• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

SONS OF THE BLACK FOREST A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts Jacob Euteneuer May, 2015 SONS OF THE BLACK FOREST Jacob Euteneuer Thesis Approved: Accepted: ____________________________ ______________________________ Advisor Department Chair Mr. Eric Wasserman Dr. William Thelin ____________________________ ______________________________ Committee Member Dean of College Mr. Robert Pope Dr. Chand Midha ____________________________ ______________________________ Committee Member Interim Dean of the Graduate School Mr. Robert Miltner Dr. Rex D. Ramsier ______________________________ Date ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. PETER SEES A UNICORN…………………………………………………………...1 II. PETER SEES ANOTHER UNICORN………………………………………….…...27 III. PETER SEES YET ANOTHER UNICORN…………………………………….…..54 IV. PETER KEEPS SEEING UNICORNS……………………………………………...91 V. HOW MANY UNICORNS WILL PETER SEE…………………………………...125 VI. PETER SEES A LOT OF UNICORNS…………………………………………....158 VII. PETER RIDES A UNICORN……………………………………………………..224 VIII. PETER FALLS OFF A UNICORN………………………………………………257 IX. PETER EATS THE UNICORN……………………………………………………296 iii CHAPTER I PETER SEES A UNICORN Jennifer leaned over the table and gave me a look that meant she either wanted to kiss me or clamp her teeth down on the arteries in my neck. It was always hard to read her face. She clenched her jaw and spoke without moving her lips. “And are you cleaning out his ears?” It was the first time she had brought up our son in the whole conversation. They told me to keep “controversial subjects” to a minimum, and I always did. When she was ready to talk about something, she did. I nodded. “Yeah, If I remember. Usually every couple of days after he takes a bath.” She looked around the silent room. The calm white walls and buzzing fluorescent lights made it feel like an ER, and in a way it was. It was a room that had seen its fair share of emergencies. “You have to do it every day.” She tapped her finger three times on the table separating us to count out the syllables of “every day.” “That’s where the body stores up toxins and tries to excrete them from the body. If they build up, he’ll start to become unwell. It’s your responsibility to take care of him. You have to clean them out every day. They won’t let us have Q-tips in here. That’s why no one ever gets better. They 1 make us talk and give us drugs, but they won’t let us touch a goddamn Q-tip. The drugswork at first—really well—they shock the system, but after a while they start to accumulate in the body. If we can get the poisons out of our bodies instead of putting more in, we’d be fine. But they won’t let us. They think I’ll push it into my brain, but I know better than that. I’m a mom. I know how to take care of someone. I took care of you. I took care of Henry. I know how to do it. They just won’t let me.” I stared at the clock on the wall behind her. The place smelled like boiled corn, wafted into the whole complex from wherever the cafeteria was. Our time was almost up. I came to this room, or occasionally they let us walk together out by the fence that separates the Behavioral Center from the nearby pond, every week for the past three and a half years just to talk with her. I guess a little bit of me was still in love with her, but really I did it for our son. I knew how hard it was to grow up with one parent and thought it might be easier on him if I could report back weekly about how his mom was doing. It didn’t really matter. He could barely remember her and was fine with having me, my mom, and my grandpa raise him. Despite what the doctors said, I thought Jennifer was getting worse. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if they let her back out into the real world. Of course, I thought everything was going fine until she tried to kill herself and was committed to the Behavioral Center by a mental health board due to “mental illness and dangerous behaviors.” Maybe I wasn’t the best judge of sanity. Most people liked me when they met me, but there must have been something else about me that made people want to kill themselves. First my dad and then my fiancé, or ex-fiancé whenever I got around to bringing up the controversial subject. She still had 2 the engagement ring. It was kept in a box with the rest of her personal belongings, and when I tried to get it back, they told me I had no legal right to it. “Promise me you’ll give Henry a hug and clean out his ears for me.” I nodded again and sipped the last of the bitter coffee from my tiny Styrofoam cup. “Promise,” she said with teeth clenched again. “I will. I’ll do it tonight.” The staff worker who had been observing our conversation through the glass window buzzed the door that led to the vestibule. When the first door closed, another buzz rang out and the second door was opened. “Time to go,” the woman said. Her voice was high and chirpy. Jennifer leaned over the table again and offered me her shoulder in hug. I leaned over and put my arms around her. Under her side of the table, I could see the cuffs that led to the chains that bound her hands to the floor. Her fingernails were covered with flecks of dried blood from where she had been chewing them before I arrived. She said seeing me always made her nervous. “I love you,” she said. The staffer held the door open for me as I walked out. “You too,” I told her. It was six days, twenty three hours, and fifteen minutes until I had to go through that again. After Jennifer had tried to kill herself and got committed, I moved back in with my mom. It worked well. The reason most people don’t want to move back at home is because of their dad. I didn’t have that problem. Between my mom and my grandpa, there 3 was always someone to watch Henry when I worked or went to visit Jennifer. There was no rent, but it did feel pretty shitty to be twenty-nine and living in the house I grew up in. When I got home, Henry was helping my mom stir a crockpot full of chili. Mom was thrilled to have her grandson with her at all times and probably would have paid me to live there. My grandpa was sitting in the computer chair watching a pirated stream of a Munich Premiere League game in German. Unlike most people his age, Grandpa had been an early adapter of all technology. He still had an original Pong cabinet in storage and had an iPod before I did. He nodded at me as I plopped down on the couch. I always felt guilty about Jennifer trying to kill herself and wanted to talk to my mom about it. I never did. In some way, it had to be my fault. I was the closest person to Jennifer. I knew her better than anyone and still didn’t see it coming. Either I was the reason for her attempt or I was too stupid to see she was on the verge of suicide. I don’t know if my mom would have understood or had anything helpful to say, so I never asked her about it. We had a long history of not talking about things. I mentioned it to my grandpa once, and he said I was a fucking idiot for feeling guilty about something someone else did. I sort of used that as my mantra ever since, though I had plenty of reason to doubt it. My dad killed himself on June 27th, 1984. He was found with a gunshot wound to the head on the second floor of the parking garage of City Hospital. The nurse who had been walking into work told the police that the “It’s a Boy” cigar in his right hand was still smoldering when she found his body. In his left hand was the .45 caliber Colt M1911 that my grandpa had brought home from World War II. The first officers on the scene 4 quickly ruled it a suicide and spent the next two hours trying to contact my mother at their home. They did not know that she was on the third floor of the hospital attempting to get me to breastfeed for the first time. My birth certificate and his death certificate were processed at the same time. He was thirty two years old. I met him once but of course don’t remember him. My mom said we look a lot alike. The same cowlick in our dark brown hair. The same gap between our two front teeth. Tall, lanky bodies. Our ears rest close to the sides of our head. My grandpa, my dad’s dad, said that I’m better off for never having met him. I guessed that my dad would have said the same thing about my grandpa had the situation been reversed. In a way, it made sense to me. It kept everything in balance. The world’s population went up one and then it went back down one.

Load more

  316

Copy Link