Category: People

“I remember a little girl,” he said

“Yes!” I said. “Her name was Danielle – a perfect, tiny child — and you were convinced Annie had booked the B&B specifically because her mom was black and her dad was white. Danielle was charmed by you and followed you around the whole time. She sat next to you and you convinced her to give you her security blanket; she kept a close eye to make sure it came back to her.”

Beginning in Denver, the trip was a joy. People everywhere. People to talk to! One lady in a dramatic hat and tiny skirt suggested places to go and things to do in Seattle. I wasn’t sure we’d go to the Pussy Galore Theater, but she offered her suggestions in a helping spirit, so I listened. On the flight, my ramrod-straight seatmate said if I ran into any problems I should call her and she would help. She had the Air Force family habit of making friends wherever they go. Gifts of service, gifts of help.

I had read about Pike Street Market before our travels; I was not prepared for the noisy, colorful, welcoming chaos. There were fish stands everywhere but no smell of fish. Apparently all those people who say fresh fish doesn’t have a smell are in fact right.

We walked down the endless hill climb steps and found ourselves on the wharf. Seagulls circling, landing, squawking. They did not look starving, but of course we fed them. If we hadn’t, how would we know we were by the ocean?

Aquarium, museum, the magnificent homes of Mercer Island – how did we have the energy to do that all in one day? I sit here at home and think it would be a challenge just to spend an hour at the Pike Street Market now. I don’t feel old. I feel young. How can I be 30 years old inside my heart and 80 in my body?

“She liked you,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

We sat in the living room and read and then Danielle came to sit in my lap and so I could read stories to her. She played with my earrings – one came off – and opened and shut the silver locket Annie gave me. Then the next morning we read the Post-Intelligencer. Then: quick steps and a light voice on the stair: “Mom, where are those people?” Then she found us. “Mom, I found them!” She smiled at me. “Can I sit on your lap and show you my Sunday outfit?”

It was hard to leave Danielle. I love the spirit of children – I remember the gypsy who said I’d have six children and she was right: three children, three miscarriages. I remember when my babies grew up and became individuals in their own right. Now they are scattered and I can’t take all of them in my arms and hug them and tell them everything will be all right. Jack once said, “You know, Mom, you lied to me.” “What?” “You told me all people were good.” At least he was there to hug. I think Annie was trying to hug us back, Tom and me, with the gift of this trip.

“It was green everywhere,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Remember the green?”

All different shades and textures. We still have one of the leaves pressed into our daybook. Danielle’s parents told us all the hard work it took to convert the abandoned boarding house into their welcoming home. Digging out the sprawl of laurel bushes, trimming the ones that stayed, and replanting, weeding, standing back, admiring. I remember how nice that was for us when we put in the lilacs in the back yard. And now they smell so sweet in the spring. The bees and butterflies come to the flowers when I sit down on the front bench and keep me company. I sit at the front bench a lot, now, when I’m tired and angry.

“Are you going to the front bench?” he asked.

“No. Not now. That must be Gina at the front door. She’ll take care of you. I have to go,” I said.

Time for my Alzheimer’s caregivers group.

He looked at the cards as he carefully cleaned out the old wallet from his bottom drawer.  Story of his life.  Thirty-five years on the Burlington, twenty years in the Masons, basic mileage ration card from 1944, untold number of years in the Lions and Elks and Optimists and Rotary.  And who was left?  None that he could tell.  His daughter Violet said he should use Facebook and search to see who is alive; but he’s afraid there will be no one.  Violet always has good ideas but they take too much time and energy.  He opened his usual wallet and looked at his lists.  The vacations he and Virginia took; the dates he worked at various companies; the birthdays of his family and friends.  He didn’t write in the dates they died for those who were gone; that felt too final.

And now, everything is going.  The estate sale people said they’d take good care of his things and make sure they went to good homes, but he didn’t know how they could do that.  Should everyone buying something fill out an application for him to approve?  “I hereby swear that every time I wear this hat I will think of the person who made it.”  That was Virginia, who spent at least a year knitting furiously after their son died.  She needed something to do with her hands other than wring them and wipe her eyes.  And all those skeins of wool–who was going to buy them?  What would they make of them?  Why were they knitting?  Questions, all these questions, and no answers.  He chuckled.  He should be used to unanswered questions by now. That’s what someone gets for being curious all his life.

