The Fatted Calf: Saturated Fat is Immoral, Dad

I used to run a simple operation: a pizza/burger/fries/hot dog sort of place with little seating and a lot of grease. It was called The Dog House, like, I'm sure many similar places are called. I know it's not an original name, okay?

Anyway, my daughters got through school on what this place brought in and after they graduated they came to work part-time for me, along with my youngest boy, Jared, who's a senior at White Chapel Christian Academy. Sydney, my older girl, is an insurance actuary but she always came in on weekends to help out. My younger one, Tabitha, went to community college and lived nearby, coming in to work most evenings. But a few years ago, after my back started going out on me, they started talking to me about letting them take on more responsibilities, like the accounting and the inventory and things like that and before I know it, they're starting to change the whole damn place, putting in all these new butcher-block tables and tall wooden bar chairs. Used to be just a few benches along the walls where people could wait for their food. Usually guests didn't linger. But Sydney starts talking about how lingering can be profitable, and I'm like, ok, so we start talking about expanding the menu. I tell the girls as long as the staff can handle it, I'm okay on all their decisions. My younger one graduated in business and the older one is taking night school now and caring less and less about her insurance job. 

Before I know it, we're serving coffee. Croissants. Green salads and herbal tea. Somehow all my friers got replaced with smaller burger and pizza ovens with the revolving grills that can also spit out bagels and other grilled sandwiches. They talked to me about healthy food like I had no idea. 

Saturated fat is immoral, dad.

So we start serving tuna salad and grilling the burgers instead of frying them. We start offering fresh fruit parfaits and bottled water and little greek salads in little plastic containers. We start frying our fries in peanut oil and I lose three or four of my customers due to a damn food allergy. 

Now I'm serving turkey and provolone on a fresh croissant with fig jam and a slice of Granny Smith Apple. And you know what? the same people come in. They come in because they have nowhere else to go where the owner will allow them to sit for hours on end. The only other place is the Exxon Dunkin Donuts off 526. So they come here and they reluctantly munch on their scone or their mandarin orange salad and my daughters pat each other on the back and say well done, we're keeping this town healthy.

I do miss the smell of the place, though. 

People come here to drink bottomless fountain Cokes. They come here to share absurd milkshakes and a concoction of ice cream entitled "Everything but the Kitchen Sink" (my daughters can't stop me from serving ice cream. Not yogurt. Ice Cream) which is so huge that the only party I've ever seen complete it was a half dozen football players from the baptist college down the way. People come here to hold hands and play music on the jukebox and talk and slow dance (sometimes) and talk about the game or talk about the show or talk about the weather. 

People come here to talk. And the worst ones are the old folks. They seem to know everything. About everyone. And they are merciless. They come in here every day; the regulars of this strange little town, the elderly who have no golf courses, no pools to sit by. They come in droves, they come in pairs, they never come alone. Never enjoy a book or a magazine. No, they order their chamomile and their cream soda and they talk, they talk about what the world is coming to and how family values are going down the shitter and it always starts the same way; some teenager or group of teenagers or some woman or some group of women walks by the large picture window; too much makeup or not enough clothes ; hair too black or jeans too ripped, skin too pale or too black or too tattooed and suddenly these people remember that life is not what they were promised and there is no better example of this than in a roving band of miscreants.

However, it is nearly Christmas and the old women sitting in a booth near the counter have other things to talk about than their usual dismay with the changing times. They're not even discussing their children and children-in-law, their grandchildren and all the choices they've made laid up on the table for approval. They had already done that around Thanksgiving. This year, it's the Hurts. All year it's been the Hurts.

The old man, Mathis, he's got emphysema, and maybe a few months. The old women say he still retains ownership of the White Chapel Inn, even though it's his son, Nathan and his wife Cecilia who really run the place. But as depressed as everyone is about  Mathis (he really is a great guy, the family's been in this town a long time) they still have other things to say about the family that are anything but sensitive. Anything but giving. 

Last Sunday at church Nathan said that his son Gabriel (whom we we all know to be more than just estranged), would be visiting for the holidays and for support through this difficult time. He asked for prayers of support and clarity and that everyone would make Gabriel feel as welcome as possible. The prayer was long and stagnant and I remember I couldn't stop thinking about Nathan's testimony some five years ago now. 

Everyone knew that Nate had been a mean drunk and would've been locked up for the rest of his good years if it weren't for the Lord's intervention. And did the Lord intervene. The change has been nothing short of miraculous; from sinner to saint, I mean it. Nathan's story is too saturated with divine grace to allow room for personal opinions about the man. 

Everyone knew his son might as well have been dead for all the good he was to him. Nathan spent nearly enough money looking for the kid to bankrupt the whole inn but his drinking was getting pretty out of control and the money ran out. Everyone was contributing as much as they could, the whole church, even though Nathan wasn't a member or even a believer, but that ran out, too. And of course, there was his wife. A whole other set of problems. Most people in town are pretty sympathetic and basically too yellow to actually bring her up. 

Except for this particular pack of cotton candy-haired old women. Four of them, discussing something that, as far as I could tell, was actually new and shocking. It had been a big year for the family.

The young one, Matty, about seventeen, just got out of that juvenile facility upstate, all filled up with the Lord last June, let out early because of good behavior and due to his grandfather's declining health. Mathis has always been close with those boys. 

One of the women, Linda, says that Gabriel coming home is a good thing, a sign of progress and unity in the family. She has not quite gotten over her church talk and the others are more than a little irritated by it.

"Well he's only in town for his grandfather. I doubt he came back for that father of his..."

"Probably just to see how  much he's getting in the will."

"Not everyone cares only about money, Margaret."

"I'm not saying everyone, but the boy's been gone so long they're like strangers now. It ain't because he cares."

"Can you blame him? Getting slapped around every other day?"

The one named Margaret, wears her powder-blue sweater with an all-over winter ice skating scene knitted into its pattern. She made it herself. The woman across from her, Claire, wears a red sweatshirt with a similar scene screen printed. Her skaters are white, smiling polar bears. She sits up straighter because she and Claire are usually competitive.

"It's been years and people have been forgiven for much worse, so if that's the reason, then I'm not breaking my back to make this young man feel welcome. His father's a deacon now for goodness sake." 

"Well have they been keeping in touch?" 

"Wasn't the boy in a motorcycle accident some years back? Pretty bad one I heard. Nathan flew to Milwaukee or lord knows where to pay his hospital bills."

"Good gracious..."

"And he still hasn't come home to see his family? That's not right..."

"He must be in a real pickle if he's coming all the way here," Margaret says, "he probably owes a loan shark or something..."

Margaret says 'loan shark' like something she read out of a book, like she's thrilled to be using such a term in her own life. The others tease her with high cooing and airy slaps of mock-scolding, but they agree with her. Gabriel's departure slashed the family open, everything visceral and nasty dropping out to be seen by everyone, and once people started paying attention again, they didn't look away. Mathis' smoking increased and he had a few heart attacks not long after the boy disappeared. Now he's dying at 76. Cecilia lost what little control she had and started wandering the woods at night and has to take fifty pills a day to stay in the house. 

