You Are Not a Stranger Here

MY FATHER’S BUSINESS

THE COMMUTER TRAIN is barely out of South Station when it comes slowly to a halt. The lights go out, the hum of the air conditioner ceases. It’s a midmorning in June and the railcar is three-quarters empty. Daniel sits toward the back, by a window, the envelope still sealed on his lap. In the sudden absence of noise, he can hear the sounds of his fellow passengers: a newspaper being folded, a boy two rows up whispering to his father, a cough, and a yawn. Weak morning light, filtered through an overcast sky, hangs in the rail yard, scarcely making it through the train’s tinted windows. He sips the last of his ginger ale and watches a blue Conrail engine creep along the tracks in front of the huge Gillette sign. A work crew in orange vests idles by a switch in the rail, waiting for the engine to pass. Above them, gulls circle the pylons. In this unexpected quiet, Daniel realizes there is part of him that doesn’t want to open the file, doesn’t want to read the interviews or what the doctors have to say about them. Their words won’t change anything. But then he doesn’t want to be afraid of himself either.

It wasn’t easy getting the records. Gollinger, his psychiatrist, didn’t want him to see the correspondence. But it was in the file, Daniel had a right to it. And another part of him is glad that somewhere in the confusion his life has become, he found the energy and organizational wherewithal to obtain them. Perhaps it will help him to remember, help him see things clearly.

Through his feet, he feels a vibration accompanied by a clicking sound, and then the hiss of the brakes releasing.

The train lurches forward, lights flicker on, the air hums again. At the end of the line is the town Daniel grew up in, a place he hasn’t been in years.

He undoes the metal clasp and with his forefinger breaks the seal. Inside is a packet of paper, half an inch thick. He flips through it and, putting aside the test results and Gollinger’s scribbled notes, begins to read.

1. Interview with Daniel Markham’s father, Charles Markham

—Date is March 15th, ides of March… first entry on the Dictaphone… got it tied around my neck here… so… Dad’s here, he’s talking about—Dad?—I’m putting this on the research, okay?

—Which, given the rates in the bond market at the moment, is just absurd and I told him that, Danny, six and a quarter, maybe six and a half, and we could float the whole offering, the street would soak the paper up in a minute, and your sister and you could get a house, a boat…

—Is that Dr. Fenn still there at the clinic, Dad?

—Yeah, he’s there, but I—if they’d just take a promissory note and once I get into the currency markets it’s child’s play—cross market arbitrage—the yen and the ruble, the lira and the pound, an eighth of a cent here, a twentieth there, a big enough stake, and I mean they understand this down at the Fed, they know that I’d be a stabilizing force in the market, and with all the bad paper on the street—

—Do you see him much?

—Who?

—Dr. Fenn.

—He has dogs.

—In his office?

—Why are you in bed, Danny?

—I told you, Dad. My back. It’s killing me, it’s been killing me for months.

—He keeps them in a cement yard behind the clinic—three schnauzers and a Great Dane—they beshit themselves and I don’t like doctors who keep animals in that condition. Besides, he’s a behaviorist.

—But you have appointments with him, right? Sometimes?

—I don’t think he’s ever published an article in his life and when I go in there with a new study from Science or New England Journal of Medicine he gets very defensive. I always prefer doctors who publish… but anyway, there’s an underlying crisis at Treasury. Bond issues have been selling poorly and with the advance of the Euro there could be a flight from the dollar, which at the moment is the only benchmark currency we have, but that might change and if I can get in there, get in there with a stake—

—Help me for a second, Dad.

—What?

—The pills on the bureau.

—Okay, okay. But do you hear what I’m saying? Everything could change, I could buy the old house back and that ugly pine hedge could be dug up and replaced with a Japanese maple tree like the one your mother planted, the smooth bark—

—Dad.

—Those small shiny leaves almost like the petals of a flower—

—The water glass—

—Spread like a fine carpet on the lawn, if I could just get in there with a stake—do you have paper somewhere, I have to write a letter to my bank and we can get it messengered downtown.

—Help me, please. Turn this off, here around my neck…

—Why are you wincing, Danny?

—Please.

—You must have paper somewhere.

