Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

But, oh Daniel, I’ve been suffocating all summer at home and I haven’t been able to write at all. Now I will, I know it. Berkeley is an amazing place and Casey is this amazing guy who makes me feel capable of anything!

“Shit,” Daniel says in his empty office, and he gets up and begins to pace the perimeter. She’s having great sex. That’s all it is. Well, of course, at her age, there’s little else. He remembers great sex. He remembers he would do most anything at Isabelle’s age to have it. He remembers feeling he had invented it. He must have. No one else could be experiencing what he was; otherwise, they’d be doing it twenty-four hours a day and the world would grind to a halt. So he understands, but he doesn’t like hearing about it.

He makes himself sit down and finish reading the e-mail.

Now I can continue Melanie’s story. Now I feel I can take all that you’ve given me and go forward and write. There’s only one problem. And Daniel, you’re the only one I can say this to — I’m terrified. Does all this make sense or am I being completely insane, as my parents have said?

Isabelle

Daniel hits Reply and then takes a minute to stare out his window. He will miss this view. The Chandler campus is beautiful, stately and very reminiscent of Old California — lacy jacaranda trees that bloom shocking lavender flowers in the spring, Engelmann oaks with ten-foot-tall camellia bushes in their shade, Mission Style buildings, gentle hills, and views to the ocean. He has no idea where he (and he supposes Stefan) will end up, but he has to address Isabelle’s question first. He starts typing.

Isabelle,

Terrified isn’t so bad. Terrified tells me you’re taking a leap. Use those long, strong legs and jump.

Daniel

He hits Send, pleased with his response, and has a quick visual memory of the last time Isabelle marched into this office. The day was unbearably hot and she was wearing shorts. Her legs were gorgeous.

Enough of that, he tells himself as he sits back in his chair. He needs to be facing the very real question of what to do next. Is there someone, at some college, who will take him in? And then he sees Isabelle’s response pop up in his in-box.

Daniel,

Terrified isn’t so bad as long as it isn’t “terrified to leave the house.”

Daniel grins in his empty office. Okay, she’s cheeky. She’s called him on it. But there’s more.

I don’t want to be afraid. I know you don’t either. What we would give to be free of it!

Isabelle

Oh, Isabelle — how does she manage to see into his soul so effortlessly? Because of course she’s right. Fear has become his constant companion. When did it first show up? He remembers a boyhood laced with fear, but that was of a whole different order, that was fear with a clear cause.

His father, already disappointed with life by the time Daniel was born, had a temper, was a screamer, and Daniel and his older brother, Roman, would find ways to stay out of his path. They became practiced disappearing artists who slipped between houses, ran the alleys, hid out in the comfort of other people’s families. This was the early 1950s, and everyone they knew in the Polish section of Erie, Pennsylvania, had lots of children. When Gus Jablonski was “in a mood,” as Daniel’s mother called it, his two sons would seek shelter at someone else’s dinner table. And be welcomed.

But then, when Daniel was eight, there was his father’s accident. A load of steel rebar. A surface slicked by overnight rain. One second with his mind elsewhere and Gus Jablonski slipped, crushing three lumbar vertebrae. The subsequent spinal fusion yielded only chronic pain. “An ironworker’s lot,” his father always said, still proud of his profession, the buildings they created, the bridges that stood only because some arrogant, foolhardy men were willing to put their bodies on the line for them.

After that, things got particularly bad at home. Some days Daniel would see his mother dressing his large, barrel-chested father the way she had dressed the boys when they were toddlers. There’s the memory of Gus sitting on the edge of the bed, wincing, as his wife slowly guided each of his arms into its shirtsleeve. Next she would kneel in front of him, working the buttons of the shirt closed, buckling his belt, and tying his shoelaces. Sometimes Gus would place a hand on her head — in gratitude or subjugation, Daniel was never sure.

After the beginning months of false hope yielding little improvement, there were the years of frustration and fury, accompanied by bouts of drinking to dull the pain. Those were the years that Daniel practically lived at Benny Janusz’s, his best friend’s, house. The nights with Benny’s family helped him weather the worst of Gus’s alcohol-fueled despair. More times than not, when morning came and Daniel warily reentered his own cramped kitchen, he would find his father at the breakfast table, head down, reading the paper. And his mother always gentle, always there, calm now to match the calm in the kitchen. Something would have transpired during the night to make his father subdued and penitent. Even as a child, Daniel could tell the storm had blown over.

On those mornings, Roman, a grin on his face, would throw Daniel his catcher’s mitt—“Let’s go, Dan-de-lion!”—and the boys would escape into the neighborhood streets, sure to be able to scrounge up enough boys with a quick tour of the surrounding blocks to make their version of a baseball game. Suddenly all seemed right with the world. There was enthusiasm and silliness, the blessed release of physical exertion, and often happiness. So that was different, Daniel understands, because the fear didn’t stick around. It didn’t invade his very spirit.

But this fear that has taken up residence now is as much a part of his cellular being as his DNA. Daniel remembers it crept into his life surreptitiously around the time he was contemplating his fourth novel. The writing of it brought him no joy, and he had the nagging suspicion that it would fare no better than his third, which was roundly panned by the very same critics who had praised his first two.

He’d lost his gift, he realized. Lost his compass, which had been unerringly true. Lost the ability to write from a sacred place within him. Lost his way. That’s when the fear began to seep in — when he didn’t know in which direction to turn, when he married Cheryl on a desperate whim, hoping that her crazy life force might jolt him back to himself.

And then the fear just grew and spread like a malignancy. At first it showed up occasionally, attaching itself to public events like book readings, when there was still hope for his fourth book, or parties. Then it piggybacked onto whatever trip Daniel had to take. Getting on an airplane became agony. Braving crowded spaces like an airport or a mall or even a supermarket became next to impossible. Finally, when he landed at Chandler College and settled into his perfectly adequate rented house and campus office, he thought maybe familiarity and routine would beat it back into hiding, but no, the fear exhaled and spread out even further, across every mundane aspect of his life. Why? He doesn’t know.

How do you combat something that won’t show its face, something that won’t stand up and declare itself, something that will only insinuate itself and slither soundlessly as it strangles the breath and twists the heart?

Daniel feels entirely defeated by this form of fear. Terrified isn’t so bad, he wrote to Isabelle. Can’t he be honest even with her? Terrified is crippling.

And that thought stops him cold — the word he chose, crippling, because the memory he has is of his father attempting to stand up straight, attempting to walk out of their house under his own power, existing only for the relief his pain medication would bring. “A cripple,” self-declared when he was drunk and reveling in his own pathos.