Pharmakon (40 page)

Who knows? Perhaps my father’s warnings, reminders, and cautionary tales saved our lives many times over. My father tried to protect us with knowledge. But contrary to what he and I believed, he didn’t know everything.

Not all Casper’s magic was bad. In the logic of my mind, if it had not been for Casper, my mother never would have fallen back in love with my father. And just as his initial imprisonment at Townsend had sent us retreating south to Greenwood, his brief escape and convenient entombment at Needmore prompted us to make our next move.

There had never been any love lost between us and Greenwood. My father had always hated suburban life—houses built eight to an acre, neighbors looking over hedges and peering into windows, observing our life the way my father observed patients through Needmore two-way mirror. The Illinois acres my father grew up on had been hardscrabble, but there were three hundred of them. He was suspicious of sidewalks that told you where to walk, and homes that lacked a barn.

Before Casper obliged us by his timely capture in the medical library of Johns Hopkins, the thought of living in the country, of not having neighbors who could hear our screams for help, was out of the question. But now, as the new decade of the swinging sixties unfolded before us, my parents could no longer use him as an excuse for not going after the life my father had told himself would make him happy back in the days when he drove past the big houses of Hamden in the White Whale.

And so it was Casper Gedsic’s recapture that gave my father permission to begin his search for a house that would provide a suitable and conducive home for his dreams. He traded in the Plymouth that had carried us south for a gaudy new red 1962 Buick Skylark station wagon, equipped with air-conditioning, to make the quest more comfortable.

Every Sunday my parents would pack the Friedrich tribe into their new wagon and set off in search of a new homestead. North, south, east, west, my father did not have a specific location or destination in mind, just so long as it was within an hour’s drive of work and conducive to a change in his state of mind.

Getting lost, turning left when we should have gone right, rolling countless miles down country lanes and gravel roads, choking on the dust of the realtors who led the way up ahead, bickering about what radio station to listen to, where to stop for lunch, why Willy insisted on taking off his shoes if he knew his feet stunk, could Lucy have a horse? (yes, if you get a summer job and pay for it yourself ), could I finally ride the minibike Lazlo had given me? (maybe), could Willy have a rifle and get a hunting license? (no), could Fiona
please
stop playing her goddamn guitar? can we join a country club? (why not?), can I go to the bathroom? (you should have thought about that when we stopped for gas), if Lucy can have a horse, why can’t I have a rifle? (because you’ll shoot it). At first it was fun, in a kind of hellish way.

But finding a place where he could feel at home was not easy for Dad. My mother told us and whoever else was listening that all she wanted was for her husband to find something that would make him happy. My father slowly and torturously made it clear that happiness was something he knew nothing about. He would tell the realtors in no uncertain terms that he was interested in an old house, a house with character, i.e., a house that had a sense of a past he had not known but sensed he would have liked to have had.

When he was shown charming colonials with Revolutionary War provenance or elegant country homes with white pillars built to last in the 1920s, Dad would at first get all excited and imagine the antiques he would collect to fill them—a sideboard we didn’t have against the dining room wall we had not bought; imaginary wing chairs like the ones he had sat on at the Wintons’ placed on either side of a fireplace we did not own.

But after he had gotten us all revved up about the peace and joy and harmony of the good life that was waiting to be had within those walls that were for sale, he’d start to see cracks in the foundation, gaps around the windows. Soot that said the furnace would have to be replaced, and then he’d turn to the realtor and sigh, “I don’t know. It’s an old house.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Careful to avoid answering that one, he would answer, “I don’t know, it’s the kind of place that would take a lot of upkeep. Just keeping the lawn mowed would be a full-time job for somebody.”

“If you’d like to see something less expensive . . .”

“It’s not the money. It’s the time I’d have to waste thinking about it.”

“Could you be more specific, Mr. Friedrich?”

“Well, now that I’ve looked at it, it just doesn’t seem that much better than what I have now.”

At which point we’d all groan and say, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and “Harrison Street’s a dump compared to this.”

Which would embarrass my father into asking the realtor, “Do you have anything better to show me?” Invariably, they would say yes. And after seeing what another ten or twenty thousand dollars would get us, Dad would decide to “keep looking.” Which really meant, wait until he had another ten or twenty thousand to spend. And we’d drive back to Greenwood feeling tricked, and he’d go to work and make more money.

The trouble was, when he’d saved the additional ten or twenty K he’d needed to buy the house that had seemed perfect six months earlier but out of his budget, and we’d go back to look at it, even if it had been repainted, in his eyes it would have lost its luster. Even if it had a tennis court or a pool, my father would find a way to convince himself that it was a fundamentally unsound and shabby investment compared to what we could have, if we just waited for him to make another thirty or forty thousand, in his fantasy of the good life.

After a year or so of looking at lifestyles we were longing to live but my father refused to buy into, Lucy, Fiona, and Willy went on strike. Fiona and her guitar were in college by then. Lucy had a boyfriend who had a house and a pool and a tennis court of his own. And Willy had stayed off the Oreos, lost thirty pounds, and grown four inches and was on the high school cross-country team. Lucy and Fiona refused to get into the Skylark; Willy ran from it. I was happy to have my parents to myself.

I was as sick of looking at houses Dad wasn’t going to buy as they were, but without my sisters and brother to complain, it was easier to cajole my father into stopping the car at a likely-looking stream or brook or river and go fly-fishing. I’d turned ten by then. I wasn’t very good at fly-fishing, and hooked far more innocent branches and defenseless shrubs than I ever did fish with my casts.

