password: daley

 

4th Cousins Twice Removed

The Achilles heel of Kathy’s suped up Airstream camper was the lighting. For a company so proud to immortalize the open road, Americana, vintage aesthetic (its founder, Wally Byam, was born on the Fourth of July, after all), you would think Airstream would’ve abandoned fluorescent lighting. I mean, it was just bad. It felt stale, sterile, like the type of fuzzy lighting at a bus stop late at night that casts a grayish yellow all over everything.

“Babe, I don’t think this is gonna work. You see the bars all over the screen?”

I didn’t look at the bars. My boyfriend, Mac, is a camera genius, so there was no need to double check his conclusions. And plus, anyone could tell this light was shit.

“Do you mind if we go inside the house somewhere to do the interview?” I asked our subject. Her name is Kathy. She’s a fifty year old woman, a born and bred Rhode Islander who, splintered by divorce, split from her lil’ Rhodey life and landed with a new husband, Roger, in Wisconsin. He told her he would work in the State Department for five-ish years. Then they could move back. Twenty-five years later, Roger’s an acclaimed hand surgeon and the two of them have already seen a booming alpaca farm industry rise and fall right in their backyard. Kathy had seen a lot in those twenty five years on the farm, not to mention the birth of four more children. But before all of that– before her divorce, before she had married the hand surgeon, back when she worked on 8b in Rhode Island Hospital, she had seen my dad. She had watched him saunter down the hospital halls with her future husband, white coat clad, flirting with anyone who dare turn an eye. She had eaten ice cream with him on her bed, right outta the carton. She had talked him through his first heartbreak. She had seen him fall in love with my mom. Wow, Mike! Where did you find her?

Kathy was always good about telling me these stories every time I visited, but this visit I wanted to get them on tape. Immortalize them. Document them beyond memory. She understood why I wanted to film her but felt small in front of the camera. We bounced around the house, trying to find a spot with good lighting and privacy, but nothing beat the comfort of her Airstream camper. Mac and I were leaving their house in a quickly diminishing seven hours and it was already nine o’clock at night. We were tired. Kathy was tired. It had been a long and fun week, vacation-like, but the holidays were over, the new year in full stride, our realities calling us.

We settled in her oldest daughter’s room. Mac told me the light was best when the pink and blue checkered wall was behind her and the hand-painted alpaca mural wall was on her left. As Mac finished finagling his camera and I read over my questions, Kathy asserted, “You know what, I don’t think this is about your dad. I think you’re doing this because Roger is dying.”

The camera finagling halted to a silence. I knew Mac was looking at me, but I inhaled, keeping my eyes on the questions before meeting her face. I came up with something to respond but it was half-conceived. Not a fully formed thought. Something about their family being special or whatever. Apparently it sufficed though. We got through the interview, she told me stories about my dad. She even woke up at 3:30 the next morning to make me and Mac coffee for our big haul back to Vermont. The whole ride back– sixteen hours– I couldn’t get comfortable, nor feel settled. All I could think about was that moment. I don’t think this is about your dad. I think you’re doing this because Roger is dying. And that look. That. Look.

It had to do with something about that Rhode Island girl in her. That Rhode Island glare. That Rhode Island mother glare. Those Rhode Island mothers don’t fuck around. Mafia princesses. Single moms. Widows and divorcees. The big dreamer kind of women who we all swore would leave this state as soon as they got the chance– the chance they knew would never come and didn’t for most. I know that look because I grew up with it with my Rhode Island mother. My brothers and I always talked about how that glare could cut right through us, disassemble us, catch us before we even knew we were red handed. It was that same thing. She undid me before I even knew there was an undoing.

But was there really anything to undo? I mean, there was no facade I was aware of. And from what I saw everything was about Roger dying. The way the room stiffened in silence each time he coughed. His new, peculiar attachment to his phone and the odd compulsivity to how he played Words With Friends. All of their kids making plans to move back to Wisconsin. The oxygen machine at his bedside, collecting dust from lack of use. I mean it was just there. Thick and hanging all over everything. Everyone.

I’m not a neutral person to come to their house. I’m the daughter of Roger and Kathy’s dead best friend. To ask their family questions of my father is to talk about Roger’s health. Is to talk about their house. Is to talk about family is to talk about love and is to talk about death.

And yet, why the hesitation on my part? The inability to say, “Yes, it is about Roger dying,” or that it was about both him and my dad. The inability to express what I was doing, what this project was about, why I picked the interview questions I did.

The truth is I didn’t know why I was there. I just knew I had to be.

* * *

 

Kathy rolls her eyes. Roger is telling the story of the “Smooth maneuver” again.

“You don’t have the name of it right, Kath, it’s…” Roger talks over her.

