Colbalt, Catheter & Keen
410 Sperryfield Parkway
Hartford, CT 06101
In Re: The Estate of Betty Cordaro
Dear Josie, Jason and Jerry,
On behalf of everyone at Cobalt, Catheter & Keen, I want offer you our deepest condolences on the passing of your mother Betty. As your mom’s long time attorneys-in-law we have only the fondest memories of her as an energetic woman who lived life to the fullest. Although your mother was confined in recent months to the care of AmeriShade Senior Homes with only an Internet connection and laptop as her lifeline to the world, we know without a doubt that her final days where among the happiest of her life.
You may well ask how we know that her final days were among her happiest. Well, we know this because upon first unsealing her will and then having our IT department examine the contents of her laptop we discovered some very surprising assets. In addition to the $670 that remained in her bank account after AmeriShade took their share of her $530,000 estate, we also uncovered the following four items which your mother has directed should be equally shared and/or enjoyed by each of you:
Item One
An 800,000 acre Farmville estate worth 19,600,235 in Farm Cash Coins (or $1.67 in US currency)
Although this amount far exceeds the $35,000 your mother charged to her credit card for Farmville livestock, buildings, equipment and migrant workers to pick her crops, we are pleased to tell you that by the end of her life she had amassed a Mighty Plantation and reached the level of Hot Shot Farmer overseeing 4 Farmville agribusinesses – a level only ever reached by one other individual, a teenager in Japan who had a CPU, hard drive and wireless modem surgically embedded into her forearms under her tattoos of a giant Farmville strawberry and Black Angus cow.
Item Two
A Second Life home and family in a place known as Twinkle Town
You’ll be happy to know that your late, virtual step father Carl was a successful attorney who was also the mayor of Twinkle Town and who owned multiple tenement apartment buildings in the TwinkleSlum section of the city. It may also interest you to know that your onscreen half brothers and sisters, Magdalena, Minerva, Marius and Mickey, have all become very prosperous in their own right with their collected amassed estates and inheritances of 467,000,000 Linden Dollars and the 16 avatar grandchildren they gave your mother, your half brothers and sisters pleased your mother in a way only a virtual family can. Note that the Second Life assets which your mother willed to you are yours to split three ways, however, your mother did also appoint your virtual half-sister Minerva as executrix of her Second Life estate and these assets are now being probated in the first circuit court of Twinkle Town.
Item Three
A Pharos’s Circle platinum membership at the Crazy Vegas Egyptian Online Casino
Remarkably, your mother attained this level of membership in just the last week of her life by spending 138 consecutive hours at her laptop playing Texas Hold ‘Em against some of the Middle East’s most famous online gamblers, including Kid Oasis, Fatwa Fats and Riyadh Pete. You can also be comforted by the fact that, although your mother actually died in the middle of a hand where she was about to bet the remainder of her estate on a pair of Kings, her fearless gambling has made her a legend in Egypt. And although the Prince Ahmad Ali Corporation which owns and operates the Crazy Vegas casino is now suing AmeriShade Manor for the remainder of your mother’s estate, you can rest assured that there are boys and girls all over Cairo who wake each morning to look at the screen shot of your mother with her Ray Bans, Marlboro light and Jack Daniels and hope that they might someday be just like her.
Item Four
73,108 Facebook friends with whom your mother was carrying on hundreds of private chats
As you know your mother was quite a gregarious woman, and it didn’t surprise us in the least to find that she had accepted this many Facebook friend requests, including those from men and women in prisons and some from the PR departments at Walmart, Def Jam Records and the Halliburton Corporation. What did surprise us is that it seems your mother’s will directs that each of these Facebook friends be invited to her memorial service. In accordance with these wishes we have sent out an invitation to all 73,000 plus individuals and have already received over 27,000 RSVPs telling us they will attend your mother’s public memorial service which, as you have informed us, is now being planned for 9 a.m. on January 11th of this year, followed immediately by the cremation of all the data and drives in her laptop.
Please Note, regarding the last item above Cobalt, Catheter and Keen is not liable and shall be held harmless for any retaliatory murders, drug deals, or other illegal activities undertaken at your mother’s service either by the 12 members of the Lords of Flagellation motorcycle club or any other individuals who have said they will attend. Also note that Cobalt, Catheter and Keen is recommending that you find a venue larger than your brother Jason’s family room for the get together after for your mom’s memorial service, preferably some type of civic arena with its own security force.
Again, on behalf of everyone at Cobalt, Catheter and Keen, allow me to express our condolences on the loss of your mother but also to celebrate the way she lived out her final days which all of us here have come to see as a model for all of our parents as well as for each of us as we approach our golden years.
Sincerely,
Marvin Cobalt, Esq.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Choking to Death on Freedom
We live in a land with few limits. We are men and woman raised on the belief that the right to have all we want and say all we want is the fundamental right of America. Given this unbridled freedom, we have taken to smoking and spending and speaking our minds until the very things that we have been buying and breathing and saying - molecule by molecule and word by word – are slowly killing us.
Our government, seeing that we our spoiling ourselves in this overabundant sunlight of liberty, steps in to save us from our own killer instincts. It is noble. It is righteous. It is what civilized leaders do for the people they need to keep them in power. But time and again our leaders fail to save us. We wonder why, but the answer is simple. If you look closely, you’ll see that deep down the people who govern us don’t actually want to save us in the first place.
The FDA wrestles the tobacco companies to the ground, hog tying them into a law which mandates that images of dead smokers and cigarette addled men, women and children appear on the upper 30 percent of every pack we smoke. To enjoy our right to inhale these toxins we will soon have to get past the glossy sight of mothers breathing cigarette smoke into the faces of their babies; we’ll have to look at pictures of toe-tagged corpses peaking out of morgue sheets and tracheotomized men exhaling through the blow-holes in their throats. The government is proud of what it has done, studies say it just might work and our law-makers bloviate over their accomplishment. We all applaud and then we turn away, choosing to forget that the tobacco lobbies run Washington. We find it convenient to ignore the fact that the fetishized advertising and outlaw entertainment allowed by our creaking constitution is all but dragging our children into mini marts and 7-11s where they will likely ignore the images of death and beg shopkeepers to sell them this legal poison.
A young, gay man jumps off a bridge one bright autumn morning, and the ignorant prankish homophobes who outed him to the edge of that bridge by broadcasting his dorm room sex on the internet are charged with his death. The government has justice in the form of two quaking college students who may stand trial for murder. Meanwhile across our righteous valleys and uniformed urban landscapes organized religions and ultra-right wing politicians are guaranteed the right to rally their followers into deploring gay men and women as sexual deviants who must either be saved from themselves or eradicated from our closing ranks. State and Federal leaders pump money into programs that force grade-schoolers to sit through staged plays where actors teach tolerance but even as these leaders are patting themselves on the back with one hand they are shading their eyes with the other. Our politicians prefer not to notice the growing crowds of fear-riddled thugs they have let gather with placards and baseball bats in the public playgrounds outside the very schools where these passion plays are being performed.
In the caverns and corridors of finance, banks plot and plunder, pulling a nation to the brink of financial collapse. The simple, greedy men and woman of America, having poured their money into the black holes of high finance - using their over-mortgaged houses as ATMs - wake up one dark December morning to find a sheriff come to shoo them from their homes. Our republican and democratic leaders are shocked at what has happened to our people. There are children who are now homeless, grandparents no longer able to afford the medicines to keep them alive, fathers and mothers about to give up on living. Lead by the Pied-Piper of Wall Street, we have spent ourselves unchecked into a deep river of bankruptcy. Waking from his nap, Uncle Sam yawns and rolls up his sleeves. He beats the bullion out of the banks, invests in the investment houses and primes the pump of the prime rate all in order to pump money back into the pockets of his people. Our good, wise uncle knows better than us and what he knows is that he needs us to start spending again, re-mortgaging our houses and buying, buying, buying so that he can go back to sleep and let the banks run the county again. It’s only what our uncle has been telling us all along, freedom certainly isn’t free.
And on and on it goes . . . Prisons are built by state governments to protect us from criminals who otherwise might destroy the inner city with assault weapons that are all but handed to them by the federal government . . . Restaurants are forced by local laws to protect our health with bans on trans fats while food conglomerates are allowed to spend billions to influence farm state politicians and claim that pork is the other white meat . . . Soldiers seeking to ensure the American right to indulge are issued body armor and fortified Humvees out of the front door of the Pentagon even as deals are being made at the back door to sell armor piercing weapons to countries where those same soldiers will soon have to fight. If we’re looking for our government to save us from ourselves, we’ll be looking for a long, long time. If salvation is what we want and saving is what we need, there’s only one place we can look: inside ourselves.
Just because we can speak hate and take more than our share and smoke ourselves to death, doesn’t mean we should. Just because we have the right to indulge in just about every pleasure known to humankind, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Just because we believe that God has breathed liberty and the pursuit of happiness into each of us, doesn’t mean God wants us choking to death on our own freedom. My lord, if we haven’t realize by now that the greatest freedom we have is the freedom to stop ourselves from wanting more than is good for us, no government on earth will ever be able to save us from ourselves.
Our government, seeing that we our spoiling ourselves in this overabundant sunlight of liberty, steps in to save us from our own killer instincts. It is noble. It is righteous. It is what civilized leaders do for the people they need to keep them in power. But time and again our leaders fail to save us. We wonder why, but the answer is simple. If you look closely, you’ll see that deep down the people who govern us don’t actually want to save us in the first place.
The FDA wrestles the tobacco companies to the ground, hog tying them into a law which mandates that images of dead smokers and cigarette addled men, women and children appear on the upper 30 percent of every pack we smoke. To enjoy our right to inhale these toxins we will soon have to get past the glossy sight of mothers breathing cigarette smoke into the faces of their babies; we’ll have to look at pictures of toe-tagged corpses peaking out of morgue sheets and tracheotomized men exhaling through the blow-holes in their throats. The government is proud of what it has done, studies say it just might work and our law-makers bloviate over their accomplishment. We all applaud and then we turn away, choosing to forget that the tobacco lobbies run Washington. We find it convenient to ignore the fact that the fetishized advertising and outlaw entertainment allowed by our creaking constitution is all but dragging our children into mini marts and 7-11s where they will likely ignore the images of death and beg shopkeepers to sell them this legal poison.
A young, gay man jumps off a bridge one bright autumn morning, and the ignorant prankish homophobes who outed him to the edge of that bridge by broadcasting his dorm room sex on the internet are charged with his death. The government has justice in the form of two quaking college students who may stand trial for murder. Meanwhile across our righteous valleys and uniformed urban landscapes organized religions and ultra-right wing politicians are guaranteed the right to rally their followers into deploring gay men and women as sexual deviants who must either be saved from themselves or eradicated from our closing ranks. State and Federal leaders pump money into programs that force grade-schoolers to sit through staged plays where actors teach tolerance but even as these leaders are patting themselves on the back with one hand they are shading their eyes with the other. Our politicians prefer not to notice the growing crowds of fear-riddled thugs they have let gather with placards and baseball bats in the public playgrounds outside the very schools where these passion plays are being performed.
In the caverns and corridors of finance, banks plot and plunder, pulling a nation to the brink of financial collapse. The simple, greedy men and woman of America, having poured their money into the black holes of high finance - using their over-mortgaged houses as ATMs - wake up one dark December morning to find a sheriff come to shoo them from their homes. Our republican and democratic leaders are shocked at what has happened to our people. There are children who are now homeless, grandparents no longer able to afford the medicines to keep them alive, fathers and mothers about to give up on living. Lead by the Pied-Piper of Wall Street, we have spent ourselves unchecked into a deep river of bankruptcy. Waking from his nap, Uncle Sam yawns and rolls up his sleeves. He beats the bullion out of the banks, invests in the investment houses and primes the pump of the prime rate all in order to pump money back into the pockets of his people. Our good, wise uncle knows better than us and what he knows is that he needs us to start spending again, re-mortgaging our houses and buying, buying, buying so that he can go back to sleep and let the banks run the county again. It’s only what our uncle has been telling us all along, freedom certainly isn’t free.
And on and on it goes . . . Prisons are built by state governments to protect us from criminals who otherwise might destroy the inner city with assault weapons that are all but handed to them by the federal government . . . Restaurants are forced by local laws to protect our health with bans on trans fats while food conglomerates are allowed to spend billions to influence farm state politicians and claim that pork is the other white meat . . . Soldiers seeking to ensure the American right to indulge are issued body armor and fortified Humvees out of the front door of the Pentagon even as deals are being made at the back door to sell armor piercing weapons to countries where those same soldiers will soon have to fight. If we’re looking for our government to save us from ourselves, we’ll be looking for a long, long time. If salvation is what we want and saving is what we need, there’s only one place we can look: inside ourselves.
Just because we can speak hate and take more than our share and smoke ourselves to death, doesn’t mean we should. Just because we have the right to indulge in just about every pleasure known to humankind, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Just because we believe that God has breathed liberty and the pursuit of happiness into each of us, doesn’t mean God wants us choking to death on our own freedom. My lord, if we haven’t realize by now that the greatest freedom we have is the freedom to stop ourselves from wanting more than is good for us, no government on earth will ever be able to save us from ourselves.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
When Reality Was Upon Her (a short story)
They called her Mags or Maggie or Mamma or just plain Peg, but hope was the name she’d have chosen if she could. At Saint Leos she was baptized in faith and she liked to believe that a vein of optimism flowed through her, trickling confidence that arrived on the day she was born and that went all the way back through her mother’s wide hips into a family of depression era aunts and immigrant virgin grandmothers who disembarked to settle this certain patch of womanhood. From an early age, Maggie had heard that it was women who held up the children, the home and the family - that when a woman fell all fell around her. So Maggie learned to push her head up high and hard and she used her strength to endeavor to stay afloat in the world, well above its pain. On Tuesdays Maggie shopped at the Foodliner and, even as she waited at the long checkout surrounded by the humble sagginess of people’s faces, the mothers and children clutching food stamps, the rattled carts being pushed by old men who were themselves being pushed by their wives - the overwhelming routine of life all around her - she tried never to let these blunt and disappointed edges of reality enter into the picture of her life.
