Mom and John

On March 16, 1994 my father Bill O'Brien fielded a call from Dr. Michael Meyers of the Brotman Medical Center in Los Angeles. My brother John O'Brien was in severe chemical shock and on the verge of life-threatening alcohol withdrawal. The situation was dire.

Dad headed to Hopkins and got on the first plane to LA.

When he saw his 33-year-old son, he barely recognized him. He was bruised and shaking with delirium tremens. He begged Dad to take him out of the hospital, that it was teeming with devils and demons. Despite the doctor's fervent recommendation that John stay, Dad was worried John would leave anyway and slip directly back into the bottle. So he reluctantly went along with his son and the two went to John's spartan Beverly Hills apartment. Dad stayed for a week, sleeping fitfully on a recliner while John sweated through the long nights.

They sipped chicken soup at Nate 'n Al's Deli in Beverly Hills. They had dinner in Malibu with Lisa O'Brien, John's wife of 13 years, whom he divorced a year earlier when his drinking finally eclipsed the marriage. They took long drives through Death Valley as Dad tried to convince John to enter a long-term rehab. John half-heartedly said he would, but Dad didn't believe him. He tried to formulate a plan that would physically keep his son away from the bottle. Desperate, he contacted the local police about some outstanding misdemeanor, the court date for which was looming. ("Can you trump up the sentence and just lock him up for a month? Away from the booze? Until I can figure out what to do?") Of course they did not comply. Attempts to find him work on an industrial freighter or other long-sailing ship failed.

In the middle of Dad's visit, an official-looking envelope arrived in the mail. Dad puzzled over it and asked a shaky John what it was all about.

"It's this thing about a film contract, Dad," he said.

But when Dad returned to Cleveland on March 25, the movie business was the last thing on his mind. He knew my brother was in grave danger and that he could not protect him. He didn't tell us at the time, but he later admitted to Mom and me that when he boarded the plane in LA, he knew he'd never see his son again.

SIXTEEN DAYS after Dad returned from Los Angeles - April 11, 1994 - my phone rang at seven minutes after midnight.

"Erin."

"Dad?"

"John's gone."

"What?"

"John. He's gone."

THE REAL TONY’S - In 1995. It closed two years later, after a fire.

Our conversation went back and forth, sparse syllables wrought with the unimaginable.

"How?"

"With a gun."

We spoke for less than a minute. I hung up the phone and turned to the vacuum before me. I spent the rest of the night blinking into it and clutching my copy of Leaving Las Vegas with hands of ice. One single bullet had ended my brother's life and punctuated his work with undeniable precision.

John O'Brien became a frozen icon to the world that night while for me the shot that killed him rang from a starter pistol that began the rest of my life. Despite my copious experience with men and whiskey, I lost my innocence in one absolute moment, at once intangible, yet specific.

Suicide notwithstanding, John would continue to weave in and out of my days like a tragic biorhythm. I tumbled forward while the path of my brother's posthumous fiction ricocheted backwards beginning with the dark period just before his death to the day he first began sketching out his destiny with black words on a white page.

IN MARCH 2007, Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce contacted me about an anthology they were putting together for Akashic books called Las Vegas Noir (due out next month). Was there anything remaining in John's body of work that would be an appropriate addition? The query kicked up a dusty memory. I dug out the single remaining hard copy of a short story John had written nearly 20 years before that I had all but forgotten. I pulled the sheaf of papers from the file.

May 13, 1988

Dear Mom and Dad,

Here's a story I wrote in January. It's a little atypical but it's my personal favorite. Since then I've been working on a novel.

Please give this to Erin when you're done. See you soon.

Love,

John

I placed my fingertip upon his signature, and then sat down to rediscover "The Tik." By the time I reached THE END, John's body of work was never so clear to me. But I cannot put "The Tik" in proper perspective until I wade through some of the words he wrote after he penned it.

KODAK MOMENT - John, me and Dad, 1980.

