My parents were not brave people. Nor were they particularly bold in any way. Economic deprivation in childhood had taught them thrift and caution. They worked hard and played it safe. After a great deal of planning, my father made the most courageous decision of his life, the only risk he ever took—but it was enormous. At age thirty-six, with four kids, an uneducated wife, and a big mortgage, he decided to pursue his lifelong dream of being a professional writer.
My father’s sudden presence in the house jarred the family in many ways. He went from being gone fifty hours a week to being in the house all the time. Home was now a place of business. He was working, which meant the house had to be quiet—no loud talking, laughing, or walking. We learned to move silently up and down the steps. Doors had to be eased shut or left open. The slightest sound startled Dad, who would yell. The steady clatter of his typewriter filled the house.
My mother changed her schedule, as well. She and Dad stayed in their closed bedroom until we left for school. Prior to this we’d had her to ourselves: Mom bathed us, fed us, kissed our scrapes, and soothed our feelings. Now she devoted herself to the needs of our father. She no longer met us after school with snacks and a hug. We didn’t gain a father, we lost our mother.
Beginning at age twelve, my job was to get my siblings up and dressed, prepare their breakfast, then herd them to school along a path through the woods. This way, our parents could sleep undisturbed. Often my sister’s asthma was very severe and I had to make a decision whether she’d attend school or not. Waking my parents was against the rules. My sister had a specific posture for breathing, a kind of leaning-forward crouch in bed, her head turned slightly to one side. I’d ask my sister to sit up and take a deep breath. If it seemed like too much of a struggle, I told her to stay home. I went to school and she lay in bed, striving to breathe, scared of Dad’s reaction when he awoke. With each painful inhalation, she hoped the asthma attack would last long enough for him to wake up and understand it was serious.
My father’s new home office, formerly my sisters’ bedroom, had two windows and a closet. Bookshelves covered three walls from floor to ceiling. A massive walnut desk stood in the middle of the room. Manufactured in 1960, it was executive furniture intended to impress clients, a gift from Dad’s boss during his insurance career. It served as an island, four feet wide and seven feet long, with narrow passageways on three sides. Beyond it, farthest from the door, ran a tight alley with a ladder-backed chair facing a tiny alcove that held a typewriter. No one was welcome.
My mother stood outside the door and waited for permission to enter, even after he had shouted a demand for coffee. I avoided communicating with Dad in his office. It was a multi-step process that began with tiptoeing to the door so as not to startle him. I tapped softly and waited for his acknowledgment, an interval that could run a few minutes. I wondered if he heard me, but I knew better than to knock again and risk arousing his ire. Dad regarded any intrusion as not merely a distraction but a form of disrespect and attack.
His response was always the same, a command: “Come.” After being granted admittance, I eased the door open and approached the gigantic desk covered with books and papers. A rifle leaned in a corner. The smell of menthol cigarettes layered the room. Beyond the desk, filling the small space, was my glaring father. I anxiously stated my business. He responded curtly, then dismissed me by beginning to type. I was glad to be away, but sad that he didn’t want me there.
On one occasion Dad summoned me to his fortlike office and motioned me to sit in a chair tucked into a corner and stacked with books. I hesitated until he told me to put the books on his desk. This felt like a high honor—allowed to touch his goods and sit in a chair. I basked in the temporary attention of my father within the confines of his office. It’s beyond my memory what was so important that he treated me this way, but I recall hoping that it signaled a shift in the nature of our relationship. As time passed, I understood that the incident had been an anomaly, that it meant the world to me but nothing to him.
Dad often joked that he was mentally ill, dismissing it as symptomatic of being a writer, the same as drinking. At the supper table, he’d loosen his upper and lower dentures with his tongue, shake his head back and forth to make the plastic scrape together, and tell the family that the sound was his brains rattling. In my late thirties, I understood that something was wrong with him, that he did suffer a genuine psychological malady. I didn’t know what it was, but my response was to stop going home. I couldn’t fix him.