By Justin Buchbinder

I want to hate you Dad. But it’s far too complicated. And, even though a middle ground between love and hate might be more appropriate, that’s not something I can execute. And so I love you. I love you so much and I have to breathe hard as I drive home to keep from bursting in to tears and alerting the Corvette full of teenage locals next to me at the stop light.

A Story About My Father

Are thousands of watts of power still flying through your body? Maybe it’s these electric memories that do this to you. The after effects of ECT. I call them the shakes. Not to anyone else, just inside my head when I look at you.

I don’t often talk about those afternoons when I drove you to the medical center. How I honked the horn, my Ford Taurus idling in your driveway next to the grass that had never been mowed, long and unruly, as though no one lived in your house. How you came out dressed like you were going to a job interview – button up shirt, finely pressed khakis, your hair all slicked back with gel and solidified with hairspray.

I don’t often tell others about those drive up the Wantagh Parkway to New Hyde Park, to the small, squat brick building – an edifice I would normally pass and assume it to be either abandoned, or some out-of-use factory. How we would sit in the tiled, cold, bright white waiting room, under the decrepit sign that read “E.C.T. Clinic”, with that one television suspended from the ceiling in the far corner. We would watch The View or The Price Is Right or whatever the nurses deemed appropriate for the day. And the picture was always crackly, lines of distortion running down like cascades in a waterfall.

And I don’t speak of the feeling like we’re waiting on death row, the other silent, downtrodden humans sitting in uncomfortable seats around the wooden table with the dead, out of date, magazines stacked in the center next to the broken coffee pot. How, one by one, their names would be called and they would rise – by themselves or with the help of a loved one or accompanying nurse to go into the adjoining room. When those people came back out, they couldn’t stay balanced, their hair shot out in thousands of different ways, frizzed and spiked. Their eyes glassy and surprised.

Sitting here at the Starbucks, I suddenly remember those days.

The days I hated taking part in, but volunteered because Mom was at work, and I didn’t have to serve at the steakhouse until 6PM. How you entered that door when they called your name, how I sat for 50 minutes, pretending I cared about luke-warm gossip and celebrity drama that had been settled weeks ago, rendered still fresh and important in an old issue of US Weekly. Until you came out. I had to stand up and guide you back to the car. Your slicked back hair now all mussed and fuzzy, your eyes which had been alert and wide turned squinty and dull.

And then those car rides back. Where you asked me the same questions over and over again, forgetting the answer 30 seconds after I told you. But every time you asked, I smiled and acted as though you had never asked me before, and gladly refrained my response one more time, my fingers crossed that this time, you’d retain what I said.

You noticed the shakes like I do, I can tell. And it’s obvious that you don’t like them. They embarrassed you, they reminded you of what you just went through. Little aftershocks that made your legs bounce up and down like you’re a kid on his way to Disney World for the second time. So I put the music up louder and you pretended to rock out to Van Halen and Pearl Jam. We played the denial game for forty minutes until I got you home, and put you on the couch so you could sleep it all off.

How long has it been since I saw you last? I look down at the Jeffery Deaver book I bought you. Sometimes I feel that the criminal suspense author is the only thing we share in common. Other times I hope that’s the case. This book was your present for Father’s Day. I haven’t seen you in almost a month.

When you called tonight, your first words to me were “Don’t hate me.” I associated the words with you before I noticed your voice.

“Of course not, Dad, I’m just glad you’re alive.”

Sometimes I wish I could hate you. Some nights I would lie in bed, my eyes stinging with tears I didn’t think you deserved. Every part of me wanted to cast you alongside every evil post-divorce father from every movie and television show and piece of literature. You never called. You never spoke. You spent more time with your girlfriend and her two daughters upstate than you did with the two sons you created on the island.

And no one understood. No one wanted to take the time to see why, despite all of these pieces that could so easily build up to a loathing for you never quite fit the equation. Maybe they don’t believe in Bipolar Disorder. I know I never did.