IN ALL, THERE ARE OVER 800 PAGES of John O'Brien. The novel he references in the above letter is Leaving Las Vegas, which Watermark Press published in 1990. The book was the basis of the award-winning 1995 film of the same name that starred Nicolas Cage, whose portrayal of Ben Sanderson earned him an Academy Award. John wrote an unpublished novel Better after that. Then came Stripper Lessons, which was published posthumously (Grove 1997). John's writing career ended with The Assault on Tony's (Grove 1996). His last edit to that document was performed on March 28, 1994, twenty-four days before his 34th birthday and 13 days before his death. Ironically, the last thing John wrote was the first thing published after he died.

I had only read "The Tik" and Leaving Las Vegas at the time of John's death. We unearthed his other novels from his Mac Color Classic, which was shipped with his other effects. The box also contained his wedding ring, his Rolex watch and the gun.

Although the outline and notes for The Assault on Tony's were complete and meticulously detailed, John never wrote "The End" at the bottom of his incomplete Tony's manuscript. I did. Now I see that completing the book was one of the things I had to do, was destined to do, however badly I did it (and I did it very, very badly). I loathe my contributions to The Assault on Tony's and I'm thankful they are small. Over the years though, I've forgiven myself. I was only trying to keep John alive.

Outwardly, Tony's chronicles a group of wealthy alcoholic men who barricade themselves in a posh bar while race riots rage all around them. But the maelstrom at the heart of The Assault on Tony's has little to do with social unrest. The driving impetus of the novel is John's difficult relationship with Dad, who expected a hunting and fishing buddy and a man's man in his only son. Instead he got a dark, moody kid who would infuriate him with rebellion again and again.

One of the most stinging blows John dealt was on his 1978 Lakewood High School diploma. He had "John Dylan O'Brien" inscribed on it instead of his legal name "John Steven O'Brien," giving a nod to the famous singer-songwriter (whom Dad detested) instead of his maternal grandfather, a stalwart self-made man and corporate phenom. Dad would come to understand the error of his ways before his sudden death in 2002, but not before it was too late.

Had John lived to flesh out and iron out Tony's, it might have been a great American novel. But Tony's was first-draft quality and there was nothing to be done about it. That said, I am thankful for the rough edges in it. The raw text is riddled with clues for solving the Rubik's cube of John O'Brien and his work.

The word "McTeague" appears early on in the text like a mysterious jewel. It led me to a novel of the same name by Frank Norris that first published in 1899. McTeague would reveal itself as the primary literary influence behind Tony's. Other peculiar tip-offs were much more personal. For instance, the passage about vintage television (Land of the Giants, The Hunt) and a father's cans of V8 lining the fridge might mean nothing to any other reader, but for me the image kicks up an emotional wind that blows me back 30 years to the house at 14000 Lake Avenue.

MY FAMILY MOVED from our home in Brecksville to Lakewood in 1971. I was 6 and John was 11. The memories of the 10 years that followed are a disorganized photo album in my mind, filled with snapshots of an American family inundated with love and flaws. Dad was drinking his way through the lowest point of his life, trying to fit into corporate life and failing miserably. John and I watched on and grew up, both smart sensitive kids, both destined to follow our father's indelible example in our own way. Mom was trying to keep it all afloat.

It's impossible to talk about John O'Brien without revisiting the '70s; and the only way I can do it is by way of my blurry recollections.

John drinking Coke. One after another. The cardboard cartons that housed the 16-ounce returnable bottles stacked at the top of the basement stairs. Mom complaining about always running out of Coke. Dad yelling at John for drinking so much, goddamn John drinking Coke Coke Coke, as many as eight bottles a day.

Dad seated at our massive oak dining room table on Sunday mornings, Playboy magazine open before him. He'd exhale a plume of smoke into air that was otherwise perfumed with the aroma of Mom's sourdough bread. "What time is it?" he'd call to her.

"Ten after eleven," she'd answer from the kitchen.

"Skeeziks," he'd say to me, "why don't you get me a beer?"

And if I brought along a Dixie cup, I'd get an ounce or two of Stroh's as well, sometimes with shake of salt.

BETTER TIMES - Mom and Dad with Lisa and John on their wedding day, August 11, 1979.