At first, of course, right Gabe disappeared, Nathan nearly lost it from the stress, from the police poking around his house and never really acting on their worst suspicions but having them anyway, which was bad enough. It helped his case that Gabe had a history of running away, sometimes for days at a time, only coming back home usually starving and often worse for the wear. It would have been a shocking case in any other household. He broke under the pressure and he broke publicly, with that car accident that could have easily killed Matty, too ("the man should have gone to prison," the old ladies are saying), then retreated to this clinic in Greenville to get cleaned up and everyone, all of us just watched, transfixed, too fascinated to praise or criticize. We had all seen the man try and fail, try and fail, and now go off the deep end, but this time it was different. When he came back from Greenville after just 90 days of treatment, he was a different person. He was a christian. And in the sense that we weren't. In the sense that the Lord descended upon him and took a hold of his heart, spontaneously and at his most desperate time. None of us were born-again, not at that level. Nathan got up in front of the church and everything, gave his testimony and told us all what we already knew but with the purpose of showing us how he came to lay his sins at the foot of the Cross. Nearly everyone in the congregation wept, and moreover, believed him. We all believed, in a moment, that this was the real deal. It had a big impact on the church; a pretty big morale booster.

Nathan transitioned the family into the church community about six months after he came out of the facility, when Matty was nearly nine. The boy still wasn't talking. Not a word. The car accident had occurred right before his eighth birthday, and had done nothing to shake him out of whatever it was that had him so rattled. I heard more than a few people say that the police had based their entire investigation upon the signs of PTSD in Matty after Gabe's disappearance, that it had factored in even more than the abusive relationship Nathan had with Gabriel, and of course, Nathan's alcoholism. 

We all have problems; that's the core belief of this whole place. All of us are born-again. All of us have come to know the Lord at our most desperate point, and most of our desperate points are pretty damned desperate. Waking up on the side of the road with no shoes and no wallet sort of desperate. The last thing in the world Nathan could have wanted was a son who took after his former self, a son who walked the wide path. But Matty had always been troubled; too skeptical to come easily to faith. One of the women, Charlene, says that a boy with a father like that isn't really going to have the most positive image of God. The church did its best to minister to him but he had this way of smiling at you, this narrow-eyed knowing way that made you feel like the butt of a joke. 

He was peddling drugs at twelve though we didn't know this until later, and he continued to do it even after his father transfered him to the Christian school in his freshman year of high school. Prior to that, Matty could barely keep himself in a slew of public schools let alone a private institution. The board let him in even though he himself hadn't claimed any belief in Jesus, (which was merely a legal stipulation) and he continued his illegal business there, too, ensnaring too many of our good youth in the process. It took a lot of us to finally talk Nathan into taking the final step, of signing him over to Camp Warren. He had needed more help than any of us could give him, and parishioners had had problems such as these before; circumstances that were out of their control, beyond them. Camp Warren came highly recommended. It was in fact, the very first suggestion that Rusty had when Nathan and Cecilia approached him. They thanked him in front of the whole church a few weeks into Matty's treatment. The place was only a few hours away, not even out of the state, and by then the Hurts were so tired and sick they would have done anything Rusty said. Beside, if someone didn't know better,  they'd think Camp Warren was a vacation spot, a school for the gifted. All in all it could have been worse for the kid. 

But the hand of blame always falls on Nathan. For Gabriel, for Matty, even for Mathis. There is comfort in pinning it all on one person. Such comfort. Margaret says, "what is the mark of a man's quality if not those he's responsible for? Look at his wife! Look at his kids!" 

The conversations go on like this all day, and then, somehow, upon the arrival of darkness, they stop; the shifting of eyes, the suspicion and the misgivings too much for these old mouths and their talk, all too afraid of what might happen if the next street corner gives way to the very person they tore apart with their words, the face they block out of their minds while the gossip hovers; as real and as sinister as their deepest dread could make him; maybe more. No one really wants to think of their neighbors in such a way.

The Fatted Calf: Don't Strain Yourself

You open your eyes and you can feel her pulling on you. It hurts in a weary, distant way, like it has been going on for a long time and you are just now feeling it. You can barely even lift your hand to stop her. You can’t even feel your crotch, which is dry and limp and she is pulling harder to make up for it. Her breath is hot and wet like something crawling on you and it brings up in your skin a sweaty, nauseous feeling. The couch under you is damp with your sweat. You look down and your head falls like a dead weight and you see her hand and in it your sad, boneless self, moving but not responding. You put your hand over hers to stop it and she keeps kissing your throat, your jaw, your neck, your lips. The edge of your mouth, even as you zip up your jeans. 

Still drunk, you think. Stumbling, blinding drunk, and you don’t even know who it is next to you. You put your hand on her shoulder and push her back gently as her neck stiffens against you and her lips pucker out, like a nursing baby. You turn to look at her face and all you see is her wrinkled, reddened lips hanging open in mid-kiss, the sad, sliding down of her eye makeup as if she’s been crying. Her breath is thick and sweet with rum and it’s so distracting that you can’t figure out who she is for a few seconds. 

Maybe Amber O’Quinn. The best singer in the youth choir. She was going to a performing arts college in Vermont. You remember, as she blinks her big, blue eyes at you, and asks you, ‘what’s wrong?’ that you had always thought she was cute, but just too good for you. Her hand is now resting beside what may have once been a fantastic erection but who knows how long ago that was? 

You can barely look at one thing for longer than three seconds before everything else starts spinning. You realize that you may have been sitting on this couch getting jerked off by Amber O’Quinn for hours. In a panic, you look around the room and adrenaline rushes in like water soaking into a sponge and you feel cooler all over, more awake. Thank God. No one is here. You and Amber are sitting on a couch with cushions that swallow you in certain spots even though the bed is right there.  

Amber sighs, then cuts her eyes away, then falls back onto the couch. She is drunk, and completely oblivious to your sudden and intense fright. Doesn’t she want to know what you did with the last four hours? Doesn’t she want to know who’s been watching?

You feel heavy from your neck down and the weight is so intense you can’t sit up and if you did, you know you would throw up. So you don’t. The room is dark and there are candles burning and you are thinking, shit, what is this? 

But you still have all of your clothes on. You are on a loveseat opposite the bed and when you look at it (empty, thank God), you remember when there were people sitting here, talking to you. Right after you did shots in the kitchen with Alex and Rodney and this girl he brought who hung on him like a fox fur.

Where's Rae?

You zip up and try to stand, slowly realize she is not here. She wouldn't be here. This thought gives you a cold feeling. You remember now what exists beyond the walls of this room, the college you are visiting that is nearly an hour away through nothing but creepy farmland. The room is small and the ceiling is low, the walls painted brick, slightly underground, the windows a strip of rectangular panes of frosted glass. The beds are positioned facing each other in opposite corners of the room, one half-made, one half covered with laundry and books. An open laptop glows in the otherwise dim room, the only light besides a desk lamp and the muted TV. You stare at the screen for a while and see a lot of naked women but you're pretty sure it's not a porno you're watching. Whatever it is, it seems to blend perfectly with the clanking sounds of Zeppelin playing from the laptop. You vaguely remember choosing this music.

