September is Suicide Prevention Month

Charity begins at home, with one’s self, and I have been successful so far this month, these first 26 days. Doesn’t mean I’m home free, of course—I have not only three and a half days to go, but three months to go until the end of the year (2021), and, I can only hope, years upon years after that until a natural, non-violent, pain-free death in my sleep while dreaming of playing a clairseach while touring the cirrocumulus. 

A Very Short Interview at the Seattle Public Library

Yes, I should have been out looking for a job, but I did that yesterday and came up with zilch. I didn’t think the chances of me finding something today were that much better, so I decided to take the afternoon off. I’d been meaning to walk around Green Lake for some exercise, but I was too tired for that. Plus, it looked like it was about to start raining. So I settled into one of the two available reading chairs, which are cushioned and covered in a dark green fabric with a pattern that is vaguely oriental. I’d been sitting there looking at some incredible pictures of Lindsey Lohan in the latest issue of Vanity Fair for maybe two minutes before an older gentleman ambled over from the magazine rack and took a seat across from me. To my surprise, he pulled a decrepit pair of leather slippers out of his rucksack. He took off his shoes, stretched out his legs (towards me, mind you), and wiggled his toes before putting on the slippers, which I then noticed were stained with what I could only guess were the spillings of so many cups of coffee, jam, and who knows what else. He then reached into the rucksack and took out a bag of frozen peas, or at least a bag that was labeled ‘frozen peas,’ and from that bag (heavily creased from what might have been years of long use) began pulling out mixed nuts and what I would guess were sections of a Satsuma orange. He ate like he was feeding a dog, or a horse, by which I mean he held up his hand and sort of grabbed them out of his palm with his lips before chewing them in a circular pattern. It was then that I noticed the smell now rolling around me. Two smells, actually; one slightly stale (which I figured was part of the fog that traveled with him), and the other quite sharp (which was worse). From the shoes, I thought. Good God, I also thought, is this what it’s coming to? “Looks like you’ve had those for a while,” I said, nodding at the slippers. “What’s the matter? You don’t like ‘em?” answered the smelly old man. “Well…” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Look,” he interrupted, “I’m old. I’m worthless. I just want to sit here and read the paper, like I do every day. And if you don’t like the way I do it – that’s tough for you.” “I didn’t say you’re worthless,” I said. “I didn’t even say you were old.” “I’m old and I’m worthless,” he repeated, crumpling the newspaper in his lap as he pulled in his legs and leaned forward. “I’m gonna kill myself the day before I turn a hundred years old. If God exists, in His infinite spite He’ll let me live that long just to see if I’m up to it.” “That’s horrible,” I said, because it was. "He knows," said the old man, nodding. I didn't say anything. He settled back into his chair. “You think that’s horrible?” He said. “Wait until you get to my age. That’s horrible. Now lemme get back to my paper.” And he shook the paper to uncrumple it as best he could, and got back to it. I sat there for a few seconds, wondering whether I should alert one of the librarians or call some kind of hotline. In the end I considered it just the ravings of dementia, perhaps in its early stages, and went back to looking at Vanity Fair.