2. Interview with Daniel Markham’s roommate, Al Turpin

—April 4th, we’ve got my roommate, Al, here. Al? Do you want to say something?

—Is this like a time capsule?

—I told you, it’s the start of the research. It’s a record, some confirmation that something’s happening.

—Right, well, I guess I feel like a lot is happening. I mean the whole idea of selling those old futons to help with the rent. I think that’s all gone really well. It’s very shrewd.

—All right, Al, but we’re doing the anecdotal sociology now, so let’s just move on. All right?

—Sure.

—Okay… we’re going to begin here with my friend Al Turpin, who’s twenty-six, an office temp, and he’s agreed to talk to us about his interest in philosophy… we’re just starting by asking people how it began.

—Well, the first thing I remember is my sister coming home from college and saying to me: “Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.” We were sitting out by the lake, and I felt this sudden flutter of excitement in my chest. The idea seemed so powerful, that I could know such a thing.

Now I mostly just read. Like after work, I’ll come home and pick up whatever I’m working my way through, Leibniz or Hegel or whatever, and I’ll read a few pages, take some notes, just try to understand what they’re saying. It’s kind of like reading a big, very long story, starts with Zeno and those guys and then there are all these installments, all these episodes, and you don’t read it in order, you just get this idea of the overall structure of the story, the plot I guess, and you fill in the parts you don’t have. Some of it’s really boring.

Like Spinoza. But you got to do it. I don’t know why really.

You just have to.

—Can you describe reading the books, Al, the actual experience?

—That’s hard. I’d say the main thing is the sense of order.

The sense that even if you can’t perceive the whole architecture of the argument at any given point, you know there is an architecture, that you’re in this man’s hands in a way, being carried along toward the completion of a vision, something he’s seen and is revealing to you slowly. There’s a tremendous comfort in that kind of order, even if you can’t see it… By the way, did that Dutch guy who called about a futon say when he was coming?

3. Interview with Daniel Markham’s friend, Kyle Johnson

—Yeah, just sit there, that’s fine. Okay, okay, we have Kyle here, a good friend of mine from Bradford High, and he’s going to talk to us, okay, okay, so tell us how the whole philosophy thing got started for you.

—Dan?

—Yeah?

—Are you all right?

—Me? Sure, sure. Fire away. You want some coffee? Al, get him some coffee.

—You look a little harried.

—I’m fine, really. So how did it start?

—Dan. I know it hasn’t been easy lately. I heard about your dad going back in the hospital. I remember all that stuff when we were kids. To tell you the truth I haven’t been so great myself. But I’m saying if you ever need a place to stay or anything.

—That’s very, very, very kind of you, Kyle. Now about philosophy.

—Have you been seeing your doctor?

—Whose fucking inquisition is this anyway?

—Okay, Dan, okay.

—All right, then. Philosophy.

—Well, I guess it began in the barn.

—The barn, okay, tell us about the barn.

—There was a room in the barn. A room I used to play in.

No. Wait. I have to go back. I have to tell you about the newspaper.

—Okay, the newspaper, tell us about the newspaper.

—When I was ten I started a newspaper. It was called the Hammurabi Gazette.

—After the famous legal code.

—No. My cat was named Hammurabi. The paper was devoted to coverage of his life.

—You never told me you had a cat.

—Yeah, I had one.

—Go on.

—There were feature articles about Hammurabi and his daily life. Pictures too. My brother wrote a monthly crossword made up of the nicknames we had for Hamm. There was a sports page as well. We set up a miniature Olympiad for him and photographed him knocking over little hurdles. My father photocopied the paper at his office. Relatives in Canada subscribed to it.

—So you got into philosophy from a publishing angle?

—No, wait, you have to listen.

—Okay, okay.

—In the barn there was a room. No, Al, I said I don’t take milk. The barn was old. It was rotting. My parents didn’t like me to play there, but I did. In the floor of the room there was a small trapdoor that opened onto the stables. They used to throw the hay down through it. I was angry at Billy Hallihan.