 I said it's alright, you know it's alright, you know it's all in my heart...

 She murmurs something you don't hear. You hear the music and it's so good and the love seat is so acceptable (and you can't move anyway). You're pretty sure Amber is passed out for the long haul so you look down at your sad, limp penis and feel a rush of panic so you cram it into your underwear and zip up your jeans. You make it to your feet and you tell yourself it's fine, just keep your hand on something. A doorframe. The wall, to steady yourself.  You remember your brother telling you that there were still active Klan members out here, a community of them, out in the woods between your home and this college. This is what you are thinking about as you stumble to the bedroom door, as you turn the knob and nearly fall down opening it. You fall against the doorjamb, your hand clinging to the knob as your shoulder takes in the sharp edge like a bite. It stings but you talk your legs into working and you know that everyone in the common room outside the bedroom is probably looking at you, shaking their heads. The room outside is a loud rush like water that keeps crashing over you and it's just music, more music and conversation but it's so loud. You only think about this for a split second before you think about your cigarettes. Your coat. 

Then you think of something else and panic gets you, makes you suddenly fast, accurate, focused. You spin around to the couch and see your coat draped over the back of it and you pad your hands over it, groping for the shape of the small plastic case you put in your pocket earlier and nearly going limp with relief when you find it, solid and safe like you left it. Candace has leaned back on the couch and appears to have passed out. You look her over as you find your cigarettes. She's got on a deep red blouse that laces up the front like a corset. It's very low-cut and still, very strange to you. You have never seen this girl in such an outfit. For a moment you want to find a blanket and cover her up. For a moment you consider taking one of the bedspreads and covering her but it's too much trouble. You have to get outside, smoke a cigarette, find Rodney, and get the hell out of here. It's far too risky to stay. 

When you get to the front porch the cold hits you and makes you feel thin and weak and you slump against the wall, feebly sticking a cigarette in between your teeth. You are shivering and you drop your cigarette and immediately a rush of panic goes through you as you look at the crowded floor, the proximity of dirty sneakers that, any one of them, could crush your precious cigarette if you don't pick it up in time. You're not even sure if you can pick it up. Then you feel a hard, jarring slap on the shoulder and before you even look up, you know it's Rodney and then there he is, grinning at you, amused by your pathetic state. He is smoking American Spirits and he hands you one and says, "don't strain yourself."

"I need to get out of here."

"What? Did something go wrong with Amber?"

"She's passed out. Dude, what happened?"

"We were in there, like ten of us, and you two just started sucking each others' faces off like no one else was there. We ignored it for a while but, you know, we figured you guys wanted some privacy."

Rodney nudges you with an elbow in an encouraging way but it makes you feel sicker. He expects you to laugh, or even to crack a smile, and when you don't he straightens up and says, "okay. I'll go get the guys and we'll leave. Sit your ass down before you hurt yourself." 

There is nowhere to sit out here so you stay where you are, dead weight against the wall, smoking hard on the cigarette as if the smoke were a solid thing that could run through your bones and make them useful again. You don't dare close your eyes, and you keep your free hand inside your coat, feeling the plastic rectangle in your pocket, like if you take your hand away it might vanish without even having to be stolen. You have never had in your possession anything so valuable. 

Rodney is nearly as drunk as you are. You pray to the cold, the air, the plastic case in your pocket, that you get home alive. 

You have so much to live for.

The Fatted Calf: The Red Pastel

About five years ago I dated a girl from Alabama State. She was thin and blond and tan and sweet, just like all the others. Her name was Mary Kim Patterson. She always wore dresses and her lips were almost always shiny with lipgloss though I never saw her actually applying it. She liked that I was an artist. She liked talking about her friends and how much they liked me, how jealous they were of me. This was before the fire department, before the calendar and before the adult film agent approached me. This was before I thought I would ever take my clothes off for money, or even be asked. Mary Kim was from a town called Blacksburg but I could never remember what state she was from. She never seemed to have any interest in going there. I dated her for two weeks and our "dates" were never really more than scheduled preludes to sex. Mary Kim called it "making love." I always had to try hard not to laugh. It always happened at my place and she would deliberately leave things laying around as if by accident. It all ended the night of a sorority fundraising dinner when Mary Kim came to pick me up and she came in without knocking. She was wearing a little frilly white thing and her skin looked nearly orange by comparison. I looked at her once and added this new information to the list of things about her that were already starting to bother me. 

We had met at a bar and gone home together because my place was close. Eveyrthing that followed seemed superfluous to me by that night, by the time the first sexual encounter was over and we had both gotten what we wanted. I didn't even know what I was doing with her. She had come in and sat down on the couch with cautious stiffness, smoothing her hand over her skirt over and over again, while I fiddled around with my tie in the mirror. It would be my first black tie event ever. I was done with her by then, but I was still going.

Mary Kim did not get off the couch to help me with my tie even though I knew she could probably tie it better than I could. By then she wasn't sweet anymore. My apartment then was a nice efficiency that came furnished, with a serving window between the kitchen and the rest of the room, wall to wall carpeting. I had hated the whiteness of the place so I put down dark rugs over the carpet, hung bright tapestries and posters on the walls; Axis: Bold as Love, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars with Bowie standing in a darkened alleyway. Mary Kim had looked at it and asked who the hell was Ziggy Stardust and I had decided right then not to play it for her for fear she would insult it and switch it to pop or country and I would have to go be sick somewhere. 

She sat on the couch, smoking a Marlboro Menthols and asked across the room, "what's wrong? Can't you tie a bowtie?"

So finally I turned around and asked her to do it and so she did, patronizing me like I was her son and she was proud of my show of effort. When she was done she kissed me and her shiny lips slid upon mine and left a trail of slime on my face. I wiped it away with more than a little revulsion. She tucked her purse under her arm and smoothed her skirt one more time. I saw it first; the red streak across her mid-thigh where she had just run her hand.

I said her name and her eyes followed mine and she screamed like a poisonous spider were crawling up her leg. She looked at me, and for a blink of time, her look seemed to be one of blame, before she looked down at her hands and saw the lump of red oil pastel on her right ring finger, picked up from the couch, the table (what else did she touch?).

I melted into concerned sympathy and reached out as if I might actually do something besides make it worse, and she swatted at me like a bug and left without a word, her footsteps percussive and angry. I followed her, though even as I was doing it, I wasn't really sincere in my efforts to get her to come back inside, and she opened the door to her convertible and didn't object when I got in. 

"We have to go back so I can change," she explained, then said "dammit" to herself over and over like it was the most effective cuss word she could think of, or muster the bravery to say out loud. In her deep southern accent, the word seemed to have three or four syllables.

