The Language of Men (16 page)

A PHOTOGRAPH: Don and my mother at JFK Airport. He is twenty. He has his arm around her, pulling her close, as if, a second before the picture was taken, my father shouted, "Get your arm around your mother, boy!" She is squished, and so is her smile, tight-lipped. Dressed in the magenta track suit that became popular with her and her sisters around that time. Comfortable. Easy to move in. My mother is afraid to fly.

Don looks ready to hop a freight train or hitchhike. Green duffle slung over his shoulder, frayed denim shorts, long-sleeved white thermal shirt. Chain wallet. Black boots. A cocky grin, perpetual squint—
can't see where I'm headed, but I'm going.
He is not a destination man; it's not about that. Just move. Just go. Fill out the college application as long as the address at the top contains a California zip code, a place as far from Long Island as possible. The sky is purple. Is it dusk or dawn? I can't tell.

There is no picture of me and my brother at the airport, but I imagine he pulled me in for a side-hug, my shoulders scrunched up beside my ears. I was about thirteen when Don left, so I was probably wearing my Raider's hat and Raider's jersey. My father loved the Raiders, so I did, too, if only for the colors and the logo. All of my sportswear beside Don's grunge gear made us look like mascots for opposing teams. He probably unhooked his arm from my shoulders and turned toward the gate. As he walked away, he glanced back at us like a driver changing lanes. No signal.

"He's out in California. Drawing stick figures or some shit."

My father knelt on the garage floor, the rotary phone's red receiver cradled in his shoulder, telling Bobby Haggemeyer about Don attending art school. He worked a rusty lug nut free from his Chevy, applied a white chemical, and scrubbed it with an old toothbrush.

"I haven't the slightest clue, Hag." Bobby was the only person my father spoke to on the phone for longer than five minutes. His voice changed. Bobby brought out the redneck jive that lay dormant most of the day. At the supermarket, between the hours of five a.m. and three p.m., my father spoke in quick choppy statements:
Got it. All set. Ma'am, can I help you? Number sixty-two. Now serving number sixty-two.
After work, in the hazy garage, Winston dangling from his lips, the levee broke. He opened up.

"You gots to be foolin' me, Hag. I know you ain't bin messin' wit my tunes. Yup. Dats right. Dats right. I want 'Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,' then 'Night Moves,' THEN 'Beast of Burden.'"

He laughed.

"Uh huh. Nun'a dat Eagles shit, friggin' Neil Young's cryin', or any'a dat new shit you bin listenin' to. Chimp Biscuit. Friggin' Marion Manson."

I heard Bobby laughing. My father spat on the lug nut and worked it into the chrome.

Bobby was more computer savvy than my father, if only because Bobby called it a computer instead of "the machine."
I ain't messin' wit dat machine, boy. Punch this in for me.
At the time of this conversation, Bobby and my father were deep into a Napster binge—Bobby having discovered the program after his nephew e-mailed him a link and explained what Napster could do. My father and Bobby had been downloading songs for months.

"Yeah, boy. Good call, Hag. Great call. 'Against the Wind.' Dat one slipped my mind."

I sat on the vinyl stool, feet dangling, listening to their conversation. His wide workbench spread out in front of me. In the corner was a long silver radio, always tuned to
The Fox.
The radio was plugged into an outlet that was powered by the light switch, so when the garage lit up, the radio immediately kicked on.
The Fox
offered the same dozen or so artists every afternoon, a predictable rotation of Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller Band, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton. Once in a while they'd surprise us and throw in some Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett, and my father would strut over to the radio and ease up the volume, as if he didn't want to scare "the brothas" off.

"Yeah, boy. 'Mustang Sally.'" He slid back beside the tire. "Ol' Sally can ride wit me anytime."

I laughed and shook my head, knowing all the lyrics, but shying away from singing with my father. Instead, I spun on the stool and tapped my foot and took inventory of the tools on the wall, the items on the shelf.

Fishing poles lined the walls like an armory, his green and black Army knife stabbed into the wall. Posthole diggers stood with their mouths shut. Birthday card on a nail, giant breasts holding a lit candle, Bobby's handwriting asking:
How'd you like to suck on these, you old bastard?
Pictures cut from magazines: centerfolds of muscle cars. El Caminos. GTOs. 442's. The car my father loved the most, his "mudda fucka:" a 1941 Willys. A rare, stubby little hot rod. When a Willys entered a car show—gleaming hunk of obsidian absorbing the sky—people turned their heads. The car was expensive. My father played the lottery.

