The Draft House 1

Here's a piece I'm working on

“How to Handle Broken Glass” 

Just outside of Washington, DC in Bethesda, where one can see the white peaks of monuments like snowy mountain caps through flat suburban houses, I pull up to Riverview Psychiatric Center. I spot my two younger siblings, Joe and Juniper by a row of Peace lilies lining the concrete walk to the facility, and flip a coin before I decide to begin my parking lot descent toward them. Joe greets me with an awkward square hug that almost knocks me over sideways. He has a glorious round pot belly that is accentuated by the sleeveless argyle sweater vest he wears over a white stained undershirt. He’s always been really quiet and anti-social. Juniper rolls the tips of her fingers, in a wave like a crowd at a ballgame. She stubs a cigarette out with her other hand in a pebble stone tower and I notice a pink scar on her lip from an old piercing.

We were all given “J” names, a trend that has been passed down for generations in my family. According to dear old dad, it was tough to come up with something fresh, hence, Juniper, the third of the Jones clan. Me? I’m not a J. I go by my middle name, Burke, but James Senior who we are here to see today, was not happy about that. At a young age it was pretty clear I was no Junior, or Junior Junior for that matter. Being a Junior leaves one vulnerable to all sorts of nicknames, mostly Jay, or Jay-Jay, or worse yet Jay-Jay Junior.

“So family meeting?” Juniper says.

“We should take a picture,” I say.

“I’m just glad mom’s not here to see this,” Juniper replies. I picture my thin mother, always in self-depriving mode on a cabbage soup or beet or toast diet. She used to keep walnuts in a ziplock bag in the freezer and pop two or three a day like vitamins, as if they were all the nourishment she needed. My pant-suit wearing mother had an elegant long slender nose, bangs that covered her bulgy eyes, and highlighted hair, big with hairspray. She wore too much mascara, so it clumped her lashes. “You have to look the part to get the part,” she would say. Her expression was often neutral and she had a sour smile, with wrinkles all around her thin lips. When she pouted, her mouth looked like a spoke wheel.

“Shall we?” Juniper skips and lets her arm lead the way to the lobby doors.

“Sure Junie, hold on a sec,” I respond.

I touch the coin in my pocket, and ponder giving it a flip, but to avoid their judgment, I decide to look out for a sign instead. There is a man out front wearing hospital scrubs, a grey hoody, and sneakers with no shoelaces. He may be a patient being discharged. If he lights his cigarette with matches, we all go in. If he uses a lighter, I wait outside. I squint from the sun and see his glary haloed figure striking a matchbook. We proceed to the sterile white lobby together. I know Joe and Juniper would have followed my directives either way. I have a natural way of getting people to do what I wanted, something as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been cautious about- “Am I turning people on to my agenda, yet again, or is this what they really want to do?”

In my old neighborhood, we invented a maze of a bike race. We would Velcro up our high tops- and June with her fluorescent handle bar tassels and spoke wheel beads- and take off from the very top of the street, ride past Mr. Ray’s scary looking shedding blind old Husky with milky blue eyes, cross over the street for the dip and jump in the pothole in front the patio donning hunter green siding. Next we’d ride straight up Ms. Steely’s newly paved steep driveway and loop back down. We rarely left our own beloved Steinford Road, to those streets parallel to us, and we considered ourselves very fortunate to have the street with the dead end. Our fate in friendships was sealed by proximity. Me, Joe, Juniper and the other neighborhood kids, the mountain bike crew. Down at the dead end, where no adult was watching, private things would happen. And to us there was another universe over there on Planet Ferndale Street, where the kids were foreigners with presumably snottier noses and tattered clothes. They didn’t come over to us either, except for Alexander Lesser, who was older than me, but smaller, something that didn’t quite compute to me back then.

In our bike race one day, fourteen year-old Alex was taking the lead. I was so focused on catching up that I felt a brief moment of elation when I made some headway due to Alex being catapulted from his sea green mountain bike face first to the cement. He had run in to a nearly invisible clothing line in Ms. Steely’s driveway that caught him by the neck and flipped him. I carried him home fireman style, but Alex never came back, and our moms stopped chatting by the bus stop.

 Later that day, James Senior cornered us by the unkempt bunk bed in our room. His brown raccoon eyes, with heavy dark circles, were rabid, and his olive skin glistened. He always seemed to have tiny dewdrops of sweat on his upper lip, nose and forearms. His facial hair was so thick it grew in dark green like pine needles. I was taking the brunt of his fury, being the oldest. His jowly cheeks shook as he screamed. My pale, skinny mother was out in the hallway, just lurking, her glacial eyes peering in to the bedroom from time to time. Inevitably, we’d see the back of her blond mushroom bob disappear in retreat through the door frame. Sometimes Dad would scold us for these risky behaviors and then beat us worse than any bike accident could do, saying we were “lucky.” “Lucky?” I thought, “I saved Matt, by myself.” From then on I went by my middle name, Burke. I must have been about ten. I stepped in front of Joe before the first smack came down and Dad said, “You want a backhand?”

