I took a break from clearing the house to finish a TV pilot for a network. The deadline was approaching. I set my laptop on Dad’s desk. Writing there felt strange, but I had little choice. Given the general disarray of the house, his office was the only private room. Over the years, I’d written in hotels, rooming houses, cars, a basement, a garage, and a shed. Once I began, the location no longer mattered. I lost track of time, forgot to eat or drink. The imaginary world became real enough that it didn’t feel like writing but more like observing actual people and transcribing their words and actions.
While working on the screenplay, I occasionally stopped to raise my head from the computer. Only then did the realization of my whereabouts crash into me. I saw the same images my father had when he paused in his work: a poster for the movie Barbarian Queen, depicting five women armed with swords, dressed like strippers. Above his desk hung a laminated Sunday cartoon of Snoopy with a typewriter and the caption “Good writing is hard work.” Another wall held Samuel Johnson’s famous line: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Like my father, I was trying to live up to both Snoopy and Johnson.
The brick walls insulated external sound but kept noise in the house, and I began to understand Dad’s resentment of interruption. I could hear my mother in the kitchen, my wife walking overhead. With four children and two dogs, the sound of cars at the foot of the hill, and the consistent echo of rural gunfire, my father had sat here and written hundreds of books. I should be able to finish a screenplay.
In a sense, my father died the moment I learned he was going to die. On the phone, it was like talking to a ghost. Now I began to wonder if he was there, overseeing my progress with his critical judgment. Though I often glanced about, I saw nothing. As a child I’d been afraid of his office, and now I was interacting with the imprint of my former fear. I saw things that weren’t there. I heard voices that didn’t exist. Part of me wanted to assign those nebulous sensations to something palpable and real. I ignored the impulse and completed the screenplay on time. Mom said it was what my father would have wanted.
At night I watched the Reds on TV with the volume down, listening to the play-by-play on the radio, as I’d done with Dad. I drank his whiskey and read his books. His library included numerous volumes on the supernatural, and at night I read about ghosts and anticipated my father’s appearance. With a sudden clarity, I understood that Dad had haunted this house while he was alive, and I was haunting it now.
Each of my siblings privately urged me to destroy everything in his office. I understood their shared view. Porn had little appeal to any of us, and we all knew the office contained an enormous amount. An overt sexuality pervaded the house in the form of books not adequately concealed or art depicting nude women on the walls. It was embarrassing when guests visited. We all left home at age seventeen, having been taught secrecy, particularly about his career. As a result we rarely talked about Dad with other people. His death released us from the necessity of silence. Destroying his papers would be a means of retaliation, of destroying the silence itself. But I couldn’t do it.
As a son, I wanted an opportunity to understand him further through his work. In the following weeks each of my siblings privately thanked me for taking on the job of the office. They expressed concern that I’d be overwhelmed by the effort or emotionally done in. I explained that with Dad dead, I was able to separate the writer from the man, and the man from our father. They only partially believed me. As it turned out, it was only partially true.
Chapter Nine
AS A child, I explored Dad’s office the first time while my parents attended a party in town. I waited until my siblings were in bed. The fewer who knew of my secret activities, the better, a way of thinking I’d certainly inherited from Dad. Before entering, I used a ruler to measure the distance between the edge of the door and the jamb, writing the number of inches on my wrist, reasoning that if the space was too large or small, Dad would know and I’d face his wrath.
Those early attempts at discerning insight into my father were little more than spelunking an unknown cave. I moved in quietly, able to see only what was illuminated by flashlight, my fear increased by the darkness and shadows. I found a stack of Playboy magazines. A surprising item was an embroidered patch, the kind people sewed on a dungaree jacket. Encased in a small frame, it sat on a shelf so as to be visible to Dad at his typewriter. It said: “You’re a fuckin’ genius.” The frame gave it an official quality. I thought it was an award from an unknown entity that recognized my father as a genius, and for many years I believed he was.