You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [0]
Title Page
Dedication
NOTES TO MY BIOGRAPHER
THE GOOD DOCTOR
THE BEGINNINGS OF GRIEF
DEVOTION
WAR’S END
REUNION
DIVINATION
MY FATHER’S BUSINESS
THE VOLUNTEER
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright Page
TO MY FAMILY
AND
TO JENNIFER CHANDLER-WARD,
LOVE ALWAYS
NOTES TO
MY BIOGRAPHER
TWO THINGS TO get straight from the beginning: I hate doctors and have never joined a support group in my life. At seventy-three, I’m not about to change. The mental health establishment can go screw itself on a barren hilltop 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 I’m presently driving into the Los Angeles basin: a niece in Scottsdale lent it to me. Do you think she’ll 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. They’re spoon-fed Ritalin and private schools and have eyes that say give me things I don’t 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 I’m glad to be gone.
A week ago I left Baltimore with the idea of seeing my son, Graham. I’ve 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 don’t know when I’ll 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, Linda’s, in Atlanta but when I arrived it turned out she’d moved. I called Graham and when he got over the shock of hearing my voice, he said Linda didn’t want to see me. By the time my younger brother, Ernie, refused to do anything more than have lunch with me after I’d 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 they’ll have another chance, that I’ll be coming around again. The fact is I’ve 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 banker’s 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.
• 1954–1965. 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 daughter’s best friend, contrary to what he will tell you. Notice the way his left shoulder twitches