***

Back in the lobby, a skeletal nurse in Tweety Bird scrubs, donning a straight bob, holds up a fuchsia manicured finger with pointy nails, indicating we should wait there a moment. Joe shifts his weight and tugs at his grey argyle sweater.

“Joe,” I turn to him, “do you think dad is ready to go?” as we all sit down in the pastel colored wait room chairs, with smooth lacquered wooden arm rests. Joe slouches and let’s his head hang low as he shrugs and mumbles, “I don’t know.”

The lamp in the lobby wait room flickers. Two flicks on, one flick off, two flicks on, one flick off. I turn it off and back on again. If it flickers again within 10 seconds, I will enter Dad’s unit with Joe and Juniper.

A group of two male nurses and one female are leaning at the nurse’s station chatting. One says, “I got this omega oil from Norway. ‘Sposed to make me smarter.” He looks like he is from the Philippines and he has an accent.

            “Walnut is all the omega you need,” the taller male responds. “I challenge you to take five walnut a day.”

            The woman stands up straight and states that the walnuts from China are chock full of chemicals. “They have zero regulations there,” she says.

            “Oh because you are American, you know everything. I am just as American as you. You not Native American,” says the short one.

            “Excuse me, I was born here. You were not!” She responds.

            “American or not” the taller one says, “your brain gets smaller when you age. The blood vessels becomes crooked. Can not be prevented” he says pointing and thrusting a finger up and down, and then he nods his head in the direction of the unit entrance.

             “That’s why I don’t eat no sugar. And I lift weight,” states the shorter Asian man.

            He shrugs, “Meh, eventually the brain will stroke anyhow, muscle or no muscle. You can be big and strong in body, but not the mind.”

            “That’s why there’s God,” the Black woman says raising her eyebrows and pointing up to the heavens. “If God wants to take you, that’s it, BAM,” she says and claps her hands in his face.

            The light stops flickering, and the lamp glows a furious orange. I wait five extra seconds, just in case. June is suggesting that we go out to see a documentary after the visit, “you know something Morgan Freeman would narrate,” and I jump in and state that I will wait in the lobby for them.

            “Just do a different one, try another thingy,” she protests.

            “June, it’s final,” I say and place my hands together as if in prayer against my lip and under my nose. Joe pulls Juniper by her gothic white sleeves, and walks with her, their arms entwined. She staggers slightly behind, and is shaking her head at me as they walk past the psychiatric nurses still huddled in conversation.

 “God is busy with other things, like thugs and violence or Mayor DiBlasio election up in New York City,” the shorter male states. The taller male nurse pushes a shelled walnut toward them, as if they would not be able to see it unless it was gyrating seductively in front of them.

 “Walnut look just like a brain too.”

            While waiting, I flip through an Architectural Digest Magazine, covering mainly futuristic furniture, exotic getaways, and ecofriendly inventions such as a boat that floats around the world covered in foliage and solar paneled sky scrapers with plants on top. I am lost in thought about how one day there will be whole cities underground, a second earth built above us on roofs, when I come across an article on 18^th and 19^th Century homes in Salem, Massachusetts.

            Our home, built in 1865, was more like an old creaky manor from Massachusetts than a typical plastic siding paneled Maryland home. It was tall, square, and flat in front. We inherited it from our great-uncle, who had no children. Our home had four stories with a functional basement that my father set up for playing pool and darts, and hosting drinking nights with his cop work buddies.  My mother could often be seen walking up and down the winding stairs to the laundry room. She would practically scale the walls to stay out of the way of my father and his officer friends, who would huff in frustration if she spoke.  “She just wants attention,” he would say to his friends and then to her, “No, I don’t want no sandwich woman, I already told you!” And his friends would cackle.

The attic was also functional, and my father had a dusty twin bed as well as a large flat table and stacks of paper strewn about. He had dozens of model trains, planes, and cars on another large solid oak table. I remember the oily chemical smell of the decals and glue. Sometimes my father slept up there. We were never allowed up. On braver days one or two of us would pop our heads up the hatch like ground hogs, to peek and then retreat with celerity.

Despite this ostracizing rule, we had a lot of fun exploring our home’s “secret passages.” These were storage closets and pantries that connected in strange ways via creaky stairs, from one pantry space to another and even to different floors. We could go in to a small closet in the kitchen and follow a set of stairs to a door in an upstairs hallway. This made for elaborate spy games, and especially complicated rounds of hide-and-go seek.

