chapter one...(part 3)

The Jupiter Symphony blared at a volume the HOA would not approve. The oboe in the second movement, or was it the first, just killed me, the way the note climbed and climbed “rising into the heavens” Mr. French, my music appreciation teacher would say, “You feel it? You feel it?”.

I could tell my dad was feeling it right then. He closed his eyes and smiled. Good, I thought, let Mozart carry you away.

“Why not take up an instrument? You could travel the world performing,” he said, after a bit, turning toward me, surprising me because I hadn’t thought he’d noticed me seated opposite him on the couch.

“Travel the world performing?” I repeated. Had he mixed me up with someone else? Yanni, perhaps?

His mere suggestion brought to mind terror of the third-grade school performance kind: my umbrella jamming, not twirling, as I stomped across the stage in my rubber boots, splashing through blue paper mache puddles; my eighth grade oral report on “Trees” and Margo Strumelbaum in the back row blurting, “I can’t hear you. Can you please speak up!” my voice disappearing like the great glossopteris trees of the South Pole; and just last Sunday, standing in front of a table of six, my heart racing, my forehead glistening with sweat, botching the breakfast specials, topping the Ole Omelets with blueberries and whipped cream.

“The violin, perhaps? Something small, easily transported.”

“Daddy, I don’t play the violin,” I reminded him. It was a minor detail but one I thought he really shouldn’t overlook.

The sun was starting to set. I loved this time of evening in Los Gatos. The hills became tinged with orange and the birds darted through the sky as if on one last blast of flight before retiring to wherever they went at the end of the day. Did birds sleep I wondered as my father continued charting an impossible future for me.

“You played the clarinet. You certainly could pick up the violin. Music is all the same, really, just a matter of learning the positioning.” He was talking to me but gazing at a cookie, rotating it in front of himself like Lear with the skull. A bird flew onto his deck and clasped onto the balcony with its bony claws, correcting its balance with a small flick of its tail.

“Take music classes, I’ll pay for them,” he said and popped the cookie into his mouth. I watched the bird and thought how I could use a tail like that, something that was automatic that kept me upright and balanced, something that was beyond my control that I couldn’t mess up. Its eye was yellow and for a moment it seemed to be staring at me.

Hello little bird, I said to myself.

“Go to Vienna. Now, theres a place to study music.”

Little bird, I said, what am I going to do with myself? Tell me, give me a hint, anything. What the hell, I thought; maybe you had to try anything to figure this world out.

“Although, Prague I hear is quite lovely. Cold though. Maybe not Prague.”

The bird and I stared at one another . It cocked its head pecked under its wing and then flew off without offering me any clues or life suggestions.

I looked over at my dad. He’d piled up a stack of Pepperidge Farm paper cookie cups on the arm rest of the couch. I counted five of them leaning like the Tower of Pisa. I picked up his security guard hat that he’d tossed on the chair. Stupid looking thing that was too large for his head even though he’d sinched the plastic strap to the last hole.

He’d thought the security job would be perfect for him. Within walking distance, just around the corner. Part-time, providing him with a little extra to pad his social security and pension. Outdoors, walking mostly. But it had gone poorly from day one.

Something about Brian, the day manager, saying he had the authority to demand that my dad wear the stupid hat; and my dad telling Brian that “as a senior scientist in the semi-conductor industry for the past thirty years designing the microchips that powered the computers at the 7-Eleven where Brian bought his Big Gulps” that if he didn’t want to wear the damn hat he wasn’t going to.

Or something along those lines. I’d heard about it from Rachel.

I put the hat on my head and felt it loose over my ears. It was the kind of thing truckers wore with plastic mesh and a thick white fabric front with the company name stitched in dark blue lettering: “Allied Security”.

“How’d I look?” I asked turning toward him, running my hand over the brim in a slick cowpoke kinda way.

“Ssh!” he said and stood up and turned the music down. “You hear that?” He walked to the window and peeked out.


“Hear what? " I asked. I heard lots of things, normal things like the far off hum of Highway 17, someone beeping their horn, a kid laughing out by the pool, a lawn mower. Normal mid-summer sounds that should not cause anyone to rush to the window and peek out through the blinds like a crazy person.

But Rachel had warned me about this behavior too.

He got up and walked over to the kitchen window and leaned with his back against the wall, lifting the blind with his pinky. He looked out to the central garden. I did in fact hear something. A weed whacker. The high pitched whine of it like a dentist’s drill was coming from directly below the window, about six feet below.

He leaned his head downward and stared, the hairs of his grey mustache smashed against the window, his breath fogging the glass. I picked up an uneaten potato on the dining room table and looked out from the opposite side of the window. Sure enough one of the condo gardeners was out there trimming the lawn to a perfectly straight edge that the HOA would surely smile upon.