He had deflated the tires of my bicycle the day before at He had deflated the tires of my bicycle the day before at school and laughed as I pumped them up again. I asked him over to play in the barn. I knew he’d come because the barn was cool. The barn was falling apart. Before he came I opened the trapdoor. The door swung downward. I covered the square hole with paper. Old copies of the Hammurabi Gazette, stapled together. My plan was that I would stand on the far side of the room. When Billy entered I would say, “Come over here, I have something to show you.”

He would walk across the room, step onto the paper, and his leg would go through the hole. My sense was that his entire body would not go through it. That he would just be hurt and embarrassed. I put the paper over the hole and went back outside to ride my bike until he arrived. When I saw him coming across the yard, I hurried back into the barn. The paper was gone. I walked up to the hole. I looked down. In the stable below there was an old rusting sit-down lawn mower that my brother and I had taken half to pieces. I had removed the plastic knob from the gearshift. That’s where Hammurabi had landed. On the spike of that metal stick that I had uncovered, falling through the trap I had laid with my paper devoted to him. Hamm had carried a copy of the Gazette down with him, and it too was impaled.

—Jesus Christ.

—Yes. The image is not so different. He died for my sins.

—You never told me this, Kyle. So this eventually led to what?

—Kant. Rawls. Moral theory of one kind or another.

—And you studied that in college.

—Yeah.

—And now you work at the bakery, right?

—No, I left there a couple weeks ago. Somebody stole a bread slicer, they pegged it on me.

—So what are you doing?

—I work at a cemetery. I’m a groundsman, I prepare the graves.

—Get outta here! You’re a grave digger!

—They don’t call them that anymore. Just like they don’t call bank tellers bank tellers. But yeah, that’s what I am.

—Where?

—Out in Bradford, that little cemetery behind Saint Mary’s.

—You’re kidding me! Is this a temporary thing?

—I don’t know. I don’t know how I would know. The future is a mystery to me.

—I’m so glad you came, Kyle, I’m in the process of developing this new way to map human experience, the research here is part of it, interviewing people. I want to figure out the relationship between the desire for theoretical knowledge and certain kinds of despair. This cat stuff is very interesting in that regard.

—Is your dad better since he got out?

—Wonderful. Just wonderful.

—I never had the same energy you did, Dan.

—Don’t be silly, don’t be silly, this is all extremely interesting.

—It’s strange being out in Bradford again. Something peaceful about it, though. You could come out and visit me sometime, if you needed somewhere to go.

—Sure, sure. Al, what are you doing?

—Shhhh. Listen. There’s someone at the door.

—Who is it, Al?

—I don’t know. I think it’s the super.

4. Interview with Wendell Lippman

—Daniel Markham conducting interview number three, June 16th, 1997, Anecdotal Sociology of the Philosophical Urge in Young Men, funding pending at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Center for Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, United States Departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services, and Education. Proceeding number 3B1997. Subject, Wendel O. Lippman, Caucasian male, age twenty-one, resident of Jamaica Plain, Boston. First question. Mr. Lippman, could you state your full name for the record?

—Wendell Oliver Lippman.

—Thank you. Now, Mr. Lippman, you have come here to participate in some groundbreaking research. What you say here today could alter the daily lives of mil ions of your fellow citizens. I don’t want to sound overly serious, but you need to understand you are sitting now at a kind of apex, an unparalleled position of influence, one you may never again attain in your life, a chance to shape the future of a nation by opening a window into the souls of its young men. Do you feel ready for this responsibility?

—I guess so. I mean, I just met Al the other day, at the park.

—Mr. Lippman, you must understand. In this instance Mr. Turpin is only a conduit through whom you have come to me. Your association with him is an empirical necessity but otherwise entirely irrelevant. This study is interested in you qua you, not you qua friend of Al. Is that clear?

—What does “qua” mean?

—Mr. Lippman, is it your impression that I am conducting this interview, or is it rather your impression that you are conducting this interview?

—You, I guess.

—That is correct, Mr. Lippman, that is correct.

—Look, man, I mean, Al just said I should come over sometime ‘cause, you know, we could talk about God and stuff like that, which is cool and all, but… I was just coming by to pick up some weed.

—For the record, I am now granting myself permission to treat the subject as hostile.

—What?

—State the titles and authors of the books you have read in the last five years.

