Umo was in the water. Then somehow he was in the far lane and up out of the water and got my father’s attention and he said something and my father slapped him hard in the ribs like walrus meat, they actually laughed, and my father had me in his peripheral vision, nothing special about that, it was something no one I ever met was better at, yet not look your way. Sure enough him and Umo — I don’t know, they were conversing on the far side of the pool when Coach’s cell as if it could hear to interrupt went, and he was irritated, sour, hard for a second; then agreeable to whoever it was suddenly, and laughed (more than he ever did) and frowned sideways at Umo for listening and Umo looked at me and nodded as if hopefully, like when he said whatever he said the first time at the outdoor pool. And then my dad looked at me and was done so quick he had obviously paid attention to what had been said at the other end and then he looked at his phone as if it was the odd thing and shut it, and said something to Umo that was not about swimming and said something else; and more than once now there was something Dad was about to do. Then at last he did it, looked over at me, back at Umo, listening to this water person as big as two Hawaiians, though Dad’s patience was to be reckoned not maybe in minutes but in space, and here not just laps — a listener now to the foreign visitor. You notice what you don’t get sometimes, and this knowing and not knowing wasn’t exactly what I had seen through the bus window, sergeant handing out literature to the middle-school kids and the kids looking at the literature but it brought it back. Umo was speaking to my father about, I was certain, me. I had brought Umo to the pool and introduced him, a bit of iron in my soul said.
5 cutting rhizomes
My term paper that had some science in it I should hope, my sister kept in a scrapbook, a lipsticked impression marking the first page.
Dad went away more, and came home. What had I done while he was gone? he asked. Learned to speak Spanish. That all? I needed to take control of my time, my father said. Break it down. I do, I said. And I read some of this. (I held up a paperback classic that my sister had gotten out of the library.). Old stuff, my father said. Ancient, Dad. Yeah, why would you read that — or him for that matter (as if you could “rue the day,” as he liked to say, that I read a few pages of some Roman on the way things are). Talked to the Daily Transcript, I said. They should start you on headlines, you can’t write a straight sentence. Mrs. Browning never realized what she had, said my sister, writing in a homework notebook at the dining room table wearing dark glasses for some reason, drawing and writing. Mrs. Browning would have given him B minus for a complete thought, said my dad, all he needed to do was—
Talked to Marine Lab, I said. About? said Dad A job. You what? said Dad. Phoned U. Hawaii. Pre-Business. You call that a—?
I said Pre, Dad.
And Pre-Med advice, I added, from a personal trainer who got a callback interview with the Chargers. With your Chem — get real. Talked to the Coast Guard, Dad. Coast Guard! (The retired bosun’s mate down at the boatyard who did not vote had taken me out in his retired USCG 38-foot picket boat, and hanging next to the binnacle were his old running spikes that had been bronzed by his high school in memory of a hard-to-believe-if-you-looked-at-him-now State Championship 880, worth a snapshot.) There’s a war on, my father said. There is? said my sister.
“Elizabeth…,” my father said. He used her given name (with almost a weird and distant respect) though she had dropped it years ago even at her age. In favor, first, of “E” and later of “Em,” or “M” (for the “m” in “family,” she said), though E-Z, I heard occasionally during the summer like a toll pass or, with my first initial, some married name of ours, was the Z a nod back to her given name, and had E to begin with just set her apart from my girlfriend Liz, though it began before Liz’s time.
Sometimes I gathered all this together and would think ahead, though it was already happening. “What are you wearing, pyjamas at this hour?” Dad said, but she was at work on her homework notebook. “Pyjama bottoms,” I said. We laughed, E and I.
“The dog’s tail, you gotta cut it off in one chop they say,” my father said, hanging in there on the war and my occupational future, but family-mad. “They’ll have a mission statement,” said my sister. “I was saying,” my father continued as if from what had just been said, “if you could just finish a sentence, forget an idea.”
“Well, they have to take this guy out,” I said, meaning the war. “Right. Nothing fancy about…” my father began but oddly didn’t finish. “That’s what I understand, keep things simple,” I said but at a slant probably. “You’re so—“my father began as the front door shook the house—“You don’t apologize,” he said, I believe of America. Business as usual about everything, I think I said. “Business as usual,” my mother called out, recyclable paper bags crackling with forethought, fresh home from the Presidio Farmer’s and her particular friend, the butcher, it came to me and to my sister catching my eye. My father muttered something. They’ll find it somewhere, I said. Find what? my father said. Their mission statement, I said. Where? he said curiously.
Division of labor, I said. Someone had said — I stopped—Someone? my dad said — that the value of a fixed calling gave us a warrant for it. For what? The division of labor, I laughed. Dad more than didn’t like the conversation. My job will be…(I thought a moment). You two, he said.
“We’ll get it in writing,” I said. “A mission statement,” my sister said. “Setting out our way of life,” I said. “You people are never wrong but you don’t have a plan and you never will have,” my father said. “You people have a privileged life, time to give something back. In writing did you say?” I humored my dad, I said I didn’t want to be doing work with no point to it, Mrs. Browning had figured that out, though she didn’t know where I’d borrowed the guy endlessly pushing the stone from who knew the secrets of the gods. “Enough of that old stuff,” my father said. “You should know,” I said. My sister, on my side, said, “She thought Zach made it up, veins in the earth, and she didn’t like that.” But we couldn’t get a laugh out of Dad, who had never perhaps had the full experience of working in the dark. He was less a loose gun than…a loaded gun (E said). And where did they say that about cutting off the dog’s tail? she wanted to know. “Chile, of course,” a place my dad wanted to visit. Dad had been known to go camping alone when a mood came over him. My sister told her librarian friend things I said — she always answered me and it was she really who said the things. What did he mean You don’t apologize—you mean me or…? “You just don’t,” said my sister. That summer she was “EZ,” incorporating my first letter. (She played softball and had a great free uninhibited left-handed swing.) When did she seem to change her name? You didn’t know when exactly it would happen. It wasn’t advertised.
Time twisting, braiding, stumbling, for me to see my way out — time to leave. I put off going to see Wick, the teacher I trusted. My home had been escaping me. About this I didn’t tell my sister; or didn’t need to, it was so old and impenetrably understood, leaning toward her or she toward me, hands, no hands, who could tell the difference? “What you get might always seem less than you should but it’s fate,” she said of me, the stony gray light of her eyes warming mine but to see more than just the future.