Mountains and Fathers

Bill and Susan, brother and sister (two years apart and the best of friends), were eating salads together. They were at a wedding, a family wedding, and not being part of the party (it’s a big family) they’d been seated with a motley crew of recent arrivals. They were keeping to themselves. She had a huge pile of beets on her plate stacked up like Fuji-san, which she thought of because she often traveled to Japan on business. Bill thought of Mt. Rainier. Either way, Bill was a little jealous, since he certainly liked beets as much as Susan did, although it must be admitted (especially by Bill) that she really did like beets an awful lot. As they ate they talked about her, Susan’s, wedding a few years earlier, and she kept insisting that the paterfamilias, long exiled and almost universally loathed, had been there all along. “Of course he wasn’t,” said Bill. “That was the whole point; he wasn’t there because you didn’t invite him.” Susan begged to differ, or actually she differed without doing much begging at all. “I did so invite him. He was there, but he wanted to keep a low profile.” “I wish he had been. I do now, and I did then. I would have known he was there. And it's not like him to keep quiet.” said Bill. Susan let the silence gather around that comment, which in her view was completely unnecessary. “You didn’t say anything at the time.” “Hmph,” said Bill, which emphasized the silence more than otherwise. "And you loved playing the father," continued Susan. "In his absence. Why is it eating you now?" “Well, whatever," said Bill, "but when has he ever kept a low profile? The point is that he wasn't there.” asked Bill, avoiding the point. He jabbed a piece of chicken with his fork. “I would have heard him. He wasn’t there.” Soon the rest of the table had turned their attention to their discussion. From just listening to a few whispered comments amongst themselves, all of them were soon insisting that, yes, the Dad really had been there all along. “On the left hand side at the back, right next to cold-cut platter,” someone said (the wedding had been in the ballroom of a posh tennis club). “That duck was excellent,” someone said. “Not like the chicken here,” said someone else. Only Jimmy, coming to Bill’s aid from a faraway table, was doubtful. Jimmy was their little brother. He said to Susan, “You have to admit that you didn’t make him feel very invited. So why would he come?” But the rest of the crowd (for it was a small crowd at this point) wouldn’t hear of it, even though a good number of them hadn’t even been there. According to them, the Dad had been there, and that was that. “Case closed,” someone even said. Then someone noticed something in Bill’s eye. “It looks like you’ve got something in your eye there,” someone said. And in fact Bill did feel something. He tried rolling his eyes around trying to work it loose, and when that didn’t work, he squinted and tried to pull out what felt like an eyelash, pressing the tips of index and thumb together for steadier motion. When he opened them again, the crowd had pushed in even closer. “Nope. It’s still there,” someone said. “Yep, you gotta work that loose,” said someone else. Everybody had a comment to make, and Bill just kept working at it (he was actually a good sport, but he got even better as problem continued. Eventually everybody got tired of trying to help him and went off to dance, drink champagne, and eat cake. Even Susan and Jimmy left eventually. Susan left a pocket mirror and instructions not to rub his eye too hard. Bill sat at the table for a long time, winking and blinking to himself, occasionally trying his trick with his fingers. Sometimes he would open his eyes ridiculously wide, but that wouldn’t work either. Next morning found him back at home, rolling and squinting his eyes in front of the mirror, still trying to get that eyelash out of his eye.

Guacamole

It recently occurred to me that there are primarily two ways by which you might die while preparing guacamole. Perhaps there are more, and perhaps even these two are more dependent on my own method of preparation than any practice so common that it might be considered a general danger to the public - a public to which I am always and ever more devoted, but especially to the young, the ignorant, and the just plain clumsy. Defenseless, it should be said, and whether that pregnability might be the result of lousy breeding, bad luck, or even some heinous but mysteriously unrecognized sin is of no concern to me. Let me first state that the addition of paprika as one possible cause of the catastrophe seems to me so ridiculous as to be hardly worth mentioning. The first method – brace yourself – requires a knife. One might just slip; probably not while making the slow and steady, circular slice by first sawing into the dark green and dimpled rind before orbiting the invisible oval within. That particular cut is made so deliberately that any resulting accident would itself really have to be considered deliberate. This is not entirely inconceivable; consider the frustration that must be endured when upon those 355th (the stem*, perhaps, having long since been driven under), 358th, 359th, and 360th degrees (mother … Fucker!), and now also the 361st and 362nd degrees, one discovers that one has not, like Magellan, perfectly completed the divine circumnavigation, but botched it completely. As if the good commander had landed, not in Sanlucar de Barrameda, but some 900 miles north – in, say, the dismally bright and sunny Torquay. You will step ashore where no crowd has gathered. On a blanket, a woman with her back to you hunts inside a basket for provisions; only her child looks up at you, a little confused but otherwise unconcerned. Having completed the beginning of a spiral (but without the patience necessary to turn it into a stunt involving the suspension of this hide among those of several other fruits in some type of Caulder construction), you would then free this lovely black egg from all that verdant placenta by first laying the shiny weapon on the counter, and then gripping each unequal hemisphere – yes, yes, very much like your brain – and plying it open without so much force that either end of the entire fruit is in any way squished. With the empty half lying on the counter, you would then avail yourself of your favorite metaphor one more time in order to set the future entirely free. First, one slow motion: a kind of feigned attempt, or perhaps a wave … down … up … down … up … further up (Adios, muchachos!), and then quickly, certainly, and very forcefully Down. There must be sufficient space, it must be quick, and it certainly should be accurate. But if you were not … if you were instead quite sloppy … hmm … a brilliant ribbon of streaming scarlet goes well with the green, rather like Christmas … one thinks of it as a kind of present, very sloppily wrapped … very sloppy indeed … it might be fatigue, it might be desire … who knows? Nobody really cares anyway … Or so you’d like to think. There is another alternative – not that it really amounts to anything different. They do care, and you know they do; so why would you then give in to the greed that demands such a small amount of the stuff that you would actually put the alpha and omega into your mouth in order to suck, scrape or even wash the abject, clinging remains down your gluttonous throat? It fits your palette perfectly; if only it would stay there. But it doesn’t. You breathe in, once. Once is enough, if it is forceful enough. Call it half a breath. Consider carefully the color of your face: bright red, dark red; purple, probably, and eventually blue, maybe even green.

