When Fulton Dunn received notification in his morning mail that the Post Office was holding a letter with postage due he squinted at the card for a while, wondering vaguely who didn’t know what a stamp cost these days, then stuffed it into his shirt pocket and forgot about it. He slumped in his customary place in the breakfast nook cupping the morning’s third coffee between his palms for its warmth and stared at the empty chair across from him. The newspaper, that he wouldn’t have remembered reading if he’d thought about it, scattered its words and grainy photographs over the tabletop.
Weeks had passed this way. Months. He hadn’t been to work since the accident, didn’t know, or even wonder, if he still had a job. Earnest acquaintances had rallied for a while but now it was just Frankie who would stop by with a six-pack some evenings to watch a game. And it suited him – both the being dropped by that sorry collection of weekday vipers come Sunday Good Samaritans and the quiet company of May’s little brother.
It was a short walk to the corner for milk, corn flakes, and vodka, and, if it were sunny, he’d sometimes sit across the street in the park for a few hours and a couple Marlboros, an addiction he’d once enjoyed and thought he might again. He paid the bills when they arrived and gazed without interest at the healthy balance on his bank statements, its accumulation a pointless endeavor like so many others. Health and well-being were for another time.
But there had been another time and part of him remembered those days when he squinted into the morning mirror to brush his teeth. Many years in which he’d never have dreamed he’d have all this grey scruff covering his face, his eyes bagged out from booze; hair, what was left of it, scraggly and lusterless down over his collar. He knew that behind the closed doors of his walk-in closet were arrayed, each in a plastic sheath from the cleaners, two dozen crisp white shirts, at least as many striped and solid colored ones, six pin-striped, three piece suits, two tuxedos, half a dozen sports jackets, two silk smoking jackets, at least thirty pairs of tailored slacks, countless sweaters, cashmere, angora, whatever had struck his fancy. On the tie rack beside the mirror hung some two hundred neckties, arranged chromatically, and on the elevated rack below were eight calf-skin patent leather black, leather-soled shoes, as many tasseled loafers, and five pairs of cowboy boots, two of snakeskin, one alligator. And, of course, he’d had the life to match, a thirty-seventh-floor glass corner office, a silver Porsche Boxster, three hours a week with his personal trainer, standing weekly appointments with his masseuse and hair dresser, and last but not least, his beautiful, witty, elegant wife, May.
His parents hadn’t named him Tom, Dick, or Harry. He wasn’t William, or Tony, or Chuck. They’d named him for success: Fulton. Always Fulton, even to his childhood friends. His family hadn’t been rich. On the contrary, his father was a postal clerk and his mother a seamstress, but he’d never worn a tattered jacket or a shirt with a patched elbow. His jeans were always creased in front by his mother’s iron, his nails clipped and clean. From his twelfth birthday until this last year he was sure he’d never been seen on the street with a hair out of place. He thought this, slouched on the park bench, with disparagement and self-loathing. Fucking snotty tight-assed son-of-a-bitch. Mr. Perfect. Mr. Achievement. Never missed a day of school, never flunked a test, never even had a fucking filling! Mr. Perfect Smile.
One day, as he transferred wet laundry from the washer to the dryer he saw that it was covered in lint, and, after a brief search, found the remains of the card from the Post Office. The next day, rather than sit in the park, he queued half an hour for the letter, which turned out to have no stamp and no return address but his in the recognizable sloping scrawl of Sarah, his daughter. Sarah, sixteen, no seventeen he realized as he shambled homeward remembering her birth, thus her birthday, which he’d missed some weeks before.
He’d been there, of course, and seen her little package emerge, not into the world but out of the world, as Alan Watts liked to say, and not with a video camera to record but with hands and voice to comfort and share. It was a safe harbor, that memory, and he stayed buoyed in it for some moments, but like all harbors it was joined, inevitably, to the terror of the open sea. He drifted to his bench in the park and sat clutching his arms about his chest while the newsreel of Sarah unwound within his skull. Early words, earlier steps, plaited hair and white socks skipping, first piano solo, black velvet, up on the big stage, swimming, the three of them at the seaside. Rapture, her pony, on her tenth birthday, the ride home in a black-and-white for shoplifting, still pre-teen, then all those pimply-faced boys. He and May began to fight about parenting, he wanting to rein her in, May arguing a little, protected sex wasn’t bad, nor a toke on a Saturday night. Fulton began drinking, not wanting to know, and during that critical year he just wasn’t there.