Climbing over the Lakewood Park fence with Johnny and sliding down the escarpment that marked the northernmost edge of Ohio to get closer to Lake Erie.

Dad wanting all of us to watch The Waltons together on Thursday nights, telling us how the grandfather character reminded him of his own gramp.

Singing "Cabaret" with Mom as we did the dishes, and laughing.

Mom going to work in her yellow pantsuit, her long hair teased and sprayed. She'd leave Jell-O and Cool Whip parfaits in the refrigerator for Johnny and me.

Driving from Cleveland to my grandparents' house in St. Louis each year for Thanksgiving. Passing through Bluff City, Illinois. The perennial jokes.

"Does the Bluff City exit really get you to Bluff City or is that just a bluff?"

"Who knows? After all, it is Bluff City."

Mom passing out ham sandwiches and potato chips. Dad having coffee. Mom passing bags of games and surprises to Johnny and me. Dad having a V8. Playing 20 questions. Dad having a beer. Falling asleep in the backseat, waking with the sun in my face. Dad having another beer. And another and another and another until he either pulled into his parents' drive or he switched to whiskey.

Johnny and Dad working on John's 1965 Ford Mustang. Tools, Stroh's cans, the fluorescent light in the garage. Lake bugs swarming in the humid summer night. The smell of WD-40. The sound of Johnny and Dad not fighting.

Dad scrutinizing the scant want ads while Mom told us that Christmas would be "slim." Dad overspent on a perfect white lace outfit for me anyway that did not fit. Mom gave us huge homemade pillows.

My parent's voices, controlled yet angry, muted by their closed bedroom door.

Dad in his basement workshop amid his lathes and hulking presses and dangerous saws. He smoked and tooled away at chunks of metal, selecting hand tools from where they lined the walls.

Johnny working at the swanky Winton Place apartments on Lakewood's Gold Coast over summer vacation. He was sitting alone in the mailroom, a boxy single- story structure adjacent to the 30-story apartment building, when a noise that he would later describe as an explosion boomed through the tiny room. Something had hit the roof above him. He suspected it was a tree.

Beneath the glaring sun, John found a young maintenance man who had been washing windows on the 22nd floor. His body was pooled in blood and gore, imbedded in the tar roof from the impact. Shaken and queasy-white, John ran to call the police.

C’MON, JOHNNY, SMILE! - Me and my big bro, 1970.

JOHN CHRONICLED that decade behind the fictional drape of The Assault on Tony's. For me, reading the novel is like walking over the shards of my brother's self-esteem, splintered during his adolescence by a father who loved his son but hated himself.

This novel that recalled John's adolescence was born during his darkest days. He abandoned it to kill himself. Call it life imitating art or vice versa; John killed himself before finishing the last two chapters which, per his notes, were to be as apocalyptic as his own suicide. Consider the very last passage in John's incomplete Tony's manuscript:

For the first time in his life Rudd found himself wishing for death, hoping (praying?) that the walls came down before the liquor ran out, that they were stormed, bombed or shot in some truculent surprise attack, some irresistible force, divine intervention.

Los Angeles was John's home with then-wife Lisa for the second half of his life. In its most obvious permutation, Tony's is a snapshot of the end of my brother's days. But the inside story of the book is all about the troubled '70s on Lake Avenue. John wanted to wash the Midwest Clevelander from himself in the worst way, but his roots were undeniable, just like his paternity. Sure, he wrote Tony's in LA, but many of the details therein came straight from home.

One of the characters from Tony's mentions his job as a teenaged busboy: "Rudd was sixteen and bussing tables in a tony restaurant where even the dishwashers were Caucasian and the busboys were damn near transparent ... everybody liked Rudd ..." For me it is anything but an off-hand reference. In that scant excerpt, I see John subtly mimicking what he perceived to be our father's racism. Then I see a 33-year-old alcoholic writer remembering himself at 16 when he was sober and funny and working as a busboy at Tony's Restaurant at Kamm's Corners.

"There's these huge trays, Erin," John explained to me after his first night on the job. "And we have to fit everything from a table onto the tray - everything - then cover the whole mess with the table cloth and haul it on our shoulder into the kitchen."