Mary Kim changed into something small and royal blue and just as revealing, just as flattering and I complimented her on it enough to sound completely insincere (though I did mean it, actually) but she clearly didn't like this dress as much as the white one. All through the dinner she pulled on it like it was an uncomfortable sling holding an injured arm and she didn't really talk to me unless she had to. I knew it wasn't just because of the pastel. So I danced with some other girls who all said they knew me "by reputation of course" and I started to wonder what Mary Kim had told them, if it was even about my paintings or something else.

I had sold some top-shelf acid to a guy in town who owned a liquor store that all the college kids went to because he overlooked their fake ids. At first, the guy, whose name was bobby, asked me to paint a giant bar filled with famous dead people as a mural on the outside of the store. He even had a list written out of who he wanted in the mural. He asked me if I could do it in the style of Hopper. I said yeah, I could, and Bobby had shaken my hand and said, "make sure you put Marilyn in something skimpy."

The girls I danced with at the fundraising dinner were hypnotized by their proximity to me, openly and unashamedly worshipping him simply because my domain was public, because I had created something that everyone in town, at one point or another, had to walk by and see, even if they didn't really look. 

Yeah, that's me. The painting on the liquor store.

Mary Kim was no longer enjoying her friends and their coveting of her "artist boyfriend" and she even went so far as to say "don't touch me" when I found her on the dance floor after dancing with Haley, the only redhead in Mary Kim's circle of friends. We left early and she didn't care if people saw she was upset. In fact she played it up and the whole ride home I was so pissed off at her and her superiority, her pursed lips like a fucking little princess on the throne that I thought I might reach over and give her a good slap before getting out of the car. She acknowledged this, looked right at me and told me with her cold, dead eyes, that she knew and didn't give a shit what I thought about her. I unclenched my fist and got out of the car. As I walked away I heard her flicking a lighter over and over, a lighter with a flint that wouldn't catch. 

She had left a tube of lipgloss, a bra, a barrette. I started a small fire in the kitchen sink and dropped the items into it, one at a time. The lipgloss released a smell of magnolia and strawberries and my apartment reeked of it for a week.

The Fatted Calf: Regret is Useless

"So tell me why you're here."

"My parole requires it."

"Is that the only reason?"

"No. It's probably good for me to talk about things."

"Like your time in prison?"

"To name one."

"What else?"

"Well, there's the woman, Agnes. From the, you know, the whole thing with the guy, and she's bringing the kid around for me to, you know, get to know him. She even came to visit me once and asked me if I thought it was a good idea for her to bring the kid to visit it me next time. Talk about fucking a kid up for life, not to mention giving guys in the place the wrong impression."

"What impression is that?"

"To bring the child of a rapist into the prison where the failed rescuer is serving three to five for throwing said rapist in front of a moving vehicle? How about the impression that I'm playing daddy in this sick little family, that's the impression."

"Do you think Agnes expects that from you?"

"I don't know. I don't know. But...if I were her and I had gone through what she went through, I wouldn't keep the reminder of it around let alone go through the labor. Besides, I don't even know why she's so grateful to me. I didn't stop anything from happening. I didn't get there in time."

"Didn't you save her life?"

"How should I know? The guy had a knife but I don't know if he was planning on using it."

"Well Agnes seems to see you as a very successful rescuer, in fact, that's why she kept the child, right? Isn't that what she said? How do you feel about that?"

"Look, if she's happy, then that's great. But I can't honestly say that I feel comfortable with this child making any sort of bond with me. I don't feel comfortable having any kind of relationship with this woman. I mean, if you're going to crush a guy's legs, you might as well do it for a good reason. But every time I see her, every time I see that kid, I only regret not walking by that alley ten minutes earlier."

"Have you told Agnes your feelings?"

"Oh Jesus, she'd flip. I mean, she seems so grateful and content and like, over it, but I feel like one inch beneath the surface, I mean she was literally there to pick me up when I was released. But I feel like it's just an act. There's no way she's actually okay with it."

"Do you plan to let it continue?"

"Well, no, but I had to come to these sessions with you, and you're a woman, so I was hoping you could give me some advice, you know, some insight."

"What I'd really like to see you do is come to your own healthy response to the situation. And if I gave you advice of any kind, it would be as a therapist and not a woman."

"It's actually pretty funny that you are a woman, because if my problem didn't concern women, I wouldn't be asking for advice in the first place."

"And why is that?"

"I've gotten used to having to take care of things myself. I usually don't require help or advice. Except when it comes to women."

"That's a very common feeling."

"It's not a feeling. It's a certainty. I can't look back on any decision I've made since I was seventeen and say that I regret it. Whatever the circumstances were, a decision had to be made and I made it. And I might feel differently about it later, but that's just hindsight, which is useless, really."

"Do these decisions include throwing Rafael Correia in front of a car?"

"Absolutely. It would have been nice, of course, if the car hadn't been coming by at that exact moment. But it did, and I can't pretend that I had any control over that, because I didn't."

"Do you regret that you had to sacrifice three years of your life?"

"No. Not regret. I didn't choose to go to jail. But yes, I would have liked for that not to happen. Regret is useless. Looking back is useless. It would have been nice for the jury to have seen the truth."

"The truth?"

"That if a hundred other guys had walked by that alley, they might not have had the balls to do what needed to be done. But I did. And for that I should have been rewarded. Not punished."

"You served the minimum sentence. The judge was obviously sympathetic to your cause."

"He should have broken his gavel and refused to take part in such a circus of injustice. He should run around the goddamn courtroom with a banner chanting my name. That whole place should have been applauding me and laying fucking palms on the ground in front of me. But I don't rule them yet, so I can't expect the entire justice system to become enlightened in one day."

"So you believe Rafael deserved to lose his legs?"

"And more."

"So tell me (we'll get to the ruling thing later) why women pose such a conundrum."

"Aren't they supposed to?"

"I suppose so. Can you be more specific?"

"A woman may not be designed for the sole purpose of killing a man but she knows, from birth, a thousand ways to do it. It is sheer whimsy that keeps some of them from doing it. And most of the time they do it and don't even know they're doing it. So yeah, I can admit that I have no chance of ever being certain about anything concerning women."

"Well that's a start."

She asks me to tell her about a formative experience; something that forced me to face a painful or ugly truth about myself. She asks me if I have ever experienced anything so challenging.

At first, my answer is no. And I really do spend a few moments thinking about it. Then I say, oh, okay. And I tell her about my pet bird, Calypso, that I had when I was twelve. She was a cockatu. I loved her, but I didn't clean her cage, and because I was a thoughtless and careless little boy, the bird got sick and died.

I don't mention the broken fingers I received that night from my father after I was done with the task of burying Calypso in the backyard. I tell her because of that experience, I learned not to be so lazy and careless. So the therapist asks me if I have anything from my adult years. Anything that caused a lot of  growth.

Oh, plenty of things have caused me to grow. I didn't always used to be so awesome and powerful. And there are definitely things I have wanted to change about myself. Like, for a long time, I couldn't really grow a beard, and then, after this bike accident, it was like, poof, you know?

"What's the most painful thing you've ever had to learn about yourself?"

