A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (4 page)

The transformation was quick and pronounced. Pa showed up at our front door every day, looking helpless. Once inside, after grunting hello, he'd sit on the couch in our basement watching sports. He remained silent for hours at a time. Gregg or I would bring him his dinner every night, and he'd mumble a few words of thanks and send us on our way. Each night when I'd head to bed, the sounds of the TV reaching my bedroom reminded me that he was still there. Each morning, he'd be gone.

Eventually, this got to be too much. My parents asked Pa to stay at his own house a few days a week so that Gregg and I could play in the basement and my mom could clean it. Pa was hurt, and took this suggestion as a request to never step foot in our house again. He retreated to his home and became even more reclusive. Gregg and I would visit him, until one night he pulled us aside.

“You shouldn't come here anymore,” he said, grim and serious.

I looked at Gregg, who asked Pa, “Well, why not?”

Pa leaned in close to our faces.

“Because your grandmother's ghost haunts this house,” he said, “and you don't want to make the ghost angry.”

In hindsight, I realize he was simply depressed and wanted to be left alone—but at the time, his warnings of my grandma's ghost frightened me to my core, because I was a little kid and shit like that is scary. I dreaded the times my mother would send me to Pa's house to borrow a tool or bring him food. I'd stand on his steps, shaking, praying the ghost wouldn't get me. It would be nine years before I again stepped inside his house.

A
fter my mother finished filling me in on my family's history of various mental difficulties, I felt exposed and uncomfortable.

“Mom,” I asked her, “do you think I'm going to be okay?”

“Well,” she answered. “Pa got better.”

P
a emerged from his self-imposed isolation around 1992 a changed man. No one knew for sure what caused his rebirth, but something had happened inside that house that led him to a true revelation, in two parts: (1) He was old and going to die soon, and (2) he could therefore say and do whatever the fuck he wanted, anytime, anywhere.

One of my first experiences with the “new Pa” occurred while I was in sixth grade. I awoke early one Saturday to watch cartoons but was interrupted by furious knocking on our back door. I ran to open it, wearing only my underwear, and saw a frightened Pa frantically motioning for me to let him in. He leapt through the door before I even had it completely open, knocking me backward. His rambling was nonstop except for quick gasps for breath, punctuated by wild gestures toward the
yard. I looked out the window and saw a skunk sitting on our lawn, completely motionless.

“Oh well, time to call animal control,” my mom said, picking up the phone.

Pa reached over and put the phone back onto the receiver.

“Oh to hell with that, get me a broom,” he replied in his trademark ornery style. “I'm going to kill it.” We all turned and stared at him in disbelief.

“What?” I asked.

“There's a trick to killing a skunk,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “You take a stick and bash it right on the tip of its nose. They have soft bones. Hit them in the right spot and their skulls cave in. You crush their brains.”

“No!” I shouted, locking eyes with Pa and shaking my head. I looked to my parents and grabbed at my hair in disbelief. “Are you just going to let him kill it?”

“Ahh to hell with you,” Pa shouted. “Get me the goddamned broom!” I looked back to my father, who nodded at me. I went and got the broom.

Pa was in his seventies, but when he got that broom in his hand he became as agile as a collegiate wrestler. He leapt off the porch, wielding the broom like a Filipino eskrima stick. He inched closer to the skunk and raised the broomstick in the air, allowing it to hover above the unsuspecting beast. With deadly precision, he brought it down on the animal's nose. The poor creature collapsed onto its side. I screamed.

Pa picked the skunk up and walked toward me. In my panic I could only shout the word “No,” over and over again. Pa grinned and tossed the animal at me. I had no choice but to catch it.

At which point I realized it was dead and stuffed, albeit ultra-realistic.

Pa, it turned out, had been up since six in the morning, lurking in our yard. He was waiting for any signs that I was awake inside the house, for the sole purpose of seeing my reaction when he pretended to murder an animal in front of me.

“R
eally?” I asked my mom. “He got better? Because he seemed pretty out there.”

My mom laughed as she sipped her tea.

P
a refused to give up his Buick, though he had no right driving at his age. Besides swerving like a blacked-out drunk, he drove so slowly that the neighborhood kids would race his car, on foot, up our hill. We always won.

My father was filled with anxiety whenever he saw his dad behind the wheel. Gardening has always been one of the few activities that clears my dad's mind in times of stress. During my childhood he would often come home from work brooding and quiet, only to head into our yard to tend to his tomato plants. After an hour or so, he'd emerge, covered in dirt but visibly more relaxed. Gardening is to my father what weird hippie yoga is to other people. For my father, Pa's driving was definitely a cause for gardening.

One day, a kickball game I was embroiled in was interrupted when Pa's car turned the corner and headed up the block. We cleared the way so he could pass. There was no need. Pa plowed directly into the back of a brand-new Jeep that was parked in front of the Tylers' house. Audrey Tyler's boyfriend flew out the door.

“My car! Shit!” he shouted, dismayed at the destruction wrought to his taillights.

“It's okay,” Pa shouted from his window. “I'm Kenny's father !” He then pointed in the direction of my dad, who'd been peacefully tending the flowers on our front lawn. Pa waved to my dad and drove away, leaving my father—who was clearly mortified, on his knees and holding gardening tools—alone to deal with the situation. I don't think my father ever found as much peace in gardening after that day.

“Y
ou were too young to really remember him before Grammy died,” my mom explained. “I knew him when she was alive, and saw how hard it hit him.”

I looked up at my mom, who smiled.

“I think Pa was weird,” she continued. “But weird was better than sad.”

F
or Pa's eightieth birthday, our family gathered for a party at my uncle's house. It was rare for some members on my father's side of the family to admit each other's existence, let alone be in one place together. I was fifteen, and it was the first time in my life that I remember everyone acting polite and cordial to each other. Aunt Joan wasn't talking as much as usual, which is to say she was only talking constantly. My one uncle didn't tell his joke about Hitler being his favorite American. All seemed strangely right.

But no one was speaking to my brother. I would touch base with him, then go off to catch up with someone else, only to
see him standing alone in a corner, looking confused, or eating chips while everyone ignored him. Gregg was as baffled as I was.

“Dude, did you say something to piss everyone off?” I asked.

“Chris, I know I sometimes say weird shit,” he said, “but I swear to God, I have no idea why nobody's talking to me.”

Fearing that his social leprosy might rub off on me, I left him standing next to a cooler of my Aunt Karen's famous homemade lemonade and got back to the party.

Eventually, Gregg was approached by Kathy, one of my female cousins (the sassy one in her early thirties who lived in Manhattan, making her “open-minded”).

“You know, Gregory, I'm fine with whatever you choose,” Kathy told him.