John would come home from work late on Friday nights, flush with cash and heavy with exhaustion. The first order of business was to help Mom unload Dad from the front seat of his 1966 Jaguar XKE Coupe. How Dad managed to time it such that he would pull into the garage just a moment before passing out still amazes me.

Tony's is riddled with landmines that explode with the complexity of John and Dad's relationship whenever I step on one.

What does "V8, those were, his father preferring that brand to the blander Campbell's Tomato Juice which Rudd now held in his larger-than-his-father's hand" mean? Is John comparing himself to Dad? A reference to the resentment he carried for the disappointment he believed Dad had in him? And when I read this: "Fenton wasn't much of a man, his dad once told him during one of that man's many drunken binges," I want John to come back and reassure me that Dad never said this. I want him to quiet the voice inside me that knows this is a detail plucked from John's vulnerable teen years.

I inhale. I cry. I exhale. I bleed. I know.

Every cryptic non sequitur in this book is thusly fraught. For instance, "As long as you're living under my roof you'll abide by my rules. Very original, Dad," is completely unrelated to the surrounding text.

Unless you're me. I know exactly which seed sprouted those words.

It is 1974. I am a 9 year old cowering in her room as her father and 14-year-old brother scream at each other during a bitter fight over James Dickey's novel Deliverance.

Dad: "I will not allow you to read this!" (Because it shows men that remind me way too much of myself dealing with homosexual rape and murder and it scares the hell out of me. I just want to protect you.)

SO ALIKE, SO DIFFERENT Dad and John in 1982.

Johnny: "You can't stop me!" (Why are you pushing me away from something that impressed itself upon you, the man from whom I was fashioned, when all I want is to know what you fear within these pages? I am a man too.)

"You will not read that book if you are living under my roof," bellowed Dad. "End of discussion."

John stormed out and took flight on his 10-speed, fleeing the inescapable.

Both men were right. Both men were wrong. Neither was capable of having that parenthetical discussion when it may have made a difference. Now both men are dead. And here I am having it for them anyway, 35 years too late.

Do I get a prize for getting it right?

STRIPPER LESSONS was a pure and golden gift.

The book's 200 pages wash away all the booze and blood. All of it fades away and Johnny comes floating back. He's doing parlor tricks, ripping phone books in half and balancing upon an empty Coke can with one foot for a few tenuous moments before reaching down and tapping the thin aluminum side in order to collapse the cylinder and present his audience with a perfectly crushed metal disc. Neither of those images can be found in the pages of Stripper Lessons, but that's the Johnny winking at me from between the lines in this book. It is my favorite piece of John's fiction.

I love the detailed accounting of how the main character Carroll (who shares his name with John's best adolescent friend) goes about procuring a video copy of The Shy Man's Guide to Getting Women from the local K'mon-n-Mart.

And I love that John plucks an angel straight from the heavens and brings her down to Earth in the form of Stevie (named after Stevie Nicks, whom John thought was an unparalleled goddess; a poster of her hung in his room). Stevie is a dancer at Indiscretions, the strip club where Carroll spends his nights pining for her.

And I love that Carroll spends his days as a clerk in a law firm (just as John was a clerk at Squire, Sanders and Dempsey in Cleveland before the booze bit down hard on him) who must cope with daily traumas such as a co-worker named Pam and her terrifying lunch (a microwaveable container in which a blue thing swims amid mysterious red stuff); the missing Solo/Bombgate file; and a shirt with an unruly shoulder epaulet that comes unbuttoned just when Carroll finally gains the attention of one of the beautiful dancers of Indiscretions: "He always assumed they were phony and didn't even unbutton, but fuck if one didn't unbutton itself, the goofy strap hanging sloppily off his shoulder, a nerd ID badge, like a pocket protector or a sign that says KICK ME."

And I hate it when my eyes fall to the bottom of the last page and my laughter fades to tears. John remembered Johnny too. Did he miss that part of himself as much as all the rest of us? How hard did he try to get him back? The questions fan out before me. They torment me until all that's left is the salty residue of my tears and one inarguable word.

Suicide.