"Look," I tell her, "I've always known who I am. I've always known who Gabriel Hurt was and is. And every unpleasant thing I've ever had to experience has only reaffirmed that self-knowledge. I am very self-aware. Extremely. I have always been. It's really just a question of, do other people believe, and how can I get them to, you know?"

"Believe what?"

"That I am destined for great things. That I am a prince. But of the universe."

The Fatted Calf: The Sperm Bank

It all started, really, when Jared Bukowski asked me over one night (for prayer no less). He needed me to pray for him. For his sinful, persistent urges and his own noble, but futile attempts against them. He broke down, not me. I listened. I’m a good listener. All it took was a thought, a sentence started but taken back, when he said it was starting to get—

“painful?” I finished. 

“I don’t know what to do.” 

“Pray through it,” I told him, “I’m telling you. Prayer always works.”

“I’ve tried that,” he moaned, “don’t you think I’ve tried that? I mean, for ten months now…I can’t…I can’t do it anymore. I can’t not do it anymore. And believe me, other guys have given up sooner than I have, I swear.” 

“But Jared,” I say, “masturbation is a sin.” 

“I know! But is it really so bad that I have to suffer like this?” 

I told him I believed him, I sympathized. 

I swear, I’m not making this up.

“I mean, what kind of service to the lord can I do if there’s some…you know, permanent damage? How can I have kids of my own?” 

I swear, I’m not making this up. 

“Look, the question is…do you think that God would want you in this much pain? The Lord created our bodies as vessels for his message. If your body is sending you a message of pain, then do you really think that message is a divine one?” 

He was crying. Like, really crying, like he was scared his pecker was going to turn purple and fall off right there. And then, he was blinking, sniffling, thinking over this dilemma with a fresh perspective, as if I had actually suggested something that had not crossed his mind before. 

“No, unless this is a test…”

“You’ve been pure of heart and soul and mind for ten months! If there was a test, then don’t you think you have passed it? If this is anything, I think it’s a sign.” 

“Of?” 

“Of…” I stood up, like maybe I was going to leave, walk out with all of this still hanging in the air, “of…permission.” 

“What? Wait,” he jumped off his bed and I was surprised by his sudden agility, embarrassed by his weathered gray boxers, which was all he was wearing at the time, “permission to do what?” 

“To release the pressure! That’s all, not to pleasure yourself, but to rid yourself of the pain, that’s all.” 

“To rid myself of the pain…” he mulls this over, and I continued, thinking that I am possibly a genius. 

“Possibly even a calling? You probably have lots and lots of little Jared’s locked up inside that loin of yours.”

He moves his hand and covers his crotch, like a girl covering her bosom. Please. 

“If you just relieve yourself into a Kleenex, that’s wasteful. That’s sinful. You could use this chance to be of service to God, just like you said!” 

“Oh, Jesus,” he moans, and sits back down. 

“Listen,” I sat back down next to him, put my hand on his shoulder which sickens me because his skin is sort of clammy, soft, not at all the rigid, strapping muscle that a teenage boy was supposed to have. I resent the people who have made him this way, “go to the clinic, say hello to the nice lady, fill out the form, and get it over with. There’s no reason why anyone even needs to know. I’m pretty sure it’s completely confidential.” 

I told him I didn’t care who he thought about, or what, that I would be there for him no matter what, that this was the right decision. I told him to think about the family he was providing for someone who may have otherwise never had kids of their own. 

Jared pulled the covers over himself and asked to be left alone, like simply talking about it had made him ready to go. But we prayed one last time, mainly thanking God for clarity, for relief, for remembering the special sacredness (okay, I did make that part up myself) of our bodies, and what precious gifts we hold inside of us. He said he was thankful for me above all things, that no one else would have given him good advice; they would have told him to hold it until he had a heart attack. 

Really, I was just trying to get him to break down and buy some dirty magazines. The sperm bank thing was just a bonus. 

The bank was confidential, but Jared took them up on the option to be informed when someone purchased his sperm and had success with it. A young Lebanese couple from Ridgefield bought his little gifts and were pregnant. A letter of congratulations and thanks came in the mail. His dad opened it. 

Genius. 

The Fatted Calf: Let Me Tell You About My Inn

Let me tell you about the White Chapel Inn. It used to be the Hurt Family Inn. Before that it was Sprawling Oaks Bed and Breakfast. It is located on the site of what was once the third largest plantation in the entire South: Sprawling Oaks, which subsisted on juniper, rice and cotton. The house managed to survive the Civil War and Sherman's rages, and was sold, along with the forty acres, to a wealthy shipping tycoon from Baltimore in 1860 who saw a future in cotton. The house stayed in the tycoon's family until 1930 when it was lost, along with most of the family's wealth. The land was leased out in pieces to whatever local farmers could afford it and raise whatever crops, and it was during this time that the southern most part of the land was converted to an orchard for peaches and apples. The house stood, abandoned and depreciating in value until 1936 when my husband's grandfather, a moderately wealthy hardware store franchiser, bought the place and all the land and offered the local farmers a lower price than the one they'd been getting through their lease with the state. His initial plan was to make it museum (he'd started talks with local historical society and the Smithsonian to make it into a national landmark) but he was so impressed with the work he'd done and the work that could be done, that he wanted the place to remain functional. So he and his wife opened it as a bed and breakfast with only six rooms available, the rest choked with objects from around the house; some valuable, some not.

After a few years of success, Nathan's grandfather bought up chunks of disused farm land and began growing on some of them. The ones he didn't use either fell back into disuse or were leased out to other farmers or sold to land developers over the years. My father-in-law, Mathis was born in the house that had once been Sprawling Oaks, the youngest of three. His eldest brother, some nine years older than he, died at Market Garden and the next eldest son, Samuel, took over the place upon the death of their father. Mathis didn't continue to work the place under the supervision of his brother, and after college and Korea, returned only to move into a small farmhouse that had actually been passed to him. It had been a farm for strawberries, blueberries and cucumbers, and Mathis moved into the modest house and tended the crops, along with the Spanish dancer he had miraculously wooed away from the USO after the war. When Joe died, Mathis took over, and he has been working it since then. We've had presidents stay here as guests, movie stars and professional athletes, politicians and their wives, politicians and their mistresses. We are very discrete. 

I have discovered an immense well of peace that has no bottom, a source of joy that is constantly renewing itself. 

Let me tell you about my inn. 

We have a modest 40 acres, most of which is my father-in-law's territory, his gardens, and a small stable in which we keep 5 horses: Tawny, Saber, Butch, Peaches and Dr. Zhivago. The far western edge of our property leads, through a path starting just beyond the pasture, through a small wood and to a polo field, where, most days of the week, Rijken, our stable hand, can have free rein over the place for lessons when he's not riding the path with guests. This amenity is free to all paying guests.

If you cross over the polo field, you'll find that the path continues through a five-mile stretch of some of the most beautiful land you'll see around here. As you head straight West through it, the land becomes more cultivated and the last square two miles or so is the public park, which represents the beginning of downtown. The path circles around the outer edge of the park so guests can see the charm and character of our small town, and then meets itself at the edge of the woods and leads back to the inn. This aspect of our location and our link is a real winner with guests and it brings in a lot of them every year. With this guided walk by Rijken (whom the town lovingly has dubbed "Dutch" after my father-in-law) the guest feels that the whole town is welcoming them, that there is a real unity here, which there is. 

