The Language of Men (30 page)

It wasn't until years later that he told me the tattoo wasn't finished. He had plans to make a whole galaxy on his foot, turn the pale skin of his heel black with stars and comets and moons. He wanted it to curl up the side of his ankle, and his girlfriend at the time would get the same thing on her ankle, but it would be a little different, a few unique details since they were doing it freehand. I asked him why he didn't finish it. He shrugged. Perhaps it was too painful. Perhaps they ran out of ink. Perhaps the star got infected.

To me, the tattoo is a clue to my brother's secret life, the one set inside his smoky bedroom, in the woods behind the high school, within the four doors of his hydroplaning Volare. It hints at his unknown universe beyond our town, his life in San Francisco, a city that developed a mythic lore in my family. The shooting star is evidence of an unseen world, the dark landscape my brother moved through that my parents did not understand and of which I was too afraid.

Recently, I've gotten a better look at Don's tattoo, while we sit barefoot on the deck in the summer or rest our feet on the ottoman while we open Christmas presents. It's hard to tell which direction the star is shooting.

My father's tattoo was something he and Don could talk about. Don was knowledgeable on the subject and could speak at length about the healing process, which ointments were the best, which sunblocks to use.

"Whatever you do, man, don't pick the scab. Or you'll fuck it up."

My father sat on the couch with his elbows resting on his knees, leaning in to Don's advice. I sat on the opposite side of the room watching
Die Hard
with the sound off, the closed caption scrolling across the screen. I often did this with movies I knew by heart. Sometimes there were discrepancies between the spoken and printed dialogue, and each time I caught one of these errors, I felt I had righted a wrong.

"So when are we going back for your next one?" Don said, re-tying the laces on his sneakers.

I laughed. My father shrugged. Then he rolled up his sleeve.

"Always thought it'd be cool to have a tiger over here." He outlined the image on his arm. "Like on a tree branch. Have'm stalkin' a rabbit or some shit."

I imagined my father covered in animal tattoos, like an illustrated map of the Brooklyn Zoo. Each animal posed exactly the way he wanted. I pictured his forearm lined with the profiles of all the animals he preserved in the basement. A visual showcase of his work.

Don and I looked at each other. "Really?" Don asked.

"Yeah. Think that'd come out pretty good." I watched him draw the image again, circling the location of the unsuspecting rabbit. He stopped, and the white outline stood out on his tan skin, then quickly refilled with blood.

"What about matching tats?" Don asked.

My father looked up from his arm. "Matching to what?"

"You and me. What if we get matching tattoos?"

Bruce Willis was about to jump off the roof of Nakatomi Plaza with a fire hose wrapped around his waist, but at the last second, the movie cut to a commercial.

"I hate it when they do that shit," my father said.

Don finished tying his shoes, stood up and went to the kitchen. He came back with a beer and leaned in the doorway to the living room. He stood the way he had when I was supposed to interview him. A controlled, eager expression that made him look like a little boy.

"So, what do you think?" Don asked.

"'Bout what?"

Don sighed. "What do you mean 'about what?' About getting matching tattoos."

My father laughed. "Think I'll let this one heal first."

MY CELL PHONE lights up with my brother's name. I don't answer. He sends me a text.

Call me right now.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Dad had a heart attack."

I sigh and ask when. My body feels as if it's sliding off the chair, just like it did on the bus six years ago, but I am not surprised. Each Winston between my father's lips burned like a fuse.

Vanessa offers to come with me, but I tell her I want to go alone. I'm more angry than sad. Don and I had recently talked to my father about smoking, a sort of impromptu intervention that went surprisingly well. Don didn't cut me off and attack my father, and I was direct and didn't back down. I told him I knew about denial and escapism, how we conform our lives around seemingly essential habits. He thought I was talking about how I quit smoking. As I gave him my speech, I thought back five years ago, of Vanessa waiting tables while I sat in the bedroom of our first apartment, searching for another image.

I grab my iPod, an extra shirt, and as I squeeze my feet into my boots, I lift my keys off the hook. The silver dollar that I bought in Vietnam sits in an old ashtray by the door. I haven't mentioned it to my father yet because I always seem to be waiting for the perfect moment. I slip the coin into my shirt pocket.

