Cocaine's Son (27 page)

But I needed to take only one look at him to realize there wouldn’t be any swimming today. He had gained back most of the weight and then some; his belly had reacquired its familiar round shape, and he had added a pair of suspenders to his wardrobe. Plus, he said, he had a case of indigestion “to beat the band.” Seeking medical advice, he had called my sister, who told him that using over-the-counter remedies was a waste of time. “Yeah,” he had told her, “but consider the alternative.” It’s no use, she said, and he answered with a favorite personal maxim that meant roughly the same thing: “Nothing means nothing.”

I did not come away empty-handed from the visit. My parents and I were having lunch in a diner, where I was recounting for them the family-appropriate exploits of my honeymoon, when my mother shared a story I had never heard. In the early days of
their marriage, she and my father had traveled to Mexico, where they booked an afternoon fishing trip on a sailboat and were likely the only non-native, English-speaking Caucasians on the ship. When they were many miles from land, the sky was overtaken by a terrible storm that threatened to sweep the ship out to the ocean or wreck it completely. The coast was so far away that there was no time to get back before the storm hit, so the only option was to drop anchor and ride it out. But as the crew rapidly searched the ship, they discovered they had left the anchor behind, if they ever had one. The storm loomed closer.

My mother, by her own telling, was panicked and useless. The resigned crew, as best as she could understand, was making peace with God. But my father somehow kept his calm. He summoned his shipmates and got them to gather all the chairs on board, tie them together with a length of rope, and secure the loose end of that rope to the ship before they threw the chairs overboard. The boat was now moored. When the storm came through, it took away my mother’s desire to return to Mexico any time soon, but it left the ship and its passengers intact.

I thought about this story incessantly on my journey home, one more bus ride along that charmed route that was precisely a hundred miles, two hours, and two
New York Times
crossword puzzles in duration. How could I have gone my entire life without ever hearing this tale? When being provided with just one example of my father acting heroically would have been enough to offset all the instances in which he had behaved otherwise, how had some cruel cartel of fate, chance, memory, and my mother conspired to keep it from me?

That, at least, was my old, linear way of looking at events. But if I saw them from another perspective, in the order I had experienced them—in the order that was most convenient and
comfortable for me to place them—this decisive and selfless incarnation of my father was the most current version of him that I knew. In the chronological sequence of his life, it had occurred over thirty-five years ago, but to me, he might as well have walked in from the sea, his hair tousled by the wind and rain, a souvenir length of rope across his shoulders. If he could do it even once before, who could say that this bravery was not some innate quality of his? Who could say it would never show up again?

What else could I change about his life and how I thought about him if I just reorganized the order in which I once believed events occurred? How much more of my own life could I validate if I just reshuffled the parts of his that most troubled me—if I tied them to the end of a rope and tossed them overboard like a bunch of tattered deck chairs? Then I could let go of the drug abuse, the prolonged absences, the uncertainty, and the anger. I could cast aside the shame and the secrecy, all the hurt accidentally inflicted upon me without thinking and without malice. I could say to myself that, as of now, I regret nothing—and accept, as my father had spent all those years telling me, that nothing means
nothing
.

Not only could I do all of that, I could allow myself to admit that I was satisfied with how everything,
everything
, had turned out. I was happy for the loneliness that had shown me never to fear solitude and taught me the value of companionship. I was grateful for the anxiety that never permitted me to be satisfied with meager accomplishments and allowed me to make productive use of sleepless nights. I enjoyed the fights that had instilled in me the ability to construct arguments on a moment’s notice and think on my feet, and had demonstrated for me the application of power and the injustice of power applied selfishly. Now I had some
power, too. My father had given me life, but I could give life back to him.

I stepped off the bus and back into the wider world. In my own private way, I told my father that he could go on living, because I intended to do the same.

There’s an old saying that victory has one hundred fathers, and this book has many parents, natural and otherwise, to thank for its publication, too. It would not exist without Lauren Kern and Adam Moss, in whose pages at
New York
it was first conceived. It would have grown up all wrong without Nina Collins and Bruce Tracy, who taught it to walk and talk and sent it off to school. And it would never have matured without Ryan Doherty, Jill Schwartzman, and Daniel Greenberg, who guided it through some reckless phases with the perfect balance of discipline, attentiveness, and forgiveness.

I could not have come this far without my loving and supportive family, or without Amy, who makes me want to be a father and glad I am not one yet.