“I’m the girlfriend in the audience!” Like a school child eager to answer all the questions in class, Kathy is pent up, being told to listen while at once trying to advocate her very important commentary. Maybe she thought that once she locked Roger down and got married she wouldn’t have to listen to this glorified reminiscence of his and my dad’s days as the hotshot young residents brewing trouble and stirring up love on 8b in Rhode Island Hospital. But whenever I come to town, knockin’ on their door it’s inevitable we’ll talk about the old days of Doctor Daley and Doctor Wiggins. Even with those glory days and my dad long gone, she still has to sit, piping up in between Roger’s pauses to make sure everyone knew she was there too.

Their voices were escalating over each other now.

“Rog, listen though…”

“But, Kath, that’s not it…”

I looked across the room at Mac. He sat on a stool, back slumped over, eyelids heavy, his face soft, friendly and attentive. He had never met this big and zany family, had never been to the corn fields and farms of Wisconsin. I brought him along because I wanted to introduce the special people of my life–him and the Daley’s–to each other, but also because he had a unique storytelling ability. For him, the story to be told was rarely ever the big bang, the performance. It was the small, little drum beating under everything, within everyone. Most of the time, this little drum goes unrecognized, but Mac is always keenly aware of its presence and once he hears it he illuminates, emboldens it with beautiful, simple visuals so other people can hear and see it too.

I knew the drum beat inside when I was with the Daley’s. They had loved my dad and went the extra mile to share it with me every time I visited. I had told Mac about all of it and I knew that if he came, he could help bring that little drum to life for other people. And that’s why the two of us and our puppy had just driven eighteen hours from our rinky-dink Vermont apartment to this wacky Wisconsin home in one shot. There was something here–a story, a feeling, a history, I don’t even know, but I knew I had to tell it and I knew Mac could help me do it.

Kathy and Roger were still going back and forth. My eyes were half open but I was all ears.

“They’re talking about Roger being this ‘smooth maneuver’ with all the women, moving the girls to the bed and I’m sitting there in the audience…” Her eyes are wide and arm gestures wider.

Roger settles back into a creaky wooden chair. “They had these plastic boards that they would use to transport patients. You put them on it and they slide across it and you call it the ‘smooth maneuver’…”

“I’m sitting there with your father!” Kathy continues waving her arms.

“And so they changed the name to the ‘Daley Board.’” He chuckles, I laugh. “Are you serious?”

Kathy knocks me on the shoulder. “And I’m sitting there with your dad, asking, ‘Mike, what does all this mean? Does this mean anything? And I’m like, really, I had no clue.’”

 

It didn’t mean anything, really. I know my dad was hot and I know what it meant to be a hot young doctor-in-training in the 80s. It meant beautiful women. It meant beaches, bronzed, toned abs. It meant flirting. Parties. Nice apartments with organized, clean drawers full of expensive exercise clothing and smooth music playing on the record. It’s not unknown to me, the stories are all there.

Roger and Kathy had a small wedding, so there really was no bachelor’s party until my dad decided that wouldn’t do. He brought all of Roger’s friends to a strip club, including Roger’s dad. The original Mr. Daley was a serious man, a stickler really, but my dad didn’t hesitate to buy him a lap dance. Then, as Roger tells the story, sometime after Mr. Daley’s lap dance he and my dad “somehow ended up” as the referees–clad with whistles and black-and-white garb from god-knows-where– to a wrestling match between two women.

When they weren’t in the ring they were going on what they called “flirt rounds,” playfully teasing the nurses on floor 8b in Rhode Island Hospital. Kathy was around to knock them down a peg– she could see right through them, even back then. But for the most part, they put on a show and everyone bought first row tickets.

I mean, they were hot, upper middle class white dudes in the 80s training to be doctors. That was a recipe for something. It’s unsubstantiated, but there’s a storyline in my dad’s history that he sold cocaine in the 80s. I mean, cocaine? Talk about the drug of the elite world. Despite cocaine’s terrible legacy of destroying countless communities, my brother and I always offer this information to close friends when they ask about our dad. See when someone’s dead you try to assemble them back again, adding little bits and pieces of stories or things they did in their life to make a more mythical, legend sort of character– one untouchable to the same sort of evaluation a living person gets. He was a doctor. He was a father of five. He was a wrestling MVP in high school. He sold coke in the 80s! See what that last detail adds? A Wow! A twist. A something unexpected that can go un-critiqued simply because he is dead and, instead, allows someone to conclude, Wow, what a guy!

There are other storylines we offer about our dad. He was a total nerd. He had a pocket protector. When we were growing up, he had a special calculator we could only use with his permission. He even erased the mistakes we made on our homework for us because he couldn’t handle the graphite scuff marks. He built us a treehouse, a skateboard quarter pipe.

Roger built all the barns on his property. He cried at all of his kids’ high school graduations. He makes his youngest daughter sing duets of his favorite song– Ed Sheeran’s “The Shape of You”– in the car. Dads are dads are dads. Especially the baby boomer, white upper middle class dads. You take what you can and make everything left over funny.