It's almost midnight on a Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Turnpike is dark, nearly empty. How quickly the night can change: one minute I'm watching an episode of
Arrested Development,
the next I'm in a cold car a half hour out of town. My iPod plays Bruce Springsteen's
Nebraska,
the album he released the year I was born. He recorded the songs on a four-track tape deck in his bedroom, alone. I let the full album play, something I haven't done for a long time.

Each lyric flows heavily through my body, settles in my right foot. Eighty. Ninety. A man dreams he is a child, walking to his father's house. Through the forest, trying to make it home before darkness falls. On the hill, his father's house shines like a beacon, ghostly voices rising from the fields. The path to the house is broken, unsteady, and the guitar is nearly silent. Just an echo of a voice—the boy running until the front door opens and he falls shaking into his father's arms. The man wakes from his dream, puts on his clothes and rushes out into the night. He walks the broken path to his father's house, but a strange woman answers and tells him no one by that name lives there.

Slow fade to a man standing over a dead dog on the side of the highway, poking it with a stick, as if the dog might get back up and run, but I don't see a dog, I see my father stopping on the way to work, scraping a raccoon off the pavement. Another droning guitar, but stronger, like an idling Mack truck. The quick harmonica like a head nodding; Bruce telling me we all have a "Reason to Believe." But as on every track, the guitar, the harmonica, the vocals fade, and by the time I drive past the turnpike's final exit and pull into a tollbooth, the car is quiet.

I hear what I want to hear. I extract lyrics—
father, mother, brother, son, quiet—
fish them like pyrite from a rushing river and sell them to myself as gold. All these stories, all these different perspectives talking to themselves, their questions answered only by their own echoes, their words unable to jump the track and speak to one another.

I'm not even out of Massachusetts before
Nebraska
restarts.

In neutral outside my brother's apartment in Brooklyn, I tap my horn. His kitchen light shuts off. He comes out the front door holding his iPod and an extra shirt.

"Damn, dude," he says. "You got here fast."

I smile. "When The Boss says drive, you drive."

He glances down at my iPod and sees the
Nebraska
album cover. "Oh, nice," he says. "That's one of those albums you gotta listen to the whole way through."

Not long before my father had his heart attack, Don invited us all to view his paintings at a gallery in Brooklyn. "Art" is not a word my father uses often and when he does, it's usually laced with skepticism. My father walked closely behind Don and pointed at photographs of plain brick walls or canvases splattered with paint.

"That's art?" my father said. "Shit, I could do that."

I watched him walk with my brother around the gallery. My father wore a black and white flannel shirt tucked into jeans, his razor-sharp goatee splashed in Afta's Arctic Breeze. He had recently bleached his white Reebok sneakers, and they squeaked when he stopped in front of a painting, sometimes drawing stares from the tan, thin couples wrapped in leather or fur.

He paused in front of my brother's painting of a half-erect penis.

"Nice johnson."

Don looked over his shoulder and shook his head.

"What?" my father said. "That's what it is, ain't it?"

"Just look at it, dude. No comments."

My father laughed and turned to my mother. "Am I missing something here?"

She smiled and shrugged. "It's very... realistic."

"So what's it supposed to mean, Don?" my father asked.

"Nothing. I don't know. Whatever you want it to mean."

My father pressed his lips together and nodded. A woman holding a tray of hors d'oeuvres walked by.

"Hey, honey, what does this mean to you?"

"Oh, Christ," Don said and walked away.

My father laughed and popped a stuffed mushroom in his mouth.

"Art or no art. That's a dick."

As Don and I pull onto the Expressway, I start laughing.

"What?" he says, pausing my iPod.

"Nothing."

"No, what? What's so funny?"

"I was thinking about Dad at the art gallery. You know, when he saw your paintings."

Don shakes his head. "Like he'd never seen a dick before. Kept trying to figure out the hidden meaning." Don laughs. The car is quiet for a moment, except for the tires humming over the bridge. Then Don hits
Play.

We walk into the same hospital where my father was treated for his stroke, his varicose veins. Same elevators, same corridor, same Cardiovascular Unit. A re-run.