One time I accidentally entered the attic through one of these secret stairwells and found my father at his desk, the ceiling so low and slanting that its wooden beams almost touched his bald head. He was licking an envelope, when he looked up and saw me. My eyes went wide, as he lunged toward me like a wildebeest, and screamed. I was out the door before the papers that he had shoved from his desk had landed.

We had a clawfoot bathtub that was fascinating to me. I used to sit in it and soak up the soapy, warm water. I would slip in a trance and pretend the tub was a lion carrying me away. Often I’d be jolted from a peaceful inquisitive moment like this, to Dad’s jarring entrance, slamming doors and shouting. This time he yanked me from the tub by pressure points on my spongy naked body. I’m still scared sometimes when I hear a doorknob turn. It’s just a strange conditioned response like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I remember Joe kicking our taut dog, round like a traffic drum, in the gut and he skidded sideways down the wooden hallway, like a shuffleboard piece.

            My dad taught us to make paper airplanes of various models. He wrapped us in a sepia feather down blanket and carried us around the house singing, “Come fly with me.” He read us bedtime stories, like “The Fir Tree” by Hans Christian Andersen. He tossed us in the air and caught us by the armpits. He played airplane hoisting us effortlessly with the thrust of his thighs. He gave us hot cocoa with small marshmallows, and if we got up, he’d sneak larger ones in. We’d squeal at the magical transformation. He painted ordinary rocks gold and sent us, unwittingly, on a treasure hunt following a burnt and coffee stained homemade map. “We’re rich!” June shouted when she found the metal tackle box buried in our yard.

Dad taught me and Joe to ride a bike and carve shapes in wood. We helped him build and paint a tree house in the backyard amidst sprouts of bamboo. He taught us to fish. I remember the pop of a worm’s flesh as we stuck a hook through it, still wriggling. I remember feeling starved and eating kettle cooked potato chips, despite my stomach turning at the thought of having worm gut remnants on my fingers. I remember thinking I was not a man for feeling this way. For a discontent and overlooked Juniper he got an easy bake oven, and brought home cotton candy from Hockey games. She stopped complaining as the gifts continued. She seemed to have convinced herself that this was enough.

Our backyard had an above-ground oval pool made of plastic resin, a rickety wooden swing set, a tire swing from a large oak that later had to be cut down due to root rot, a full size trampoline, and the tree house all built with a piebald assortment of plastic, aluminum, rope, wood, plaster, paint, and nails. It was like a Lego land constructed from varied box sets and colors, and no manual.

We didn’t think twice when our father would line us up out on the porch and belt out instructions, like a drill sergeant, on how to hide in case of a break in. We’d do a walk-through in the house as he pointed out numerous hiding nooks, in pantries, storage bins, and coat closets. He said in a desperate moment we could hide under the bed, and pull the cover down over the side to be fully concealed. I secretly hoped for a home invasion so we would have a chance to prove how very clever we were, hiding under the bed with a phone strewn through the living room and in to the closet, whispering to a 911 emergency responder. How I longed to outsmart a burglar.

            “When you grow up, you should hide your wallet in the popsicle box in the freezer,” he would say, “And carry two wallets at all times, one fake and one real. In case you get robbed, you can hand over the fake one. And put a note in it that says, ‘Haha, got you sucker.’ Just remember to run away before he sees it.” We wholly believed that his post-it notes and ideas strewn about the attic were elaborate and brilliant schemes for something fabulous and important. It is only clear now how paranoid he was, and often teetering on the verge of breaking. It’s like realizing that Pee-Wee Herman and Barney are not the beloved characters they play on TV, and that the evidence of their perversions was there all along. “I love you, you love me,” and Pee-wee, come on.

            Dad played an imaginary game with us “Good Dad, Bad Dad,” he called it. We would turn a light on and off and he would feign being nice proper Dr. Jekyll, or raging and delirious Hyde. He was acting, and we never knew which personality we’d get. It was an exhilarating rush to run from him playing a hulk-like “Hyde,” only to reach a safe haven light switch, to turn him back to sweet, soft-spoken Jekyll. You could almost envision him wearing a dignified pair of round wire-rimmed glasses. He takes Lithium now for rapid mood shifts.

             “Hey remember that time you were going to buy a 31 gallon storage bin so you could bathe in your tiny New York apartment. Why did you even move there?” Juniper punches my shoulder and I leap.

“June!” I scream. “You scared me. I’m reading this.” I hold up my rolled up magazine above her head, and feel my nostrils flare. She flinches, and I snap to, and give her a playful tap on her shoulder.

 “Oh, sorry, Dad just brought it up in there and I thought it was funny,” she says. Joe has his hand over his mouth and I can tell from his eyes, he is smiling.

“How’d it go?” I ask.

            She tells me that he seems better. “You know he’s still pissed. He talked about how they have him locked up in there like McMurphy, and what not, the usual rant.”