At least he wasn’t going to the limbo of assisted living.  He was going to have his own apartment, and his own dignity, and his own independence.  What was left of it.

What does he really need?  The pictures are important but they won’t mean anything to anyone else but Violet, and she won’t know half the people in them.  All those people in the photos lived on through him, and he’s starting to puzzle over names now.  Remember all the pretty girls in their summer dresses?  He looked at the first page of the small album.  Cut-out pictures of smiling ladies he remembers fondly; the tilt of the head, the hand to the cheek.  All the good times they had; picnics and gatherings and parties.  And walks in the summer sun.

The sale would be starting soon.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to be there.  People looking at his things and walking by all the meaning that had accumulated over the years.  Each rejection would be a rejection of him and the items he’s used and yes, loved, over the years. But he wanted to be there, to say goodbye, to see each venture out into its new life.  He hoped they would have new lives.  They had served him well.

The estate ladies had set up the tables and put up the signs and placed the ads.  Everything was ready except him.

And the door opened.

He sat on the couch (priced at $100) and watched as the flood of people looked at his things, picked them up, and then put them down.

A girl picked up the album.  And didn’t put it down.

She asked the estate sale ladies “What do you know about this?”  They said “Nothing—but he will,” and pointed to Paul.  She came over, sat down, and opened the album.  “Hi, I’m Holly.  Why did you cut out these pictures?  Who are they?  Look at their smiles.  I feel like I know them from those smiles.”

“That’s the album I made to keep with me when I was on the road for business.”

She took out a notebook.  “Tell me more.”

“Well, this girl here is Deirdre.  She was my first girlfriend.  We held hands in school and then became just friends and then she was the best friend of Virginia, my wife.  And this is Helen.  She worked the farm next to ours all on her own and did better than a lot of men would have.  Emily came from Germany and her cousin John was my business partner.  See these cards?  This one was for our company.”

And then, it had been an hour and the notebook was full.  “You’ve been wonderful,” she said.  “I’m going to have a baby, and she won’t have any grandparents or anyone other than John and me in her life.  I need to have some stories to tell her and you’ve given me a lifetime’s worth.  Would you mind if I gave you a hug?”

No.

Everything felt brighter after that.  At the end of the day he told the estate sale ladies that whatever was left could be donated to the church bazaar, then he went to bed even earlier than usual.

The next morning he got out of bed, sat on the floor, and did his usual stretches.  He remembered his cousin Casey, who was a visiting preacher until he was 99.  Casey did five sit-ups every morning.  The whole day stretched before Paul; he felt possibilities in the air that he hadn’t sensed for years.  Perhaps he would go out for coffee.

Waiting in line, he looked about the cafe.  What a mix of old and young, mothers and children, construction workers and students.  Half of them had computers open in front of them.  He watched people in line.  One guy was rumpled and be-bearded and clearly homeless.  The lady taking his order knew his name.  She knew his order.  So if he ever lost his apartment, he could count on at least one person greeting him. Another lady ordered and turned away, smiling.  She had horrible teeth but didn’t let that stop her from radiating confidence and joy.

He ordered his coffee and sat down near a table of men near his own age, each of whom had a book open on the table.  Ah.  A Bible group.  One of the men turned and caught him looking. “Hi, friend.  How are you?  Pull up a chair and join us.  That’s how we built this group, inviting people in.  You look like someone who will have something to say.”

Why not, he thought.  Why not.

He pulled his chair around and looked over at his neighbor’s bible. The man at the end of the table cleared his throat and began to speak.

“Please turn to the Psalms.  Today we will be discussing Psalm 133, verse 1.  Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together on unity.”

“Is it on fire or is it bleeding?” said Elizabeth.

“No,“ said Jack.

“Then it can wait.”