—All of them?

—Yes, Mr. Lippman, all of them.

—You’re fucking intense.

—Are we done now with the editorial comment?

—Yeah.

—Good. So you’ve read what, exactly?

—Well, I checked this thing out on the Gulf War, about how, like, there was all this information about it, but not really any analysis, and that was sort of a new thing.

—Could you state for the record your level of education?

—I go to college.

—Right. Passing on the book question for now, perhaps you could tell us something about your interest in philosophy and how it began. You do have an interest in philosophy, correct?

—Sure.

—All right. Tel us how it got started.

—Well, the first time I got high—

5. Interview with Carl de Hooten

—We’re talking here this afternoon with Carl de Hooten… who is twenty-seven years old and a resident of western Somerville. Mr. de Hooten—

—Carl’s fine.

—All right. Carl is a—how did you describe it?

—A freelance graduate student.

—A freelance grad student. Meaning?

—I’m affiliated with a number of departments.

—He is a graduate of SUNY Oswego, where he studied philosophy. So, Carl, tell us something about your initial interest in the field.

—Where I lived as a child, a neighboring girl began a lemonade stand, her plan being to sell to passersby. My mother decided that I ought to participate in this venture, a sentiment which I later concluded derived from her conviction that I did not leave the house frequently enough. I fought her suggestion tooth and nail, having no interest in hawking some sugar drink to the locals. My mother persisted, however, going as far as to contact the girl’s parents and negotiate my inclusion. I was told to go and sit by the girl at the table—to go and have fun. It was through the experience of sitting beside this girl—Verena was her name—that I became interested in artificial intelligence. In front of the table, Verena had hung a sign which announced the price of a lemonade at twenty cents.

The interesting thing, however, was that despite the sign she charged different customers different prices. If her friend Judy came by, for instance, she was invariably allowed to pay only a nickel. Boys were generally charged five cents over—a full quarter—on the claim that the sign referred only to the price of the lemonade, and not the cost of the cup.

When cars slowed to make a purchase, she’d slap me across the shoulders and insist I kneel down in front of the table, thus obscuring the sign and allowing her to bilk the strangers for fifty cents or even a dollar. When I said I thought this was unfair, she took my face in her hands and yelled at me, saying, “You are only here because my mother says you have to be.”

Around this same time I had been taking apart a calculator my father had given me, checking out the circuits, looking through a magnifying glass at the chip, imagining all those microscopic chambers inside, how every calculation was broken down into its binary constituents. I was watching Verena one afternoon, watching the expression on her face as three older girls approached from up the road. I could see her trying to decide what to charge, and it struck me that if one knew enough about her brain, if one could get down into the synapse, down into the interstitial fluid, to the binary code, well, then she’d be predictable, even reproducible, and all the apparent capriciousness, all the malleability would succumb to an algorithm, a chip on a motherboard.

That’s more or less how it got started.

—Interesting…

—I’ve been pretty heavily into artificial intelligence ever since: neural nets, cognitive modeling.

—Ask him if he’s ever had a girlfriend.

—Al! I apologize, my roommate’s—

—That’s all right, I can answer if you like. The fact is I haven’t had a girlfriend.

—Does this bother you?

—It occasionally bothers me intensely and I feel like an outcast, and then for long stretches I don’t even notice. I must say, though, coming here is comforting.

—Why’s that?

—It makes me feel like a stable person, in control of my life.

—Coming here does?

—Yeah, I mean look at you guys. You’re living in these rooms so full of books you can barely move, your roommate’s lying on his stomach on the floor, he’s been there for an hour—

—He’s got gastrointestinal problems—

—And you’re sitting there with a bag of ice on your back and a Dictaphone asking these questions… and this is all somehow part of you selling me a futon? This isn’t normal, you know. There’s nothing normal about it.

6. Interview with Charles Markham

—Okay, Dad, it’s on… Are you going to say something?

—Day’s almost over.

—I can turn on a light if you want.

—It’s all right… What are we supposed to talk about?

—I told you, I’m doing this research, about how the interest in philosophy begins, what it leads to…

—You don’t want to interview me.

—I do.