And here we are, sitting in the Starbucks, talking like we see each other every day. Why couldn’t you just be a villain? Or why couldn’t you just be a perfect father? I was never trained to appreciate the gray line that exists in the middle of things. The Golden Mean. I like my coffee burning hot and my sodas ice cold. I like my weight below the healthy minimum and my exercise ratio above the maximum recommended. I’ve never been one to bother to find the middle ground, the equal space for the give and take.

And I guess that’s what you teach me. For years I said I learned nothing from you. You were irresponsible. Immature. Rash and quick to judgment. You would either not speak for days or talk so much I wanted to shoot your mouth off. I gladly attributed every positive aspect of me to Mom, and every negative one to you. But here is the living lesson right now. You’re schooling me in understanding that not everything can be black and white, one side or the other. Men can be good and bad. I can be good and bad.

It would be easy for me to catch the tailwind of your actions, and it fill my sails and push me to a hateful extreme. In that extreme I could comfortably disown you and forget about you. Care so little about you that I wouldn’t be moved to tears or screams when I heard about things you’ve done and did. But nothing is that easy.

You’ve got nothing left. The bills that I first saw at your house a year ago just grew. You never opened them. All you did was stack more on top, until you had three leaning towers of final notices that looked like they were about to spill over. Maybe, in your mania, you saw them as pointless pieces of paper. And then, when depression sunk you, maybe you viewed them as the guillotine dangling an inch over your neck.

But those bills, in their cute looking towers, they ruined you. Your house is gone. The bank took it away from you after you failed to pay your mortgage, re-financed it, and failed to pay for the re-financing. Then the dealership came and took away your Jeep. Your source of freedom, you were a man who loved to escape reality by getting in his SUV and hitting the road with the windows down. But then one day they came and it was gone before you even woke up. And now, your girlfriend may leave you, too. Who wants to own a man who can’t even own his own life? Not her.

But still you smile and say you’re so proud of me. You shake your head and say that you had to cut the ropes that were attached to the anchors that were holding you down. You announce the fact that you’re claiming bankruptcy like it’s news, and not like I was chased by your debtors who needed to find out where you were. Not like I didn’t see those towers of bills. Not like I’m blind and can’t see your world crumbling down around you.

When the Barista announces they are closing, I gather up our trash and throw it away. I hand you the rest of the black and white cookie and tell you to finish it up. You act like you’re not hungry, but I’ve seen the cavern of the inside of your refrigerator. I saw the old milk and the mustard that the previous owner of the house left behind. The previous owner of the house that won’t be yours in less than a week.

I know you don’t like admitting you’re weak, even though you had ECT today. I know you won’t mention that you went AWOL for a month, not answering telephone calls of anyone who wanted to check up on you. We’ll never utter a word about how your sister found out you lied that someone had taken you to get your monthly ECT, that you had stopped taking your meds, and swooped down from Westchester to force you into her Infiniti and drive you back to her house.

You told me you’re staying with her, but you didn’t mention that she’s paying for your health insurance, that she had to force you to call me a month ago so I knew you were alive. But I think you understand that I know all of this as I help you walk in a straight line back to my car.

At your house, you swing the door open and slowly emerge from my car so those rampant sparks of post-ECT don’t sprawl you out on the lawn that the realtor mowed for you, since you refused, even after Uncle Russ gave you a free lawn mower. I wait in the driveway, my car idling behind the piece of junk car that Mom’s boyfriend gave Jared for when he’s home. It’s your car now, which you drive on occasion. I can only imagine how you feel, a man who cared so much about the wheels he drove, puttering around in that fossil from the mid-80’s. It takes you a long time to reach the door, and a longer time to produce your keys so you can get back into your house, the house you bought to signify your new life, independent and successful, the life you were excited to lead, in a house that someone else will live in next week.

I shake with love and caring for you Dad. And I let these shakes take me over when I get home and sit at my desk to write this about you. Please get well. Please come back from this. No matter how long between calls and visits, I will always love you. No matter how hard that may be.