The house itself is a Greek Revival that was built in 1837 in the style of the Joseph Manigualt house. There is a charming parking circle in front and an iron gate that is always open during the day so as to appear welcoming. The front porch is Colonial style and deep, with seagrass furniture because it's more comfortable than wicker. In the summer we hang large misting fans and serve sweet tea and cucumber sandwiches. Through the grand cut-glass double doors is the main foyer, with various rooms branching off on each side, and a winding staircase wrapped around an antique chandelier put in about thirty years ago. 

Directly under the chandelier is the reception desk, a large federal-style affair behind which sits Karen, our clerk. The carpet in here is Egyptian Mamluk, dark navy and gold to emphasize the regency style of the room. The carpet also nicely compliments the dark reds and browns of the smoking parlor to the right, a room decorated in the Russian Empire style with polished leather furniture and Oriental rugs to soften the sound of a dozen conversations. 

Opposite the smoking parlor through three sets of double french doors, is the dining room, my favorite room. The high ceilings offset the crowded population of fifteen pedestal tables in the center of the room and booths along the walls, some large enough to accommodate parties of ten. Any larger party is usually serviced in the day parlor, which converts to a private dining or party area when the need arises. All of our dining room furniture is antique in the Queen Anne style and upholstered in Italian silk in rich creams, golds and reds to accent the dark mahogany of the walls which are decorated in the Thomas Hope style with carved wood medallions from Greece, Impressionist watercolors of exotic birds and beautifully dressed women by the French greats, antique armoires imported from Hong Kong containing a myriad of small antiques that have accumulated over the years: decorative plates from Spain, antique guns from Italy, figurines from Austria. The lights are usually dim at night and bright during the day when guests can attend a daily continental breakfast or tea served two hours before lunch. I'll have to tell you about our kitchen staff later. They're exceptional. 

Through the dining room is the kitchen, a large but tubular room that always reminds me of a very well-lit submarine. It was once all eggshell tile but I had it replaced with brushed steel not long ago. We have a meat locker with all fresh, local meat and a vegetable refrigerator with all fresh, local produce. Food is delivered three times a week by friends of ours who appreciate our business and are willing to go out of their way to stop by. During Thanksgiving season we have more turkeys than we know what to do with. But we do have all industrial strength appliances and at any time up to ten people could be preparing a meal or five in here, coexisting nicely. At the far end of the narrow kitchen is the staircase that leads to the basement. The only other entrance to the basement is through the pantry which leads directly out back of the house to Mathis' gardens where he grows prize-winning tomatoes and grapefruit. The basement isn't usually my place in the house; it's always scared me a little bit. Mathis' brother Joe, who ran this place until his death in 1980, had the whole house put on a scaffolding of some kind and had the basement put in back in the early 70's. Down there, in addition to the pantry, is a large laundry room with half a dozen industrial-sized washers and dryers, steamers and sewing machines. We even have copper vats at least a hundred years old for dyeing. There is also a maintenance closet and an employee locker room and bunk for anyone who needs a quick nap on their break. 

We have a small crew here, and we want to show our loyalty to them. 

The maintenance is usually performed by Mathis, my father-in-law, who owns the Inn but lately, due to his health, has receded from representing it to guests. Most guests who pass through meet Nathan and me, and few inquire about Mathis anymore. I think I'm going to have to hire someone else to fix up around here, since Mathis has taken to taking everything apart and stowing pieces of things around the house. He was working on his Carmen Gia a few months ago and put the carburetor in the linen closet upstairs, ruined a perfectly beautiful Brussels Lace tablecloth. 

We have ten bedrooms, two of them suites that were converted from two sleeping porches on opposite wings of the house. The suites are called the Red Room and the Blue Room for obvious reasons; one is decorated in a deep oxblood and the other a navy not unlike the Russian Empire smoking parlor downstairs. The rest of the rooms are pale yellows, greens, blues and pinks, five of them containing two double beds, three of them a single King sized canopy bed. We do not provide our guests with television sets but we do offer desks, chaise lounges and dressing tables all in a Louis XIV-inspired design. All of our bathtubs are antique clawfoot, all of our bathroom decorations rustic and usually made of brass and even the tiles are antique, imported from Barcelona. Room service is available until two a.m and that includes the entire menu but most guests don't order roast duck with foi gras at two in the morning. Housekeeping leaves fresh flowers from Mathis's garden every morning with the fresh coffee and breakfast pastries. 

Directly above the front porch is the second-floor balcony, also running the entire width of the house. It is also in the Colonial style, its columns thick, with a running balustrade and dentil molding. Wisteria grows from a hanging arbor over the balcony in the summer, covering the front walk with its dropped petals, releasing its cool fragrance when crushed underfoot. 

We used to live in the inn, along with the guests.We used to use the carriage house at back just for storage but then we had a second boy and we moved all of our things out, and converted our little apartment into the second suite. The carriage house is a small, two-story affair with a small winding staircase in the center of the kitchen that leads up to a lofted set of bedrooms and bathroom. There is a small corner living room that looks out at the Inn. Sometimes I just like to sit on the couch and watch the inn, searching for figures in the windows, the flickering of lights, any sign that there is life inside. It's so easy to forget with a house so old. 

Sometimes I see things that are not there. I can admit that now. Sometimes I cannot go into certain bedrooms because I feel like someone will be waiting there for me. And I can NEVER go to the basement. That was where all the bad feelings started. And sometimes they still come back. But not if I listen to Nathan. He's been taking real good care of me. 

Sometimes I still have the Awful Feelings. The kind that feel like a barbarous army bent on destruction, marching towards my little village. Sometimes I sit by the window and just stare and stare, at the iron gates enclosing our property, at the expanse of Mathis's garden, but I never can remember what it is I'm expecting to see. And that is very frustrating.

The Awful Feelings started before Gabriel left, I can admit that, they started like this vague sense that every decision I made would inevitably lead to disaster and my life would become nothing more than a pool of guilt for me to swim in for the rest of my days. I used to look at the men in my family, my sons, one timid and afraid, the other railing against every word of direction or authority, my elevated father-in-law retreating to his gardens because he has fought wars but none like this, my husband always yelling, always raging and then disappearing and then returning with a soft, apologetic voice and eager hand and I would always do what he wanted with my son's black eye in mind, his fat lip, or sometimes just his voice and it was awful but distracting from the even more awful reality of making love to someone I hated.

Eventually Nathan stopped trying, when he was in and out of treatment and he would return and we would all know it was just a matter of time and so we couldn't even make love anymore because I could look at him and see how dried up he was, like there was nothing warm or soft inside of him to give and there hadn't been much to begin with. I hadn't enjoyed being with Nathan for a long time, not since we were young and he had yet to show his despicable side, the sloppy, lumbering drunk that he was, breaking furniture and embarrassing himself, me, all of us. 