 

* * *

 

Hunter and I always stayed up late together. I have many memories of him across from me–bright big eyes glancing out over his high cheekbones, his face narrowing down to his small chin. His mouth moved a mile a minute, telling stories and going on tangents, waxing philosophical while also throwing in a few quick wits here and there. Every time I saw him, usually either at my Rhode Island home or his home in Wisconsin, we’d sit and talk all night, almost like a ritual. There’s something about the darkness outside, a quiet sleeping house inside, that allows for better conversation. Enveloped, like whispers under a blanket fort, the dim flashlight beams illuminating only the cheeks, nose and eyelashes of your friend across from you.

We used to stay up late because that’s when the stars came out. When our family visited his in Nantucket our conversation felt too big for the little rental house both our big families were squished into, so we walked down to the beach to be under the sky. I remember how opened up the sky was, like looking into an oyster, clouds surrounding a pocket of dust-like stars streaked with the milky way. He slipped his boots off, propping them up side by side– a pillow for each of our heads. We laid down, heads touching and bodies extending in a 45 degree angle, talking.

The summers after that we mostly met up in Wisconsin. I remember that the third summer after Nantucket he had acquired a high-powered laser pointer and we traced out constellations, talking still. A summer after that we spent every night of my week-long visit making out in his mom’s vintage Airstream camper parked out in the backyard. To this day, four years later, our families still tease us about it. In spite of the laughs we stayed up late tonight, playing darts, cracking hazelnuts, and talking about our dads.

“I go on these long research binges about his disease sometimes,” Hunter starts. His hair is longer, his bright eyes behind glasses now instead of contacts. We’re kitty corner to each other at his kitchen table, a pile of hazelnut shells between us. Everyone else–Kathy, Roger, Alexis, Emma and Mac–are all sleeping upstairs. We talk quietly so as not to stir the five dogs snoring in the other room.

“When you search like that, you just find the worst of the worst…life expectancies, treatment outcomes…” he trailed off. “I know it’s not good for me, but I can’t help it.”

Hunter scored in the 92nd percentile on his MCAT a few months ago. In eight years, he’ll be the next Doctor Daley. The other day he told me he didn’t think about being a doctor as a want or a childhood dream, but more as a must. A necessary thing he just has to do, especially now.

“I mean, you must know what that’s like, right?” He looked up at me. I could see the hesitancy in his eyes behind his glasses.

The truth is I didn’t know. My research binges on my dad’s cause of death came after the fact when my mom got his biopsy results in the Orlando airport. A genetic heart disease. Well that explains it, I remember thinking– his sudden collapse while snowboarding with me at a Colorado ski resort five months prior. I mean it made sense–the cause: genetic heart disease, the effect: sudden cardiac arrest and, consequently, death. But I dealt with that after the fact–without my Dad. His disease caught my whole family off guard and we figured out the cause later. Hunter was different. He knew his dad’s disease through and through, understood the prognosis, but nothing had happened yet. It was all coming. And in the meantime Roger is still here. Cracking jokes, performing hand surgeries. Only now with coughs and “Fuck…Shit”s muffled in between his breaths.

I averted my gaze to the hazelnut I was cracking in my hand. When I looked back up, Hunter’s glasses were foggy, cheeks wet. I stood up and leaned over him, interlocking and weaving my arms within and around his. We stayed like this for a while, the darkness outside and quiet sleeping house inside wrapped around us like a blanket.

 

* * *

 

Sunday, January 6th. The New Year’s Day drive out here to Wisconsin felt like weeks ago, my home in Vermont like a past life. Our trip was nearing its end and I still hadn’t interviewed Roger. We hadn’t really even talked too much. For most of the week he had been at work–surgeries, white lab coats, residents in training–normal doctor stuff. I knew the hectic, busyness of it all. Growing up, I remember my babysitter always attempting to calm the four of us kids down before Dr. Mom and Dr. Dad came home late from work. Despite her heedings, most of my young childhood memories feature hearing the garage open, tumbling to the door and clasping onto my parents’ legs as they fumbled to put mail, keys and dirty coffee cups on the counter.

I wanted to give Roger space, but the last day had come and it was time to sit down with him. He wanted me and Mac to interview him out by the log barn he built years before while he fixed the farm’s watering system. I was nervous and skeptical, he was nonchalant. We sat outside for three hours–a fence between us, mini horses and alpacas surrounding us, he tinkering with the water system while I handed him parts at his request. He talked, and I listened, absorbing as much as I could.

The next morning at 3am Mac and I piled our camera gear and puppy in the back of the car. I drove almost the entire day, until four in the afternoon. The roads were familiar, even in the morning light. I was awake as ever, arms pencil straight from shoulders to my hands ten and two on the steering wheel, barreling down route 41 South past Menomonee Falls, around the ninety degree sharp turn in Batman city Chicago where 294 becomes 80/94, past Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio.

I don’t think this is about your dad. I think you’re doing this because Roger is dying.

Past Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Welcome to Pennsylvania, Pursue Your Happiness. All the way through the never ending highway of upstate New York, and finally down Route 7 East to our home in Vermont, I couldn’t get over the feeling–the image–of Roger’s interview. A dadless daughter and a sick father, a fence between them, fixing a broken watering system.