Home Is Burning (14 page)

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So, all in all, Greg and I were doing the best we could, but it felt like the dam was about to break open and fuck up the whole town, and we were just a piece of gum preventing disaster for but a few brief moments. The girls needed their real parents. They were confused, lost teenagers trying to figure out how to manage this big, scary world and their road maps were fading. It wasn't supposed to go like this. They were supposed to graduate high school with two healthy parents smiling in the audience. Their dad was supposed to take them on college tours and help guide them into the next phase of their lives. Instead, Greg and I were at the helm of the ship, steering them right for the iceberg.

My poor dad had to watch as Greg and I fumbled around and tried our best, all while the Lou Gehrig's disease continued its relentless conquest of his life. It must have tormented him; the disease made it so he could no longer parent his children the way he wanted to. He could no longer drive them to school. He could no longer patiently help them with their homework. He could no longer proudly stand on the sidelines of a lacrosse match or in the audience of a dance recital. He could no longer wait up worrying at the window as they went off to prom. He could no longer scare off boyfriends. He was now fighting his own battle. He could no longer fight the battles for the people he loved.

But he was still our dad. He wasn't dead yet. He was still capable of flashes of greatness, flashes of his old self.

It was a pleasant October day. Fall in Utah is glorious—the calm before the messy, gross, endless storm that is a Utah winter. The temperature had dropped, but not enough to make it uncomfortable. The mountains were colored by the changing leaves. Jessica was due at the courthouse for her Lagoon drinking ticket. My mom was at chemo, so she couldn't go. Greg was exhausted from being on Daddy Duty the night before. So I figured that I'd go with her, stand in as her fake father.

We were about to leave when my dad said, “Wait, I'm coming with you.”

“Really? Why don't you rest up so you can try to not die later today?”

“I want to go. Jessica needs me,” he said.

“Are you sure? You're in bad shape there, Papa Bear,” I said.

“Just get my jacket. I'm going,” he insisted.

So I put a jacket on his bony shoulders and got him loaded into the car. He was still walking, but he looked like he was about to keel over at any moment, so I grabbed the manual wheelchair that someone had donated to us and jammed it into the trunk. We got to the courthouse, and I unloaded the wheelchair. Jessica looked terrified—like a scared kid closer to childhood than adulthood. My dad looked over to her.

“Look, we know you messed up, but I'm here for you, and I love you,” my dad managed to say. “We all make mistakes. It'll be okay.”

“Thanks,” Jessica managed to reply.

I got our dad out of the car and into the wheelchair. “Probably good we brought the wheelchair. They'll feel extra sorry for you,” I told Jessica.

“Yeah,” nervous Jessica said.

Once we were in the courtroom, we made sure to sit right in front of the judge so he was sure to see our dying father. He wouldn't punish a girl whose father was on the brink of death, right? Surely he would take mercy on her and understand the need to escape into numbness that brought about her drinking. Maybe Jessica and I would be seen as heroes (of sorts) fighting the good fight, and we'd actually leave the courtroom with a Golden Medal of Courage or something.

“You two are so strong. Stay strong and keep him strong,” I imagined the judge saying.

“Thank you, Your Honor. Our lives are complete shit right now, but we'll do our best to find a way through this mess. No more drinking for Jessica. I'll see to it,” I imagined myself saying. “Though I might have a drink or two myself,” I might joke, sending the judge and possibly the whole courtroom into fits of laughter.

“You're a good man, and a funny son of a bitch,” the judge would say.

“Hey, my mom's no bitch,” I'd reply, causing more laughter.

“You rascals get on out of here. And don't forget your Golden Medals of Courage,” he'd say as he placed the pure gold medallions around our tired necks.

That's not what happened.

Instead, the tired and matter-of-fact judge ran through the list of petty thieves and recreational drug users that decorated the Utah courtroom. He finally got to Jessica.

“Jessica Marshall, looks like you had a little too much fun at Lagoon,” he said. Jessica nodded back. “Looks like you're a minor. Do you have anyone here with you?” he asked. “Anyone here for support?”

