilemma: how to arrange the house so that at the same time it is comfortable for us but discourages guests from staying more than forty-five minutes.”
Mine: “Not sure.”
Dad’s: “Jasper! This is to be a hard, practical exercise! No messing about! Something that reflects my personality, no, my dilemma, my lie, which is, of course, my personality. And the color. I want it white! Blindingly white!”
Mine: “Please, can we do something simple?”
Dad’s: “I couldn’t agree with you more. We want something simple that can be eroded by the elements. We don’t want anything more durable than we are.”
Mine: “OK.”
Dad’s: “Open living space. No. That discourages human intimacy. No, hang on, I want that. I want…”
Long silence.
Mine: “Dad? You still there?”
Dad’s: “Bullfighting ring! Gothic cathedral! Mud hovel!”
Mine: “Are you taking your medicine?”
Dad’s: “And no mantelpieces! They always make me think of urns with ashes in them.”
Mine: “OK! Jesus!”
Dad’s: “Which do you prefer, a porch or a veranda? What’s the difference, anyway? Wait. I don’t care. We’ll have both. And I’ll tell you something else. Ornamental detail can go to hell. We are the ornamental detail!”
Then I’d hang up and curse myself for sending Dad down what I thought was another ruinous path. These conversations certainly did not prepare me for the abrupt change that was about to follow.
One day I visited the hospital and was shocked to see that Dad had arranged the books into a neat pile. All the pages of erratic designs had been thrown away, and when I sat down in that eerily organized room, he presented me with a single piece of paper with a shockingly normal design for a shockingly normal family home. No moats, drawbridges, igloos, or stalagmites. No bullfighting rings, indoor slides, trenches, or underwater grottos. It was just a normal house. The construction was clear and simple: a classic boxy structure with a central living space and several rooms arranged off it. I might even go so far as to say it summed up the national character, right down to the veranda on all sides.
He had finally seen his situation clearly: to build his house he must get out, and to get out he must convince the powers that be that he was once again mentally healthy and fit for society. So he faked it. It must have been a strenuous period for him, putting all his energy into pretending to be normal; he did this single-mindedly, and talked about the Great Australian Dream and interest rates and mortgage repayments and sports teams and his employment prospects; he expressed outrage at the things that outraged his countrymen: taxpayer-funded ministerial blowjobs, corporate greed, fanatical environmentalists, logical arguments, and compassionate judges. He was so convincing in his portrayal of Mr. Average that Dr. Greg swallowed every droplet of bullshit my father sweated out for him, swelling with triumph at the conclusion of each session.