—Danny, it’s all over now. Why do you want to drag it up? They fired me, that’s all.

—It’s not about the job. This isn’t about academics, I just mean how it got started for you, what it meant to you…

—Funny. What it meant to me? I was reading this book the other day. There’s this fragment I remember. Went something like, People whose best hope for a connection to other human beings lay in elaborating for themselves an elegiac mode of relatedness, as if everyone’s life were already over. Seemed accurate to me.

—How do you mean?

—This idea of living your life as an elegy, inoculating yourself against the present. So much easier if you can see people as though they were just characters from a book. You can still spend time with them. But you have nothing to do with their fate. It’s all been decided. The present doesn’t really matter, it’s just the time you happen to be reading about them. Which makes everything easier. Other people’s pain, for instance.

—Did this have something to do with what got you started reading?

—The philosophers—they were part of that, keeping things at a remove.

—How?

—They were my friends. Reliable. There to keep me company. You spent time with them, they talked to you. They didn’t have crises. They were always ready with a little numbered comment. So ideal that way. No dying bodies to drag around. Like a painting. No changes, no disappointments. Everything already over.

—Did you read when you were in the hospital? Mom said you always had your books.

—What are you talking about?

—The year you were on the ward.

—She told you about that, about me being in there?

—Yeah. She said she used to come and read to you… Look at me, Dad… Say something.

—Turn that tape thing off, would you? Oh Danny, why are you crying?

—And she said, she said the doctor told her you were sick…

—Stop it.

—And that you needed your family… Where are you going? Dad. Where are you going?

—I have to go.

—No, Dad, please. I want to talk to you, come on, you said you’d do the interview, please, this is for me—the research—come on, you can’t leave now, please… What about the day you picked me up from school in your tux—Dad?—with that Lamborghini, and we went to the Harbor and you bought me martinis and dinner and we stayed the night—tell me what it felt like, tell me what you were thinking—

—No, Danny, I have to—

—That week you slept in the garage or the time you made the sculpture in the living room, come on, I want you to tell me how it all fit in, how the books fit in, the theories, the things you read, Dad!

7. Daniel Markham, self-interview

—Anecdotal Sociology interview number something, Daniel Markham… So, Mr. Markham, could you tell us a little something about yourself?… Surely, I was born in Boston, we were all in the hospital there, me, my mom, and my dad too!… Your dad?… Yes, he too had a room, just over in the next wing… You’re such a kidder… I know, doesn’t it just kill you… So seriously now, to the topic at hand, why have you laid all your books out on the floor like this, and why have you stacked them in front of the door and why won’t you let Al in, and why, Mr. Markham, why are you naked, and why do you lie on top of these books, and do you really have a back condition, or is that just an elaborate somatoform pose, and do you really have an ulcer that won’t let you sleep, and do you really spend the day in a ghastly neurasthenic haze, and just what are those things you’ve started to draw on the wall that look vaguely like the symbols of some primitive religion, and what would Dr. Gollinger think of them, hey? And is it the circles in them that interests you, or the lines that cut across them, like the spike of the gearshift on which that cat landed?… All very interesting, yes, I agree, but really you’ll have to be more specific. I mean, what exactly is the question?… Well, it’s your own question, Mr. Markham, don’t you remember it? You asked them how their interest in philosophy began, so how did it begin for you?… Interesting yes, very interesting, the tears, I think it was the tears, or rather the pages wrinkled with the dried tears, the open book on his desk, my father’s of course, and then a paragraph where the paper was wrinkled, raised, you know the way paper gets when it’s been wet and then dried, just a few circles here and there, and no water glass in sight, and of course the other minor evidence being that he was weeping on the sofa. Reading those wrinkled paragraphs, looking at the little black words, listening to my father cry, well you see, it was all so fascinating and captivating to me, and I just said, gosh darn it, I’d love a career in this sort of thing…

There you go again, you crack me up, really this is supposed to be a serious interview… Sorry, I know, I know… And so what have you learned?… Well I’m glad you finally asked me that because you see, that’s why I keep the books all over the floor like this, and why I like to lie on top of them, because really then reference becomes much easier, I mean I can just feel the Symposium pressing up against my thigh here, but seriously, what I’ve learned, well there’s so much, but let’s see, Kant said I’m clearing away knowledge to make room for faith, and Marx said there is only one antidote to mental suffering, and that is physical pain (which seems accurate to me), and Kierkegaard said there are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys, they cheat their masters by copying the answers from a book, and Vico said the criterion and rule to truth is to have invented the truth, maybe even conducted a few interviews, who knows?