The courtroom was silent for a second. The judge stared at Jessica, Jessica at her feet. I was about to say something like “I'm here. I'm Jessica's fat, budding alcoholic older brother.” Then, with all the strength in his weak body, my dad rose out of the creaky wheelchair.

“I'm Jessica's dad,” he managed to say. All heads turned to him, shocked by his resurrection out of the chair. He stood there like a proud parent, his weak legs barely able to hold him up, watching after his little girl, making sure she knew he still had her back. “I'm here to support her.”

The judge looked my dad over. “Okay, and are you okay, sir?” he asked.

“I have Lou Gehrig's disease, but we're trying to manage,” my dad said. The judge solemnly nodded back at him and made a few notes.

Jessica got out of the ticket. She just had to do forty hours of service, which the judge said she could do by helping out at home. We weren't awarded any Golden Medals of Courage, but Jessica left knowing that her dad was still looking after her. Even if he could barely do it, he stood up for her.

“The wheelchair really did the trick,” my dad said as he smiled at us. “We really fooled them.” I smiled at my dying dad. He had flashed back to who he was before Lou Gehrig's disease, if only for a brief moment.

“Come on, let's get the fuck out of here,” I said as Jessica and I wheeled our dad out of the courthouse and into the crisp fall air.

 

STANA'S CAT HOLOCAUST

Before the Lou Gehrig's disease, my dad did a great job of maintaining our house—keeping it looking fresh and modern, making us appear to be a family in its prime. The TVs worked and functional batteries weighed down the remotes. There was always an abundance of beer in the fridge. The yard looked like the cover of a magazine that specialized in beautiful yards that were never littered in dog shit. Lightbulbs were replaced the instant they burned out. There were multiple shampoo and conditioner choices in the showers. Rolls of toilet paper were at least an inch thick. The grill had a never-empty propane tank connected to it and chicken shish kabobs sizzling on top. The garage was swept and didn't smell like a combination of dog urine and cat urine, with a splash of drunk-Dan urine. There was chalk next to the pool table. No leaves floated in the pool. The tennis court had a net. The cars were washed and had gas in them. There were no spiders in our basement.

Then the ALS shitstorm hit.

Suddenly, our house was transformed into a war zone. There were weeds on our dirty tennis court. Dog shit and dandelions marred our yard. HBO worked on only a couple of our TVs. The hot tub smelled like balls and teenager piss. Cobwebs haunted our windowsills and spiders ran our basement like a 1920s speakeasy. Rooms were unevenly lit or just darkened by dead bulbs. Keys on the computer keyboard were missing. The grill functioned as a recycling bin for unfinished 3 a.m. beers instead of the place where meat was made delicious. Two of our three pinball machines no longer worked. The mini-fridge in the basement had more types of mold than beer and wasn't even plugged in anymore. Door handles jiggled. Locks didn't lock. Our cars were filled with Del Taco wrappers, Red Bull cans, sunflower seeds, hardened pita bread, banana peels, and glasses lined with week-old orange juice residue. No new pictures went up on the wall. Cat piss yellowed our carpet. Cigarettes and weed were smoked in the backyard. Raccoons danced in our trees and shit on our trampoline.

We had lost the man of the house, and his absence amplified how much he had formerly done for us. Greg and I were left to try to fill in and keep the house up and running. But we were so used to having our dad do everything that we didn't know how to do anything. For example, once it took me forty-five minutes to change a lightbulb. I thought an old one had broken off in the socket. I had read somewhere that a potato could grip the bulb and spin it out. I started there. The potato didn't work. Before I knew it I had an apple up there, then a banana, then a cantaloupe, then a Fruit Roll-Up, and then I went back to the potato. It turned out that all I had to do from the get-go was screw in a fresh bulb. In the end, the whole fixture was destroyed and smelled like the produce section of a grocery store.