Date rape one month, the next she is rescued by the cops stumbling stoned and naked in a downtown alley among jeering adolescents and winos. His perfect package delivered home to him in a blanket. His response: drunken rage – rage at her, at May, at the school, the streets, the insolent policemen questioning his parenting skills. He bought a gun. May quit her job, pulled Sarah out of school and took her to a detox center in California for two months, then only weeks back and she overdosed on May’s sleeping pills. That scared her, being minutes from death, and things calmed down for a while. She went back to school, May shepherding her to and from, then Fulton found cocaine under her mattress and the rage returned.
He and May were screaming at each other that night when he stormed into the bathroom and found Sarah slumped unconscious on the toilet, crack cocaine spilling onto the floor. He scooped her up and ran to the car, laid her out in the back seat while May got the keys and scrambled in on the driver’s side. Fulton tore open the car door and insisted he drive. May refused, calling him a drunk, and he struck her then shoved her across to the passenger seat. He’ll never forget the look in her eyes. As he tore down the street leaning on the horn May turned to tend to Sarah, to brush the hair from her face, he supposed, something innocuous and useless, but necessary. They were doing sixty when Fulton missed the turn and slammed into a parked police car. May was thrown with terrible, bone-crushing force backwards against the windshield from where she slumped and leaked out through the hole where the door had been. When Fulton gained consciousness under police guard in the county hospital he was informed that Sarah had been saved but he hadn’t seen her since, custody given over to May’s sister Ellen that very night.
Fulton slid a finger under the flap of the envelope and pulled out a scrap of paper. Two words: I’m pregnant. He let it slip away and it fluttered into a flowerbed.
Deep within him the old rage began to boil. Fucking Ellen. Fucking rehab center. Probably one of those cozy care workers had gotten to her, or the janitor, the night watchman. He felt his jaw clench and his gut tighten. He remembered his pistol, still loaded and tucked under the mattress at the foot of the bed. Sons of bitches, every one of them. Then the slip of white, still held in a clutch of marigolds caught his eye and the breath went out of him. Maybe she was happy for the first time in years. Maybe she was in love and wanted this child. Could this be a sign of health? Of normalcy? Why had she written him, and why like that, so cryptic, no stamp, like a message in a bottle tossed into the sea? Casting a seed into a windstorm wondering if it would find fertile ground? Not asking anything, but vaguely hoping… hoping… what? That her only parent might give a shit? Might care to know? Could this be a plea for help, however timid? Forgiveness? Could it be forgiveness, or the first step in that direction?
Fulton had been ordered to stay clear of her, not by the courts but by Ellen, and he’d obliged. They both needed recovery time, he figured. Still, from Frankie he knew where she was and her general condition, so the next day he stopped by the corner store for a mixed spray of spring flowers in a plastic wrap and caught the Eighth Street bus across town. He’d lost his driving privileges after the accident and on principle preferred public transportation to cabs, but the bouquet made him feel a little foolish, like a kid on his first date or something.
He wished he’d brought a magazine to read, something to take his mind off what he was doing, what he hadn’t done. Instead his eyes wandered to the advertisements above the windows across from him. DARE to keep your kids off drugs, said one. Another showed a young man, obviously pregnant, beside a girl: It takes two to conceive and two to raise a child. Acknowledge your responsibilities. He wondered when he’d stopped acknowledging his.