I know the rant. He’s always glorified free spirit types, Jack Nicholson, Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, any 70’s classic rock band: “Don’t ever get tied down by a conniving woman, like your mother. A pretty little woman can steal your soul,” he would warn.

            “And,” I respond, “You think he’ll keep taking his meds?”

            Joe looks at June, who doesn’t respond and begins to twirl and pick at the hair on the side of her head. She plucks a few strands, looks at them, and drops them.

            “What?” I ask. I should have gone in with these two.

            “He was doing one of his funny muscle man poses. We were all laughing.” I can picture my father’s sinewy arms flexing through a hospital shirt, engaging the visitor room with his gregarious humor.

 “Ok, so what’s the problem?” I say, feeling my neck tingle and grow hot.

 “When he flexed his shirt rode up….” She slowly peels a long piece of skin from her ring finger with her mouth.

“And, what?” I throw my hands up and rise.

            “His fly was down.”

“So. The fuck. What.” I respond, leaning toward her and feeling my arms tense at my sides.

 “Jesus, Burke, sorry I said anything.”

“No, please enlighten me June, who knows everything.”

“Burke, are you kidding me? Don’t you remember how he’d walk through the grocery store that way, fly down all exposed, completely oblivious. Or answer the door for a deliveryman, without thinking to cover himself? I just think it might mean something, that’s all.”

            “Or,” I respond, lips clenched tightly, “it could mean nothing. You said he’s better,” I said pointing my finger in her face. “Joe,” I say turning to him, “Speak!”

            Joe starts to leave all hunched over, and then turns back around, his closed hand outstretched toward me. I just stare at him bewildered. When he opens his hand, it is shaking. He has a coin in his palm, and is pushing it at me, like a pulsing heart, or a subway beggar trying to get me to feed his tattered change cup.

***

Back at my place, I’m thinking about how today was so different from my usual routine. The curtain is moving in the wind and I imagine a creature reaching toward me in the shadows. I’m not easily spooked, but the silence is unnerving. There’s usually at least a few mini vans driving through the night to pick up the last lingering prostitutes on this block. I had actually been thinking about getting a gun for the apartment. I’m not going to let some thug get the best of me. Just as I'm replaying the evening, appraising if I locked the front door when I came in, I hear a thud and glass shatter.

My guard dog, Frodo, a stiff old cairn terrier, with fiery red hair like dancing flames, does not move- he is content asleep huffing and sprawled out on his mat. I am a little disappointed in him as I plod past, while he puffs curt breaths from his snout in a dream world. I peek out my bedroom door and see what's left of a wine glass- it’s stem and glass bits, sprinkled about the square, grey tiles of my kitchen floor. The cutting board tipped, knocking the wine glass to the ground from the dish rack. Groggy, drunk, and shoeless, I creep around the shattered glass and sweep.

Frodo approaches and sniffs at the air. I snap my fingers and point him to the living room. I remember the way my mom used to shoo us away, similarly, in such a panic that I felt punished. My tender three year old pink toes, “piggies” she called them, could not handle a piece ingrained. My feet are hardened and calloused now, like a dried out orange rind. I have dealt with broken glass plenty of times before. I know how to tread lightly looking for slight reflections on the tile. It could even feel good, to step on a piece, the jagged sharp bit stinging and burning as it enters me. If I accidentally step on glass, I call June and Dad goes home. If I don’t, he stays. Once I had a sharp sliver in my calloused heel for three days before it worked it’s own way out.

Extra details/ background:

June has a pink scar on her lower lip from an old piercing and her left ear dons a large swollen keloid. She has a small round nose that crinkles when she smiles, and her bottom lip is thinner than her upper lip, perhaps more pronounced due to her full fat cheeks. Juniper smiles revealing pink gums and small Chiclet size teeth. She has small round narrow set blue eyes, and too much black eyeliner. Juniper is small framed, but doughy and soft. She is striving to be an artist and has been working on a sticker line. She draws about two dozen unicorns daily, in various poses under mystical objects like rainbows, hearts, and dewdrops. I am certain that her year of raving and Ecstasy contributed to this venture.

Joe is a large solid guy, bigger than me with paws for hands. He’s rather hairy too, sprouting kinky hairs from his knuckles to his toes. Joe has large blue eyes that are straight at the top and round on the bottom so they look like half-moons. He has a glorious round pot belly that is accentuated by the sleeveless argyle sweater vests he often wears over a white undershirt. The hair on his head is curly and thinning, and he has eczema around his neck and ears, leaving rough dark splotches. He is less forthcoming about his career path than June, but I assume he is living off mom’s trust since he rarely leaves his apartment- the apartment in Bethesda that she also bought him. He says he’s working on his music, and when I last visited, I remember a dusty music sheet or two on a cold metal stand. His bow and violin slouch lazily in a corner.

            Dad’s checks say “James the Giant Peach.” Or “James the Great!”