I’ve to tell you. My life there’s as real to me as we are here, sitting in this car looking at that ocean.’
He stares out of the windshield.
‘All this time and I never put it together. I think I’ve spent at least half the last thirty or so years there. But it was always separate. I know I was here all the time. I know you’re right, but sometimes, lots of times, my mind wasn’t here, and not just when I was sleeping either. I’ve been away a lot.’
The resident psychologist is intrigued. The scared son is being displaced somewhat.
‘Maybe you made all this up while you were sick, Dad; you were out of your mind for a long time. Maybe you got this idea in your head then and it’s coming back to you now.’
I wait. Dad stares more at the ocean. There’s nothing to do but wait, let him put it together. We sit quietly for almost five minutes. My mind’s racing ten to the second, all the way from Mother’s ‘crazy’ theory to wondering if this reality might only be a dream and what Dad’s talking about is the real reality. Maybe he’s about to wake up and we’ll all vanish, the sky, ocean, car, Dad, me; everything.
‘John, it’s something like the ocean out there. The top, the waves, the surf, the foam are us, here, right now. We call it real because we can see it. But my life in Cape May is the water, it’s under the surface and holds everything up. If I loosen my hold on that, I feel everything else will fall in.’
He’s quiet again.
‘Probably Mother’s right, Johnny; I am crazy. It might even run in my family the way she says. Dad had very personal ideas for running his life that were definitely peculiar. Who else would put together three row houses in the middle of South Philadelphia so he could have a regular old-time farm kitchen? You’ve got to admit that’s not normal. I don’t think Dad ever really left Wisconsin in his mind. Do you remember the pictures of hunting dogs on the walls, and that gigantic bear head along with the elk and deer heads, hung in the same room where we used to eat? Then there was that huge table he built so we could all sit down at the same time, with twenty-four drawers built into it all around, each drawer with dishes, salt, pepper, knives, forks. Nobody does things like that unless they’re a bit strange.’
I nod. I don’t like hearing him talking down Granddad. He doesn’t mean it; he’s only searching for answers. My grandfather was such a pleasure to me, a proof some few people are still real.
‘Then there’s Uncle Orin and Uncle Pete; they never did adjust to the city, stayed farm boys all their lives. Neither of them ever held a regular paying job. And look at the people they married, big fat women who couldn’t keep a house; their places smelled so bad you kids wouldn’t even go visit.’
He’s speaking without screening; he’s not acting out the role he’s cast for himself, neither the reclusive, shy, dominated man nor Jake the big-timer, free spender. This is almost like hearing myself, or one of my few closest friends, desperately trying to break the walls of aloneness, searching for some communication.
‘Johnny, I don’t think I ever truly left the East Coast. Some part of me stayed back there and another small part never even left Wisconsin. I hated those jobs at G.E. in Philadelphia and at Douglas here in California, so gradually I moved myself down to Cape May and set myself to farming the way we did in Wisconsin. Now, all that sounds crazy, doesn’t it, but that’s what I think might’ve happened.’
I look at Dad. He’s another man all right. Why is it I had to wait so long to know my dad is a man like myself, more like me than anybody I’ve ever met; genetically self-evident, since I have no brothers. His casting me as his brother Ed makes sense now. We have, in our deepest selves, beyond the masks of time and experience, a communal identity.
What is it that keeps fathers and sons so far apart?
‘You’re not crazy, Dad. We all do what you’ve been doing. We make up daydreams, and who knows what’s going on in our deepest sleep? Not even the best psychiatrists really know. You’re not crazy, you’ve just been doing what we all do, only better.’
I want to see how he’s taking it; how much he can talk about his fantasy world. I think it might help.
‘Tell me, Dad. What do you do in this dreamworld in Cape May? What do you do for a living?’
When I say ‘dreamworld’, he blinks. He keeps looking at me but he blinks down hard. He’s not sure he should tell me any more. I can almost hear the scales balancing in his mind.
‘I’m not sure it’s a “dream” yet, John. All I know is it isn’t here in this world. Do you think it’s possible I could be living half the time in heaven before I’m dead on this earth? Have you ever heard of a thing like that happening?’
He looks at me seriously. I shake my head. I want him to go on. I don’t want to make any more stupid mistakes. He stops and looks down at his hands. He twists his ring, the JHT ring on his finger.
‘You know, John, I even wear this ring there in that other place.’
It’s the first time he calls it ‘that other place’.
‘There, Johnny, I built a house exactly like the one we have here; only I built it there first. I drew the plans for this place from my memory of the one there. But for some reason I made this one all backwards. The L goes the wrong way, all the rooms are on the opposite side, going the other way, like left-handed and right-handed. Everything here is backwards. The house there is on a little hill and we have bedrooms in the attic, too.
‘We have seven acres there. I raise produce for the market in Philadelphia. I truck it up in an old ’29 Ford I converted into a flatbed truck. I go up on Tuesdays and Fridays. Gosh, Johnny, it seems strange telling you all this, because you’re there too, only you’re much younger; you can’t be more than fifteen.’
He stops and shakes his head.
It sounds great to me. I wouldn’t mind going back and being fifteen again, living on a small truck farm at Cape May near the sea. I wonder if there are any chickens – some beautiful Plymouth Rock, black-and-white-check, brown-egg-laying chickens, or Rhode Island Reds.
‘Are there any chickens there, Dad?’
Now I’m playing Lennie in Mice and Men.
‘Sure there are chickens, Johnny; interesting you should ask because they’re your job. Bill Sullivan showed us how to build a coop and we have a hundred laying hens now. I take up twenty or thirty dozen eggs every time I go to Philly. Kay, Ira Taylor’s wife, showed Joan and Mother how to sew up potholders and I sell those too. We make out all right.’
It’s so crazy but I find myself wanting to get into his world. We sit there two hours with the sea rolling in on itself while Dad tells me about it. He wants to talk. He’s kept it to himself all these years and now he wants to share. When he knows I’m not going to laugh, that I’m enjoying it too, he can tell me everything.
He has concocted the most incredible, elaborate, complete fantasy anyone could possibly imagine. He can give the names of roads, of his neighbors on both sides, up and down the road. He’s peopled his world with his best friends, the people he’s loved. The life is somewhere between the best of country living and an idealized suburb. It also includes the quality of a two-week summer vacation at the shore. There is all the good, the best parts of his life, and none of the bad. Listening to him is like Laura Ingalls Wilder, as told by Lewis Carroll, produced by Walt Disney.
The sun is setting and I realize it’s late. I don’t want to stop him but I know Mom must be worried.
‘Look, Dad. What can we do about this? Mom can’t take it; she’s terribly upset. What is it you actually said to her?’
‘I got confused, John. And that never happened before; I’ve always kept it all separate. But you know since I’ve gotten out of the hospital I’ve had so much fun; I’m having a hard time keeping the two places apart. I think I said something to Mother about how the corn was growing.