He got off the bus and, on an impulse, went into a café. He ordered a glass of water for the flowers and a coffee for himself. What did he feel for Sarah? Was it only obligation? Well, he didn’t feel much of that, actually, he’d been so angry and disappointed in her for so long, and then Ellen had relieved him of whatever shreds remained. He supposed it was parental love. Was that different from love, the love he’d had for May? He suddenly realized that, for many years, it had been obligation that had driven him to whatever care he’d given Sarah, not love, because they were opposites. You weren’t obliged to one you loved, you just acted in the best interest of the other out of love. Where obligation and duty began love ended. Had he felt duty, responsibility, towards May? Well, some, he admitted. Always. Responsibility for her happiness. What were the wedding vows? To love and to cherish. Nothing about responsibility. What a fool he’d been. Well, with obligation and responsibility gone, all that was left was love and maybe a chance to start again, and not for Sarah, but for himself.
He walked the few blocks to the rehab center where Frankie had told him Sarah was living, but he found she’d checked out a week before, returned to her aunt’s house. That made it more difficult, but, buoyed by a new conviction, he caught another bus to the suburbs and an hour later, the freesia wilting in his sweating hand, he rang Ellen’s doorbell.
Through the screen door May’s sister endowed him with the tight, disapproving look of a spinster, her thin, pale lips pursed and eyes in a near-sighted squint. I told you to stay away, her voice was nails on a blackboard. I have stayed away, he said, and now I’m here. Fulton held up the flowers. For my daughter. Well, I didn’t expect they were for me. I suppose Frankie told you. Fulton shook his head. No, she did. Wrote me a letter. Did she now? That child’s life is one indiscretion after another. Must have got her brains from your side of the family. She hesitated, glaring at him, appraising him from his scuffed brown shoes to his uncut hair. Then abruptly she let go of the door and stepped backwards. Well, I suppose you have to come in, if she invited you. Ellen retreated a few more steps into the hallway leaving the door open then turned into the living room. Fulton opened the screen door and followed. Ellen stood alone in the middle of a musty, but somehow, comfortably crowded room with her arms folded beneath her breasts. You look older, uglier, downright disreputable. She wrinkled her powdered nose, and I believe you smell. Fulton held her gaze. Where’s Sarah? You murdered Sarah’s mother, my only sister, you drunken bastard. I can’t imagine why I’m even speaking to you. Then don’t, Ellen. Don’t speak to me. It would be my preference. Just take me to my daughter. Of course it would be your preference, you selfish, ungrateful cretin. You never could tolerate an unvarnished truth, least of all about yourself. I have a good mind to call the police and have you thrown out of here. Go ahead, he snapped. Might be an interesting scene for Sarah to witness.
Is that you, Daddy? Footsteps slapped down a distant staircase. Aunt Ellen, is my father here? They both turned as Sarah burst into the room. Oh, thank God, thank God, she cried, rushing into his arms. Why have you left me here?
Sarah, wearing only a flannel nightgown, her long, blonde hair tied in a messy ponytail, pinned herself fiercely to Fulton’s chest. Oh my God, get me out of here. Please get me out of here. You won’t believe what they’re doing to me. Fulton glanced towards Ellen in time to see her face blanche and twitch violently. You stop this at once, she barked. You silly child! Ellen held her fists tightly against her hips, apparently in an effort not to pry her charge from her father’s arms. It’s her meds, her voice suddenly brisk and businesslike. They make her like this at times. Wild. Irrational. What meds? demanded Fulton. What meds is she on? Ellen shook her head then seemed to wilt. Oh, goodness me, how would I know? She sank onto the sofa. I lost track long ago. Who’s giving her these meds and for what? Ellen rallied momentarily. Her psychiatrist at rehab. She’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Manic depression. In my day we called it bad behavior and treated it with a licking. Sarah was whimpering now. Daddy, they torture me. Make me do things. Ellen’s face sunk into her hands. Listen to her, the things she’ll say. The best medical help in the world and they’re torturing her. Ask yourself, Deadbeat, who’s being tortured.
Fulton felt his daughter’s full, young breasts against him, and her heartbeat, hot and far too rapid. Go get dressed, he whispered into her ear, and get your things together. Be quick. You’re coming home with me.