There was a cat that showed up one day at Maggie’s sun porch door. The cat was a male and Maggie knew that he was sweet on her from the moment he first pushed his way into her knuckles licking at her hand cream. She liked to pretend the cat was a long lost boyfriend – sometimes even her late husband come back to whisper jittery purrs into her pillow. She fed the cat tuna she got on sale and when it rained she let him crawl up under the edge of her skirt and wedge himself between her folded knees while she read whatever the library was recommending that week. The fact is that Maggie didn’t like the rain herself. But she never let on. Not even to the cat. Sometimes at night in bed when it rained she would shove the cat out into the hallway and let the rain get the better of her. It’s not that the rain scared her, more that she seemed to actually drain emotionally as it ran off the roof down her gutters. This was a rare time when the residual emptying out of her confidence was something she could no more stop then she might stop the sky from dropping its water in the first place.
Still, in the morning she would be fine. She’d get a check in call from her daughter Eileen on the West Coast, let the cat back into the room, go down to the kitchen to eat a soft boiled egg with a bowl of instant oatmeal. All that and the wetness on the grass would bring her back to herself. She’d go outside and kneel on the patio blocks, lean into the blades and remember how when she was a child fairies danced within this forest, the beads of rain big enough to fill the buckets from which they drank before smiling up at her and disappearing.
On most Friday nights Maggie ate hamburgers with a group of women at a shabby old place in Hamden called Butchy’s. It was a low rent ritual that Maggie took part in not for the food – of which she ate very little anyway – nor for the aggregate company of her girlfriends who as a group mercilessly tried to cheer each other up, something Maggie felt she needed no part of. Maggie really went because there was something about the restaurant and even Butchy himself that pulled her in, though she couldn’t have told you exactly what that was. Butchy was a short, fat, perhaps once nice-looking Greek man who had the blistering veined cheeks of man who spent his days sweating the grease of a kitchen and who wore a different threadbare vest every Friday and Saturday night when he was not in that kitchen. Without realizing it, Butchy had created a place in his image – all well-sat, fabric covered booths and lumpy votive candles flickering through the red netting of round jars. Once when Butchy came over to check on their table before they ordered, Maggie asked him if he could make a Salisbury steak. Butchy told her that he wouldn’t trust his kitchen help to make this for her, but if she came back on one of the nights when he cooked, he’d make it for her himself. Maggie took this as flirting and she smiled politely at Butchy and ordered a cheeseburger. She may not have known what attracted her to Butchy or his place – but confident as she was - she knew this was not it.
It was a week before Christmas now and Maggie’s kids would be coming for the holiday. Secretly, she found she sometimes had to steady herself to be with them these days. She longed for their company, but for some reason they could be like the rain to her– they emptied her out and this had been happening ever since they themselves had emptied out of the house where she and Ed had raised them. It was the third of four times in her life when she felt hope slipping completely from her and she was entirely surprised by what was happening to her – not so much that it was happening but by how much it dug a core of the unexpected out of her. Ed, on the contrary, never even missed a beat. More than that, he’d started to prepare for it as soon as the kids finished college. “You gonna need these old high-school science posters?” No, and he’d throw them out. “Hope you kids don’t mind, but I was thinking I’d sell the third car unless one of you wants to take it wherever you’ll be living next year.” Maggie stood by shivering each time Ed did this and on the night Teddy took the last of his sheet music, his CDs, books and clothes to move in with a divorced woman he’d met at his first job out of college, Maggie found herself driving around alone in the car eating through a box of Whitman’s she bought at the Walgreens. Maggie was not a shiverer. She was not a woman who sat alone in a car eating chocolates. Ed couldn’t figure out who she had become after the kids left and he starting slamming things down to wake her up whenever he saw her mooning around. She must have known that, sooner or later, these kids would no longer be with them. Ed’s voice was as hard as the tumbler he’d bang empty on the Formica table. How could this have come as such a surprise to her? But then Ed died at his work table two years after Teddy left home and that was the fourth and last time in her life that Maggie had let herself be surprised and emptied so completely by life.
On the Friday before her kids were due to arrive for the holidays, Sue - one of the women she dined with - called Maggie to ask if she was going to meet them at Butchy’s or would she like one of them to pick her up. Maggie stretched the cord on the wall phone all the way out to its limit trying to ignore the fact that she badly wanted to go even though she told Sue she couldn’t. “I’ve got the kids coming the day after tomorrow and they’ll be here for all of next week.” Sue wheedled her a little, made a wise crack about the idea that Maggie’s kids should get in the way of Maggie’s good time, but Maggie held firm. She didn’t like to be coaxed into something that she said she didn’t want to do (even if she really wanted to do it) and when she hung up the phone after an abrupt goodbye, she left behind a static whiff of bitterness. There had always been some resentment among Maggie’s friends over the hallowed detachment Maggie could call up at will, and she knew that Sue would be reporting this conversation to the girls at their line of tables in the middle of Butchy’s. Maggie could see each woman picking up on it and adding her own slant as they dribbled their judgment on the subject quietly from the left corner of one’s mouth to right corner of another’s ear.
Maggie didn’t linger on any of it though, using most of that night to get ready for the arrival of her kids, the cat following her from room to room as she stripped beds and stacked her great aunt’s plates into the dishwasher. Alone in the house, picturing how it would look in six days after three adults and two children had piled their needs into each room she was cleaning for them, Maggie was elated as much from the purpose of the activities as by the chance she would have to put the house back into order after they left. By 9 p.m. she was done but not a bit tired. Not a bit tired and nothing left to do. She tried to read but the house was too clean and she couldn’t sit still; even the cat seemed on edge, preferring not to sit with her but to guard the kitchen from something he felt was living in the dishwasher, pouncing to the base of the machine every time it bumped and stuttered into its next cycle.
At 9:30 Maggie put on her coat and got into the car, the cat now asleep on the warm tile floor in front of the steaming dishwasher. She had taken her book and her purse and her glasses and she thought she’d find a quiet coffee shop where she might try to read. This was something she did every once is a great while after Ed died, preferring to leave the quiet of her house for the noise that could surround her anonymity on its way to becoming another kind of silence for her. She never thought much of women who were afraid to sit alone in cafes or restaurant – for Maggie being comfortable enough to be alone with yourself was a sign of real strength, the kind of peace with your existence that showed you accepted that you were really on your own no matter how the movies or glamour magazines pushed you to believe otherwise. Sometimes in these places she would be able to read and sometimes she would just sit pretending to read, feeling the thrill of being free of everything that held her to life. But either way she was always grateful for the odd times when her twitchiness at home pushed her to stray into a place where no one knew her.
And this was why, contrary to what she might have done otherwise, she avoided Butchy’s and who she might bump into there, preferring to go to one of the younger cafés that dotted Chapel Street and where no one knew her. The street was well lit, relatively safe and with a little luck she could park across from one of these places and wouldn’t have to walk more than 30 feet to get in or out. So there was the Atticus Book store café, the Cellar Grill and even the Starbucks that had replaced the ancient luncheonette she had gone into as a teenage girl. All of which she could choose from. And any would do. But tonight it was the Atticus Café that had empty tables she could see from the street and a space for her car where she could park right outside the front door.
It didn’t take long, however, for her to regret the table she’d chosen when she got inside. It looked like a good table, not too far from the counter to get faster service, but off by itself away from the stacks of mixed new and used books where students lingered for hours sitting on the floor reading through what they could not afford to buy. But once Maggie sat for a while she realized that the couple nearest her at the counter – they couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 – were holding up two sides of a heated love triangle. She could hear the boy pleading softly for reason and see that the girl was completely staggered by the surrealistic picture of another girl that had been painted for her. Maggie just knew it was the first time this had ever happened to the girl. And how did Maggie know? She knew because when the girl got up, leaving the boy with a pile of green napkins that had been stained with her mascara along with all the rest that had run from her nose and eyes, the boy looked at Maggie briefly, and in that second he became Maggie’s first real love.
The boy was beautiful – just as Maggie’s Sam had been beautiful. The dark tips of his lashes drooped languidly, and from the angle of his shoulders to his shiny eyes he oozed the confusion and stupidity of a young man feeling the power of having two women love him and he thinking he could love them both in return. When the boy dropped his head away from Maggie’s gaze to look into his pockets for the bills to attach to this failed date, Maggie fell into a dark place where the front passenger door of a ‘42 Buick stood open while the motor idled as she decided whether she would scream and pound her fists into Sam’s face or summon the grace to simply tilt her nose toward the night sky and follow it onward toward home. It had been a magic spring and summer, the war over by many years, high school behind her, her father on his feet again, and the promise of Sam slowly entering her one smile at a time. She believed Sam would be the one, as every girl early on believes she has found the one. But then she found out - through the cursive figure of some other female’s handwriting sticking out one of Sam’s books - that she was not the only one for Sam. And it took her down. Hard. When it happened she remembered what her uncles and older cousins used to say about some of the men that died beside them in the Philippines and the Argonne - “they never saw it coming.” These relatives stated this as if it were a blessing, owing to all the other men who had seen it coming, who had suffered the organic hell of knowing that the life in their exploded bodies was about to cease to be. Maggie too never saw it coming but it was not a blessing for her. Sam’s infidelity was a bullet that hit Maggie when she least expected it, but once it hit she’d had to live on to watch it gut her of her confidence. Maggie did walk home that night, her hope emptying into the dirt along with her tears and snot, just as this girl at the counter had left her hope behind on that napkin. How, god, could he who was so beautiful and so kind and so warm inside me do this to me? But Sam did and that was the second time in Maggie’s life when reality had truly prevailed.
Maggie went home that night as quickly as she had arrived at the coffee house. Once home she fell into a deep sleep where she did not dream and she did not wake until morning. She reminded herself that it was a blessing to sleep this deeply – even though she dreamed almost every night - and by the time her children and grandchildren arrived two days later she had loosened herself of the little scene at the coffee house and what it had triggered for her.
The three days leading up to Christmas went rather slowly once Maggie’s children and grandchildren had shown up and had that first meal together where everyone shakes off their ever-happy faces and best behavior. Maggie understood that small children acted up and made noise but during that first dinner Maggie’s grandkids once again surpassed her understanding. Eileen and her husband made flailing gestures to get the kids simmered down, but as usual the couple drank too much and it was Teddy, of all people, who was finally able to get his niece and nephew focused by taking them into the den and having them make up new words for Christmas carols which he played on the upright his dad had dragged home and rebuilt. Teddy told them stories about the burn marks their grandfather had left in the ivory of the keys during those times when he got so distracted with his playing that he would prop his cigarettes filter end down on the wood above the keyboard and the ash would finally tip over to singe yet another place in the piano’s upper register. Hearing Teddy in there with the kids, Maggie still believed that Teddy was going to right himself – that this was on its way to happening any day now.
By the next day Maggie had made a deal with herself that she was not going to judge her kids and grandkids for whom they were presenting themselves to be but for whom she knew them to be. Or at least for whom she believed they could become. This made it easier for Maggie to keep the dinners, and breakfasts and lunches moving along through aggressive, unforgiving appetites, easier to steer them all through the Christmas morning chaos of kids exploding with despair soon after they couldn’t find any more gifts to open and adults no longer able to hide the fact that they wanted to be somewhere else once strong coffee ceased to elevate their moods. By the day after Christmas, when she knew her family would be leaving that evening, Maggie finally found a few minutes to sit alone on the unheated sun porch to consider if all this had truly been worth the trouble for any of them. She concluded that it was the only trouble worth having in life, that of a noisy, somewhat disrespectful family who, nonetheless, decide to be with you no matter what they seemed to be saying otherwise.
Pulling her big sweater around her to get up and walk back through the morning chill of the porch into her house, Maggie had found a way to ground herself in the sweet emptiness that would come with saying goodbye in a few hours. But when Teddy walked onto the porch before she could rise from her chair there was something about his entrance that took away the warm, self pity she had worked herself into. She let herself feel the chill again and she let herself swell with affirmation. Teddy opened the sun porch storm door leading to the back yard and stood across the jamb where he lit a cigarette and tried to blow the smoke out into the gentle December wind which only blew it back toward his mother’s averted face. “You need to quit that habit,” Maggie told him foregoing what might have been a stronger remark. “The doctor said it killed your father.”
“Living killed dad. The doctor was just earning a paycheck.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” is all Maggie said before adjusting her small frame in the love seat. As a boy and now as a man, Teddy was always dissatisfied and always on the run. There was always something better wherever Teddy was not. His mother knew this but she preferred to support him in his wanderings, believing her boy was ultimately on his way to a steadier place that had more promise, a home with a sturdier foundation that could hold his outsized dreams long enough to make them real. Maggie knew why Teddy was on the porch with her before he even came to the point. That’s why she swelled up when he walked out there - she was ready to say yes to Teddy before he even asked the question.
“Mom, I gotta go a little early. I’m supposed to meet a producer in the city.” Maggie nodded and patted the cushion beside her. Teddy threw his cigarette out into the yard and joined her on the love seat.
“I don’t really want to have to ask you this . . . not again . . . but I have a good feeling about this project.”
“Just tell me what you need, Teddy. Your father worked hard and I have it and you know I’m never one to give up on anybody in this house."
Teddy arched his shoulders back into the love seat and closed his eyes.
“Jesus, mom, you don’t even know how much I’m asking for and you’re going to give it to me? I mean I’m grateful, but there are times when I honestly wonder why you don’t give up on me. ”
“Because I choose not too Teddy, that’s why.”
From out of an elm tree in the backyard, a bird screeched feverishly into the conversation. It distracted Teddy and he looked away from his mother never realizing that she was not going to stop looking at him until he looked away first. Though it didn’t matter, because even if he had realized it, it would have only told Teddy what he already knew, that his mother really had no idea how much the stern hopefulness she carried inside her had taken out of those she labored to carry it for.
Maggie left the porch immediately after that and she kept marching tight-jawed through to her purse and onward to the check she wrote and tore out for Teddy, pacing time and the breaches of her family to force her way smiling into a gang of sloppy hugs and guilty goodbyes, all the way through the next morning and afternoon and on to the final evening of that week when she found herself sitting amongst a group of crow-eyed girls across a table at Butchy’s.
