My father stood up abruptly when the song ended, gripping the chair as if for support, uncertain of where to go next. He had been a swaggering and theatrical man, tall and bulky, but in his solitude he looked tired (and where was Monica? Twenty-two, boots, a pink coat, blond—she had been living with him up until a month before he died, and she was the one who had found his body, though there was no sign in this video that she lived in the house anymore). My father looked exhausted. Gray stubble covered his neck and gaunt cheeks. He was holding an empty glass. He staggered out of the living room. But the camera lingered in front of the window, taking inventory: the lime green carpeting, the lame impressionist paintings (my father being the sole client of a rural French artist represented by the Wally Findlay gallery in Beverly Hills), a massive white sectional couch, the glass coffee table on which he displayed his collection of Steuben bears.
I enlarged the screen in order to see specifics.
His bookshelves were lined with an array of photographs that had not been there the last time I was in that house: a very brief lunch on Christmas Day, 1991.
There were so many photographs that my eyes started dancing around.
Most of them were of me, and I couldn’t help thinking that they served as some kind of reminder that I had abandoned him.
In a silver frame, the faded Polaroid of a worried little boy wearing suspenders and a red plastic toy fireman’s helmet, innocently holding out an orange to whoever was taking the picture.
Bret, twelve, wearing a Star Wars T-shirt, on a beach in Monterey, behind a house my parents owned in Pajaro Dunes.
My father standing beside me outside the auditorium at my high school graduation. I’m wearing a red cap and gown and am secretly stoned. There is a noticeable space between us. I remember that my girlfriend had taken the picture at my father’s urging. (I flashed on the celebratory dinner at Trumps later that night, when he drunkenly came on to her.)
Another photo of the two of us. I am seventeen—sunglasses, unsmiling, tan. My father is sunburned. We’re standing outside a white church, its plaster cracking, its fountain dry, in Cabo San Lucas. The sun is very bright. On one side is the blue and glimmering enamel of the sea, and on the other are the ruins of a small village. I became almost exhausted by grief. How many times had we fought on that trip? How drunk had he been that week? How many times did I break down during those grueling days? The trip proved so hard to bear that my heart had turned to ice. I had erased everything about it except for the feel of cold sand on my feet and a particular ceiling fan that whirred above me in a hotel room—all else forgotten until now.
And then my eyes drifted to a wall where my father had hung the magazine covers, framed, that I had been on. And another wall featured (even more sadly) photographs of me that he had cut from various newspapers. At that point I surrendered with a moan and had to look away.
My father had become a hermit, someone who either didn’t know his son was lost to him or refused to believe it.
But then the camera—almost as if it realized how drained I was becoming—plunged forward and raced around the side of the house. The camera was bold and covert at the same time.
The camera maneuvered toward a window that looked into a large modern kitchen, where my father reappeared.
Horror kept sweeping over me. Because anything could happen now.
My father opened the stainless steel door of the freezer and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya and clumsily poured a large amount into a highball glass. His gaunt face contemplated the vodka. Then he drank it and began weeping. He took off his T-shirt and drunkenly wiped his face with it. And as he was pouring himself the rest of the vodka, he heard something.
He jerked his head up. He stood motionless in the middle of the kitchen.
He turned and faced the window.
The camera dared him. It didn’t move or try to hide itself.
But my father couldn’t see anything. He gave up. He turned away.
The camera steadily rounded the corner of the house and now offered a view of the small, elegantly landscaped backyard.
The camera followed my father as he walked outside to where the Jacuzzi was churning with steam that the wind swirled around the yard. The moon hung over everything and it was so white that it cut through clouds and illuminated the vines of bougainvillea that covered the walls enclosing this space. My father staggered toward the Jacuzzi, still holding his drink, and tried to slip into it gracefully but instead stumbled, splashing water all over the surrounding Spanish tiles while managing to keep his drink raised high above his head, protecting it. My father submerged himself in the water with only his hand holding the glass of vodka visible above the roiling bubbles.