To add to the deterioration of our house, there were way more animals running around than we could handle. It was a zoo. In addition to the two golden retrievers, we now had four cats: Brighton, Bailey, Pierre, and Pongo. Brighton had been around our house for years. She must have been fifteen years old. Cats are a reflection of their surroundings, and growing up in our house was chaotic and intense, so Brighton was rather skittish. Plus, she didn't get along with any of the other cats. Anytime another cat would approach, she'd make that terrifying hissing noise and even take a swipe at them. Bailey was our second-oldest cat. My mom had apparently rescued him from traffic on State Street. Bailey also kept to himself, and didn't really interact with us or any of the other animals. Tiffany had dumped Pierre and Pongo on us after BCB turned out to be allergic. They were brothers, so they sort of ran the show, ganging up on Brighton and Bailey and taking over the best nap spots. All the cats were territorial, and they were engaged in a rather epic piss battle, leaving stains everywhere and making the majority of our house absolutely reek of cat urine.

The combination of the loss of the man of the house, Greg's and my inability to fill his shoes, and the cats' piss war amounted to our home slipping into total dysfunction and decay. And with the construction in full force, half the house was covered in tarps, dust, and construction gear. It was mayhem.

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No one noticed the deterioration of our home more than Stana. Stana had worked for our family for as long as I could remember. She was in her seventies, but tried really hard to look like she was in her fifties. She had a wrinkly face, was about five feet tall, wore glasses, and had dyed blond hair. Her backstory was caked with tragedy. She was born a Jew in Poland just as things were heating up with that asshole Hitler. When the Nazis stormed her family's house and pulled her parents out, they somehow missed Stana, leaving her alone in their ransacked home. She was two at the time. Neighbors discovered her and raised her.

My mom, being a cancer survivor, naturally took a liking to Stana. “She's a survivor like us, and survivors are always good to have around,” my mom once explained. Plus, Stana was short and feisty, like my mom, and hated Mormons more than anything on earth. Well, maybe except for the Nazis.

Because my mom had a soft spot for Stana (survivor sisters for life!), she didn't seem to mind that she wasn't a great cleaning lady. Instead of actually cleaning, Stana seemed more interested in the house gossip. I guess she was looking for a replacement family. So we took her in, and she became a sort of grandma figure in our lives. Fuck, she even attended birthday parties and some holidays. She was a friend first and a cleaning lady second.

I always liked her because she was funny. Funny goes a long way in my book. She swore up a storm (“son of a bitch” was her go-to) and would call people out if they were fucking up. I admired her honesty and bluntness, even when it came at my expense. When I visited home after my first semester at Berkeley, Stana took one look at me and said, “Oh, Danny, you is havin' fat face now.” It hurt my feelings, but it was true. I was havin' fat face after a semester of eating shit, drinking beer, and never exercising, as college students tend to do.

Stana had her flaws, though. She, like our real grandma, was a not-so-closet racist. I always thought it was strange to hear a woman who survived the Holocaust discriminate against anyone who wasn't a Nazi, but she did. For example, though it was only October 2007, preparations for the 2008 Democratic primary elections were kicking into high gear. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were neck and neck. When I asked her whom she liked for president, she said, “Danny, I is no likin' Obama. No be president.”

“Why not? Obama's super cool and he likes basketball.”

“Danny, it is because he is black. No black president. This is, how you say, ridiculous,” she explained in her adorable broken English.

I didn't know what to make of that, so I said, “Well, I like him. He's really smart and is a welcome change from that dipshit George W. Bush.”

“There is no way this man is president. Black people no get good jobs,” she retorted as she swept our hardwood floors, not recognizing that maybe she didn't have the best job.

Stana, though she thought she was really smart, couldn't read or write in English. One year, she gave my mom a birthday card that had on the front the words “I give you my deepest sympathies in this your time of mourning.” So she was an illiterate, unrepentantly racist Holocaust survivor, but we still loved her like one of our own.

Though Stana wasn't great at it, she tried her best to make our home look orderly and warm. While the dying-parents mess was happening, Stana was trying to figure out how she could put a stop to the decline of our house. She noticed the obscene amounts of cat piss popping up all over the place and started blaming the cats for everything.

Construction in the basement had finished, so I moved from the dining room down into the basement. One Monday morning, Stana darted into my basement room—one of the cat-piss hot spots.