Secret items. Stuff I couldn't see then, but knew was there because I snooped around the garage while my father was still at work. An old crumpled pack of Kent cigarettes. His father's brand—the same brand the Army issued to my father with his rations in Vietnam. I also found a dusty brown eyeglass case containing my father's green sunglasses. He wore the same pair in most of his pictures from Vietnam. The lenses were loose in the case, but I popped them back into the frame and tried the glasses on. The world was emerald, the sun shining like a precious stone. The water in our pool became green. The brown grass, burnt by the sun, appeared fresh.

"Listen to this drum solo, boy. John Bonham is nasty." He laughed. "God damn."

The Fox
had entered its "Stairway to Seven" routine, which meant my father and I would be enjoying a solid rock block of Led Zeppelin, but also it was just about time for my mother to come home from work. My father lit another Winston, bent his knees, and went to work on another rusty lug nut.

Wednesday was junk day. It was also my father's day off. He let me ride around our block and look for cool things in our neighbors' trash: radios, televisions, food processors, anything. Most people threw out furniture or records or boxes. I had no use for that stuff. I needed electronics, wires and motors, appliances that, with the turn of a few screws, revealed their inner workings.

One hand on a coffee maker or blender, the other steadying the handle bars, I coasted down my street in sweeping S's, drunk with anticipation. If my find was too large to carry, I tied it to my bike with rope and dragged it home. Once, I pulled a small electric lawn mower three blocks. Items too big to drag—a microwave or mini-fridge—I stashed in the woods, where they waited until my father drove me back to pick them up.

I parked my bike and carried my VCR, my electric typewriter, my walkie-talkie into the garage. If my mother was working in her garden, I hid behind my neighbor's bushes until she stood up, stretched her back, and went inside for a glass of water. She wasn't angry when I brought home junk; she just wasn't as encouraging as my father. We often kept secrets from her—the cost of a new power tool, pork sausage instead of turkey.
Just between you and me, boy.

Stale-sweet scent of gasoline, coffee, cherry cigars. I believed the garage and my father were created from the same material, at the same moment, separated at birth like a freakish set of Siamese twins. The garage was alive in the summer, when I had all day to scour the neighborhood for items to dismantle.

One Wednesday, I spent the morning at Billy's house. On my ride home, I searched the streets for something to take apart, but couldn't find anything good. I came home and went upstairs to the attic and dug through Christmas decorations and old photo albums, some boxes filled with my baby clothes. One box contained canisters of 16mm film from my parents' wedding. I held the negatives to the light and saw a tiny couple on the dance floor. I slipped the reel onto my finger like a giant ring and pulled out more and more film, but the tiny couple seemed frozen in the same position. Carefully, I rewound the spool and shut the metal canister. Behind the box was my old Fisher-Price tape recorder.

I flicked the switch in the garage, spotlighting the Chevy. My father had started restoring his truck. He had smeared Bondo, a goopy paste, over the rust holes on the front and rear fenders. When it dried, he sanded them smooth, wrapping sandpaper around a wooden block so as not to leave fingerprints in the metal. The garage maintained its scent of oil and tobacco, but the Bondo had added a chemical scent, like the pickling solution he used on his animals in the basement.

His long silver radio on the workbench glowed an emerald green. Springsteen barked about the skeletal frames of burned-out Chevrolets. I searched for a Phillips-head screwdriver. First, I removed the brown plastic shell without much trouble. The recorder could either run on batteries, or I could open a small door in the back and unravel a power cord. The cord was a nuisance now, so I cut it with a large pair of tin snips. With the turn of a few screws, the recorder lost its form, began to look like something completely different than what it was. I switched out the Phillips with a short flat head and poked around the recorder's insides. Tiny blue wires, soldered at each end, connected all the different parts. I cut each one. All that was left was a tiny motor. I jabbed at the pieces of plastic that kept the motor in place, until it finally broke free. A two-inch cylinder. No more screws. No more wires.