Hamburgers served and cleared and each woman totaling her portion of the flimsy diner check, Maggie had nearly forgotten about the week that just transpired. Her son was just another spirit she held aloft: her family a group of problems she could solve with the will of God. Maggie had even found the good grace to allow her friends to minister to her that night, pretending not to mind that they thought themselves superior in the advice they forced on her even after she told them again and again that she was just a little quiet tonight and not a bit unhappy. Maggie was pleased with herself for having found this equilibrium after such a long week. And this made it all the more surprising for her when Butchy crossed the dining room toward their table and Maggie slowly felt a growing sense of uneasiness that constricted her throat and heightened her cheekbones into something between a giggle and sob.
By the time Butchy reached the table with his unfortunate face blazing, Maggie was staring back into something she had not looked at for a long, long time. She tried to shift her position to look away from Butchy who was attempting to catch her eye, but having turned this way and that she could not shake the hopeless face which came in at the edges of her memory. There was no longer any doubt for Maggie about what had attracted her to Butchy or to this place where she knew he would likely go crazy with sadness when he finally realized that his world was slowly dying all around him. There was no longer any doubt of what Maggie had really known all along.
The first time reality was upon her, it was Maggie’s father who brought it with him back from the war. He was a short man, who as a young father was as tough as a city street in the old suit vests he always wore over open collared shirts and rolled cuffs. Ruddy in complexion, his cheeks popped with the red roses of a skin condition he’d had ever since he was a boy, but when Maggie the girl kissed him it wasn’t a heated skin rash she felt under her lips but the warmth of God. Before he’d shipped for Italy, Maggie had built her father into a tree of life that sheltered her inside the big shabby home where they lived. As it is for all very young girls with all good fathers, the man was immutable. Where he walked, hope shined for Maggie. But then came the morning two weeks after he had been discharged when Maggie, just 10 years old, found her father weeping at the foot of her bed.
Waking in the shadows of the rainy dawn, Maggie wasn’t sure what she was hearing, so she groped along the beside wall until she came upon her father with his head damp and lolling around the point of his spine. At first Maggie thought he was physically hurt . . . Daddy, did you fall? But he did not answer and would not answer for many weeks and months to come. And with her father’s fall, Maggie was pierced for the first time by the lies her mother and grandmothers and aunts had told her. The light of a rainy day once so beautiful and soft for her now became unbearable; the shelter of her father’s arms, and the home he built with the work of his hands, were now nothing more than wood and skin and bones which could burn and die. During those months, every other human being Maggie ever loved became truly human and weak and the best she could ever do hereafter was to continue to pray hard enough to fool herself into thinking that something else might be true.
Every time for the rest of her life that Maggie kept hope alive for her family when the jaws of misery were snapping around them she had to turn her back on her father to do it. Each time she rose above the desolation of life or the failings she found in yet another man or woman, her father wept alone at the foot of her bed. And in those one, two and three times when Maggie had completely lost her way and let the cold-bloodedness of loss win her over, it was her father that rose from that floor to ultimately remind her that this was a broken and ignorant world in which we lived and it could either drain us of our hope or give us pause to consider that hope was all we had.
Bit by bit, the somewhat artificial voices of old women trying to sound like girls filtered Maggie back into her seat at the table and the night at hand. Butchy had walked away by that point and soon after Maggie had paid her share and she too walked away to get in her car and drive home. Pulling into her garage and pushing the button on the visor to shut the overhead door behind her, there was a moment before she turned off the ignition that Maggie wondered if it might not just be better to leave it running for a while. Just for a little while so she could rest. But the moment passed quickly – as these moments will - and she shut off the car and moved to go inside to pick up where she had left off.
When she opened the door of the breezeway the cat ran out into the garage. He’d heard the ticks of the still warm car and felt that perhaps there was something out there he was missing. Maggie thought for a second about rooting around through the junk in the garage which the cat had run under in order to find him and shoo him back into the house. Then she decided against it and closed the door behind her to leave him out there for a while. Maggie knew that, one way or the other, he would always find his way back in.
There was a cat that showed up one day at Maggie’s sun porch door. The cat was a male and Maggie knew that he was sweet on her from the moment he first pushed his way into her knuckles licking at her hand cream. She liked to pretend the cat was a long lost boyfriend – sometimes even her late husband come back to whisper jittery purrs into her pillow. She fed the cat tuna she got on sale and when it rained she let him crawl up under the edge of her skirt and wedge himself between her folded knees while she read whatever the library was recommending that week. The fact is that Maggie didn’t like the rain herself. But she never let on. Not even to the cat. Sometimes at night in bed when it rained she would shove the cat out into the hallway and let the rain get the better of her. It’s not that the rain scared her, more that she seemed to actually drain emotionally as it ran off the roof down her gutters. This was a rare time when the residual emptying out of her confidence was something she could no more stop then she might stop the sky from dropping its water in the first place.
Still, in the morning she would be fine. She’d get a check in call from her daughter Eileen on the West Coast, let the cat back into the room, go down to the kitchen to eat a soft boiled egg with a bowl of instant oatmeal. All that and the wetness on the grass would bring her back to herself. She’d go outside and kneel on the patio blocks, lean into the blades and remember how when she was a child fairies danced within this forest, the beads of rain big enough to fill the buckets from which they drank before smiling up at her and disappearing.
On most Friday nights Maggie ate hamburgers with a group of women at a shabby old place in Hamden called Butchy’s. It was a low rent ritual that Maggie took part in not for the food – of which she ate very little anyway – nor for the aggregate company of her girlfriends who as a group mercilessly tried to cheer each other up, something Maggie felt she needed no part of. Maggie really went because there was something about the restaurant and even Butchy himself that pulled her in, though she couldn’t have told you exactly what that was. Butchy was a short, fat, perhaps once nice-looking Greek man who had the blistering veined cheeks of man who spent his days sweating the grease of a kitchen and who wore a different threadbare vest every Friday and Saturday night when he was not in that kitchen. Without realizing it, Butchy had created a place in his image – all well-sat, fabric covered booths and lumpy votive candles flickering through the red netting of round jars. Once when Butchy came over to check on their table before they ordered, Maggie asked him if he could make a Salisbury steak. Butchy told her that he wouldn’t trust his kitchen help to make this for her, but if she came back on one of the nights when he cooked, he’d make it for her himself. Maggie took this as flirting and she smiled politely at Butchy and ordered a cheeseburger. She may not have known what attracted her to Butchy or his place – but confident as she was - she knew this was not it.
It was a week before Christmas now and Maggie’s kids would be coming for the holiday. Secretly, she found she sometimes had to steady herself to be with them these days. She longed for their company, but for some reason they could be like the rain to her– they emptied her out and this had been happening ever since they themselves had emptied out of the house where she and Ed had raised them. It was the third of four times in her life when she felt hope slipping completely from her and she was entirely surprised by what was happening to her – not so much that it was happening but by how much it dug a core of the unexpected out of her. Ed, on the contrary, never even missed a beat. More than that, he’d started to prepare for it as soon as the kids finished college. “You gonna need these old high-school science posters?” No, and he’d throw them out. “Hope you kids don’t mind, but I was thinking I’d sell the third car unless one of you wants to take it wherever you’ll be living next year.” Maggie stood by shivering each time Ed did this and on the night Teddy took the last of his sheet music, his CDs, books and clothes to move in with a divorced woman he’d met at his first job out of college, Maggie found herself driving around alone in the car eating through a box of Whitman’s she bought at the Walgreens. Maggie was not a shiverer. She was not a woman who sat alone in a car eating chocolates. Ed couldn’t figure out who she had become after the kids left and he starting slamming things down to wake her up whenever he saw her mooning around. She must have known that, sooner or later, these kids would no longer be with them. Ed’s voice was as hard as the tumbler he’d bang empty on the Formica table. How could this have come as such a surprise to her? But then Ed died at his work table two years after Teddy left home and that was the fourth and last time in her life that Maggie had let herself be surprised and emptied so completely by life.
On the Friday before her kids were due to arrive for the holidays, Sue - one of the women she dined with - called Maggie to ask if she was going to meet them at Butchy’s or would she like one of them to pick her up. Maggie stretched the cord on the wall phone all the way out to its limit trying to ignore the fact that she badly wanted to go even though she told Sue she couldn’t. “I’ve got the kids coming the day after tomorrow and they’ll be here for all of next week.” Sue wheedled her a little, made a wise crack about the idea that Maggie’s kids should get in the way of Maggie’s good time, but Maggie held firm. She didn’t like to be coaxed into something that she said she didn’t want to do (even if she really wanted to do it) and when she hung up the phone after an abrupt goodbye, she left behind a static whiff of bitterness. There had always been some resentment among Maggie’s friends over the hallowed detachment Maggie could call up at will, and she knew that Sue would be reporting this conversation to the girls at their line of tables in the middle of Butchy’s. Maggie could see each woman picking up on it and adding her own slant as they dribbled their judgment on the subject quietly from the left corner of one’s mouth to right corner of another’s ear.
Maggie didn’t linger on any of it though, using most of that night to get ready for the arrival of her kids, the cat following her from room to room as she stripped beds and stacked her great aunt’s plates into the dishwasher. Alone in the house, picturing how it would look in six days after three adults and two children had piled their needs into each room she was cleaning for them, Maggie was elated as much from the purpose of the activities as by the chance she would have to put the house back into order after they left. By 9 p.m. she was done but not a bit tired. Not a bit tired and nothing left to do. She tried to read but the house was too clean and she couldn’t sit still; even the cat seemed on edge, preferring not to sit with her but to guard the kitchen from something he felt was living in the dishwasher, pouncing to the base of the machine every time it bumped and stuttered into its next cycle.
At 9:30 Maggie put on her coat and got into the car, the cat now asleep on the warm tile floor in front of the steaming dishwasher. She had taken her book and her purse and her glasses and she thought she’d find a quiet coffee shop where she might try to read. This was something she did every once is a great while after Ed died, preferring to leave the quiet of her house for the noise that could surround her anonymity on its way to becoming another kind of silence for her. She never thought much of women who were afraid to sit alone in cafes or restaurant – for Maggie being comfortable enough to be alone with yourself was a sign of real strength, the kind of peace with your existence that showed you accepted that you were really on your own no matter how the movies or glamour magazines pushed you to believe otherwise. Sometimes in these places she would be able to read and sometimes she would just sit pretending to read, feeling the thrill of being free of everything that held her to life. But either way she was always grateful for the odd times when her twitchiness at home pushed her to stray into a place where no one knew her.
And this was why, contrary to what she might have done otherwise, she avoided Butchy’s and who she might bump into there, preferring to go to one of the younger cafés that dotted Chapel Street and where no one knew her. The street was well lit, relatively safe and with a little luck she could park across from one of these places and wouldn’t have to walk more than 30 feet to get in or out. So there was the Atticus Book store café, the Cellar Grill and even the Starbucks that had replaced the ancient luncheonette she had gone into as a teenage girl. All of which she could choose from. And any would do. But tonight it was the Atticus Café that had empty tables she could see from the street and a space for her car where she could park right outside the front door.
It didn’t take long, however, for her to regret the table she’d chosen when she got inside. It looked like a good table, not too far from the counter to get faster service, but off by itself away from the stacks of mixed new and used books where students lingered for hours sitting on the floor reading through what they could not afford to buy. But once Maggie sat for a while she realized that the couple nearest her at the counter – they couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 – were holding up two sides of a heated love triangle. She could hear the boy pleading softly for reason and see that the girl was completely staggered by the surrealistic picture of another girl that had been painted for her. Maggie just knew it was the first time this had ever happened to the girl. And how did Maggie know? She knew because when the girl got up, leaving the boy with a pile of green napkins that had been stained with her mascara along with all the rest that had run from her nose and eyes, the boy looked at Maggie briefly, and in that second he became Maggie’s first real love.
The boy was beautiful – just as Maggie’s Sam had been beautiful. The dark tips of his lashes drooped languidly, and from the angle of his shoulders to his shiny eyes he oozed the confusion and stupidity of a young man feeling the power of having two women love him and he thinking he could love them both in return. When the boy dropped his head away from Maggie’s gaze to look into his pockets for the bills to attach to this failed date, Maggie fell into a dark place where the front passenger door of a ‘42 Buick stood open while the motor idled as she decided whether she would scream and pound her fists into Sam’s face or summon the grace to simply tilt her nose toward the night sky and follow it onward toward home. It had been a magic spring and summer, the war over by many years, high school behind her, her father on his feet again, and the promise of Sam slowly entering her one smile at a time. She believed Sam would be the one, as every girl early on believes she has found the one. But then she found out - through the cursive figure of some other female’s handwriting sticking out one of Sam’s books - that she was not the only one for Sam. And it took her down. Hard. When it happened she remembered what her uncles and older cousins used to say about some of the men that died beside them in the Philippines and the Argonne - “they never saw it coming.” These relatives stated this as if it were a blessing, owing to all the other men who had seen it coming, who had suffered the organic hell of knowing that the life in their exploded bodies was about to cease to be. Maggie too never saw it coming but it was not a blessing for her. Sam’s infidelity was a bullet that hit Maggie when she least expected it, but once it hit she’d had to live on to watch it gut her of her confidence. Maggie did walk home that night, her hope emptying into the dirt along with her tears and snot, just as this girl at the counter had left her hope behind on that napkin. How, god, could he who was so beautiful and so kind and so warm inside me do this to me? But Sam did and that was the second time in Maggie’s life when reality had truly prevailed.
Maggie went home that night as quickly as she had arrived at the coffee house. Once home she fell into a deep sleep where she did not dream and she did not wake until morning. She reminded herself that it was a blessing to sleep this deeply – even though she dreamed almost every night - and by the time her children and grandchildren arrived two days later she had loosened herself of the little scene at the coffee house and what it had triggered for her.
The three days leading up to Christmas went rather slowly once Maggie’s children and grandchildren had shown up and had that first meal together where everyone shakes off their ever-happy faces and best behavior. Maggie understood that small children acted up and made noise but during that first dinner Maggie’s grandkids once again surpassed her understanding. Eileen and her husband made flailing gestures to get the kids simmered down, but as usual the couple drank too much and it was Teddy, of all people, who was finally able to get his niece and nephew focused by taking them into the den and having them make up new words for Christmas carols which he played on the upright his dad had dragged home and rebuilt. Teddy told them stories about the burn marks their grandfather had left in the ivory of the keys during those times when he got so distracted with his playing that he would prop his cigarettes filter end down on the wood above the keyboard and the ash would finally tip over to singe yet another place in the piano’s upper register. Hearing Teddy in there with the kids, Maggie still believed that Teddy was going to right himself – that this was on its way to happening any day now.