MY ADVANCE COPY of Las Vegas Noir sits upon my desk. The story John wrote long before Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue would glitter upon the silver screen in Leaving Las Vegas is the first entry in the anthology. The 10 slim pages "The Tik" occupies are soaked in blood and booze and sex, unless you read it through my eyes.

"The Tik" swirls around a drug of the same name, a man stepping into his past, and a beautiful and treacherous woman named Melinda. It is black, violent and unapologetic. Dad read it all those years ago and passed it to me wordlessly. Mom remembers nothing of the event. Perhaps Dad didn't show it to her in order to shield her from all that sex and murder, courtesy of her son. Perhaps she read it and subconsciously eclipsed it, just as she later did with the tiny rat John had tattooed next to his left ear (or was it the right?).

John was 28 in 1988 and already mired in addiction. He had done his first stint in rehab three years before. I was 23 and understood John's situation a bit better than my parents. After all, I'd witnessed John's shaking hands and clandestine 6 a.m. slugs of vodka during a trip to Los Angeles I'd made two years before, but I never told my mother and father about those details from my visit.

You there, don't be so quick with the head-shaking. I was only 21 and it was so easy to believe that John would solve this tough problem on his own. It was just drinking. Everyone was doing it. My brother was just doing it a little too much.

Now with its 2008 publication, "The Tik" is just as dark as it was back then, but my scarred heart softens when I read it. I don't know if it is a good story or a bad story, nor could I ever decide.

The syringes, Wild Turkey, orgasms, splattering blood and blas� indifference are transparent to me. They are the defense mechanisms of a young man standing naked before addiction. The short story John wrote so early in his writing career also galvanizes what I believed for years. Although John mightily wielded the one weapon that might have saved him - the pen - in the end, it couldn't defend him from himself.

I should know.

For years I flailed in corporate life just like my father. I drank and smoked and nearly let the false quest for the American dream kill me. Then I found myself in writing just like my brother; his death shocked me headlong into the craft. Now I tool words just like my father tooled chunks of steel and tell stories for dead men.

I am my father's daughter. By the time Dad realized that designing and building machinery wasn't his hobby, but his calling, his son had already fled to the other side of the country. By the time he began to follow that calling in earnest and get his life in check, John had already fallen victim to the one ladder-rung in the DNA helix that separates a problem drinker from a profound alcoholic.

When I read "The Tik" I see John trying to articulate the skill of the lethal beautiful enemy before him. That he wrote about her so early on in his short battle with the bottle fills me with sorrow. I finally understand how desperately John wanted to slay her and speed away victorious and clean in a vintage Jaguar E Type just like the one his father drove. Too bad it wasn't that easy. In a way, the dark ending of "The Tik" is brighter than the author's real-life demise.

Love, John

JOHN'S LIFE was peppered with periods of sobriety. Sometimes he would talk about the delirium tremens, which posed unimaginable horror for him. He muses at length on this topic in The Assault on Tony's, in scenes and exposition based on John's own DT episodes. He once recounted one of them to our mother: during the last moments before he surfaced from the live-action nightmare, everything stopped at once. Then an angelic female voice pierced the blackness, crystalline and sweet.

"We've lost you," she lilted, "but we'll get you back."

John startled to a shaking, sweating consciousness, more terrified by the surreal voice than the oily devil breaking through the wall that had filled the screen of his mind just before it gave way to the singing woman. She is surely tethered to "The Tik"'s Melinda, although I will never know if John finally succumbed to such a woman or if he just escaped her.

I grew up with an older brother, but now I'm 10 years older than John was at the time of his death. Now he's my kid brother. And I can't help him. I can't stop him from putting the barrel of a pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger. But I can unwrap the metaphor inside "The Tik" and release my brother's silent scream for the world to hear.

Visit the April 16, 2008 entry at erin-obrien.blogspot.com for additional photos and links.

On Saturday May 24, the Lit will host "Remembering John O'Brien" in the ArtCraft Building, 2570 Superior Ave., with a screening of Leaving Las Vegas at 7 p.m. followed by an informal discussion with Erin O'Brien. Visit www.the-lit.org or call 216.694.0000 for more information.