The Commute
The Man leaves his apartment, 6:45 am.
He travels by bicycle, West to Fort Lauderdale Airport as he does every Wednesday.
Turns left on Springtree Drive.
Stops, at the corner between W. Atrium and N. University Drive, one block before State Road 817.
Dismounts bike, unloads the worn knapsack from his shoulders.
Glares at the grocery store’s buzzing red neon sign.
Mumbles in a language only he can decipher.
He enters the grocery store, surprised by the crowd.
He wheels the shopping cart down the middle aisle.
The cart, an extension of The Man’s thoughts, his language, his voice.
The shoppers’ carts are in the aisle, already in position and waiting.
But he is faster.
He pushes into the other carts, hard, but not hard enough. He hums a tune to block out the metal colliding, their shrieks, their bellows piercing his ears.
This is a new war, and the shoppers—new enemies.The four-star General contorts his face, flailing his arms to force the enemy to retreat.
Instead, the manager approaches and tells him to disappear.
“What about the bread and milk?” The Man asks.
“Keep it. Now, get out.”
Outside, he looks at his wrist. The black, waterproof watch tells him he is off schedule. The Man rides off; milk and bread still on the ground.
He reaches his final destination, 9:02 am.
Terminal 3: Arrivals.
He waits at the airport terminal, but no one arrives.
He puts the new gold-plated SEIKO watch he bought as a gift for his son-in-law back in his jacket pocket.
He pulls a few photos from his knapsack: shadow images of his three daughters, son-in-law, his seven grandchildren. The Long Island Hi-ranch, the beaches, walking the Akita pups, Sunday night ice cream frappes—all lost.
He descends on an escalator to a darkened place, far away from the bustle of people, the whir of the planes, the P.A announcements, his family.
He remembers that he is thirsty.
The instinct to shift from emotional pain to the mundane is his parachute. A coping mechanism well-honed for survival.
He finds a concession stand and chug-a-lugs a cold ginger ale on the way out.
Point of Impact
The Man pedals home on the highway. A breeze sweeps through his silver hair. He glides, freeing his arms from the handlebars. No voices, only the whoosh of the wind and the sound of the gears spinning under his feet. He does not hear the engine behind him. He does hear the sound of crushing metal. A jolt propels him several feet up in the air. The old General feels shrapnel embed his skin. He wonders whether the value of him in pieces is worth more than the whole. His body slams to the ground. Metal cradles his chest. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t hear the screech of tires as they pull away.
Then, it stops. All of it.
“I” is for Linda…
My relationship with my father is complicated. Complex. Conflicted. With him being schizophrenic, I have spent most of my life reconciling my feelings toward him.
I daydream a lot about floating in the air. A slow, sort of dead man’s float across the sky. This doesn’t make much sense to me because I don’t like planes. Or swimming. I prefer concrete over carpet. Analysis over meditation. So, the floating in the air thing—well that is a little crazy. A contradiction to my nature that feels oddly good.
I was sad and relieved when my youngest sister called on that cold February morning, one week before my 48th birthday. My father had been killed by a hit and run while riding his bicycle.
He was—both my father and my enemy.
Father, Enemy
Father, when he introduced me to EVERYONE as his “beautiful, lesbian, writer, daughter” and my girlfriend as his “daughter-in-law,” even before same sex-marriage.
Father, when he taught us his silly humor and his love for animals. A love that sparked with my first pet, Wally, an “ugly duckling” guinea pig that he brought home from Woolworth’s.
Father, when he took me to work with him. Chevy Impala windows rolled down, my head poking out from the back seat, eyes tearing from the highway heat and the smell of gasoline.
Father, when he coached me and my friends at those lazy Sunday afternoon softball games.
Enemy, when he broke my mother’s nose when he thought we were asleep.
Enemy, when he chased me around the house for a chapstick, which he believed I stole from him.
Enemy, when his moments of lucidity were replaced with days of mental delusions:
Like firing the gardener for cutting holes into the hose.
Like accusing the next-door neighbor of shoveling snow onto our driveway, and then shoveling the snow back onto the neighbor’s driveway.
Like handing out business cards on the street with the name Bruce Wayne.
Like pouring a jug of water over my mother’s head, then after she calls the police, pouring water over his head and telling the police she did it.
Like the dinners beginning with grievances, and ending with shattered plates, thrown cups, broken glass.
Like Wheel of Fortune’s Vanna White speaking to him through the T.V.
Like looking in the mirror and saying over and over: “It’s in my head. It’s in my head.”
Like my father, who is a stampede of one.
I felt my mother’s fear when she said, “I have to pick up your father at the train station.”
I felt that if I left for college, my mother’s life would end before I even finished, so I don’t go.
I felt the danger and even considered murder, sleeping with a knife under my mattress.
I wondered how much jail time I would get for killing him since I was still in high school.
In therapy, the knife is revealed to be a butter knife.
I don’t want to kill my father; I just want to kill the illness.
