A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (40 page)

What do you mean, another deception?

Well, like all people who drink, and do so while successfully keeping a family and a job, he was an extraordinary magician. The tricks, once found out, of course, were kind of flimsy, but at the time, for so long, they fooled a houseful of naturally sneaky and suspicious people. The most famous trick was the AA trick, which
involved attending AA meetings, in our house even, while a few fingers under. It was great. He had gone for about a month to a treatment center somewhere, while we were out East visiting relatives, and when we got home, he was there, sober, dry, triumphant. We were all elated. We felt like we were finally done with all that, our family was suddenly this clean and new thing, and naturally, because he was sober and strong and everything, he
’
d conquer the world and bring us with him. We sat on his lap, we worshiped him. Maybe that
’
s a bit strong. I guess in a lot of ways we still hated and feared him, after all the years of yelling and chasing and everything, but still, we were resilient, and wanted things to be normal—we were not really sure what normal was, or if we had ever been a part of it, come to think of it—but we were hopeful nonetheless. And then the meetings, including the one held in our living room. We were supposed to stay in bed, but one time I snuck down and peeked through the stairway
’
s railing and saw all these adults, foggy through all the smoke, and our dad there, in the spot on the couch where he sat on Christmas. It was weird seeing all those adults in the house—our parents did not entertain—but the point is that he was drinking even then, probably even that night—we never knew, they didn
’
t know—which is a neat trick, if you think about it. It
’
s a trick I have to respect, being diabolical myself and all.

How could he be drinking undetected if he was home all the time?
Aha. Yes. There wasn
’
t a bottle in the house. We searched the place. My mom was vigilant, we were too. But you know where it was? It
’
ll make you choke, it
’
s so simple. Every so often, early in the mornings—it was the only time he was really alone, and would not rouse suspicion—he would go out,
get
a bottle of vodka and four or five liters of quinine, and would bring them home.

Then he
’
d...

Yeah, he
’
d empty out half the quinine containers, fill them with
vodka, and then toss all evidence of the vodka. So at night, when we all gathered in the family room, watching
Three
’
s Company
or whatnot, he
’
d go into the kitchen and—oh, this was a great detail—he
’
d pour the quinine (vodka) into, instead of the short glasses he used to use, a short glass that would indicate, to the casual observer,
alcohol,
he used a
tall glass.
A tall glass and we were fooled! To recap: What goes in the short glass?
Alcohol.
What goes in the tall glass?
A soft drink, of course!
Yes, the tall glass is the container of choice for a nice, cool, nonalcoholic beverage. Can you imagine? He must have felt like the cleverest guy in the world, or at least more clever than his dim-witted brood. This went on for about a year—all while we were flush with pride and hope, believing that he had quit and that there would be no more moving, for days and weeks at a time, to friends
’
and relatives
’
houses, no more talk of leaving him, all that, and as we were all rebuilding, all the while—it was incredible. Of course, what
’
s more, with the tall glass (remember: tall glass * soft drink), he was drinking even more, and we became increasingly confused, because while he was ostensibly sober, he was still talking funny after ten, still raging suddenly and implacably, and still falling asleep sitting upright on the couch, at eleven every night.

So after he was discovered, he quit?

Oh God, no. My mother went out on the patio, closed the sliding door and screamed and cried, her arms wrapped around her shoulders, and there were probably a few threats of leaving, all that. But then we kind of gave in. My mother was exhausted, by him and us, the three of us had recently become four, and I suppose she conceded that he was going to drink, that he was born to drink— and was quite good at it, by the way, a pretty functional drinker, not a gone-on-a-bender sort, harmless if not provoked. So with a new baby, moving or leaving suddenly became far more difficult to do (or even to threaten to do) and I imagine at some point our
exhausted mother just came to terms with him—this many drinks a night and no more, blah blah. And when you think about the lengths he went to deceive us, in the interest, of course, of keeping us from leaving—he would arrange his schedule in really any way at all, would do the flimsy, sad little lies, with the quinine and tall glasses, for instance—all so we wouldn
’
t leave—when you think about that, well, he was not perfect, but he was a decent man. And so he reduced his nightly intake after that, readily accepted the truce, drank only beer or wine at home, and as Toph started crawling and then walking, he plateaued. And to tell you the truth, we almost preferred it that way. The whole A A vibe was unsettling, and all those adults in the house, the murmuring and the smoke, it didn
’
t seem appropriate for him, he just wasn
’
t a group sort of guy, buying into all that. In a way, we just didn
’
t want our father to be in AA. He wanted to control or kick it on his own, and that
’
s really the way we preferred it, too. And AA was probably murder for him, with all the references to higher powers and whatnot, the whole gist of which held no water for him. Anyway, after the whole treatment ghost was given up, it was better then because it was all out in the open, we knew the exact parameters of him and he of us, and we could then prepare for eventualities. Which I had been horrible at doing, never knowing what to expect. See, from when I was very small, I had this wild, horror-infested imagination—it was, for example, my firm belief for a few years that when we went to bed the downstairs turned into a laboratory for human experimentation, a cross between snippets I
’
d seen of
Coma
and
Willy Wonka,
filled with Oompa-Loompa men and bodies in stasis—and that, with even a little of his unevenness, could combine and make chaos and terror where it wasn
’
t necessarily there— I mean, for me, it ended, that thin brittle rope of trust between a parent and child snapped, probably when I was about eight, with the door thing.