By the next day Maggie had made a deal with herself that she was not going to judge her kids and grandkids for whom they were presenting themselves to be but for whom she knew them to be. Or at least for whom she believed they could become. This made it easier for Maggie to keep the dinners, and breakfasts and lunches moving along through aggressive, unforgiving appetites, easier to steer them all through the Christmas morning chaos of kids exploding with despair soon after they couldn’t find any more gifts to open and adults no longer able to hide the fact that they wanted to be somewhere else once strong coffee ceased to elevate their moods. By the day after Christmas, when she knew her family would be leaving that evening, Maggie finally found a few minutes to sit alone on the unheated sun porch to consider if all this had truly been worth the trouble for any of them. She concluded that it was the only trouble worth having in life, that of a noisy, somewhat disrespectful family who, nonetheless, decide to be with you no matter what they seemed to be saying otherwise.
Pulling her big sweater around her to get up and walk back through the morning chill of the porch into her house, Maggie had found a way to ground herself in the sweet emptiness that would come with saying goodbye in a few hours. But when Teddy walked onto the porch before she could rise from her chair there was something about his entrance that took away the warm, self pity she had worked herself into. She let herself feel the chill again and she let herself swell with affirmation. Teddy opened the sun porch storm door leading to the back yard and stood across the jamb where he lit a cigarette and tried to blow the smoke out into the gentle December wind which only blew it back toward his mother’s averted face. “You need to quit that habit,” Maggie told him foregoing what might have been a stronger remark. “The doctor said it killed your father.”
“Living killed dad. The doctor was just earning a paycheck.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” is all Maggie said before adjusting her small frame in the love seat. As a boy and now as a man, Teddy was always dissatisfied and always on the run. There was always something better wherever Teddy was not. His mother knew this but she preferred to support him in his wanderings, believing her boy was ultimately on his way to a steadier place that had more promise, a home with a sturdier foundation that could hold his outsized dreams long enough to make them real. Maggie knew why Teddy was on the porch with her before he even came to the point. That’s why she swelled up when he walked out there - she was ready to say yes to Teddy before he even asked the question.
“Mom, I gotta go a little early. I’m supposed to meet a producer in the city.” Maggie nodded and patted the cushion beside her. Teddy threw his cigarette out into the yard and joined her on the love seat.
“I don’t really want to have to ask you this . . . not again . . . but I have a good feeling about this project.”
“Just tell me what you need, Teddy. Your father worked hard and I have it and you know I’m never one to give up on anybody in this house."
Teddy arched his shoulders back into the love seat and closed his eyes.
“Jesus, mom, you don’t even know how much I’m asking for and you’re going to give it to me? I mean I’m grateful, but there are times when I honestly wonder why you don’t give up on me. ”
“Because I choose not too Teddy, that’s why.”
From out of an elm tree in the backyard, a bird screeched feverishly into the conversation. It distracted Teddy and he looked away from his mother never realizing that she was not going to stop looking at him until he looked away first. Though it didn’t matter, because even if he had realized it, it would have only told Teddy what he already knew, that his mother really had no idea how much the stern hopefulness she carried inside her had taken out of those she labored to carry it for.
Maggie left the porch immediately after that and she kept marching tight-jawed through to her purse and onward to the check she wrote and tore out for Teddy, pacing time and the breaches of her family to force her way smiling into a gang of sloppy hugs and guilty goodbyes, all the way through the next morning and afternoon and on to the final evening of that week when she found herself sitting amongst a group of crow-eyed girls across a table at Butchy’s.
Hamburgers served and cleared and each woman totaling her portion of the flimsy diner check, Maggie had nearly forgotten about the week that just transpired. Her son was just another spirit she held aloft: her family a group of problems she could solve with the will of God. Maggie had even found the good grace to allow her friends to minister to her that night, pretending not to mind that they thought themselves superior in the advice they forced on her even after she told them again and again that she was just a little quiet tonight and not a bit unhappy. Maggie was pleased with herself for having found this equilibrium after such a long week. And this made it all the more surprising for her when Butchy crossed the dining room toward their table and Maggie slowly felt a growing sense of uneasiness that constricted her throat and heightened her cheekbones into something between a giggle and sob.
By the time Butchy reached the table with his unfortunate face blazing, Maggie was staring back into something she had not looked at for a long, long time. She tried to shift her position to look away from Butchy who was attempting to catch her eye, but having turned this way and that she could not shake the hopeless face which came in at the edges of her memory. There was no longer any doubt for Maggie about what had attracted her to Butchy or to this place where she knew he would likely go crazy with sadness when he finally realized that his world was slowly dying all around him. There was no longer any doubt of what Maggie had really known all along.
The first time reality was upon her, it was Maggie’s father who brought it with him back from the war. He was a short man, who as a young father was as tough as a city street in the old suit vests he always wore over open collared shirts and rolled cuffs. Ruddy in complexion, his cheeks popped with the red roses of a skin condition he’d had ever since he was a boy, but when Maggie the girl kissed him it wasn’t a heated skin rash she felt under her lips but the warmth of God. Before he’d shipped for Italy, Maggie had built her father into a tree of life that sheltered her inside the big shabby home where they lived. As it is for all very young girls with all good fathers, the man was immutable. Where he walked, hope shined for Maggie. But then came the morning two weeks after he had been discharged when Maggie, just 10 years old, found her father weeping at the foot of her bed.
Waking in the shadows of the rainy dawn, Maggie wasn’t sure what she was hearing, so she groped along the beside wall until she came upon her father with his head damp and lolling around the point of his spine. At first Maggie thought he was physically hurt . . . Daddy, did you fall? But he did not answer and would not answer for many weeks and months to come. And with her father’s fall, Maggie was pierced for the first time by the lies her mother and grandmothers and aunts had told her. The light of a rainy day once so beautiful and soft for her now became unbearable; the shelter of her father’s arms, and the home he built with the work of his hands, were now nothing more than wood and skin and bones which could burn and die. During those months, every other human being Maggie ever loved became truly human and weak and the best she could ever do hereafter was to continue to pray hard enough to fool herself into thinking that something else might be true.
Every time for the rest of her life that Maggie kept hope alive for her family when the jaws of misery were snapping around them she had to turn her back on her father to do it. Each time she rose above the desolation of life or the failings she found in yet another man or woman, her father wept alone at the foot of her bed. And in those one, two and three times when Maggie had completely lost her way and let the cold-bloodedness of loss win her over, it was her father that rose from that floor to ultimately remind her that this was a broken and ignorant world in which we lived and it could either drain us of our hope or give us pause to consider that hope was all we had.
Bit by bit, the somewhat artificial voices of old women trying to sound like girls filtered Maggie back into her seat at the table and the night at hand. Butchy had walked away by that point and soon after Maggie had paid her share and she too walked away to get in her car and drive home. Pulling into her garage and pushing the button on the visor to shut the overhead door behind her, there was a moment before she turned off the ignition that Maggie wondered if it might not just be better to leave it running for a while. Just for a little while so she could rest. But the moment passed quickly – as these moments will - and she shut off the car and moved to go inside to pick up where she had left off.
When she opened the door of the breezeway the cat ran out into the garage. He’d heard the ticks of the still warm car and felt that perhaps there was something out there he was missing. Maggie thought for a second about rooting around through the junk in the garage which the cat had run under in order to find him and shoo him back into the house. Then she decided against it and closed the door behind her to leave him out there for a while. Maggie knew that, one way or the other, he would always find his way back in.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
When ... (or Baby Tattoos, Sensible-Eaters Anonymous and Middle Class Nomads)
When …
China becomes the world’s largest economy Americans will no longer be able to afford to adopt Chinese babies. On the bright side, infertile upper middle class Chinese couples will now be wealthy enough to start adopting American babies from Detroit, Los Angeles and Kansas City. Poor little American kids will be groomed by US orphanages who will market these children as a race of “giant” people with the potential to rap in Mandarin. Natural born Chinese kids will still excel in economics and engineering, but Chinese moms and dads with adopted American children will take special pride in their children who – like the Buddha – seem to be able to sit and do nothing at all as they stare into tiny cell phone screens communicating in short IM “proverbs” that impart their wisdom using only words made from punctuation marks and two and three letter acronyms (i.e.: omg).
When …
Every last man and woman in America gives in to peer pressure and gets a tattoo, they will then begin tattooing their children, imprinting them with Sponge Bob Square Pants and Little Mermaid tattoos alongside permanent script that reads “My Parents Took Me To Mexico But All I Got Was this Lousy Tattoo.” These tattoos will be rationalized in the same way that we now rationalize dressing our kids to match us in skinny jeans with diaper flaps and miniature Dolce and Gabbana sun glasses that double as teething rings. No child will be considered complete or socially acceptable without “ink” from a high-end tattoo parlor and on special occasions proud moms and dads will take their children to visit their great grandparents where they will compare great granddad’s tattoo commemorating his lost platoon in Vietnam with little Eric’s tattoo commemorating the cast of MTV’s The Jersey Shore.
When ...
The entire population of the US is overweight from six-meals-a-day of junk food and the high-fructose corn syrup that has been put into everything from frozen vegetables to rescue inhalers, the top three reality shows in the country will be The Biggest Human, So You Think You Can Eat and America’s Got Food. Any remaining thin people in the country will be shamed into going to Sensible-Eaters Anonymous where they will learn how to break their addiction to eating in moderation (”Hi my name is Steven and last night (sob, sniffle) I ate 23 grams of fiber with no trans fat in my organic stir fry”). At the end of these meetings, massively obese old-timers will attempt to hug new comers without crushing them while, instead of coffee and cookies, a buffet of 2700 calorie individual meat-topped, stuffed crust pizzas will be served to help attendees continue to overcome their twin demons of intelligence and good sense … one pie at a time.
When ...
The US tax code and banking system finally eliminates the American Middle class, leaving only the super rich and the very poor, a few remaining middle class nomads will continue to wander the land through high-end malls and housing developments looking for the American Dream. Middle class nomad Fathers will stand next to their daughters and sons pointing through the windows of large houses at the hi-def TVs and stackable washer / driers they used to be able to buy, while rootless Moms will stop wandering just long enough to mime sitting at kitchen tables where their children will pretend to do their homework. At the same time, the nation’s super rich leaders will have convinced the very poor that the American middle class was only a myth perpetuated by the Obama administration and other American Democrats who will by this time have also all become extinct.
When …
National, state and local governments at last convince every US citizen that terrorists are all around us, it will be considered an act of patriotism for US citizens to call 911 whenever they witness an old lady covering her curlers with a head scarf. No college kid walking out of a Middle Eastern restaurant with a falafel will be able to hide from the watchful American eye, and It will be the little things we do that make us heroes (such as lining the bottom of our bird cages with Arabic language newspapers and teaching our dogs to sniff out copies of the Koran at local yard sales). Soon America will have become so vigilant and paranoid that we will even start turning ourselves into detention centers at which point actual terrorists will have no one left to attack and will be forced to leave the country, proving once again that American determination can conquer all.
When …
When YouTube, Facebook and Twitter become the only form of human communications left in the world, people will no longer have the attention span or skills to acquire information by reading anything longer than 140 characters. The titles on required reading lists will be the only thing that students are actually required to read and the only way to get us to sit still to take in complete ideas will be to entertain us with funny voices and scantily clad teenagers. At the same time, business proposals that involve any consideration by meeting participants will have to be created in the form of short video clips where animated characters draw pie charts and then hit each other in the face with them. No one left alive will remember what it was like to read a novel or a newspaper and publishers will be forced to create a new form of literature called the “eMotiBook” which will reduce great pieces of literature down to a short series of webdings and emoticons. For instance Romeo and Juliet would become: “YLN”while a Tale of Two Cities would look like this: “C/D”. At the same time, the front page of the New York Times would be boiled down to: “— --@pMÿZQ‡üÛ>” and the entire contents of all you just read would - in the end - simply be summed up as follows: “ü?ÿ….”
China becomes the world’s largest economy Americans will no longer be able to afford to adopt Chinese babies. On the bright side, infertile upper middle class Chinese couples will now be wealthy enough to start adopting American babies from Detroit, Los Angeles and Kansas City. Poor little American kids will be groomed by US orphanages who will market these children as a race of “giant” people with the potential to rap in Mandarin. Natural born Chinese kids will still excel in economics and engineering, but Chinese moms and dads with adopted American children will take special pride in their children who – like the Buddha – seem to be able to sit and do nothing at all as they stare into tiny cell phone screens communicating in short IM “proverbs” that impart their wisdom using only words made from punctuation marks and two and three letter acronyms (i.e.: omg).
When …
Every last man and woman in America gives in to peer pressure and gets a tattoo, they will then begin tattooing their children, imprinting them with Sponge Bob Square Pants and Little Mermaid tattoos alongside permanent script that reads “My Parents Took Me To Mexico But All I Got Was this Lousy Tattoo.” These tattoos will be rationalized in the same way that we now rationalize dressing our kids to match us in skinny jeans with diaper flaps and miniature Dolce and Gabbana sun glasses that double as teething rings. No child will be considered complete or socially acceptable without “ink” from a high-end tattoo parlor and on special occasions proud moms and dads will take their children to visit their great grandparents where they will compare great granddad’s tattoo commemorating his lost platoon in Vietnam with little Eric’s tattoo commemorating the cast of MTV’s The Jersey Shore.
When ...
The entire population of the US is overweight from six-meals-a-day of junk food and the high-fructose corn syrup that has been put into everything from frozen vegetables to rescue inhalers, the top three reality shows in the country will be The Biggest Human, So You Think You Can Eat and America’s Got Food. Any remaining thin people in the country will be shamed into going to Sensible-Eaters Anonymous where they will learn how to break their addiction to eating in moderation (”Hi my name is Steven and last night (sob, sniffle) I ate 23 grams of fiber with no trans fat in my organic stir fry”). At the end of these meetings, massively obese old-timers will attempt to hug new comers without crushing them while, instead of coffee and cookies, a buffet of 2700 calorie individual meat-topped, stuffed crust pizzas will be served to help attendees continue to overcome their twin demons of intelligence and good sense … one pie at a time.
When ...