I ate another potato and then another while he continued monitoring the gardener’s activities. Nervous food eating was a bad habit I was always fighting against. Do I really want to eat this I’d ask myself or am I just anxious. Half the time, the answer was “just anxious” but I ate whatever it was anyhow.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. He angled his head left then right looking around the grounds. I followed his gaze. What was he looking for I wondered. I couldn’t see anything that looked like cause for alarm. Sure, things might be better: That woman lifting two bags of groceries from the bottom of her stairs really should be using her legs not her back to lift and maybe I wouldn’t have paired the blue socks with the orange shorts. I did see a carpet, smallish like a bathmat, hanging over the stair railing outside of Condo 54 that was clearly in violation of HOA rules but apart from these things all was in order, all was neatly clipped, clean, well watered, hazy and warm with the glow from a summer’s setting sun.

And yet, still he spied outside his kitchen window like an FBI agent while I reached for another potato, my fourth, and popped it in my mouth.

“Save those,” he said, letting go of the blind and heading off down the hallway toward his study. “We’ll fry them up for breakfast.”

Just what had he been looking for I wondered as I took the bowl of potatoes off the table and placed them in the refrigerator. I cleared our dinner plates and placed them in the sink. Maybe he didn’t like how close the gardener was to his space. Was that it? Did he think the guy was casing the joint? But the man couldn’t even see in the window from where he crouched.

I let the warm water whisk away the scraps of our dinner, returning our plates to their former shiny, non-fishy selves and placed them steaming in the dish rack to dry.
His brain wasn’t like mine. It knew things, endless smart things, that no matter how he tried – and oh how he tried, with salt and pepper shakers representing electrons and photons – I never could grasp what he tried so hard to share: “but wait, I thought you said the butter knife was the earth’s gravitational pull?”

So it was possible that the gardener was not simply the gardener but something else? Wasn’t it, I asked myself.

chapter one....(part 2)

Lithium is just a kind of salt, I thought, as I tipped the shaker upside down and watched the salt crystals coat the the steaming potatoes. I glanced over at my dad as he sifted through the mail picking up each envelope and tossing it aside like a card dealer. He'd come home and tossed his mesh baseball cap, the one he was required to wear for his security job at the Los Gatos Inn, onto the chair. He'd sat down, then got up. I tried to look efficient in the kitchen, useful and handy to have around the house -- his house -- basically because I was sensing my presence was upsetting him. He turned on the radio in the living room. The volumn was up high from the last time he'd listened, when he had been in a happier mood perhaps. "Capitol Expressway Ford! Your number one sales team in South San -" He switched it off. I heard the weight of him, which wasn't much, maybe one-sixty, fall and sink into his leather armchair, the one that matched the couch that I'd been warming. I could hear the air puffing out as he hit the cushions. I couldn't see him from the kitchen but I imagined him sitting there, with his arms resting on the armrests, staring straight ahead, looking like the Lincoln memorial in Washington. I wondered if he'd been messing with his dose again. My mother said he had, the other day when I called to ask if she still needed me to take her to her eye appointment.

"He shouldn't mess with that stuff," my mother had said. "He should listen to his doctors. Do what they tell him," she'd said.

I thought this was funny coming from her. She was always bitching and moaning about the doctors she was seeing. The last time she went to Dr. Sadesh about the blinking in her right eye that she couldn't control, she said said they'd "gone at it" and when I'd asked her what exactly she'd meant by that, she'd said he'd walked out of the examining room in the middle of something she'd been telling him, "without even saying goodbye," she said as if they'd been lovers.

"Maybe the doctors are giving daddy too much," I'd suggested. "Maybe he knows better than them."
"You know you're starting to sound just like him," she'd said. "He always knew better than everyone. Look where it's got him," she add.

And just where are you, I wanted to respond but didn't.

The last time he fiddled with his dosage, he messed up his balance and tripped on the bottom step outside his front door. He complained to Home Owner's Association about the rickety bottom step which he claimed was the reason for his fall. "Yo see this," he showed me the step, prodding it with his foot, pushing at it repeatedly with the rubber tip of his tennis shoes to prove his point. I really I couldn't see any movement in the bottom step and I told him so, but i did wonder where he'd been walking in those shoes to get them covered in mud.

I heard him sigh several times so I knew something inside of him had shifted from the day before. I knew I would have to stay out of his way, try not to bug him, be quiet and let this thing rumble inside him and move on, which it always did in time.

"Daddy's taking Lithium, you know," Rachel had told me when I arrived in Los Gatos. "I was looking for nail clippers and found the medicine bottle."
"Don't you have your own nail clippers?" I'd resonded cooly.
"What sort of question is that?" she'd asked. "Did you hear what I just told you?"
I had heard what she'd said but I wanted to deprive her of the thrill of breaking the news, since she'd uncovered it during one of her frequent investigative snoops through other people's belongings.

"Daddy, dinner's ready," I said. I set the bowl of potatoes on the table, then placed the steamed green beans in a bowl next to the potatoes. I opened up the two foil-wrapped salmon steaks and put them onto our plates. How had my mother done it, cooking every night for a family of six. And she had not just simply steamed everything. She'd used spices and recipes, timers and measuring utensils. Still, I allowed myself a small degree of pride as I looked upon the meal I had layed out before us. I could steam food with the best of them, I thought, and then threw open the kitchen window as I'd fogged up the place like a sauna.