Which was...

This was when things were a little messy, when he was a little less in control. And I don
’
t remember what the issue was, but I had apparently done something wrong, and so was supposed to stand for punishment—you know what was funny? We were, when due punishment, in each instance told to
“
assume the position,
”
meaning to come over and lean over his knees—so quaint, can you believe it?—and of course I wasn
’
t going to have any part of that garbage. Not that he ever really hit us all that hard—our mom was the one who really put her weight into it—but there was something terrifying about his fumbling, his clumsy grabbing...it was just so unpredictable, because we knew enough to know when he was already blurry, so we just didn
’
t want to be anywhere near his area of—you know that game, octopus? Where you run around, trying to get from one side to the other, past all your classmates and then the red line, where they can
’
t touch you, but you can
’
t get near any of the limbs, with their little perfect arms suddenly so perilous, so horrifying?—it was like that in a way, a heightened sense of terror born of doubt, a lack of predictability in his behavior—we just did not want to get close enough to him at night for something weird to happen. So with the verdict handed down and the spanking imminent, we ran. Every time we ran, and tried to get far enough away and for long enough that—and this was usually more wishful thinking than practical—that his anger would subside, or our mother would intervene, or both: a reprieve granted. If the episode took place during the day we
’
d just run down the street, to the park or the creek or a friend
’
s, and wait it out. But at night—which is when these things usually happened, given we only saw our father, an avid golfer, a few daylight hours each week—of course we (or at least I) couldn
’
t go outside, being sure that it was much worse out there, the neighborhood being populated with the vampires from
Salem
’
s Lot
and the William Shatner mask man from
Halloween.
At night, options were limited to those
within the house, which were many, actually, though each with its particular merits and drawbacks. Down in the basement you could hide in the furnace area or the crawl space, but for the area to be effective one had to keep the lights off, and one never knew when there would be actual murderers there, in the furnace area or crawl space, or corpses—highly possible, of course. Then there were the closets, which were often effective, but in a closet, though one felt warm and safe, one was found so suddenly—the sliding door would woosh open and the hands abruptly
there,
grabbing—and so the best places were either the upstairs bathroom or one
’
s own bedroom, both of which had simple locks and often held for long enough for things to settle down on the other side. So on this particular night, I ran to my room, closed and locked the door and, while listening to his bellowing from the bottom of the stairs— this is, by the way, what he did first, inexplicably demanding that we come down, come down the stairs to allow him to take us with his hands and drag us back to the couch where he would shake us around, get us into position, and then do the whacking... ludicrous. We did not owe him that, I did not owe him that, of course not, we never deserved spanking because we were perfect, perfect, perfect, unassailable, or if not perfect at least provoked into whatever it was we did, and so, while in my room, while staring at the door, hyperventilating, I looked around for ideas. I looked to the wallpaper—it was the kind that
’
s actually a huge photograph, mine being an orangey fall forest scene; my mom and I had picked it out, thought it was so beautiful, had sat on the floor staring at it after we put it up—and in my room that night I wanted to run through it, through the orange forest, because it looked like it went deep, the forest, and it was daylight there besides. But of course I didn
’
t think of really doing that, I wasn
’
t stupid or delusional but then looked to another wall, to the unpapered wall over my bed on which I had drawn, with markers, twenty or so little monsters and happy but still presumably fierce Viking men, all
created to protect me as I slept, and to come to life in such situations as this—but they were not coming to life, and why were they not coming to life? The yelling continued and, sure that he was still downstairs, I snuck out of my room and into the hall, grabbed the phone, and jumped back into my room, sliding the cord underneath and again locking the door. I brought the phone to my bed and called the operator and asked for the area code for Boston. Then I remembered it wasn
’
t Boston, it was Milton, outside Boston. I called for information in Milton, looking for my aunt Ruth. Or Uncle Ron. She had done AA, he had been with her, they knew what was what—what should I do? I would ask, they would know, they would intervene...Then the footsteps started coming up the stairs, which they only did some of the time, the times when he was extraordinarily angry and our mother could not calm him down, and as they thumped up the stairs—why did he go so slow, so maddeningly slow?—I hung up the phone—I didn
’
t have time now—and devised a plan. I opened the window over my pillow, then tore the sheet off my bed. The footsteps stopped thumping, meaning he was on the second floor, was just six or seven steps from my door... I twisted the sheet so it looked like a rope or however I had seen it look on TV and as I began to tie it around the bed frame there was the trying of the door, then suddenly my name so loud I jumped, then pounding and demands yelled, and if I could just get this thing tied in time... the thumping got louder and louder and then the sheet was tied, twice-over, I yanked it to test its strength and it seemed okay—it only had to hold for a few seconds, just until I was far down enough to jump— and so I turned my body on my bed and started to scoot back, reaching a leg out the window, feeling my bare foot against the coarse wood of the side of the house...and then the pounding stopped. I was still lowering myself, almost half out the window now, the night was humid, I was able to see the ground, the neighbor
’
s yard, holding the sheet in two hands...I paused, breathing

quickly, like an animal, thinking, wondering if he had been called off...so quiet. And then the door came in, an explosion of wood, and he was upon me.