Oh God, this is such a relief! Daddy, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming for me. Did you get my note? Oh good, so you know. Well, that’s a relief too, being over that awkwardness, or potential awkwardness, I should probably have said. Because what do I know about whether it would have been awkward or not? And why are we in a cab anyway? I envisioned you my knight in a silver Boxter, top down, scarf streaming like Isadora Duncan, oh, but with a different ending of course. That was a Mazurati, wasn’t it? With those dreadful spokes. Did you see that movie with Fay Dunaway? Oh God, she was so beautiful. I’d love to be able to dance like that. Do you think I’d have a chance? I’m tall enough, and skinny. Maybe I’ll take dance lessons, after the baby, of course. Do you know Aunt Ellen wants me to abort it? Can you imagine that? You’d think that she was just a nice old lady, but she’s not. Vicious. I think it’s those knitting needles, all that time she spends clickity-clickity-clickity-clicking, jamming them into things, in and out of her purse that she keeps snapped shut like it was Fort Knox or something. Oh, and that rehab center she had me in is something else! You wouldn’t believe what they put you through. It’s indecent, really, and embarrassing. Not a shred of privacy and I don’t mean just physically, but mentally. They want to know your every thought, and what you don’t tell them they think they know anyway. It’s so bogus! I’m not saying there aren’t any nice people there. There are. Some are very kind, but in a wheedley kind of a way, you know what I mean? I just can’t tell you how happy I am. Well I guess I can tell you because here I am telling you. But I’m so happy that it’s all over. That’s all behind me now. I can go back home and have a normal life. Do you know they think I’m crazy? Well, they’re crazy. Never seen someone with moods before. They have me on these drugs to stabilize my mood swings. Well, I don’t want to be stabilized. I can’t be happy when I take them. Like now, I’m so, so, so happy! If I’d drugged myself up I’d be just sitting here like a potato or something. Wouldn’t be enjoying this incredible rush of freedom. It’s like stepping out of prison must be – getting a chance, grasping the chance, to start over. Carpe Deum and all that, which reminds me, I need to get back to school. This distance education stuff is a crock. It’s just no fun learning by yourself. It’s just endless drudgery. I feel like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, but at least he got to walk back down now and then. Speaking about down, sometimes I get pretty down, like really down, I mean. You know, probably it won’t happen any more, now that I’m back home. It was probably environmental, all that institution. But if I do, please remember it’s not personal, and I’ll be OK, no matter what I say. And that is probably the time to take the drugs. They say you have to be steady with them, but they’re deadly, deadening, I mean. How can people live like that – flatliners. Spontaneity is normal, don’t you think? And I shouldn’t be taking them now anyway, the drugs with the pregnancy. Aunt Ellen says she can’t keep track but we’ve only been through three different brands and several dosages of the same drug, lithium. Right now it’s Priadel, but they are all potentially bad for the fetus. Also Prozac, which probably isn’t good either. I’ve been researching it on the web, but try talking to my doctor about it! You’d think I couldn’t live without them.
Fulton led her up to her bedroom, which he’d paid to have cleaned some weeks before, and helped her change the linen just for something to do while she talked. After about half an hour more he asked for her bottles of lithium and Prozac, then pleaded fatigue and took a beer out to the shade on the back porch. The drug labels were uninformative except for dosage, so he took one of each and downed them with another beer. Sarah found him there in his chair at midnight, woke him up with her chatter, and they went out to Denny’s for a midnight dinner.
The next day Fulton phoned Sarah’s psychiatrist to inform her of Sarah’s new living arrangements and to discus the drug regimen. They were given an appointment after hours that very evening. Dr. Belinda was a short, plump thirtysomething with a growing downtown practice from which she donated three afternoons a week to the rehab center. Armed with a dozen pamphlets, she insisted that it was critical that Sarah keep to her medication schedule. As a condition for her release from the rehabilitation center her aunt had promised to ensure it and if her father would not give similar assurance then she’d have to insist that she be returned immediately, and would get a court order, if necessary. Lithium must not be halted abruptly under the best of circumstances, and in cases such as Sarah’s it could be catastrophic. Dr. Belinda understood that the patient was pregnant. She recommended abortion, and if her recommendation was not to be heeded, the lithium treatment must be continued in any event. The risk of a malformed fetus was raised from about two in a thousand to two in a hundred, a risk that had to be taken for the health of the mother. In the last trimester, certainly the last month, she hoped to be able to reduce the dosage temporarily, as this seemed efficacious to the newborn.
