It must have been the dead middle of the summer of 2005 when the doorbell rang.  It must have been the dead middle because I hadn’t realized that the summer had started and I had no idea that it was about to end.

In through the entryway dotted with “authentic” African Masks - which, I am given to believe, were fashionable entryway decorations in the 1970s - strolled Arnold and Phylis Rowe.  They were carrying a bottle of white wine.

Like my parents, Arnold and Phylis changed their surname after being married for some time.  My parents made the move from Janowitz to Jordan and Arnold and Phylis leapt from Rojakavik to Rowe.  While my parents were pleased with their stayed surname shuffle, Arnold and Phylis seemed to be made only more nervous by the fact that they had upended the natural order of their own identities.  They were nervous to begin with - Phyliss had that quivering vocal whine which conjours up memories of a Sunday School teacher and Arnold seemed as though he was always bracing for a meteor to strike right dab in the center of Riverside California.  They probably should have just left their name the way it was.

With an uncharacteristic flourish, my father swept the bottle of wine from Phylis’ unsteady embrace and seemed to have corked it by the time he said “welcome.”  Sure, the Rowe(jakavics) were our neighbors, but this was first time in twenty years that my father had invited them over.  It was also the first time since the funeral that they had been inside the house without my mother present.

Their daughter, Aimee, and I used to ride bikes around the cul-de-sac when I was little.  What a very idyllic picture that paints.  And, for the most part, it was.  I have a vague memory of Aimee having a serious surgery when she was about eleven years old, but the dominant memory is of us just chasing each other around in circles on our Schwinns.

Back then I was known as a “smart kid.”  Not a nerd, really, just the sort of kid that no one wants to be around because he knows that he is smarter than you and your kid because his mother told him so.  And because he just destroyed you in that uninstigated debate about Nicola Tesla’s place in the scientific pantheon.  I was the kid that would proudly parade around the supermarket announcing my upcoming candidacy for president.  As soon as I turned thirty-five (which my research told me was the requisite age for me to assume my rightful post), I would be the President of the United States.  This must have been the most annoying fucking thing in the world to hear from a four-to-thirteen-year-old, but I didn’t care.  Neither did my mother.  She beamed.  She loved shit like that.  Anything that set me apart as superior was worn like a charm on her Bradford Bracelet.  Jingle Jingle.

At age eleven my life plan was to be a child star on television (something like You Can’t do That on Television, but cooler), and use my millions to start running campaign ads twenty years before I ran for president.  The ads would air, staring a fifteen year-old Bradford Jordan.  I would approach the camera and say, “Hi, I am Bradford Jordan.  Get to know this face.  In twenty years, I will be running for President.”  I also imagined a print campaign - busses, benches, skywriting.  Every year, I would run the same campaign, just as a year older version of myself.  America would watch me go through puberty, college, and, ultimately, vote me into office.  Genius.

My dad ushered the Rowes out into the backyard.  We never had people in the backyard.  He turned on the fountain.  He poured the wine.  He engaged the neighbors in conversation.  Arnold looked up often.  I suspect he was keeping a lookout for ominous cloud formations which might portend the invasion of an alien rock into our atmosphere.  Phylis did most of the talking.  Only is wasn’t really talking.  It was yammering.  We were all just yammering at each other.

In the dead middle of the summer of 2005, I was living at home with my father.  Just the two of us.  In our family’s house.  It had been four years since someone randomly carjacked and shot my mother twice in the heart, killing her instantly.  We were still deep in the process of recovery, but there we were.  Assembled in the backyard were two bachelors, a nervous wreck and a nervous goof.  Yammering.

Then, out of the low mumble, and about two and a half glasses of wine in (Dad had supplemented their offering with one of his own), Dad’s bass voice erupted above the rest.

“Brad?  Well - who knows?  He’ll probably be President some day!”

I looked at my father like he was some kind of alien.  First of all, that was Mom’s line.  Second of all, no I wouldn’t.  

I had spent my senior year of college smoking enough weed, having enough sex with random people, and committing enough petty theft to fill a decade’s worth of political attack ads, but that was hardly the point.  The point was, I didn’t want to be president.  I didn’t want to be involved in politics.  People just seem to hate each other in politics.  I was taking a class at the Groundlings theater in LA.  I wanted to do that.

There was no way Dad could have known those things, of course.  Sitting out there in the back yard of the house he bought with my mother way back when African masks were considered a welcoming decoration in suburban California, he was doing his best to channel Mom.  He was trying to be the one that beamed for me in that “Jingle Jingle” kind of way that only Mom could.  And, if he hadn’t been so wildly off base, he would have been doing a hell of a job.  Phylis and Arnold were certainly convinced.  They looked at me with that “ugh / oooh! This kid could really be something —- and he probably is” look that I had cherished for so long.  Only this time, it made me feel dirty.

I have had a lot of long phone conversations with my father over the years.  He is a great dad - he listens well.  In many of those conversations I lamented the fact that I felt like I was pretending to be two people at once.  I would sometimes cry and tell him that I didn’t want to wear a mask - that I felt like it alienated me from truly connecting with people.  For a good chunk of my life I was truly afraid that I would never learn how to be honest.  I was disproportionately concerned with being “impressive.” And I knew it.  He would counsel me compassionately and tell me that it was all a part of growing up - that personal congruity was an admirable struggle to undertake.  I would nod on the other end of the phone, whether I was in England or New York or Ecuador or California, and thank him.

Dad always seemed to be able to be congruous.

That warm evening in the dead of summer in Riverside, however, with Phylis quaking on the rocking bench and Arnold eyeing his wine like it was a foreign elixir, Dad was incongruous.  Dad was trying to be Mom and Dad at the same time and it felt fucking weird.  If it had been just Dad, I would have told him that I didn’t want to be President. I would have told him that if I had a million dollars I wouldn’t blow it on an ad campaign to alert America to my burgeoning greatness.   I would have told him that I just wanted to be a guy who could amble onto a stage or into a classroom once in a while and laugh hard at the beauty of the world.  But I couldn’t do that.  Not then.  Because it wasn’t just Dad.  It was Mom/Dad - a bizarre otherworldly concoction of memory, fear, and love.

Arnold and Phylis probably think I am going to be President, but I doubt it will bother them much if I am not.  Sitting in their quiet living room twenty yards from the living room I used to do crosswords with my mother in, I hope they can find solace in the simple fact that they will probably die before an asteroid hits earth.

In the summers since 2005, Dad and I have talked about that moment and how strange it felt to both of us.  He is a great Dad.  He listens well.  And he shares even better.

At this moment, right now, the three of us are all ourselves.  I am me.  He is Dad.  And, Mom is Mom.  And none of us are President.  And that is just perfect.