Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

TWO THINGS TO get straight from the beginning: I hate doctors and have never joined a support group in my life. At seventy-three, Im not about to change. The mental health establishment can go screw itself on a barren hill top in the rain before I touch their snake oil or listen to the visionless chatter of men half my age. I have shot Germans in the fields of Normandy, filed twenty-six patents, married three women, survived them all, and am currently the subject of an investigation by the IRS, which has about as much chance of collecting from me as Shylock did of getting his pound of flesh. Bureaucracies have trouble thinking clearly. I, on the other hand, am perfectly lucid.

Note, for instance, how I obtained the SAAB Im presently driving into the Los Angeles basin: a niece in Scottsdale lent it to me. Do you think shell ever see it again? Unlikely. Of course when I borrowed it from her I had every intention of returning it and in a few days or weeks I may feel that way again, but for now forget her and her husband and three children who looked at me over the kitchen table like I was a museum piece sent to bore them. I could run circles around those kids. Theyre spoon-fed Ritalin and private schools and have eyes that say give me things I dont have. I wanted to read them a book on the history of the world, its migrations, plagues, and wars, but the shelves of their outsized condominium were full of ceramics and biographies of the stars. The whole thing depressed the hell out of me and Im glad to be gone.

A week ago I left Baltimore with the idea of seeing my son, Graham. Ive been thinking about him a lot recently, days we spent together in the barn at the old house, how with him as my audience ideas came quickly; I dont know when Ill get to see him again. I thought I might as well catch up with some of the other relatives along the way and planned to start at my daughter, Lindas, in Atlanta but when I arrived it turned out shed moved. I called Graham and when he got over the shock of hearing my voice, he said Linda didnt want to see me. By the time my younger brother, Ernie, refused to do anything more than have lunch with me after Id taken a bus all the way to Houston, I began to get the idea this episodic reunion thing might be more trouble than it was worth. Scottsdale did nothing to alter my opinion. These people seem to think theyll have another chance, that Ill be coming around again. The fact is Ive completed my will, made bequests of my patent rights, and am now just composing a few notes to my biographer, who, in a few decades, when the true influence of my work becomes apparent, may need them to clarify certain issues.

Franklin Caldwell Singer, b. 1924, Baltimore, Maryland.

Child of a German machinist and a bankers daughter.

My psych discharge following desertion in Paris was trumped up by an army intern resentful of my superior knowledge of the diagnostic manual. The nude dancing incident at the Louvre in a room full of Rubenses had occurred weeks earlier and was of a piece with other celebrations at the time.

B.A., Ph.D., engineering, Johns Hopkins University.

1952. First and last electroshock treatment for which I will never, never, never forgive my parents.

19541965. Researcher, Eastman Kodak Laboratories. As with so many institutions in this country, talent was resented. I was fired as soon as I began to point out flaws in the management structure. Two years later I filed a patent on a shutter mechanism that Kodak eventually broke down and purchased (then-vice president for product development Arch Vendellini WAS having an affair with his daughters best friend, contrary to what he will tell you. Notice the way his left shoulder twitches when hes lying).

All subsequent diagnosesand let me tell you, there have been a numberare the result of two forces, both in their way pernicious: (1) the attempt by the psychiatric establishment over the last century to redefine eccentricity as illness, and (2) the desire of members of my various families to render me docile and if possible immobile.

The electric bread slicer concept was stolen from me by a man in a diner in Chevy Chase dressed as a reindeer who I could not possibly have known was an employee of Westinghouse.

That I have no memories of the years 19881990 and believed until very recently that Ed Meese was still the attorney general is not owing to my purported paranoid blackout but on the contrary to the fact my third wife took it upon herself to lace my coffee with tranquilizers. Believe nothing you hear about the divorce settlement.

When I ring the buzzer at Grahams place in Venice, a Jew in his late twenties with some fancy-looking musculature answers the door. He appears nervous and says, We werent expecting you till tomorrow, and I ask him who we are and he says, Me and Graham, adding hurriedly, Were friends, you know, only friends. I dont live here, Im just over to use the computer.

All I can think is I hope this guy isnt out here trying to get acting jobs, because its obvious to me right away that my son is gay and is screwing this character with the expensive-looking glasses. There was a lot of that in the military and I learned early on that it comes in all shapes and sizes, not just the fairy types everyone expects. Nonetheless, I am briefly shocked by the idea that my twenty-nine-year-old boy has never seen fit to share with me the fact that he is a fruitcakeno malice intendedand I resolve right away to talk to him about it when I see him. Marlon Brando overcomes his stupor and lifting my suitcase from the car leads me through the back garden past a lemon tree in bloom to a one-room cottage with a sink and plenty of light to which I take an instant liking.

This will do nicely, I say and then I ask him, How long have you been sleeping with my son? Its obvious he thinks Im some brand of geriatric homophobe getting ready to come on in a religiously heavy manner and seeing that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look in his eye I take pity and disabuse him.

Ive seen women run down by tanks. Im not about to get worked up about the prospect of fewer grandchildren. When I start explaining to him that social prejudice of all stripes runs counter to my Enlightenment idealsideals tainted by centuries of partial applicationit becomes clear to me that Graham has given him the family line. His face grows patient and his smile begins to leak the sympathy of the ignorant: poor old guy suffering from mental troubles his whole life, up one month, down the next, spewing grandiose notions that slip like sand through his fingers, to which I always say, you just look up Frank Singer at the U.S. Patent Office. In any case, this turkey probably thinks the Enlightenment is a marketing scheme for General Electric; I spare him the seminar I could easily conduct and say, Look, if the two of you share a bed, its fine with me.

That drive must have worn you out, he says hopefully.

Do you want to lie down for a bit?

I tell him I could hook a chain to my nieces SAAB and drag it through a marathon. This leaves him nonplussed. We walk back across the yard together into the kitchen of the bungalow. I ask him for pen, paper, and a calculator and begin sketching an idea that came to me just a moment agoI can feel the presence of Graham alreadyfor a bicycle capable of storing the energy generated on the downward slope in a small battery and releasing it through a handlebar control when needed on the uphilla potential gold mine when you consider the aging population and the increase in leisure time created by early retirement. I have four pages of specs and the estimated cost of a prototype done by the time Graham arrives two hours later. He walks into the kitchen wearing a blue linen suit, a briefcase held to his chest, and seeing me at the table goes stiff as a board. I havent seen him in five years and the first thing I notice is that hes got bags under his eyes.