And Wittgenstein said ethics and aesthetics are one and the same thing, and he said the solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem, and he said I can only doubt if there is something beyond doubt, and Heidegger said the idea of logic itself disintegrates in the turbulence of a more original questioning, and Fichte said—No, Al, I’m not hungry, I’m doing an interview, I’ll be out tomorrow, go out, enjoy yourself, it’s a lovely day… A warning?… Burn it, Al!

It’s just a collection notice. Just burn it, burn the whole fucking stack, the phone and electric, just burn it in a pyre on the landing and strap that fucking nosy super to it! You can do it, Al, you can do it!… You were saying, Mr. Markham… Yes, I was saying Fichte said something too, and so did Pascal, and my mother said we all fall apart in little ways, and then there’s the passage here, the one I can’t stop reading, where is it? Here in the gospel, Luke, Chapter Two. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?… My father’s business… Open to any page. Here, take a book, Mr. Markham, yes there, that wetted paragraph, read the words.

THE TRAIN CLICKS past the backyards of Bradford.

One strewn with children’s plastic toys. Another with its ground churned up, ready for the sod of a new lawn. Daniel leans his head against the glass, letting his eyes drop out of focus, the trees becoming a gentle blur. Without looking, he takes the papers from his lap and places them facedown on the seat beside him. Soon the train begins to slow. At Bradford Hills, he watches the father two rows up gather his briefcase under one arm, take his young son by the hand, and walk down the aisle. Emptier still, the train moves on, past the tennis courts and baseball fields where Daniel played as a child, past the supermarket where he bagged groceries after school and the police station where he and his mother used to file the missing persons reports.

Have they picked him up, he wonders, dressed in a swimsuit in a supermarket aisle, pleading with a stranger to read a sheet of paper he clasps in his hands? Or is he at the apartment he mentioned the last time they spoke, some friend Daniel had never heard of, a woman who told fortunes? That he can sit placidly on this train and imagine any of this astonishes Daniel. That in this moment of reprieve he feels neither despair nor exaltation.

Just behind the post office, the train comes to a halt at Bradford Square. He takes up the papers, the envelope, the empty soda can, lifts himself from the seat.

The day has become warm, the dampness of the morning rain lingering in the air. He climbs the staircase into the parking lot and heads across it toward Washington Street.

The sidewalks have been redone with brick, and there are new benches and lampposts, all painted the same dark green. There are even more Mercedes and Jaguars than he remembers, even more wealthy young mothers with painted faces and gold jewelry, pushing strollers by restaurants and boutiques. He walks past the library. By the pay phone there is a garbage can, and into it he throws the file and all its contents: the test reports, the duplicate prescriptions, the blood levels, the doctors’ notes, the interviews, the predictions of experts. At the Pond Street intersection, he waits for the walk sign and then crosses. The sun is nearly out, playing faint shadows on the sidewalk, beginning to glisten against the road’s wet pavement. The tires of the passing cars make a swishing sound as they go by. A warm breeze drifts over the street and into the budding trees.

Ahead, he sees the sign for Saint Mary’s. A path leads up to the church’s brick tower and then heads off down the side of the building. He follows the path around to the gate. The cemetery is no more than a couple of acres, crowded with headstones and flowers. At the back, they’ve cleared a copse of trees to make room for a few more parishioners.

He sees the line of Kyle’s shoulders hunched over a wheelbarrow, and closing the gate behind him, makes his way over the carefully tended grass.

“Dan,” Kyle says, looking up from his work on the grave, “you made it.”

For a moment, here, in the calm he knows is only the eye of the storm, in the center of a turbulence that, despite everything anyone has ever written or said, might not mean a thing, he can only stare into his friend’s gentle face, and listen, with gratitude, to the sounds of the world around him.