Elizabeth sighed. Why did he always need her when she was in the tub? Jack was a boy; so different than his sister Annie. Knew all the answers to tests at school, didn’t see the point of doing the homework since he already figured out the answers. Teachers were either exasperated or angry; she’d go to the parent-teacher conferences already braced for their disapproval.  Joe was always better at this. She would ask what was wrong with Jack; he would ask what was wrong with the way they were teaching him. Jack took up all the air in the room but he always made others feel good about themselves.

Sam slipped under the teachers’ radar. He dedicated himself to being Not Jack. Only at home did he show the fire of which he was capable. Once time when she was at her evening college course and Tom was at a sales conference, Jack bothered Sam once too often and Sam’s temper exploded. Jack realized he had gone too far and fled to his room and locked the door. Sam broke the doorframe. Suddenly cooperation was all they thought about: “I’ll get the glue, you get the clamp!” said Jack. It almost looked like it had never splintered at all.

And when she got home, Jack took her aside. “Mom. I have to show you something. Please, please – don’t tell Dad.”  Elizabeth said “If he notices it, I won’t lie to him. But if he doesn’t notice – I’m not going to point it out.”

She wished cooperation didn’t involve breaking things. Tom was just as bad. She came home another night from class. Jack and Tom sat in the living room, suspiciously quiet.  Hmm.

Sam came up the stairs, holding his maroon robe with one hand and a book in the other.  “I just want you to know I had nothing to do with it,” he said, then went silently downstairs.

Suspicious, she walked down the hallway. Just outside the bedroom door two pieces of typing paper hung from the wall.

What the hell? She pulled them off. There was a perfect double-round imprint of a butt. Back to the living room, holding up the pieces of paper. Jack, of course, was the confessor. “We were just wrestling! And the hallway was too narrow! And it’s my butt, but Dad was the one that put it there!” She was deeply entertained they thought taping paper over the hole would stop her from noticing.

Boys, old and young.

Jack and Sam did follow her rules: Use your seat belt. Don’t litter. And return your shopping cart to the cart corral. So maybe she wasn’t such a bad mother after all.

She got out of the tub and toweled off. Time to resume motherhood.

And there, on the table, is a note:

“Mom: I’ve taken the gun and the dog and gone down to the creek. Something there is on fire!”

Since it was a BB gun, blood wouldn’t be involved, but he really should have told her about the fire.

For years he dated young tattooed women who were drawn to him—who wouldn’t be;  he’s got the biggest heart in the world—and then wanted to change him.  He gave up after a while; most of them just wanted to be friends, anyway; ask him for advice and then never take it.  He knew everyone but had two close friends:  Sheila, who served as his cat; and John, who was his dog.  Sheila had a contrary opinion for every on of Jack’s and enjoyed sparring; she probably would have slept on his laptop and wandered on his keyboard if that was available for a human. John lived one apartment over from Jack and would come by every night that Jack was available.  He had a key to the apartment but always, always knocked and said “It’s John; can I come in?”  He’d answer Jack’s phone.  “Jack O’Connell’s apartment; this is John; how can I help you?”  Come to think of it, he was more of a butler than a dog.  He’d sit in the big reclining chair, quietly cleaning his guns.  We lived in Nebraska, guys.  This is not an unusual activity.

Mom finally stopped loading up grocery bags with creamed corn and toilet paper when Jack was 26; and he stopped doing laundry at their house when he was 27.  Small milestones on the path to adulthood.  It wasn’t that he was taking advantage; it was just that it was an opportunity to see Mom and Dad. It seemed to be important to her to still take care of Jack and hey, look; free food!

His best friend from high school, Mike, fell in love—or in something—with Sarah.  Jack met her and thought well, she’s the one for me, and I’ll never be able to tell her.  He was best man at their wedding.  Because Mike was a Viking re-enactor, the best man was in chain mail but we all have our quirks.  And then after two years Mike decided he’d go Viking full-time, and Sarah decided no, not so much, and they divorced.  Mike is still angry and won’t have anything to do with her; it’s been fifteen years.  Way to hold a grudge.