I held it to the light, but I couldn't see through it. I tossed the cylinder on the workbench and stared out the window. Now what? I grabbed my father's permanent marker and quickly wrote a list of curse words. Right in the center of his workbench. I didn't even have to think:

Cocksucker

Motherfucker

Asshole

Shithead

Twat-kisser

Dick-face

When I was done, I was out of breath. I felt empty. Not hollow, but satisfied, relieved. The way my father must have felt after cursing out a driver who cut him off or a telemarketer who called during dinner. The curves and angles of each letter were shiny, but soon the slick ink faded to a dull black. I hid the marker behind the workbench. I sat on the vinyl stool for a moment. My breathing returned to normal and I could almost pretend the words were not on the workbench. I stood up and grabbed my father's Army knife and sliced up the stool, cutting it into strips like a Fruit Roll-up, then pulled out the dry-rotted yellow foam. I carefully returned the knife to its spot in the wall.

I rode my bike back to Billy's house. As soon as I stepped onto his front lawn, I felt safe. Jeanie had already picked up pizza for everybody, so when I walked in, she pulled the ottoman over to the dinner table and gave me a paper plate.

Soon, the phone rang.

"Get that, Bitchy!"

"Billy! Don't talk to me like that." She reached for the phone. "Hello? Yes. Oh, yes. He's right here." Jeanie offered me the phone, but I shook my head and stood up.

"Tell him I'm on my way."

My father was waiting for me in the driveway. His eyes were hidden behind black sunglasses. As long as he kept them on, I could pretend he didn't see me. I pulled my bike into the driveway, and he pushed the sunglasses up onto his bald head.

We didn't talk. I followed him to the garage and we stood above the words for what felt like hours. Then he pointed to the stool, the stuffing scattered on the floor, just as I had left them. I felt like the whole garage should be wrapped in CAUTION tape, like a crime scene. My father lit a Winston.

"I don't get you, boy. Just don't get it." He exhaled. "Did you think I wouldn't see this?"

I stared at the words and the pieces of yellow foam on the floor.

"And this," he said, pointing at the stool, "this here's the kicker. What did you use for that?"

"My Swiss Army knife."

"I gave you that to use for other stuff. Not to destroy shit."

I nodded and waited. A part of me thought if I waited long enough, the director would yell "Cut!" and this whole scene would be over. He took another long pull on his Winston and exhaled as he stubbed it out.

"Get some soap and water, boy. Start scrubbin'."

As he walked away, I realized the radio was playing faintly, but I couldn't tell what song it was. In the doorway, my father stopped and turned around.

"Got an A+ for spelling, though. God damn."

IN THE SUMMER, my father was indestructible. He stretched himself out on a lawn chair and baked in the sun for hours. My mother turned red walking from the house to the car but my father, without a drop of sun block, could work outside all afternoon and never burn. Occasionally, his shoulders would peel, but all he had to do was rub his hand over the dead skin and it flaked off and disappeared.

I watched him drive a posthole digger into the ground. His vein-laced biceps trembled as he wrenched the handles apart. Bending at the knees, bracing himself, tendons in his neck pulling the tan skin taut across his throat, he extracted the digger, its mouth shut, metal lips clamped on brown soil and severed roots. The digger left a large hole in the earth, and the root's frayed white ends were bright against the dirt. He emptied the digger into a pile, measured the distance between posts with footsteps, then slammed the digger into the ground once more.

"Gonna look good, boy," he said, twisting the digger deeper. "Not like that plastic piece of shit Mitch put up."

Our neighbor's fence suddenly appeared ridiculous to me, so clean and fake. White plastic passing itself off as wood. It even had phony grain and knots, as if somewhere in the world, white synthetic trees were harvested for this purpose, to give Mitch and a few others on our block the impression of wood, the illusion that plastic could protect them. My father and I used real wood.

Hurricane Gloria had recently torn through Northport, burying the streets in broken tree limbs. Hard rain had pasted oak leaves on the sidewalks like green hands. The Long Island Sound swelled above the docks downtown, backed up drainage systems and choked exhaust pipes. Pneumonic cars of all makes and models coughed up and down our block. Our neighbors' decks and porches, the Hess Station's awning and storefront windows on Main Street, our fence and our swimming pool were all destroyed. I was most concerned about our pool. I had pool parties every year for my birthday and didn't want that to stop. My father said there was a law: no fence, no pool.