When I didn't hear him get up, I poked my head around the wall to see what he was doing, but he wasn't there. I walked down the hall to the spare room that he'd made into his study, the kind he'd always wanted, but never had with four kids. His back was toward me as he stood holding a magazine and stared down at the pages. On his desk was a stack of Semiconductor Manufacturing magazines. My brother's floor lamp in the corner, with the shade still singed like a toasted marshmallow. On the desk was a photo of him and Epi in Mexico. His arm around her, on his head a straw hat like the locals wore.

"Daddy? Dinner's ready."
"Yes, yes," he said but he didn't look up immediately, then he tossed the magazine aside and followed me into the kitchen.

“Watch out for bones,” I said, sounding like my mother as I handed him his plate, even though I was pretty certain that if he were to suck down the salmon filet like an oyster he would survive; these were, afterall, Lunardi filets. He was seated to my right and didn’t turn toward me when I spoke so I had to look for meaning in the slightest facial twitch on the one side of his face. He was eating the potatoes which i discovered were a little undercooked in the center, so I was cautious not to interpret any excessive movement in his jaw to anything more than applied pressure.

I sensed from the way he held his fork aloft in front of his mouth a few moments before eating that he was thinking about something keenly. What was it, I wondered. Something about semiconductors he'd just read in his magazine? Or, maybe Epi. Did he miss her I wondered. I certainly did. She was a calming influence in the condo, sitting in her spot on the couch embroidering, writing letters to her sister in Mexico.

“That Susan next door,” I said to fill the silence. “She questioned me about the hose,” I said. His right nostril, I thought, flared slightly at the mention of "hose," making me immediately regret this line of conversation. Why did I simply not shut up, let him eat in silence? I had an awful self-sabotaging streak that revealed itself like some kind of reverse darwin effect: making myself standout when I should really curl up and quietly play dead.

"They're building a case. That's what they're doing," he said. "They want me out of here."

I was completely on his side regarding the home owner’s association. Their relentless postings wore on one's nerves. No swimsuits, towels or other items shall be hung over balconies. No bird feeders or windchimes on balconies. No Alcholic beverages by the pool. No walking in swimsuits outside of the pool area. No car repairs in parking areas. Do NOT remove books, magazine or other items from the game room -- as if anyone really wanted to remove ten-year old copies of Ladies Home Journal magazines.

"I think they just want their hose back, Daddy," I said affecting a light and breezy non-Oliver Stone-ish tone, that I hope would nip this paranoia in the bud.

I mean it wasn't as if he broke their rules intentionally; he simply lost track of them in the business of living his life spontaneously. "Yes," my mother would say to this, "and with not a thought to anyone else but himself."

So on his way to the pool wearing just his trunks with a towel slung over his shoulder, he might fancy a glass of wine and go and get himself one. And perhaps after bathing, he might toss his wet suit and towel over the balcony to dry, and consider it a good time to replace the side panel on his Toyota. And he might leave his tools scattered across his parking space while he went upstairs to make himself a sandwich only to become distracted by the sight of the birds flitting in and out of his birdfeeder and the peaceful sound of the wind through his windchimes.

He had other things on his mind, and the HOA rules, like weeds under his feet, simply got trampled upon as he set out to smell the roses


"Have you been looking for work?" He said apropos of nothing. He grabbed the loaf of bread i had placed in the center of the table and instead of using the knife layed upon the cutting board -- very french, very Gormet magazine, i thought -- to cut a slice, he tore off a hunk wringing the neck of that poor loaf like a doomed farm chicken.

"Work?" I said. Had he not seen me walking in the front door on a Sunday afternoon, after the morning rush, wearing an apron splattered like a Jackson Pollock with ketchup, mustard and grease? Had he even wondered where I was going early in the morning on a Saturday with a kerchief on my head and comfortable shoes on my feet? Had he not noticed the new spray of acne across my chin and forehead that were clearly work-related, last appearing in the summer of 79 during my Der Wienerschnitzel employment period.

“Why Daddy,” I said, “I have a job at the Broken Egg. You know that.”

“Yes, Yes, that's right,” he said. “Indeed you do.” The corner of his right lip turned up for a moment and then dropped. I had hoped that my waitressing job at the Broken Egg would prove that I was not just a bum on his couch, mooching off him. I was earning my way in the world, learning to play with others. Clearly, he thought I was wasting my time there.

“Editing,” he said after a moment's silence. “Can’t you do something like that? Use your brain a bit, eh?"

“I suppose, “ I said although I found I wasn't so fond of using my brain at work. It got me into trouble and messed me up. I overthought simply tasks. After three weeks at the Broken Egg, I still had yet to figure out how to ring up a half-order of country fries so was handing them out for free left and right. I found I worked best when I worked on on auto-pilot, behind the scenes, like at Der Weinerschnitzels wrapping Chili cheese dogs: bun, weiner, cheese, chili. To be quite honest, I would have prefered to be one of the bus boys or the dishwashers at the Broken Egg, in the background, unseen -- clear, wipe, set.