The US tax code and banking system finally eliminates the American Middle class, leaving only the super rich and the very poor, a few remaining middle class nomads will continue to wander the land through high-end malls and housing developments looking for the American Dream. Middle class nomad Fathers will stand next to their daughters and sons pointing through the windows of large houses at the hi-def TVs and stackable washer / driers they used to be able to buy, while rootless Moms will stop wandering just long enough to mime sitting at kitchen tables where their children will pretend to do their homework. At the same time, the nation’s super rich leaders will have convinced the very poor that the American middle class was only a myth perpetuated by the Obama administration and other American Democrats who will by this time have also all become extinct.
When …
National, state and local governments at last convince every US citizen that terrorists are all around us, it will be considered an act of patriotism for US citizens to call 911 whenever they witness an old lady covering her curlers with a head scarf. No college kid walking out of a Middle Eastern restaurant with a falafel will be able to hide from the watchful American eye, and It will be the little things we do that make us heroes (such as lining the bottom of our bird cages with Arabic language newspapers and teaching our dogs to sniff out copies of the Koran at local yard sales). Soon America will have become so vigilant and paranoid that we will even start turning ourselves into detention centers at which point actual terrorists will have no one left to attack and will be forced to leave the country, proving once again that American determination can conquer all.
When …
When YouTube, Facebook and Twitter become the only form of human communications left in the world, people will no longer have the attention span or skills to acquire information by reading anything longer than 140 characters. The titles on required reading lists will be the only thing that students are actually required to read and the only way to get us to sit still to take in complete ideas will be to entertain us with funny voices and scantily clad teenagers. At the same time, business proposals that involve any consideration by meeting participants will have to be created in the form of short video clips where animated characters draw pie charts and then hit each other in the face with them. No one left alive will remember what it was like to read a novel or a newspaper and publishers will be forced to create a new form of literature called the “eMotiBook” which will reduce great pieces of literature down to a short series of webdings and emoticons. For instance Romeo and Juliet would become: “YLN”while a Tale of Two Cities would look like this: “C/D”. At the same time, the front page of the New York Times would be boiled down to: “— --@pMÿZQ‡üÛ>” and the entire contents of all you just read would - in the end - simply be summed up as follows: “ü?ÿ….”
Thursday, September 9, 2010
America Lost and Found
Somewhere in this country there is a treasure waiting for us and because we are Americans we will find it. It is rusty and it is old. It has hardly ever been used though heartily has it been loved. It is caked with the patina of earth and wind and washed with a temper of sea water and sun and fire. It is stamped with a mark that makes it the first or the last or the best, and it carries a note that tells you why it must be saved. Ours for the searching and the haggling, it has been sleeping in the barns and garages and dusty shops that are strung like wooden beads across our land. We may be in hard times now and we will see hard times again but this treasure is a drop of glue that holds us together and gives us hope. If we can just stumble on what has been hidden behind years of neglect, under piles of leaves and inside cartons of memories - if we can just buy it low and sell it high - then better times might come again.
Open your eyes. Open your eyes and look and you’ll see an army of junk thumpers tromping through garage sales at sunrise; fortune seekers marching through flea markets on rainy afternoons; ‘freegans’ out late sifting through piles of garbage at midnight for that which has cash or life left inside it. If you turn on and tune in you’ll notice whole families salivating in front of high-def screens, scheming as they watch the get-rich-quick antics of American Pickers looking for rare and rusty machines and Pawn Stars cheating desperate gamblers out of the last historical object they own that is worth a car payment or a bag of groceries. There are shrewd little old ladies and enterprising Goth teenagers taking notes on the super charged appraisals they see on Antiques Road Show and men with seats on the stock exchange searching for 40’s era baseball cards and vintage bottle caps on eBay and Craig’s List. Whether it is a down turn in our national fortunes, a need to feel the value of history in our hands, or something more than that, increasingly we have become a people obsessed with the value that can be put on the past. And that means that more and more of us are now on the hunt for our own share of the loot and the history that comes with it.
Me, I joined the hunt a long time ago. I am not poor, nor truly needy, nor ever have I been, but still I plunder and search like a pirate for those things that I can hoard into my own closets or simply admire on the high shelf in my living room - first edition books and classic souvenirs, Japanese china and metal toys, iron tools and art deco kitchen utensils that I might sell in my old age or just hold onto because they secure me in a place and time that is not the place and time I live in now. As a child I walked the streets at dusk on those magic nights before our town collected its bulk trash, pulling out radios I could gut for their speakers and wires and wheeling home boxes of game boards, dice and tokens from which I could salvage an old amusement or piece together a new one. As a man I’ve carried on this addiction from youth to mid-life like an aging junkie looking for a fix among the home owners and peddlers pushing their junk at garage and estate sales. I have risen at 5 a.m. on the first vacation I had in two years to cruise the driveway sales of a beach town and walked away with an antique drill and a one hundred year old leather bound book of poetry worth far beyond the small fan of dollar bills I paid for them. I have slumped at the doorway of an old man’s garage in the sleet of December to find and buy a stainless steel clock made 80 years ago and still humming from the juice of a corroded wall socket. In the last hours of an autumn Sunday afternoon, when misery was upon me with the thought of another work week stretching out in front of me, I have passed a man hauling out the leftovers of his yard sale and - hiding in my car until he disappeared into his house – I have driven away with a trunk full of record albums and old magazines that I gave away to a loved one so that they could find their own pleasure and hope. I have been made happy and whole again with all of these finds, as if the very act of possessing these tokens of the past which I could use or not use, sell, save or simply pass forward, was enough to make me trust that life would go on happily despite all signs to the contrary.
Is this the new American way? You bet it is. In the thousand year old worlds of France and Spain, the ancient cities and towns of China and Germany and Russia, people don’t have to search and haggle for the riches of their past because these artifacts are part of and inside the roads and bridges and buildings and bistros over which they walk and in which they live and work. A man in Paris or a woman in Moscow don’t need to look far and wide for a vintage bicycle, nor do they have to dig into a yard sale to find old china because they ride on and eat off these objects still. In these societies where the past is not easily forgotten, little is cast off and much that has been possessed by your grandparents and parents is possessed by you still. But in America (oh America!) we have made an art of forgetting our past and trashing the things that make us old. Until now. Lately we seem to have been startled awake into realizing that today is no longer a sure thing and tomorrow may never come, but the past will be with us forever. And so our search across lawns and driveways and internet bazaars is growing more intense every day.
And if you believe that I have made this whole thing up for the sake of the poetry, just ask your neighbors; poll your friends and family too. See if they don’t couch a secret and growing desire to find that one old object that will fetch a good price and bring back a curio cabinet full of memories from their childhood or their grandparents or the father they lost a long time ago If they are telling the truth, they will admit that they are searching just like you and I. They will confess that their need to touch and hold these treasures is rising higher and higher - all the way into the bone of the hereafter.
For when we hold in our hand a porcelain bird painted a century ago by a woman in a tenement slum, or a thick obsidian record etched during the depression with the voice of a man singing the blues, or child’s metal bicycle that was fit and finished by Eisenhower era workers who took true American pride in their output, we just somehow know that life will go on without us. This is what all citizens of the world knew eons before America existed and what we American’s just now seem to be understanding for ourselves: our spirits live on in the objects we make long after we are gone. In finding this treasure that is waiting for us among the trash of outbuildings and online auctions and rummage sales at dawn, what we are really looking for is the treasure of everlasting life.
Open your eyes. Open your eyes and look and you’ll see an army of junk thumpers tromping through garage sales at sunrise; fortune seekers marching through flea markets on rainy afternoons; ‘freegans’ out late sifting through piles of garbage at midnight for that which has cash or life left inside it. If you turn on and tune in you’ll notice whole families salivating in front of high-def screens, scheming as they watch the get-rich-quick antics of American Pickers looking for rare and rusty machines and Pawn Stars cheating desperate gamblers out of the last historical object they own that is worth a car payment or a bag of groceries. There are shrewd little old ladies and enterprising Goth teenagers taking notes on the super charged appraisals they see on Antiques Road Show and men with seats on the stock exchange searching for 40’s era baseball cards and vintage bottle caps on eBay and Craig’s List. Whether it is a down turn in our national fortunes, a need to feel the value of history in our hands, or something more than that, increasingly we have become a people obsessed with the value that can be put on the past. And that means that more and more of us are now on the hunt for our own share of the loot and the history that comes with it.
Me, I joined the hunt a long time ago. I am not poor, nor truly needy, nor ever have I been, but still I plunder and search like a pirate for those things that I can hoard into my own closets or simply admire on the high shelf in my living room - first edition books and classic souvenirs, Japanese china and metal toys, iron tools and art deco kitchen utensils that I might sell in my old age or just hold onto because they secure me in a place and time that is not the place and time I live in now. As a child I walked the streets at dusk on those magic nights before our town collected its bulk trash, pulling out radios I could gut for their speakers and wires and wheeling home boxes of game boards, dice and tokens from which I could salvage an old amusement or piece together a new one. As a man I’ve carried on this addiction from youth to mid-life like an aging junkie looking for a fix among the home owners and peddlers pushing their junk at garage and estate sales. I have risen at 5 a.m. on the first vacation I had in two years to cruise the driveway sales of a beach town and walked away with an antique drill and a one hundred year old leather bound book of poetry worth far beyond the small fan of dollar bills I paid for them. I have slumped at the doorway of an old man’s garage in the sleet of December to find and buy a stainless steel clock made 80 years ago and still humming from the juice of a corroded wall socket. In the last hours of an autumn Sunday afternoon, when misery was upon me with the thought of another work week stretching out in front of me, I have passed a man hauling out the leftovers of his yard sale and - hiding in my car until he disappeared into his house – I have driven away with a trunk full of record albums and old magazines that I gave away to a loved one so that they could find their own pleasure and hope. I have been made happy and whole again with all of these finds, as if the very act of possessing these tokens of the past which I could use or not use, sell, save or simply pass forward, was enough to make me trust that life would go on happily despite all signs to the contrary.
Is this the new American way? You bet it is. In the thousand year old worlds of France and Spain, the ancient cities and towns of China and Germany and Russia, people don’t have to search and haggle for the riches of their past because these artifacts are part of and inside the roads and bridges and buildings and bistros over which they walk and in which they live and work. A man in Paris or a woman in Moscow don’t need to look far and wide for a vintage bicycle, nor do they have to dig into a yard sale to find old china because they ride on and eat off these objects still. In these societies where the past is not easily forgotten, little is cast off and much that has been possessed by your grandparents and parents is possessed by you still. But in America (oh America!) we have made an art of forgetting our past and trashing the things that make us old. Until now. Lately we seem to have been startled awake into realizing that today is no longer a sure thing and tomorrow may never come, but the past will be with us forever. And so our search across lawns and driveways and internet bazaars is growing more intense every day.
And if you believe that I have made this whole thing up for the sake of the poetry, just ask your neighbors; poll your friends and family too. See if they don’t couch a secret and growing desire to find that one old object that will fetch a good price and bring back a curio cabinet full of memories from their childhood or their grandparents or the father they lost a long time ago If they are telling the truth, they will admit that they are searching just like you and I. They will confess that their need to touch and hold these treasures is rising higher and higher - all the way into the bone of the hereafter.
For when we hold in our hand a porcelain bird painted a century ago by a woman in a tenement slum, or a thick obsidian record etched during the depression with the voice of a man singing the blues, or child’s metal bicycle that was fit and finished by Eisenhower era workers who took true American pride in their output, we just somehow know that life will go on without us. This is what all citizens of the world knew eons before America existed and what we American’s just now seem to be understanding for ourselves: our spirits live on in the objects we make long after we are gone. In finding this treasure that is waiting for us among the trash of outbuildings and online auctions and rummage sales at dawn, what we are really looking for is the treasure of everlasting life.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Here’s What Happened ... Here’s What Didn’t
Here’s what actually happened
The problem was that this turned out not to be so funny - mostly because she didn’t get the joke. In fact she didn’t get it so much that when she let the air out of the blood pressure bag she whispered, “You have excellent blood pressure, doctor.”
By the time I got my mouth opened to try to fix the problem, she was already on her way out the door looking to get away from me as fast as she could, mumbling “Dr. Weis will be right in to see you, Dr. Taddei,” and then closing the door behind her.
And things only got worse when Dr. Weiss showed up. “Hello there,” he said, shaking my hand, “I hear you’re a physician ...”
Now there are two things you can do in a situation like this. You can run out of the room and never go back there again, or you can quickly correct the lie, endure the condescending looks of a man who already feels superior to you because he actually is a doctor (and you’re not) and then you can run out of the room and never go back there again.
Actually, in the moment before I took the second option, I also thought of a third option. It was something that crossed my mind for the two seconds that it took me to come to my senses. Maybe I could just play along. Maybe I could avoid the embarrassment and just tell him that I was a doctor. Other people lived out their fantasies all the time, didn’t they? Other people realized that the time they had left to live was getting shorter and shorter and they escaped by pretending they could start all over again. Why couldn’t I? In fact, who knew where this might lead . . .
Here’s what didn’t happen
“Why yes, I am.” I say. “But I don’t like to make too big of a deal out of it.”
“I know what you mean,” he replies with that look of understanding shared only among those of us who have seen the inside of a human body. “So what can I do for you today, doctor?”
“First of all call me Tony.”
He glances at my chart and then looks up at me with a knowing grin.
“Well, Tony. Judging by this, I think you probably already know what I can do for you.”
“I do? I mean, yes, I do . . . It’s what I think it is . . . Am I right?”
“Yes you are. So, I’m guessing you just need me to write the script . . .”
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m just trying to avoid any ethical issues.”
“No problem. I’m always happy to help a fellow practitioner.”
He writes out the script and hands it to me. He then pauses for a moment before he decides to tell me that a group of the doctors in his practice are going out for drinks after work. “We always like to get to know other professionals in the area. Would you like to join us?”
My brain does one of those little flips, that tickling quick high you get in those moments where you realize you are free to follow any lie, any deception, any poor choice or illegal activity without getting caught and with the potential for personal gain or a life-changing series of events - whether it be sex with a woman who doesn’t know that you have a girlfriend, the theft of a fat wallet you see lying next to a vacant car as you happen by in a parking lot, or the chance to have drinks with a group of men and women who have given their life to medical science because you lied and told them that you have too.
“I’d love to,” I say, looking directly into Dr. Weiss’s eyes. “Where and what time should we meet?”