There was no discussing it with her. She was trying to save Sarah’s life, in spite of her, if necessary. She hoped they both understood this very clearly and she would not permit Sarah to leave her office until she was convinced that her orders would be followed.
Fulton was ashen as he descended the stairs beside his stiff-lipped daughter. Nazi, she muttered, fucking Nazi. What did I tell you? Bitch Nazi whore. Am I right or am I right? Fucking fascist institution. Lock us in her fucking office! Did you hear that? Save my life! Ha! More like ruin it, she means. Anyway, we did well to escape. Daddy, can we go out for dinner? I feel like Chinese tonight.
The next morning, and every morning thereafter, Fulton sat at the breakfast table, or on bad days on the edge of Sarah’s bed, and watched her take her medication with a full glass of orange juice. Good girl, he always said to her. We can beat this. They went to the new Batman movie that first night and brought home a pizza. Later days they drove out to the lake and swam, walked in the park to feed the swans and geese, spent a weekend at the ocean in a ratty little cabin. It was there that they finally talked about the accident, their anguish, mutual loss. Sarah began to blame herself for her mother’s death through great chunks of tears and Fulton held her through the night, assuring her it wasn’t true, that he was to blame if anybody was – his insisting on driving. The next morning Sarah refused to get out of bed, refused her medication, refused to speak. He carried her to the car and drove her home to bed. For two days she continued her silence except to cry, lying curled on her bed. Fulton called Dr. Belinda. She is in the rapid cycling stage of the disease, she told him. It is common early on. She’ll go up and down. Read the literature I gave you. Stay with her, make sure she is medicated. Read to her. Never raise your voice. Don’t show anger or frustration. If she appears suicidal bring her in to the center immediately. We’ll sedate her. Eventually, she’ll come out of this and return to normal. Maybe this week, maybe in a month. This is the hard part. Think of it as an opportunity to learn unconditional love. Never give up on her. Bring in her aunt if you need help. Make sure she takes her pills. If she absolutely refuses, bring her in.
The doctor was right, and in a few days she seemed normal again. He enrolled her in the Lamaze birthing class at the community center, the same one he and May had taken eighteen years before, and he attended with her, feeling like a grandfather amid all the twentysomething couples. Quick breathing, one two three. He remembered the routine, his role as coach.
It seemed that the rehab center had been effective. She was clean and had been for months. He took her there twice weekly, sitting through her twelve step meetings and helping her with her assignments – Step two: “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” What power would that be, he wondered, and before he’d finished wondering he know it was Love. It was not God. That’s what this higher power bullshit was about, but it was not God that would restore them to sanity, but Love. And God is not Love. Rather Love is God. And there is a difference!
But she continued to rapid cycle: a few days of exuberant mania, a week or two of calm, then a week of crushing depression. And it was the weeks of calm that were actually the worst for him, because then she was just the sulky teenager that he’d come to despise. She would hang around the house in sweats watching TV and reading fashion magazines. She generally refused to prepare the food he brought home or clean up after meals. Occasionally he’d hear her in the kitchen, go in to see what she was up to, and she’d announce that she was making a tomato sandwich, did he want one? He would say yes even if he didn’t, thinking it was a start. May’s cleaning lady still came weekly, but she was barred from Sarah’s room. Fulton decided it didn’t matter. He asked her if she missed school, her friends, and she’d shake her head, nose in Cosmopolitan. When he asked who the father was he got no response at all. Someone from rehab? A boyfriend from school? Nothing. Was she in love with the father? A cold stare. Your mother was buying you birth control, what happened to that? She’d flap out of the room. Do you even know who the father is? She’d let her mouth drop open. Duh… Does he know you’re carrying his child? Mind your own business. You don’t think you are my business? Fuck off, Pops. Fulton took up smoking a pipe, spending hours each day on May’s love seat that he moved outside onto the verandah.