But I loved it all the same. Partly because my father loved it, but mostly because Dad was different knee-deep in a brook with a fly rod in his hand. On dry land, anger could spark out of him, as though an invisible squall had knocked down a high-tension wire inside his head. He was grounded in such a way that he was unaware of the voltage he unleashed at those closest to him. He’d say things that were bothersome, scary, and sometimes mean, oblivious to the effect they had on others. And after ten or fifteen minutes had passed, most of his brain would forget he had ever said them, and he’d be left wondering why his children stayed away.

But out on the water, standing against a current that could be gauged, thinking only about how to think like a fish, my father could relax and stop thinking about what would make him happy and actually be happy.

Though I wasn’t cognizant of it at the time, I can see now that what I also loved about fly-fishing on those phantom house-hunting trips was, when we were on moving water, I didn’t have to compete with anyone but the trout for his attention. The only part of my father’s life my mother did not feel the need to share, the single passion she did not claim and invade with heart and soul, was fishing. In the solitary arena of gurgling brook and rock-strewn streams, with their deep pools riffled with shadows cast by the low overhang of woodland hemlock and beech, my mother was content to sit on the bank and read secondhand paperback mysteries and be an innocent bystander to his life.

I did not mind if the mosquitoes bit and the fish didn’t, because it was safe to be close to him on the river. Knowing that one of the catastrophes Dad imagined was buying hip boots for his youngest son only to have him slip and fall and the boots fill with water, drowning me in a trout-filled pool, I did not complain that while Dad was snug and warm in sure-footed, felt-soled, chest-high rubber waders, I was shivering bare-legged in icy brooks, wearing only shorts and sodden sneakers.

In the summer of ’65, we got lost on the way to look at an old house down near Chester. A colonel in the Union Army had ordered it constructed in the shape of a heptagon, so that when he came back from the war, he and his bride could have a different view for every day of the week. It was unclear whether it was the fact that the house had seven sides, or that the colonel didn’t live long enough to ever sleep in it, but my father thought that this unseen mansion might just be strange enough for him to feel at home there.

Each time we made a wrong turn, my father would mutter, “I have a good feeling about this place.”

My mother smiled as she flipped the pages of her mystery. “That’s what you always say.”

“What if it’s haunted?” I was just making conversation while I studied the map, looking for a place to fish.

My father laughed. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Zach?”

My mother looked up from her book. “I believe in ghosts.”

My father gave her a look. “No, you don’t.”

“Have you ever seen one, Mom?”

Before my mother could answer, my father announced, “I think it’s time we go fishing.”

I don’t remember the name of the river he found to distract us, but it was narrow and deep and walled on either side by chestnut and dogwoods all tangled up in wild grapevines as thick as my wrist.

We followed our usual routine, rods were assembled, flies chosen, and a fresh hatch of damselflies darting and hovering over the river told us which feathered hook to pick. My mother spread out an old army blanket and retreated into her mystery as I waded out after my father into the undertow. Sometimes, fishing made my father talkative. He would become generous with stories of his youth and random thoughts in his head. But that day he was quiet. My mother’s saying she believed in ghosts bothered him. I waited for the white noise of water moving over rocks rounded by the Ice Age and tree trunks felled by lightning we had not witnessed to drown out his thoughts of all that could still go wrong.

But that nameless, crooked tributary we had chanced upon was hard fishing for a boy not yet twelve. Even my father was challenged. The leafy overhang that jungled up and out over both sides of the stream made it hard for me to cast my line where I wanted it to go. My hook snagged branches and vines. Each time I tried to free it, my line tangled. After losing three flies and dropping my rod in the water twice, I shouted to my father, “It’s too hard for me.”

“We’re here.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t go somewhere else.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We’re not too far from Needmore.”

“What’s that got to do with fishing?”

“Remember the river you used to take us to, before I knew how to swim? It was full of trout, and no trees.”

My father took his eyes off the shadow of the fish he was trying to lure up off the bottom and stared at me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He began to walk toward me gently, as if I were a trout that might be spooked.

“Why?” I slapped at the greenhead that had bit the back of my calf.

“To get there, we’d have to park at the hospital.”

“So? You know all the doctors there.”

“I don’t want to risk it.”

“Risk what, dammit!”

The greenhead had just taken a bite out of my other leg.

“Casper might be looking out the window of his cell and see us. Might bring on a setback.”

“What kind of setback?” My father didn’t like talking about Casper.

“Cause him distress.”

“Did he ever say why he didn’t drown me?” The question rose up in me like a fish striking live bait.

“No.”

“Why do you think he didn’t?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Do you think he’ll ever tell us?”

My father shook his head no, then put his hands on my shoulders and brought me close to him as if to make sure I was seeing what he wanted me to see. “It’s time to forget about Casper.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Sometimes, if you stop talking about something, you eventually stop thinking about it.” They’d tried that with Jack.

“Does that mean I can’t talk about him?”

“No, you and I can talk about him anytime.” I was glad he said that. But then he had to add, “Of course, since it’s not a subject I’m particularly fond of discussing, you might want to consider why you’re so determined to bring it up.” He took his hand off my shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“Just don’t bring it up in front of your mother.”

“How come?” I knew why, but I wanted to hear what he’d say.

“It distresses her.” I had suspected she and Casper had something in common.