We walk into my father's room and he's alone, sitting up in his bed, reading Cormac McCarthy's
No Country for Old Men.

"Yo! What's shakin', fellas?" He goes to stand up, but tubes and wires keep him in his bed. "Shit."

"Easy, dude," I say. "I'll come to you." I walk around the rolling dinner tray, bend beneath the wires and stand up beside him. I don't so much hug him as press my body against his. Don does the same. As they try to hug, I stare at the book's bright red cover.

"Don't be eyeballin' my readin' material, boy."

"No, no, I'm not. That's a great book," I say.

"Just like the movie," he says, nodding. "Mom got me a few of 'em." He points to the stack of books on a chair beside his bed:
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Feelin' Lucky: The Life and Times of Clint Eastwood,
and a thick colorful book titled, simply,
Trucks.

"Those should keep you busy," Don says.

My father nods. "Don't know how long she thinks I'm gonna be here. Plannin' on rollin' out in a day or two."

"What's the rush?" Don asks.

My father looks at him. Me. Then pans the room, the skin around his eyes delicate without his glasses. "I ain't staying here a second too long."

The door swings open and my mother walks quickly into the room, holding a paper bag and a tray of 7-Eleven coffees, a dark stain in the bag's corner. She kisses us and leans over to kiss my father. Before she takes off her coat, she mixes my father's coffee and places the steaming cup on the tray in front of him. He sips. She places two scratch-off tickets beside his cup.

"Now you're talkin'," he says, digging through the pockets of his jeans, which hang in a clear plastic bag beside his bed with the rest of his clothes.

"When did you boys get here?"

"Couple minutes ago," I say. My eyes fall again on the book's red cover.

My mother smiles. "I know; I was shocked, too. Guess it just took a heart attack to pull him away from the television."

My father takes another sip of his coffee. He stops scratching his ticket and looks up at my mother. "It's good. Just like the movie."

I look at the silver dollar in his hand. "Oh, dude, check this out." I reach into my shirt pocket and pull out the silver dollar. "Found this in Hanoi. Crazy, huh? Same year."

My father presses his lips together and nods. "No shit?" He takes the coin from me and flips it over. He holds it up against his coin. "Is it real?"

"I hope so," I say. "It cost four bucks."

He shakes his head. "Shit never changes."

"But I did do some research on it. They didn't release the Eisenhower dollar until the middle of '71, so there's no way you could have had it with you before you left."

He bites his lip. "Hmm." I don't know why I tell him that. Maybe the wires and tubes and beeping machines make me want to talk about something else. Or perhaps I want the coin to mean more than it does, to give some new value to my father, to me, to our story. But what I said doesn't seem to throw him off or make him question his version of the truth. He shrugs and takes a sip of coffee. He looks up at me, grinning.

"Guess you better delete chapter one, boy."

"You need to know this," my mother tells my father as they lean over bills and paystubs and direct deposit forms scattered on the dining room table. He nods, sucks his cheek between his teeth. She pushes aside coasters shaped like Rudolph so she has room to write—a lefty in a house of righties. She's always written in that lefty manner, as if she were trying to twist her left hand into a right. At the dinner table, she sat at the end so she could use her fork without disturbing me or my father or my brother. We kept her spot open until she placed the food on the table and took her seat. Robert De Niro shouts,
I'm not an animal!
in the empty living room. My mother forges my father's signature as he jumps up and trots toward the television with a grin on his face, passing my brother and me in the kitchen.

"Great fuckin' part, guys."

My brother follows my father into the living room. I go to the kitchen to get more iced tea. I hear De Niro bash his head against a stone wall over and over and over, grunting and snarling like a trapped dog. "I'll do it myself," my mother says, sighing. "But you need to know this." She stacks my father's paystubs, gathering crinkled receipts into a pile. If she still smoked in the house instead of sneaking them in the bathroom or on the ride to work, she'd drop her match into the pile, let it burn and see if anyone could interpret her signals. Leaning over the flaming receipts, she'd toss in my father's paystubs, glance at the file cabinet, and decide simply to breathe. Deep inhalations, soft whispers. Her words turn to ash.