At least she knew enough to continue with the birthing class and to stay clean, and as Fulton contemplated her swelling waistline he savored the hope that the child would pull her out of her morass. She would keep the child, she announced, and, curiously, the prospect didn’t fill him with horror as it would have a year before. In fact, he realized that it was the best thing that could happen to him, to have another child to love. Another child’s easy adoration. He knew it would be a mine-field, but with every passing day he was more determined to traverse it, more certain that, together, they could traverse it.
As her time grew near the Lamaze classes seemed more pressing, the subject more imperative. He could see the edge of fear in her eyes as she lay on the mat, her belly bulging high in her stretch-pants, quick breaths, one, two three. Pant, pant, pant. OK, here it comes, now bear down, bear down, slow your breath, big exhalations, keep breathing, keep breathing. Squeeze my hand, look at me. Don’t close your eyes. Big breath. Ok, it’s passing. Now take a breather before the next one. Short breaths. Look at me. One two three. Here it comes. Start to pant. Open your mouth. One two three.
It was exhausting, for both of them. One night as they were walking home she said, This is fine, you know, Daddy, I appreciate what you’re doing, but when I spread my knees to give birth, there’s no way you’ll be watching. It’s just too weird. I’ll be at your head, sweetheart, he told her. Holding your hand. It’s quite modest, really. He put his arm around her shoulder. It will be all right, he said, knowing it would be because there was nothing in the world that he wanted more than to see his grandchild being born. She twisted away and slowed her pace then stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He turned to her. What? No, she said. I said no. I mean no, no, no. You’ll not be in the room. No more weirdness. What weirdness? I’m your daughter, not your wife. Pops.
Two days later, three weeks before her due date, Fulton took Sarah, uncommunicative but apparently calm, to her bi-weekly appointment with Dr. Belinda. As usual, he sat in the waiting room chatting with Tracy, the receptionist, and leafing through a stack of old New Yorkers while Sarah met privately with her psychiatrist. After about an hour the doctor came grimly out of her office, had a brief, whispered conversation with Tracy then asked him to accompany her to an empty conference room. Mr. Dunn, she said as she closed the door, please have a seat. We have a serious matter to discuss. Your daughter accuses you of sexually molesting her. Bullshit! That’s absurd! She contends that when she was nine, ten, eleven, you repeatedly came to her bedroom in the middle of the night. I will not listen to this nonsense. Sit down, Mr. Dunn. You will listen to this. You fondled her inappropriately, forced her to stroke your genitals, and, on numerous occasions, had sexual intercourse with her. That’s a lie. Why would she say such a thing? Possibly she is lying, Mr. Dunn. I can’t tell, although I have questioned her extensively. She is in very bad shape. I dearly wish to reduce or eliminate her medication prior to the birth of her child, but I don’t think I can. I am very concerned for her wellbeing. You bring her in here this instant. I want her to tell me this to my face. I can’t do that Mr. Dunn. She has requested re-admittance to the center here, and I completely concur. We need to remove her from this stressful situation of living with you, and try to stabilize her prior to her time. I have questioned her about your possible role in her pregnancy and she will not confirm or deny it, which is normal in these circumstances, I must say. You are lying to me! Sarah did not say these things. I’m afraid she did, Mr. Dunn. But why? Why would she do this? It is very common for us to block out memories of terrible events in our past. This is not a memory. It’s a fabrication. And then for some other dramatic event to trigger them to resurface, Mr. Dunn. This is not a police matter yet. We have to wait to see what develops. I suggest you go home. Mr. Dunn. You’ve had a stressful year. I hope you seek help. SARAH! Fulton found himself on his feet hammering the wall that separated him from his daughter. SARAH! Talk to me! Don’t lie to these people! SARAH!
After two thuggish brutes deposited him at a bus stop across the street Fulton slid to the sidewalk in a puddle of tears. For half an hour nervous pedestrians skirted him until two police officers helped him to his feet and ordered him to move on. He stumbled to his old park bench and slumped there, patting his empty pockets again and again for cigarettes. As night began to fall he made his way home, stopping at the corner store for milk, cornflakes, and vodka.
August, 2005 Todos Santos