You can't come back from that, can you? Not when your image of that person is already unreasonably high.

There was a time when I would have said that Nathan had saved my life. I would lay in bed and chant it to myself, staring at the ceiling and hoping he would pass out on the couch downstairs and I would modify my fear, my repulsion by saying that he had saved my life. I might be dead if not for him. He had saved me. That's what I told the shrinks, all of them, in the beginning. He had saved me from an eternity of boredom, if nothing else. He saved me. He really had. 

That was a long time ago. 

But it's okay, because I've got the Inn. I've got it more than he ever had it, and it needs me, even if no one else does around here. I could climb around inside its walls like they were made of flesh and they were welcoming me. Most of the time I stay focused on the Inn. If I lose focus, the Awful Feelings start to come back. And then I hurt the Inn. I tear the walls down. I set things on fire. I take whole objects and shatter them to pieces. 

There is a lot of work to do today. There will be a lot of work tomorrow.

The Fatted Calf: We All Gotta Quit Sometime

They didn't really start for months after Gabriel left; the episodes. For a long time, i mean weeks and weeks, she just wouldn't get out of bed. She just kept saying she was tired and I believed her because, I mean, she slept all the time. Not without a little chemical help, of course. Then she started crying, just sitting on the bed,staring at the wall crying and I almost wanted her to keep taking the pills because it was driving me crazy, just insane with rage, like she wanted me to just feel guilty every time I was in the room with her.

Then came the first episode. When the episodes started, so did the major semantic change in reference to them, to all of it. Bad day failed as a euphemism though we clung to it desperately and people, those who braved to inquire, knew it was their duty to smile and say "I'm sorry to hear that," and not ask for anything more from us. 

I came home from the police station (I kept going there for months even after this; I couldn't stop going it had grown to be a habit) walked into our empty house, and of course, the first thing I did was call out for Cecilia. We had closed the hotel for a while but now my father and I had kept it running, had hired more people and taken in a little less money for ourselves but we had guests and most of them didn't even know the nature of our problem even if they had a vague idea. This was after months of progress and so naturally any scene made by Cecilia would be nothing short of devastating. 

I looked through the whole house, even in places I thought she would never be. I should have looked in the hotel first and that was exactly what I was thinking as I ran across the solid three acres that separate the big plantation house from our modest carriage house. It is all uphill, up stone steps pounded into the side of the slope for guests even though they have little reason to come down to our house. The steps lead to the back door, the pantry door which is situated in what is basically the basement of the house (put in by my uncle in the sixties; it cost him his life savings to have that kind of work done). 

The basement is solid stone all around, smelling always of bitter metal you can almost feel on your tongue. It is basically one long hallway with various rooms branching off: a large laundry room, an employee locker room with a shower, a deep, dark maintenance room with a private bathroom in the corner even I don't like to go into, and two smaller rooms both used for storage though they weren't originally intended for that. Naturally I didn't think Cecilia would be down there. She told me over and over that she hated it down there, that she felt like something was always lurking. I could understand that such a feeling would be quite frightening, so I was going to pass straight through the basement and on up into the house. But I heard noises coming from the maintenance room--that exact room, and when I opened the door the light was on, and across the way the bathroom door was open and I could hear the sharp, tinny sound of something being violently broken by the blunt force of something else, and the small, delicate grunts of effort coming from my tired wife's lungs.

Naturally I ran in, and I nearly lost my head as she swung a fucking sledgehammer over her shoulder and then down again onto the tile floor of the bathroom. She had already taken out the whole wall that once stood behind the sink and the mirror. The sink was in pieces, the pipes exposed and spitting out water, the mirror sparkling all over the floor. Cecilia's hands were bleeding and she looked like she had been at it for a while, having made it through the tile to the floorboards. Some of them in a torn pile in the corner like firewood. Cecilia raised the hammer one more time and I grabbed it, took it from her easily. She spun around quick and looked at me with these eyes like she wanted blood and could get it with her bare hands. For a moment I just stood there holding the sledgehammer, until she said something. Her eyes were so red, the rest of her chalk white.  

I don't even know why I'm doing this, she said, you've obviously found them already.

Found what?

She started to cry.

"Don't say 'found what' Nathan," she said, "they'd be here if you didn't know they were here. Why didn't you just tell me you knew they were here?"

"Come on, you're under enough stress as it is."

She became angry and said that if I had just told her, she would have been saved the stress of having to break the bathroom apart looking for them.

"I had a secret spot for them," she said, "that hole in the wall behind the cabinet." 

She pointed to the place where they would have been had there still been a wall. But of course, there wasn't. And there wasn't anything left to hide there, either.

"When did you find them?"

I have always been a quick thinker.

"I came down here to fix it. Randy said he saw mice down here and I thought they were coming in through there." 

She covered her face because she was ashamed and I couldn't take that, so I held her close and said, "I knew you would come to a point where you didn't need it anymore. I knew you could do it on your own. And think about it, that stuff's been gone out of here for going on six months now."

I could feel her tense up against me, her face locking against some kind of realization.

"Right when Gabriel left."

I nod. 

"You know I needed something to distract myself. Randy mentioned the mice...I didn't think it was the right thing to tell you about it."

Her spindly little hands curled around my back and she held me close and said, "I wish they were still here. I wanted to find them so badly. Are you sure they're not here?" 

I didn't let her go even when she wanted me to. 

"No, sweetheart. They're not here."

That was when I first seriously thought about quitting. Right then and there, no more drinks. Not while Cecilia's tearing apart the house for her secret stash of pills and booze. Sobriety and honesty. That could become our motto, I thought. Sobriety and honesty. But she still needed her shit. She needed it more and more, the more she had to get out of bed and greet the guests. She needed her pills to do her hair properly, to put on her lipstick without screwing it up. She needed them to smile and shake hands. 

Valium. Like anything else, it was once here to help her.

She made it six more days before the first episode occurred. 

I woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, a neurological impulse that began only after getting married and having sons. The bed was empty beside me and cold, like she'd been gone a while. 

One more frantic search of a creepy old house, embarrassing and desperate and clueless. My only comfort was that all  seemed normal in the place; dark and quiet like it should have been; no scenes made, no hysterics yet. I looked in the lobby, in the lounge, in every hallway, every linen closet. I asked the employees, I told them all to start looking I didn't care if everyone left their posts but it wouldn't make a difference; there weren't too many people working at that hour of the night. So I ended up going into the woods by myself, running along the path and calling calling for her. Dutch and a few others were tagging along behind me, the house having been searched endlessly by the few night attendants we had at the time. 

It was nearly Thanksgiving and freezing and when we finally found her she was over a mile away but thankfully on the path. She was just past the boundary between our land and the farm we had sold to the county so the off ramp could be put in. Most of the land was still usable, still good for cultivation back then, and the land closest to us still grew juniper. I remember smelling it, feeling it down in my throat, when I followed a bend in the path and saw her. She was barefoot and walking fast, calling out Gabriel's name. When I ran up to her she grabbed my hand and said, "Oh good! You brought a flashlight! I saw him. I saw him through the window. He took the path so I followed him, of course." 