My Dad’s Apartment
My sister Teri’s plane hadn’t arrived yet so I go to the Police Station by myself. I pick up his belongings: a windbreaker, a worn green knapsack, and a bunch of keys strung together. The keys are heavy and I have no idea why my father would need so many keys or what they might open. I have a strong urge to drop them on the ground. I find it hard to hold them in my hands. The keys both scare and repulse me. I do not want to step into his world. I do not want to be here. But I have to.
My sister meets me at my father’s apartment. The door lock has been removed and in its place there is a hole, which the condo manager blames on our father. We don’t believe this—removing a door lock is not something a paranoid schizophrenic would do, but my father is not here to defend himself. His apartment is filthy: there is a hole-y bare mattress on the bedroom floor, and a worn weight bench and barbell in the living room.
There is no electricity. The fridge is empty and in the Florida heat, a moldy smell lingers in the dark. The countertop and cupboards are blackened and rotting. I breathe in his tainted air, his disease, and I have to leave. We drive to CVS and return with dust masks, gloves, and two flashlights.
There are boxes and papers strewn all over. One of the many keys from the police station unlocks a suitcase in the bedroom closet. Xeroxed copies of handwritten complaint letters from over the years spill out. Grunts and gripes imagined but made real by mailing to various judges, police chiefs, and utility companies. I recognize many of them—having also received Xeroxed copies of my own. I was his designee, a lifetime witness to his many grievances. This was my father’s life.
In the dark living room, on the wall, there is a shrine of us. The pictures are soiled, an effect from the dirt and humidity. With gloves, I pick them up. I want to keep them, but most of the images are too far gone. I take a few and put the rest back. My brave sister is still rummaging through the bedroom. I may be the oldest, but she is now more courageous than I am. I want to leave, but she insists on staying. She is searching for documents, statements, condo papers, and the SEIKO gold-plated watch my father had recently bought for her husband, Scott. My father had told Teri and Scott about the watch in a handwritten letter. In some ways my father was like a child. He couldn’t keep a secret.
We recover the receipt for the SEIKO watch and an Amtrak train ticket he had purchased to visit New York, with a departure date set for the week after he died. A refund from the watch might help reimburse us for the onyx and diamond pinky ring that went missing from the list of items from the police. It was a ring my father had for years and never removed. An extension of him that was invaluable to my sister.
Of the three girls, Teri was closest to my father. He was her tennis coach and her softball coach. I remember one night when she couldn’t sleep, crying, he spent hours playing cards with her until her melancholy had passed.
In my father’s knapsack, we find more pictures. These have retained their original condition having been protected from the elements. The infrequent times I saw my father, I remembered him carrying that knapsack. Photos of nieces, nephews, the triplets, my sister Laurie on her first day at sleep-away camp. First dogs. First vacations.Teri’s wedding.
My mother’s therapist told her that the pictures kept him grounded to earth. To reality.
To us. Even just for a few moments.
Perspectives
“He lived a violent life; he died a violent death.”
– something my mother’s sister said.
“I don’t know what I would have done if it wasn’t for Bobby. He saved my life.”
– something my father’s brother said.
Family Crest
Mental illness, like a twisted sort of family crest, seems embedded within the Kravitz name. My father’s sister Rhoda was the first person that I identified as mentally ill. Though she was married, Rhoda had an imaginary boyfriend named Sal that she would often speak to and dance with while chain smoking L&M cigarettes in the living room. Rhoda’s husband Al was fair-haired, handsome, gregarious, liked to cook lasagna, but he was also violent and regularly beat my aunt. Al was previously arrested for the attempted murder of his first wife, a bit of familial gossip that fascinated me in my teens.
My father loved his older sister, Rhoda.
In my preteen years, there would be these nights, when my Aunt’s psychosis would induce wandering episodes through the streets of Brooklyn. When it happened, my father was the one who Uncle Al called to come find her. My father would drive straight from his new textile company in the Garment District, across the bridge, and canvass the streets of Brooklyn for hours searching for his older sister—sometimes with success, sometimes not. Then he’d take the Belt Parkway all the way back out to our Hi-ranch on Long Island.
I remember one evening:
Eyes open. Alarm clock glares red, 11:30 pm .
Bathroom light is on, door partially ajar.
I peer inside. My mother’s hand is over her nose.
Blood escapes between her fingers, matching the blood drenched towel in the sink. My father, back against the wall, whispers,
“You’re dreaming. Go to sleep.”
The second time I wake up, my mother is in the kitchen, her nose bandaged.
The next day, my father leads a family meeting in the den, my sisters and I on the ugly brown floral couch. He stands in front of the dark TV while my mother hovers in the archway between the den and the adjacent dining room. He tells us that he hit my mother and that it was her fault. He tells us about the long night he spent searching for my wandering aunt, whom he did not find, and my mother badgering him when he returned home. “A simple example of cause and effect,” he says. The meeting goes smoothly. Efficiently. He pauses, turns toward my mother. She repeats what he says, her voice nasally through the bandage, “I should have left your father alone.”
I’m confused.
What part of this is a dream?
The Archives