And then time went by, and Sarah married again and had two boys, and then that marriage went south and Sarah thought I’m doing something wrong.  I don’t know what it is, but if I keep going south instead of north I’m going to go crazy.  Who is the nicest man I know?  What family do I want to be a part of?

Ah.  Facebook.  Jack.

So she reached out; and he reached back out; and they dated for six months; and then she introduced him to her sons (because she is a good person and didn’t want them to have to deal with men she wasn’t going to be with long-term).  They came to our wedding; him proud; she radiant.  She charmed everyone she met.  And then they married, and we all burst our buttons over the rightness of this, the absolute perfection of the two of them.

Jack said “You know what?  I always wanted a family.  I have one.  I’ll never let it go.”  He called them His Boys from the first day.  When he was gone on a business trip Sarah took his clothing and stuffed it and put it on the couch so Oscar and Hank could still have a Jack to cuddle up to.

Family.  One finds it; and then one makes it.

He’s a very self-contained person.  Mom asked him, after he walked around the lake near Jack’s house, “Who did you meet?  What did you talk about?”  And he replied “Why would I want to talk to anyone?  I’ll never see them again.”

We’re not even sure he’s from the same family as the rest of us; the inveterate talkers, the invariable handers-out-of-business-cards-because-you-never-know-who-will-be-your-new-best friend.  I have friends I made from interviewing; when their skills didn’t match the job requirements I said “You’re not a good match for this position, but do you want to be friends?”  I shudder to think of the HR penalties for that now.  Nate and I have friends we met at garage sales, friends we met dog walking, friends we found at a bookstore because we liked the same book.

“I’m sure they think I’m the cleanest homeless person they’ve ever seen,” Sam says about being in the library.  He doesn’t spend a lot of time at home, so he has routines:  the coffee shop, the library, the brewery, the other brewery.  Everyone knows him but no one talks to him.  We met him at the other brewery and the bartenders exchanged looks with each other:  see, he does associate with others.  I win the bet.

Mom says she thinks he’s like Noni, our great-grandfather.  “Give him an opera to listen to and a book to read and he doesn’t need anything else.”  The Italian strain comes out strongly in me; all hands waiving and voice inflections and the need to tell everyone what I’m thinking all the time.  I’m not sure how the Italian comes out in Sam.  Noni was happy tending his market garden; he liked people but didn’t always see the point of them.  That’s pretty much Sam.

Dogs are different.  Sam loves dogs.  He photographed humane society dogs for posting on their website.  If he could adopt every abused pit bull he saw, he would.  When our Shiba Sakura went missing, and then was found and returned, Sam was housesitting.  Apparently Sakura was remorseful about her week away from home, and allowed Sam to pet her and even stayed on the bed while he watched Ash Vs. Evil on his iPad.  “I made sure to cover her eyes when it got gory,” he said.

And yet:

At a brewery, wearing Grandpa Gub’s Amoco work shirt, reading.  The guy one stool over says “Hey!  I like your shirt!”  Sam, shockingly, explains that it was his Grandpa’s and they engaged in conversation and then Sam—continuing to shock—sent the guy a follow-up email.

“Hey, Zach.  A few days ago at 300 Suns you noticed my Amoco shirt and we got to talking about Iowa and that small town we both come from, Fort Dodge.  I called my Mom today and asked if she had any recollections; she did remember that there was an Eleanor Troubridge in my Dad’s class.  When Eleanor’s boyfriend went off to the army he asked my Dad to take her to the prom because my Dad was trustworthy and wouldn’t try anything.  So they went and danced and Dad was all those things; a perfect gentleman.

“She also remembers the Lebanese community in Fort Dodge.  That town was a bastion of communities:  Italian, where she grew up; Scots, who lived down on the flats; Lebanese; Czech; and black folks who had come north for opportunity and peace and found it, mostly, working in the brickyard with my Noni.  She has a vague memory of a Lebanese restaurant downtown named Anwar’s with an organist who played during meals.