She pulled ahead like her arm was a leash and she was an eager pet and I almost followed her into the woods but stopped her and when she looked at me she was like a child and I knew things had gotten bad. I felt things had gotten bad when I woke up without her, when I called and called and couldn't find her. But this was evidence. Her nightgown was ripped, her feet and ankles filthy and her lips were turning purple but she didn't seem to notice.

"Who did you see?"

Though I didn't need to ask. Of course I didn't need to ask.

"Who do you think? Gabriel, stupid!" 

She goes to run again and I pull her back. Naturally, she starts to lose it, pulling against me, telling me "we're losing him, we're going to lose him if we don't go now!"

And she starts calling his name and cupping her hand over her mouth, calling louder and louder and saying, "Come on in, it's freezing out here!" 

It took three of us to get her back into the house and she was calling Gabriel's name the whole time, the sound of it going from light and beckoning to raw and desperate as she began to realize her foray into the woods was over. Then she was calling his name like he might come help her, come rescue her from her captors. Then she called again and again and I knew the delusion was over. She was calling for him the way she called in the middle of the night after a nightmare she never told me about. She called for him like she was standing over his grave. 

That was the first time I ever had to set foot in the psychiatric unit of White Chapel Medical Center. The first time in a long time I had to deal with a social worker and the first time i had to leave anyone in my family at the hospital overnight. But there was no way she could go home with us. We were carrying her into the hospital and she was still calling for Gabriel. She had sat in the backseat with Dutch and Randy and said his name like a broken record. 

Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel. 

Almost immediately she was given a shot and she went to sleep and the nurses carried her off as if there was some hurry and the doctor says "we're going to take good care of her, she just needs to rest, we've given her something to help her relax and we're going to put her on a Thorazine drip for the night..."

They wouldn't let me stay the night. They said, "get home to your son."

The next day when I went to get her, she looked like a photograph that had been crumpled up and then flattened again by someone's hands. Her hair was limp all around her and it didn't remind me of a mermaid like it used to and this was the first time I really thought she was starting to look old and yes, this was what I was thinking about when the nurse signed her over to me. 

Dr. Patton, an officious little black woman with round little glasses and her hair all pulled back, she sat there across her desk with her pictures all angled so that I could see them; her beautiful daughters, her beautiful husband, her beautiful home, all free from the horrid burden of mental illness. She talked about psychosis. She talked about recent trauma and depression. She asks me, 

"Has your wife experienced any recent trauma?"

"Our son ran away about eight months ago. We thought we were close to finding him a few times but...every time it turns out to be a disappointment, she gets worse."

She nodded her head with her eyebrows pressed. She glanced down at her daughters and I don't blame her. But when she spoke again she sounded pretty sensitive and she didn't insult my intelligence. Cecilia would take anti-depressants and for a trial period, antipsychotics, just to see.

Already I felt like a traitor by being there, in that office, with that woman. I didn't say anything and Dr. Patton leaned forward, lessening the space between us and she said, "are you prepared to go forward as her legal guardian? I know it is difficult to have to make certain decisions, and you will have a great many to make but it is very important for you to adopt this way of thinking."

"What way of thinking is that?"

"The understanding that your wife's wants and needs may not necessarily be in her best interest. I'm sorry, I know it's difficult."

I asked her what kind of medication.  

"Something like Zyprexa. Should be safe with Fluoxetine."

I still don't know why but at that moment, in my mind, I started to hear this Jeff Buckley song, this song "Mojo Pin." Some song Gabe used to listen to all the time, and Jeff's squealing falsetto began to drown out this woman's voice and I was lost in this vivid memory of barging into Gabriel's room. I had barged in and yelled at him to turn that flaming homo off or I would bust one of his eardrums. We had had a pretty bad round earlier, so he did. 

Dr. Patton said my name, asked me if I was alright. I think she may have been talking for a while before I began to hear her again.

She asked me if I thought Cecilia would agree to the medication. 

"She's been on anti-depressants before. She'll agree," I said.

Dr. Patton smiled a little bit, the first smile of the whole conversation, like somehow she had just gotten her way. She said, "we'll take it one step at a time."

We'll. That made me feel better. She gave me her card and my dirty thumb put an ugly smudge on it right away.

I took Cecilia home and she seemed to be herself, just groggy and horribly, horribly depressed. She hardly blinked and the whole ride she just stared out the window, her chin in her hand, until she fell asleep again. I was relieved. I carried her into the house and put her in our bed and covered her up then looked for something in the top of the closet, in the drawers, under the bed, in the bathroom, everywhere. I had taken to doing this for months now and I never found anything. I put a glass of water on the table by Cecilia and went downstairs, looking for my father. 

He was sitting on the back porch in a lawn chair, smoking a cigar. It was deadly hot and yet he still had a thick cube of ice in his tumbler of good old Jack. I stood behind him, looking out past him into the yard. He didn't even turn his head to look at me and I decided it would be easier that way, so good. He had the bottle of Jack on the table next to him and he was smacking his lips after every sip, playing with his glass and clinking the ice around and waiting for me to say something. 

"You know, I'd think that you'd try to support my efforts to quit, dad. Do you forget the conversation we had?"

"Oh, son, of course I remember. And I think it's a great idea. But if you can't watch an old man enjoy a drink without sweatin, you're in trouble."

"I'm going away. There's a place in Greenville I've heard good things about."

Then dad asked me about the boys. Both of them.

"Matty will be fine with you. He likes you more than me anyway."

"And what about Gabriel?"

"What about him?"

This was eight months, two weeks and six days. I wasn't about to let it become a year. 

"You were there, dad. Wallace said even if we had the money and the resources, Gabriel is the least likely--"

"Oh, horseshit--"

"--to be found if he chose to disappear--"

"--You're not trying hard enough and you want to give up."

"I don't want to give up. I want to get sober. And I really want it, not like before. Not just because I know I need to."

Dad sat up on the chair and swung his legs over the edge so that he was turned towards me. 

"You don't have to justify yourself to me, son," he says, "I wish you the best of luck. We all gotta quit sometime, right?"

I thought back in my mind, at that moment, to the times in my childhood when my father would be gone, for days, for weeks and sometimes months, to some drying-up place out of state, and I would sit for as much time with my uncle, who really pressed the Bible readings during those particular times. My father had only recently returned to drinking in his older years, after some thirty-five years without a sip, he said to me one day, "I'm not living the rest of my life without a taste of fine whiskey." 

But there on the porch, the drink in his hand, he said to me, "Just think of Gabriel whenever you start to lose your resolve. It'll guilt you right back into sobriety." 

My father's addiction had never really touched me directly as a child. There were no slamming doors, no cruel slaps to the face, not even a drunken insult. I stood there looking at his drink, at ice cube melting down into a sliver in his glass, and searched my memory for an image, a word, a clumsy stumble to use against him as he was belittling me. But there was nothing, which meant only that my father was even a more successful alcoholic than I ever was. 

He looked at me with his eyes wide and quick, repeated nods of his head, and said, 

"trust me. It works."