I hurry home and Google medical specialties, deciding on pediatrics because I have always liked children and because having raised three of my own and spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in pediatricians’ offices I feel I both have a head start on this choice of specialties as well as a right to get some return on my money. I read up on pediatrics for the next three hours, choose Johns Hopkins as my medical school, memorize some rare childhood diseases (See: Krabbe disease, Eisenmenger Syndrome, Osteogenesis Imperfecta . . .) and then I go out to find a medical supply store where I can buy some tongue depressors with cartoon characters on them which I put in my shirt pocket before joining Dr. Weiss and his colleagues for a drink.
Our drinks go better than you might expect and all the doctors in the practice are very impressed with both my education and my compassion for children as well as with my shyness when it comes to talking about my work which I modestly explain is not my style and which only gets them to respect me more. Their only regret, they tell me, is that they can’t hire me since they run a practice that specializes in gastrointestinal problems. I assure them I’m happy where I am and then I rush home, having now decided to apply to an online premed program.
Time seems to speed up now as I finish my premed studies long distance at the University of Bucharest and then apply to a medical school in the Bahamas which I attend by taking a leave of absence from my current job. My wife and children are incredibly supportive and - when I come back from doing my residency at a small hospital in the Philippines (which certifies me to treat patients in the US) – they are so happy that “daddy is doctor” that they forget all about the fact that I’ve deserted them for almost four years. The problem is that by then I’ve already met and married a 20 year old Pilipino girl and when my wife finds out she files for divorce, taking me for half the earnings of my future medical practice.
I see it as just the price one has to pay for a career in medicine.
Anyway, years go by and I am practicing pediatrics in a small office I run with a former CIA Black Op (who also did his pediatric residency in the Philippines and with whom I bonded after I found out that he too felt compelled to change his life, although for different reasons than me which he would have liked to talk about except that if he did he would have had to kill me and bury my body at sea) when, oddly enough, Dr. Weiss walks into my examining room with his eight year old daughter, Becky.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Dr. Taddei,” says Dr. Weiss with a genuine grin of delight.
For a moment, I think of once again reminding him to ‘call me Tony,’ but then I decide that I’d rather not, given that I now actually am a doctor.
“It’s been quite a few years. My partners and I wondered what happened to you.”
“Well I keep a low profile. My work treating sick children is satisfaction enough.”
It’s then that Dr. Weiss introduces me to his daughter. “Dr. Taddei, this is Becky. Becky, say hi to Dr. Taddei.”
She shyly says hello and her father prompts her again. “Tell Dr. Taddei what you want to be when you grow up.”
Without taking her eyes off her father, Becky says, “I want to be a doctor like you.”
“Well Dr. Taddei is also a doctor. Maybe you’d like to take care of children like he does.”
“Maybe,” she mumbles.
“That would be wonderful,” I say. “There are lots of children who would love to have you as their doctor when you grow up.”
Dr. Weiss smiles at me with what I can only see as wistful, professional pride. Here we are, just a couple of men of science, passing the torch to the next generation.
“Yeah,” Becky blurts out. “But my daddy doesn’t want to be a doctor, anymore. He complains to my mommy all the time. He says that, if he could, he’d just walk away . . . He eve says that sometimes when he’s taking care of sick people, he’s really thinking about what would happen to him if he just left them in the examining room to go off and become a writer.”
_______
“Everything is created twice, first in the mind of the creator and then in reality.” Steven Covey
Saturday, August 14, 2010
The Counter Man
I love the way her head falls when she has been drinking vodka and the paperback she imagines she is reading falls from her hand and the ash from her cigarette flakes down onto the inside of her boozy tank top just under her naked cleavage, burning a tiny lace of holes in a place not too far from her heart. I love that she has sunk this low into the bottle and that I am in there with her. I love that her family has abandoned her – her precious grown children who cannot fathom the way she has thrown away her life; her two ex husbands, the first a good man with common sense, too good and with too much sense for the tragedy that is her, and the second a prick who should, if there is a God, die in misery. I love that I am all that is left for her – because, let’s face it, I am no prize myself, just a sober drunk and a miserable bottom feeder who began big but was laid low and is now barely hanging on to a hourly job with no guarantees that any of this will last without him fucking it up. I love that I am just one step far enough behind her to be able to make sure she does not catch fire and burn up like a gin-soaked rag. I love that her life has taken these brutal and cursed turns, brought upon her by her fate alone. I love it because she needs me. God help me, I love it because I am the only one left who still loves her.
She was beautiful – I don’t want you to ever forget that. Everyone else has. But don’t you forget it, you judgmental bastards walking by her outside the strip mall, seeing her sitting on the ground against the flowering bushes, her mascara streaked head lolling back into a crown of honeysuckle (Yes, I know you’ve seen her). If I lifted her today, right now, from the sidewalk, took her home and washed her face and hair, gave her coffee and dried her inside and out, you might just see enough of what I mean to get the point. I’ve seen pictures of her at 19 with a baby in her arms and a fire backlighting her on Christmas Eve, and no Madonna and Child that Raphael could have painted would have ever filled in the frame the way she did. Where she started and how she started is a long, long way from where she has landed now.
She told me her story during those three weeks we worked together on the graveyard shift at the deli counter of the 24/7 Safeway. By the time I met her she had legs like soda straws and her blouse and apron swam on her, but she was wide awake during the night and could stay sober enough not to take off her fingers with the slicer, so I let her work with me and by the end, by the time they fired her, I had heard it all and gotten deep, deep inside her where I am to this day. There was very little left that I did not know about her after those three weeks, even if I didn’t care to know it, and to say that I started to love her for her past, her present and even (or mostly) for her lack of any real future, is to say that I had been waiting a long, long time for her or someone like her to show up and surround me with her need.
The story she told me is not your story. Then again, her story is not as far from yours as you might want to think. A tweak in fate here, a tiny twist in your genetic code there, and you’d be the one with the high-strung temperament chasing you all the way from a husband working his way up as a union mechanic, from two sweetheart daughters who you kept washed and ribboned and your Saturday job at the Cut and Curl, to that night when your inability to forgive your parents, your husband or yourself finally overcame you in shifting tectonics of anxiety and you drank and drank and drank until you started to pound yourself in the face with your own fists again and again - your wailing children and unshaven husband watching as the police and EMS technicians carried you through the drizzling night into the yawn of an idling ambulance. Don’t forget that it’s only an accident of family history and the rules of chance that kept you from marrying again after your first husband divorced you and you lost your children. And it’s simply you planning and god not laughing at your plans that helped you avoid a second husband who gave you a job in his insurance company where you and he drank away the cash flow and he beat you and then left you alone in an empty, over-mortgaged house after he took every table, plate and chair (not to mention the car, the motorcycle and the barbecue grill) to go set up house with a much younger drunk than you. When you see her with me and I’ve got her under her arms, rolling her out of some bar in which I found her, remember that, but for the grace of your birth, it’s you whose shoulders are caving into my chest, whose short, shambling hair is plastered by the sweat of other drunks against the protruding bones of your eye sockets as I lower you into my car. It’s merely the cosmic dust of happenstance that keeps you out of a bed with me in my tenement apartment, sleeping off your liquor at night.
The world is full of us, of you and me. And any of us could be her. Although, I have to admit that, in the end, she is who she is – there’s no getting around that. I have taken her and sat her skinny ass down in one of those smoke-stained retro chairs that we set up in stale church halls where the drunks and abusers and reformed addicts sit and confess our sins and inject each other with the power to go on another day without having to shoot ourselves with a needle or needle ourselves with temptation. And she will bounce from that meeting into the sunlight or the moonlight, promising me the sun and the moon, and when I kiss her goodbye and go off to the shift I have to work to keep us in clean clothes and edible food she will deceive me and find a place to quietly sit and pretend to read her cheap paperback (a final tilt at civilization) and smoke her cigarettes down to the filters and drink her way into another life – a life where she has grandchildren who come running into her arms when she calls, and a handsome, graying husband trimming the grass of a big backyard and where she dreams she is free to enjoy the fruits of all the clean and sober work she has done.
You see, a woman has to dream and someone has to love her for it and that someone is me. Why, you ask - because no matter what you think, there is a person inside that woman. And who’s to say that her life and the way she lives and the way that she will die is not what God intended for her or any of us all along. I had another life planned but the righteousness I had about that life was beaten out of me a long time ago, about the time I drank away a thriving business I built with my talents for telling a story and making a good buck, about the time I had to let go of what it was I though God had planned for all of us righteous and arrogant fools. So I see it differently now.
I see a world where the drunks will inherit the earth. I flip it all on its head - the way fate flipped her on her head and me on mind - as I tend to my flock of one. In the place that she and I live it is you with the estates and the two and three cars garages and the jobs so big you can barely contain your heads inside them; you who the world looks down on as we addicts and losers cluck our tongues and shake our heads at the edges of your driveways and gated communities. You are the ones who stoop in shame as you overspend on your children’s college educations and your summer houses. It is you who God admonishes when you use others as an excuse for your inability to be as down low and wasted and close to the edge as we are. In this world God giggles as he blesses the dammed and the down-trodden and he leaves the rest of you to beg for his forgiveness. I dare you to tell me that this might not just be the way God wanted us to see the world from the moment he hung his only son on a cross between a beggar and a thief.
So step up now and give me your order. We’re all in this together – whether it’s you snoring, drunk and peaceful, in the bed next to me when I go home tonight or whether it is she – there is no difference or distance between us. A pound of food that will feed you is a pound of food that will feed all of us. And I love the way your face twinkles just a little when you take the package from my hands as much as I love the way she will someday die in my arms, human and forgiven.
She was beautiful – I don’t want you to ever forget that. Everyone else has. But don’t you forget it, you judgmental bastards walking by her outside the strip mall, seeing her sitting on the ground against the flowering bushes, her mascara streaked head lolling back into a crown of honeysuckle (Yes, I know you’ve seen her). If I lifted her today, right now, from the sidewalk, took her home and washed her face and hair, gave her coffee and dried her inside and out, you might just see enough of what I mean to get the point. I’ve seen pictures of her at 19 with a baby in her arms and a fire backlighting her on Christmas Eve, and no Madonna and Child that Raphael could have painted would have ever filled in the frame the way she did. Where she started and how she started is a long, long way from where she has landed now.
She told me her story during those three weeks we worked together on the graveyard shift at the deli counter of the 24/7 Safeway. By the time I met her she had legs like soda straws and her blouse and apron swam on her, but she was wide awake during the night and could stay sober enough not to take off her fingers with the slicer, so I let her work with me and by the end, by the time they fired her, I had heard it all and gotten deep, deep inside her where I am to this day. There was very little left that I did not know about her after those three weeks, even if I didn’t care to know it, and to say that I started to love her for her past, her present and even (or mostly) for her lack of any real future, is to say that I had been waiting a long, long time for her or someone like her to show up and surround me with her need.
The story she told me is not your story. Then again, her story is not as far from yours as you might want to think. A tweak in fate here, a tiny twist in your genetic code there, and you’d be the one with the high-strung temperament chasing you all the way from a husband working his way up as a union mechanic, from two sweetheart daughters who you kept washed and ribboned and your Saturday job at the Cut and Curl, to that night when your inability to forgive your parents, your husband or yourself finally overcame you in shifting tectonics of anxiety and you drank and drank and drank until you started to pound yourself in the face with your own fists again and again - your wailing children and unshaven husband watching as the police and EMS technicians carried you through the drizzling night into the yawn of an idling ambulance. Don’t forget that it’s only an accident of family history and the rules of chance that kept you from marrying again after your first husband divorced you and you lost your children. And it’s simply you planning and god not laughing at your plans that helped you avoid a second husband who gave you a job in his insurance company where you and he drank away the cash flow and he beat you and then left you alone in an empty, over-mortgaged house after he took every table, plate and chair (not to mention the car, the motorcycle and the barbecue grill) to go set up house with a much younger drunk than you. When you see her with me and I’ve got her under her arms, rolling her out of some bar in which I found her, remember that, but for the grace of your birth, it’s you whose shoulders are caving into my chest, whose short, shambling hair is plastered by the sweat of other drunks against the protruding bones of your eye sockets as I lower you into my car. It’s merely the cosmic dust of happenstance that keeps you out of a bed with me in my tenement apartment, sleeping off your liquor at night.
The world is full of us, of you and me. And any of us could be her. Although, I have to admit that, in the end, she is who she is – there’s no getting around that. I have taken her and sat her skinny ass down in one of those smoke-stained retro chairs that we set up in stale church halls where the drunks and abusers and reformed addicts sit and confess our sins and inject each other with the power to go on another day without having to shoot ourselves with a needle or needle ourselves with temptation. And she will bounce from that meeting into the sunlight or the moonlight, promising me the sun and the moon, and when I kiss her goodbye and go off to the shift I have to work to keep us in clean clothes and edible food she will deceive me and find a place to quietly sit and pretend to read her cheap paperback (a final tilt at civilization) and smoke her cigarettes down to the filters and drink her way into another life – a life where she has grandchildren who come running into her arms when she calls, and a handsome, graying husband trimming the grass of a big backyard and where she dreams she is free to enjoy the fruits of all the clean and sober work she has done.
You see, a woman has to dream and someone has to love her for it and that someone is me. Why, you ask - because no matter what you think, there is a person inside that woman. And who’s to say that her life and the way she lives and the way that she will die is not what God intended for her or any of us all along. I had another life planned but the righteousness I had about that life was beaten out of me a long time ago, about the time I drank away a thriving business I built with my talents for telling a story and making a good buck, about the time I had to let go of what it was I though God had planned for all of us righteous and arrogant fools. So I see it differently now.
I see a world where the drunks will inherit the earth. I flip it all on its head - the way fate flipped her on her head and me on mind - as I tend to my flock of one. In the place that she and I live it is you with the estates and the two and three cars garages and the jobs so big you can barely contain your heads inside them; you who the world looks down on as we addicts and losers cluck our tongues and shake our heads at the edges of your driveways and gated communities. You are the ones who stoop in shame as you overspend on your children’s college educations and your summer houses. It is you who God admonishes when you use others as an excuse for your inability to be as down low and wasted and close to the edge as we are. In this world God giggles as he blesses the dammed and the down-trodden and he leaves the rest of you to beg for his forgiveness. I dare you to tell me that this might not just be the way God wanted us to see the world from the moment he hung his only son on a cross between a beggar and a thief.