“None of that I remember.  The family moved when I was about three, and my biggest memory is the enormous blue water tower near our house.  That, and grandpa Gub’s Amoco gas station that he ran for 53 years on South 22nd Street.  He worked six and a half days a week for all those years.  He got a plaque from the company after 52 years and proudly displayed it in their living room.  He knew everyone in town and when he died, Mom was deluged with cards telling her of the many small kindnesses Gubba performed on a daily basis.  She cried for days.

‘Anyway, let me know if this rings any bells for you or your family.  I look forward to hearing back; it was nice chatting with you.”

So maybe there’s a friend out there for Sam.  I like to think so.

I like to watch Nate sleep.  Here he is, hand curled around the bars of the headboard; it looks like he’s about to make a prison break in his sleep. I think about raking a metal cup across the bars; then decide against it.

He’s stretched out on the couch, empty cider cup and folded glasses on the glass coffee table. “Do you want to go to bed, or do want me to leave you alone,” I ask. “Leave me alone,” he mumbles, and shifts an arm over his eyes.

He is as horizontal as horizontal can be, lying on the decaying reclined Eames chair. Tablet on lap, water glass on adjacent chair. He’s closed his eyes behind his librarian glasses and is at peace.

We are in bed. He mock-throws three pillows at me, one after another. “There. Enough pillows for you?  Pillow monger.” he says.

When we courted and he was in one city, I, another, we would call every night at 10pm and write notes several times a week. He has one from that time tucked in the corner of our dresser mirror:  a stick figure of me in the middle and a pillow fort on all three sides. Only my feet can escape. “This is me without you” I wrote underneath.

I still build pillow forts but now the open side is the one he’s on. I have trouble doing that emotionally. I’m all tap dance and skitter around my friends; “I’ll entertain you!  Here are my stories!”  I’m in, and then I’m out; no more than three minutes of their time.  That doesn’t, and shouldn’t, work for Nate. I’m trying to move around the pillow fort in my heart. My feet don’t need to be free. I don’t need to escape.

I said “It’s like a puzzle.  When you first look at it, there’s no way to start.  All the pieces are confusing and colorful, or drab and identical.  There’s no way in hell there’ll ever be a picture to come of this.

“Then you put down a piece and wait. Then you see a piece that you can press into the one you’ve got. Then you see two edge pieces that go together. And slowly, so slowly that you don’t even know it, a picture starts to form. And it’s exciting. And you want to keep on until you can see the whole picture.

“Like the time I wrote about the lady who had Wonder Woman grips on her .45 and she founded a group called Second Amendment Sisters and taught a lot of women to Take Back The Night With a Gun and when that guy tried to hurt her, she took him out with a double-tap and made the news. That was your mom. Although I made a lot of it up.”

“So you lie, then,” he said.

“Sometimes.  I have a very bad memory.  Barely recall anything that happened to me before the age of 24.  So if I want to say anything about that time, I have to think of things that make sense to me as I am now and take away all the experience and wear and skills and find some longing, some reason for me to have done something that your dad told me I did or your uncle has a picture of me doing.  I need to start somewhere with something to get anywhere worth going to.”

“Why do you sometimes use a computer and sometimes a pen or a pencil and sometimes your iPhone and sometimes just cut and paste Facebook entries?” he asked.

“I use what suits. And I have to write 50 words a day no matter what. I have to write something even if I’ve broken both hands. Sometimes I’m just going to grab an I-think-it’s-witty comment from a message and build something around that.

“Last night I talked about lying on the couch reading a true crime book while there was beauty all around me on the island, and someone joked about us being in a prime defensible spot for when the zombie outbreak arrives, and then it came to how Nate and I had to supply our own arsenal because his sisters think that’s just crazy talk, and there, I’d gotten to 5,000 words and a saleable piece of writing.”

“Saleable?  How much?” he asked.

“$0.99 for every download.”

“And how many downloads?” he asked.

“3,000.”

He thought for a few minutes. “So you made  $3,000 for putting together a puzzle?  For lying?”

“Well, not quite; but yes.”

And that’s how Oscar became a writer, just like his aunt Annie; though it took me to the age of fifty and him to the age of fifteen, the little imp. I’d better get 5,000 words out of this encounter.