So step up now and give me your order. We’re all in this together – whether it’s you snoring, drunk and peaceful, in the bed next to me when I go home tonight or whether it is she – there is no difference or distance between us. A pound of food that will feed you is a pound of food that will feed all of us. And I love the way your face twinkles just a little when you take the package from my hands as much as I love the way she will someday die in my arms, human and forgiven.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Despicable Acts and Desperate Measures
“(AP) – July 16, 2010 - JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri abortion clinics will face new mandates to offer women ultrasound images and heartbeats of their fetuses as a result of legislation allowed to become law Wednesday by Gov. Jay Nixon . . . The new law will require consultation in person instead of over the phone and mandate that women receive a description of the "anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child."
Re: Budget Saving Measures
I am tickled pink to report the phenomenal success of the right-to-life law that has recently been passed in my home district of Jefferson City, Missouri. In fact, so many poor, destitute and single pregnant women in Jefferson City have now surprisingly chosen to have their babies rather than be made to listen to the heartbeats and a detailed description of their unborn fetuses (along with a gruesome account of the termination procedure which local officials “recommend” that doctors whisper in the expectant woman’s ear) that it has actually given me cause to think of how we might use this same strategy to shrink the enormous budget deficit brought on by our godless democratic colleagues as they break faith with the American people by spending government money to care for the sick and feed and house the poor even as hard-working Republican citizens go to church and pay our salaries.
I say this - if forcing a socially deprived, desperate woman to listen to a heartbeat or the description of an ultrasound will cause her to keep her baby, imagine how we might use this same psychology to cut billions of hard-earned dollars from our federal deficit.
To wit, I propose that we immediately consider the following legislation:
The Blackmore Expired Food Amendment – This amendment to the food stamp program would make it mandatory that anyone applying for food stamps first starve their children and/or themselves for a period of two weeks before being allowed to register for the program. After that, they would be allowed to apply for a one month trial period upon which they would receive an allotment of food stamps that could only be used to buy foods that have passed their expiration date (preferably eggs, milk and cheeses that are more than three months old). While this measure may seem harsh, only the truly destitute and hungry will likely stay with the program long enough to make them eligible for the “Food Stamp Elite Access Program,” entitling them to pay 80 cents for one dollar’s worth of food stamps and saving the government hundreds of billions in this program alone.
The Blackmore Medieval Medicine Measure – Millions of illegal aliens, drug addicts and just plain lazy unemployed individuals are sucking money from federal health programs by entering government funded hospitals and treatment facilities simply because they won’t pull themselves together or because they insist on working long hours in poor conditions at sub-minimum wage jobs. Imagine the surprise of these folks when they find out that – in order to receive federal health care – they will have to allow doctors to examine and treat them using techniques that date back to the 15th and 16th century. For instance, if a drug addict were to apply for government sponsored rehab - under this new federal program he would be confined to a rat infested cell with the criminally insane where a priest cloaked in a black hood would perform an exorcism on him while forcing hot wax down his throat. Or let’s say an undocumented alien were to walk into a government clinic with a badly mangled arm caused by operating heavy machinery in an illegal sweatshop; he or she would be anesthetized by placing a leather helmet on his head and then being hit repeatedly with a wooden mallet prior to having the arm amputated with a rusty sickle. While this bill may further the accusations that we Republicans are cruel and heartless, we will not, nor should we deny care to anyone truly in need. If those in need don’t want to have leeches placed on them to treat their asthma that’s simply their choice (and the federal government’s gain).
The Blackmore Boondoggle Bill – Who among us likes to work? Not me, that’s for sure. Well if this psychology motivates all of us why not use it on those who are seeking federal unemployment benefits. You want to collect an unemployment check? No problem. We’ll give it to you and you won’t even need to qualify or answer a single question. All you have to do to get the money is agree to take a trip at the government’s expense to a remote, undisclosed Island in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Siberia. Your unemployment checks will be forwarded to a PO office box in Moscow and you can pick them up anytime you feel you’ve taken enough from other Americans who have to work for a living. Once again, lest we Republicans be thought of as heartless, the American people will be encouraged to think of this as a working vacation where all they need to do to earn their money is to relax on sheets of black ice surrounded by hungry polar bears. Remember we are compassionate conservatives and it’s the least we can do for those who are stressed out by not being able to find a job, not to mention what this will do for currently employed American’s who will have their hours cut and have to work much less as unemployment rolls drop by 85% in the first year alone.
The Blackmore ‘Share’ Housing Act – Remember the days when your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and even a boarder or two lived with you and your family in your tenement apartment? Well, neither do I, but I’m sure that millions of Americans do fondly remember these quaint depression era stories and are probably longing for the good old days. This act would bring them back while also allowing us to continue helping our failing banks and domestic car companies with bailout money that would preserve executive salaries. We are not asking people to come to us to seek housing, but if they have to why not further the concept of America as a melting pot and allow people of all races, creeds and social backgrounds to live together in single family federal apartment units. No more than four families of six people each would have to share a single unit and we would ensure that the apartments were ethnically integrated without bias toward religion or national origins. For instance, those of Pakistani and Indian origin as well as Christian, Muslim and Jewish families would live together in one big happy cooperative apartment. And in the true spirit of America no one would be turned away from the program or evicted, even if tensions rise (as they sometimes do in big happy families).
Note, at present the above are just for your consideration and are in need of funding for further study. Funding we may be able to acquire as budgets are freed up when the recently passed Blackmore Send Your Child to Work Act takes effect and millions of children saved by our right to life legislation reach their fifth birthday and are forced to go to work in order for their parents to qualify for federal subsidies.
I eagerly await your comments.
Sincerely,
Alvin Blackmore
From the Desk of . . .
Senator Alvin Blackmore
Republican - Missouri
Re: Budget Saving Measures
I am tickled pink to report the phenomenal success of the right-to-life law that has recently been passed in my home district of Jefferson City, Missouri. In fact, so many poor, destitute and single pregnant women in Jefferson City have now surprisingly chosen to have their babies rather than be made to listen to the heartbeats and a detailed description of their unborn fetuses (along with a gruesome account of the termination procedure which local officials “recommend” that doctors whisper in the expectant woman’s ear) that it has actually given me cause to think of how we might use this same strategy to shrink the enormous budget deficit brought on by our godless democratic colleagues as they break faith with the American people by spending government money to care for the sick and feed and house the poor even as hard-working Republican citizens go to church and pay our salaries.
I say this - if forcing a socially deprived, desperate woman to listen to a heartbeat or the description of an ultrasound will cause her to keep her baby, imagine how we might use this same psychology to cut billions of hard-earned dollars from our federal deficit.
To wit, I propose that we immediately consider the following legislation:
The Blackmore Expired Food Amendment – This amendment to the food stamp program would make it mandatory that anyone applying for food stamps first starve their children and/or themselves for a period of two weeks before being allowed to register for the program. After that, they would be allowed to apply for a one month trial period upon which they would receive an allotment of food stamps that could only be used to buy foods that have passed their expiration date (preferably eggs, milk and cheeses that are more than three months old). While this measure may seem harsh, only the truly destitute and hungry will likely stay with the program long enough to make them eligible for the “Food Stamp Elite Access Program,” entitling them to pay 80 cents for one dollar’s worth of food stamps and saving the government hundreds of billions in this program alone.
The Blackmore Medieval Medicine Measure – Millions of illegal aliens, drug addicts and just plain lazy unemployed individuals are sucking money from federal health programs by entering government funded hospitals and treatment facilities simply because they won’t pull themselves together or because they insist on working long hours in poor conditions at sub-minimum wage jobs. Imagine the surprise of these folks when they find out that – in order to receive federal health care – they will have to allow doctors to examine and treat them using techniques that date back to the 15th and 16th century. For instance, if a drug addict were to apply for government sponsored rehab - under this new federal program he would be confined to a rat infested cell with the criminally insane where a priest cloaked in a black hood would perform an exorcism on him while forcing hot wax down his throat. Or let’s say an undocumented alien were to walk into a government clinic with a badly mangled arm caused by operating heavy machinery in an illegal sweatshop; he or she would be anesthetized by placing a leather helmet on his head and then being hit repeatedly with a wooden mallet prior to having the arm amputated with a rusty sickle. While this bill may further the accusations that we Republicans are cruel and heartless, we will not, nor should we deny care to anyone truly in need. If those in need don’t want to have leeches placed on them to treat their asthma that’s simply their choice (and the federal government’s gain).
The Blackmore Boondoggle Bill – Who among us likes to work? Not me, that’s for sure. Well if this psychology motivates all of us why not use it on those who are seeking federal unemployment benefits. You want to collect an unemployment check? No problem. We’ll give it to you and you won’t even need to qualify or answer a single question. All you have to do to get the money is agree to take a trip at the government’s expense to a remote, undisclosed Island in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Siberia. Your unemployment checks will be forwarded to a PO office box in Moscow and you can pick them up anytime you feel you’ve taken enough from other Americans who have to work for a living. Once again, lest we Republicans be thought of as heartless, the American people will be encouraged to think of this as a working vacation where all they need to do to earn their money is to relax on sheets of black ice surrounded by hungry polar bears. Remember we are compassionate conservatives and it’s the least we can do for those who are stressed out by not being able to find a job, not to mention what this will do for currently employed American’s who will have their hours cut and have to work much less as unemployment rolls drop by 85% in the first year alone.
The Blackmore ‘Share’ Housing Act – Remember the days when your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and even a boarder or two lived with you and your family in your tenement apartment? Well, neither do I, but I’m sure that millions of Americans do fondly remember these quaint depression era stories and are probably longing for the good old days. This act would bring them back while also allowing us to continue helping our failing banks and domestic car companies with bailout money that would preserve executive salaries. We are not asking people to come to us to seek housing, but if they have to why not further the concept of America as a melting pot and allow people of all races, creeds and social backgrounds to live together in single family federal apartment units. No more than four families of six people each would have to share a single unit and we would ensure that the apartments were ethnically integrated without bias toward religion or national origins. For instance, those of Pakistani and Indian origin as well as Christian, Muslim and Jewish families would live together in one big happy cooperative apartment. And in the true spirit of America no one would be turned away from the program or evicted, even if tensions rise (as they sometimes do in big happy families).
Note, at present the above are just for your consideration and are in need of funding for further study. Funding we may be able to acquire as budgets are freed up when the recently passed Blackmore Send Your Child to Work Act takes effect and millions of children saved by our right to life legislation reach their fifth birthday and are forced to go to work in order for their parents to qualify for federal subsidies.
I eagerly await your comments.
Sincerely,
Alvin Blackmore
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Crazy Days of Summer
Riverside Hospital
Behavioral Health Center
Weekly Admission Report
Monday, July 5 – Sunday, July 11, 2010
Patient #RH70510m1
53 Year old male, Nicholas Z. presented with neurotic tendencies arising from an inability to water his lawn due to drought restrictions. Patient reports having spent over $35,000 on lawn care and a computerized sprinkler system and was admitted by his wife after she found him laying face down weeping onto the grass. Mr. Z told doctors he hoped his tears would help his dying Kentucky Blue Grass and High Fescue Mix. Sedatives have been prescribed and Patient is now noticeably calmer although medication was adjusted after Patient began running back and forth behind the nurse’s station in an attempt to adjust imaginary sprinkler heads. Patient told nurses that, “The grass needs to be green ... green god dam it ... green I tell you ...” but was ultimately restrained by orderlies pretending to be illegal immigrants who had come to cut the Patient’s lawn and adjust his sprinkler system.
Patient #RH70510m2
42 year old mother, Dianna S admitted herself at 9 a.m. on Monday saying she believed that her 12 year old daughter had been trying to kill her by repeating the words “I’m bored” thousands of times over the three week period since the girl’s school year ended. Apparently the Patient was able to remain calm for the better part of the first three weeks of her daughter’s summer vacation but finally snapped earlier this week when she threatened to send her daughter to “a farm, where they make children work all summer picking cotton under the hot sun in their bare feet alongside wagons pulled by farting goats.” Patient told the admitting psychiatrist that she wouldn’t have really sent her daughter to a farm but “would it have killed her to read a book or go outside or help me with a little house work?” The daughter was also interviewed by the hospital social worker who decided to end the session when the girl would only respond to her questions with the phrase “I’m bored.”
Patient #RH70710w1
22 year old male, Charles P - recently graduated with a degree in history from Petersburg College - admitted after his parents found him feeding his Burger Barn uniform into a wood chipper. Doctors have determined that the Patient is suffering from “Latent Reality Syndrome” characterized by the Patient’s inability to face the fact that his college diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and that he has to now get a real job. Parents also told the attending psychiatrist that their son spends long stretches searching his dresser for drugs that may have been left over from high school and attempting to contact his fraternity brothers “so they can start a band or get drunk or pick up girls or something.” Patient’s mother also reports that Mr. P has been attempting to crawl into bed at night with his parents “just like he used to do when he was a very little boy and was scared because he thought there was a monster in his closet.”
Patient #RH710810t1
17 year old female, Cindy T admitted to emergency room with burns on her thighs, buttocks and back after paramedics had to pry her from the seat of her 1987 Dodge coup which had been sitting in one hundred degree heat at the edge of her parent’s driveway. Patient had been wearing nothing but flip flops and a two piece bathing suit which the admitting physician reported “wouldn’t have had enough material to make a couple of eye patches for a midget.” Miss T was treated for her burns and released from emergency care but then admitted to the Behavioral Health Center when she could not be restrained from removing her bathing suit to take cell phone pictures of her burns which she then planned on posting to Facebook so her boyfriend “wouldn’t forget about her when she while she was gone.” Attending psychiatrist diagnosed Patient with nervous exhaustion brought on by heat stroke and an obsession with having to get to the beach to prevent “all those little summer sluts from getting their dirty hands on” her boyfriend.
Patient #RH70910sa1
35 year old male, Marty N was brought in by ambulance from his job as a salesman and admitted after hallucinating that he was the last man on earth who was still working. Apparently Mr. N had been unable to make his monthly quota after repeatedly receiving automatic email replies and voice mail messages telling him that the person he was trying to reach was on summer vacation. Attending Psychiatrist reports that Patient spent the first three hours in the observation ward incessantly turning his pockets inside out and mumbling, “I’m sorry, Gary, I’m really, really, really sorry, but I just don’t think there’s anyone left anywhere to sell anything to.” Attempts were made to contact the Patient’s boss, Gary K, however automatic email and voice mail replies informed hospital staff that Mr. K would be away on vacation for the remainder of the month of July.
Weekly Summary
This week’s patients are all making good progress and no serious complications have arisen. Behavior Health Unit administrative and medical staff are all performing satisfactorily. Doctors, Nurses and administrative staff all report that patient load levels are acceptable and that they are all “just happy to still be working in an air conditioned building in July.” New programs being tested to lessen seasonal summer stress for staff include: “take your liquor to work day” where doctors and nurses bring in tequila, margarita mix and crushed ice on Friday’s and then drink heavily while watching patients act out the neurosis, fantasy or hallucination of their choosing; and “Summer Sanity Sundays” where medical and admin staff gather in the hospital chapel and pray desperately that that the summer won’t get to them in the same way it’s gotten to the people who they’ve had to admit the previous week.
Behavioral Health Center
Weekly Admission Report
Monday, July 5 – Sunday, July 11, 2010
Patient #RH70510m1
53 Year old male, Nicholas Z. presented with neurotic tendencies arising from an inability to water his lawn due to drought restrictions. Patient reports having spent over $35,000 on lawn care and a computerized sprinkler system and was admitted by his wife after she found him laying face down weeping onto the grass. Mr. Z told doctors he hoped his tears would help his dying Kentucky Blue Grass and High Fescue Mix. Sedatives have been prescribed and Patient is now noticeably calmer although medication was adjusted after Patient began running back and forth behind the nurse’s station in an attempt to adjust imaginary sprinkler heads. Patient told nurses that, “The grass needs to be green ... green god dam it ... green I tell you ...” but was ultimately restrained by orderlies pretending to be illegal immigrants who had come to cut the Patient’s lawn and adjust his sprinkler system.
Patient #RH70510m2
42 year old mother, Dianna S admitted herself at 9 a.m. on Monday saying she believed that her 12 year old daughter had been trying to kill her by repeating the words “I’m bored” thousands of times over the three week period since the girl’s school year ended. Apparently the Patient was able to remain calm for the better part of the first three weeks of her daughter’s summer vacation but finally snapped earlier this week when she threatened to send her daughter to “a farm, where they make children work all summer picking cotton under the hot sun in their bare feet alongside wagons pulled by farting goats.” Patient told the admitting psychiatrist that she wouldn’t have really sent her daughter to a farm but “would it have killed her to read a book or go outside or help me with a little house work?” The daughter was also interviewed by the hospital social worker who decided to end the session when the girl would only respond to her questions with the phrase “I’m bored.”
Patient #RH70710w1
22 year old male, Charles P - recently graduated with a degree in history from Petersburg College - admitted after his parents found him feeding his Burger Barn uniform into a wood chipper. Doctors have determined that the Patient is suffering from “Latent Reality Syndrome” characterized by the Patient’s inability to face the fact that his college diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and that he has to now get a real job. Parents also told the attending psychiatrist that their son spends long stretches searching his dresser for drugs that may have been left over from high school and attempting to contact his fraternity brothers “so they can start a band or get drunk or pick up girls or something.” Patient’s mother also reports that Mr. P has been attempting to crawl into bed at night with his parents “just like he used to do when he was a very little boy and was scared because he thought there was a monster in his closet.”
Patient #RH710810t1
17 year old female, Cindy T admitted to emergency room with burns on her thighs, buttocks and back after paramedics had to pry her from the seat of her 1987 Dodge coup which had been sitting in one hundred degree heat at the edge of her parent’s driveway. Patient had been wearing nothing but flip flops and a two piece bathing suit which the admitting physician reported “wouldn’t have had enough material to make a couple of eye patches for a midget.” Miss T was treated for her burns and released from emergency care but then admitted to the Behavioral Health Center when she could not be restrained from removing her bathing suit to take cell phone pictures of her burns which she then planned on posting to Facebook so her boyfriend “wouldn’t forget about her when she while she was gone.” Attending psychiatrist diagnosed Patient with nervous exhaustion brought on by heat stroke and an obsession with having to get to the beach to prevent “all those little summer sluts from getting their dirty hands on” her boyfriend.
Patient #RH70910sa1
35 year old male, Marty N was brought in by ambulance from his job as a salesman and admitted after hallucinating that he was the last man on earth who was still working. Apparently Mr. N had been unable to make his monthly quota after repeatedly receiving automatic email replies and voice mail messages telling him that the person he was trying to reach was on summer vacation. Attending Psychiatrist reports that Patient spent the first three hours in the observation ward incessantly turning his pockets inside out and mumbling, “I’m sorry, Gary, I’m really, really, really sorry, but I just don’t think there’s anyone left anywhere to sell anything to.” Attempts were made to contact the Patient’s boss, Gary K, however automatic email and voice mail replies informed hospital staff that Mr. K would be away on vacation for the remainder of the month of July.
Weekly Summary
This week’s patients are all making good progress and no serious complications have arisen. Behavior Health Unit administrative and medical staff are all performing satisfactorily. Doctors, Nurses and administrative staff all report that patient load levels are acceptable and that they are all “just happy to still be working in an air conditioned building in July.” New programs being tested to lessen seasonal summer stress for staff include: “take your liquor to work day” where doctors and nurses bring in tequila, margarita mix and crushed ice on Friday’s and then drink heavily while watching patients act out the neurosis, fantasy or hallucination of their choosing; and “Summer Sanity Sundays” where medical and admin staff gather in the hospital chapel and pray desperately that that the summer won’t get to them in the same way it’s gotten to the people who they’ve had to admit the previous week.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Author Imagines the Future of a Relationship Begun in an Airport Bar
[As seen and overheard in San Francisco’s McCarren Airport on June 11, 2010]
Given how much they are hiding from each other it is inevitable that they will fall in love. She smartly sits on the stool beside him, camouflaged behind a cheap travel necklace which has been layered on an artificially inflated décolletage that is itself pushing down on a lightly spanked tummy and a stale lungful of smoke from the cigarettes we catch a whiff of as she walks by. Once seated, she promptly disturbs the inner edge of his personal space with the calculated crossing of her waxed calves. For his part he appears smitten with the tits and the legs, but would never let on that he hates the way she does not initially look at him even though he too is good looking and even though he knows that she knows she could bend him over his stool and make him slap his own ass in exchange for her phone number. The two of them are fools and liars, in the same way all the rest of us are fools and liars, but when she giggles softly after he opens up and tells her that he doesn’t think there’s an airport bar left in North America with which he’s not intimately familiar, they both seem to realize that something will happen between them at this bar that will be just as thrilling and lovely in the present as it will be mind-numbing and slightly sorrowful in the future.
Now, it is important to note here at the top that it will be her chuffing giggle which, within a year of their wedding vows, will cause him to semi-seriously consider slapping her. They will be setting the table in the custom built house they bought with their combined PR agency and stockbroker incomes and he will drop a massive porcelain serving plate on his foot. She will ask him if he is alright and when he says he is not but that he’s used to bearing his pain quietly she will giggle just a bit too sarcastically (again hiding something) in that nasally, deviated septum way of hers. It is then that he will realize how this giggle and the ten thousand times he has heard it have built up in him until he sees fire whenever he hears this broken down racket. He will quickly get over it after she reaches down and picks up the plate, stroking his foot lightly for a moment before she rises to kiss him on the cheek. But this will be a turning point in their relationship, pre kids and post infatuation, when they both realize that neither of them is completely stacked up to what they supposed the other would be.
He orders her a glass of wine and the conversation turns to sports. This is a safety move and a way toward the possibility of more serious exploration in the moments to come. You can see that she has learned that a) guys like sports, that b) she likes guys, and that c) she needed to learn to like sports too - or at least to know enough to pretend - in order to hold a man’s attention after flirtation and following sex. He bites, and when she talks about the Knicks and the Yankees and the Giants as her Knicks and her Yankees and her Giants, you can almost see him crossing most of the other women he’s been dating off his list. The Celtics are playing the Lakers on the TV suspended over the top shelf liquors and when the home team scores she boos demonstrably. That cinches it. He decides that she has now earned some other talk besides sports, and he asks where she‘s from. Well, funny you should ask, she says, because I live out here, but I’m headed to the east coast where I was born and where my older sister is getting married next weekend. Wow, he says, what a coincidence, I was born back east too, and now I commute between our offices on the east and west coast, and are you in your sister’s wedding party? Well, yeah - we never really got along when we were kids, but now I’m actually her maid of honor.
Ironic as it may seem, her older sister will be a big problem for them, especially after their second child is born. It’s true that the girls never did get along when they were kids and, contrary to what our girl at the bar would like us to believe, they still don’t get along now. Anyway, the older sister also never liked this guy at the bar, ever since her younger sister called him spur of the moment the day after their serendipitous meeting and asked him to be her date at the wedding the following Saturday. So when, after 7 years of marriage and in the tenth year of their relationship, this couple at the bar had their second child, the older sister was flaming hot with jealousy (having never been able to have her own kids) and overflowing with anger at the distance her younger sister had put between them. This somehow led to deeper fights between our couple at the bar, awful fights in full view of their newborn and their 3 year old, as the older sister conspired to turn her parents against them. Strangely enough, however, this couple was stronger then we might have imagined and they endured if only halfheartedly and only after a future bout of infidelity and a trial separation (which we will get to later). And the older sister? Well she never really will come around; although years later she will come down with breast cancer which will once and for all end the anger she feels for her little sister.
Within the background hubbub, you can see the both of them trying to stay tuned for the announcements of their respective flights even though they are drawing more and more intimate attention from each other with each moment that goes by. They are into future plans by this time – an idea she has to work for a year in Rome or Paris where pretty English speaking PR agents with American accents are paid handsomely; another idea he has to start a brokerage firm on the sea coast of South Carolina where property is still cheap and good face-to-face financial advice is as scarce as snow – and yet you can just tell that neither of them can help but seriously play with the idea of each other’s face on the pillow next to them in the here and now. By the time the traveler with the Willy Loman suitcase and the hair-hat toupee tilts off his stool to the left of them you notice by the way they are talking that they are feeling good and alone in this crowded bar, indeed that they are the only ones in the whole airport. So, when business cards are exchanged in order that neither can get too far from the other, one can sense that there is already a mutual jealously over potential other lovers who might be waiting at the end of a jetway somewhere down the line.
For twenty years this jealousy will simmer until it finally rises into a full head of steam for her when he cracks up over a woman he meets on his daily commute, starting the affair by having sex with her in a bathroom on the train. Their youngest child will be in sixth grade by this time and the other a freshman in high school, and she will kick him out of the house never expecting to be living with him again. She starts smoking once more during this time of their separation and to her surprise she loses the weight she’s been trying to work off for the last fifteen years. She contemplates going back into PR and likes the fact that she no longer has to babysit his overbearing superior cautiousness. What is most unexpected is that she has actually begun to think how good life might be on her own (if only she didn’t still get so lonely at night). And then one day she drops the kids off with him at the apartment he is renting and she sees how he is living. The piles of uneaten food, the shirts he doesn’t wash in favor of just buying new ones, the total lack of regard for his surroundings and the obvious fact that no woman has set foot into this place in months breaks her heart – a heart she should have suspected would be broken in every possible way from the minute she laid eyes on him in that airport bar. Oddly, however, it is the thought of the two of them sitting in that bar way back when that eventually gets her to allow him back into the house, albeit with conditions on his freedom that would have made a dumber man run for his life.
When her plane is called it’s not completely clear to him (although it is clear to us) when and if they will ever see each other again. On the other hand, anyone with a brain can see that she is already sure how this will play out (starting, presumably, with the phone call she’ll make to him the next morning and moving on to the weekend wedding she will seduce him into). She’s never been shy and - having met him tonight - she isn’t going to start by being shy now. She slowly (and you might even say a little achingly) draws herself from the swivel stool, dipping a bit to reach behind her for the telescoping arm of her rolling suitcase. When she straightens up he is also standing to say goodbye and their faces are closer than they have been this entire time. You just know that each would really like to kiss the other – cheeks, lips, ears, anywhere above the shoulders where there is flesh – and when they both stop talking for a moment and she smiles directly into his brown eyes, it’s almost as if their heads have become living bone magnetized by the promise of love. It happens fast and sudden, his lips leading the way as if on rails toward the inside edge of her cheek, a centimeter or two from the pointy corner of her mouth where he kisses her in a way that amounts to more than the thirty minutes they have spent here. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but when she breaks the attraction and pulls away, it looks as if she might have winked at him. If it did happen, it wouldn’t be hard to think of this batting eye as the first stitch set in a seam that will get longer and tighter in the hours, weeks and months to come. She walks away and the last thing he sees before she rounds the corner to her boarding area is the floor edge of her suitcase where the hard little wheels have to be reminding him that what goes around will come around again and again and again.
His youngest daughter will still be using this same suitcase nearly thirty years later. It’s old but the kid really loves her mother’s vintage bag, though she really couldn’t tell you why. Watching her roll this thing out to the car as he and his wife prepare to take her to college, this man we first discovered at the bar cries for maybe only the third or fourth time in his adult life. He quickly runs to the bathroom and washes and wipes and then washes and wipes again until the trace tracks of tears are gone. But there it is, as it was all along, a sensitive man who ultimately knows how to treat a good woman at a bar and how to come to her when she calls and how to miss her when she’s gone.
One could keep imagining what happens to our couple from the bar after he leaves the bathroom - the car ride to the state school 50 miles way, the unloading, the goodbye and then the return home to a finally empty house where the two of them will once again be as alone as they felt that first night in the bar - but what would be truth and what would be fiction. Take what you can and then add your own life here. You might as well. All happy relationships are alike in the same way and all sad ones as different as you and I, making our own relationships the only ones worth dwelling on.
When his plane is called a few minutes later he doesn’t immediately leave the bar. A new woman has taken the place of the girl who just left even before the seat next to him got cold. There was a line waiting to sit down and so it is inevitable that someone would take her place. What is not inevitable is what he will do next. The new woman, skinnier and more tightly put together, smiles at him when she catches his eye as he reaches across the bar for his check. Does he smile back? Does he offer to buy her a drink? Does he look at the game and then back at her to see if she is at all interested? Does he?
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