On the day I met William F. Buckley

On the day I met William F. Buckley, I learned that he and his wife, Pat, had discussed it beforehand. When I went to meet him at his home in the city, Mrs. Buckley met me at the door and took me aside for a moment for some quick advice. She gave me a pamphlet that her husband had been reading and was anxious to talk about – I think it might have been a Hillsdale Imprimis, but I’m not sure after all this time. In any case, if I gave it a quick read I might be more prepared to answer whatever questions he asked me, and at the very least should consider it of some educational value in its own right. So I glanced at it while he finished up with a call in his office. From the president? To the president? Kissinger? A hotel in Switzerland? I never learned. Anyway, when I was finally sitting across from him, it seemed to me that his mind was elsewhere. He asked me a long and difficult question, and just as I was forming an answer he informed me that he needed to take care of something, got up, and walked out of the room. I took this as an opportunity to study up on the question, and so turned to the pamphlet in search of an answer. By the time he came back I had slipped the little book into the side pocket of my satchel, and answered the question as if there hadn’t been any interruption. He furrowed his eyebrows a little and seemed to follow me with an intent look, but I could tell that at some points his mind had wandered off to whatever subject it was with which he was otherwise preoccupied. When I finished, he took a breath and said, “Right …”, took a second breath and began expanding upon the subject himself. I had a hard time following him, which doesn’t mean I doubted him. Not in the least. Then, in what seemed to be the middle of his answer, he stood up and announced that he needed to take care of something, and then walked out of the room. This time I waited for a minute at most, and when he came back he announced that perhaps we should retire to a bar “where we might be more comfortable.” I wasn’t about to refuse, so we got up and walked a short block or two to a place with which he was certainly familiar, exchanging a few remarks along the way about some of my own recent work and how it intersected with his own. When the conversation turned to matters such as the current geopolitical situation, I felt like I was still being interviewed, and I wondered if it had any bearing on our friendship. Of course I know now that it did. Everything counts. We took our place at a small, high table, and very soon after a waitress brought over drinks – Bloody Marys, as I recall – without either of us ordering. Obviously Mr. Buckley had been there before. We continued talking, and I still had the impression that more important gears were turning in the back of his mind. By this time I’d begun feeling that I was blowing an opportunity – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - but without quite exactly knowing how I’d blown it. I never learned that either. When he’d finished his disquisition on another subject, he murmured quietly and got up from the table. I watched him as he walked over to the bartender and dropped a couple of twenties on the counter and then wander back to our table. By this time I’d stood up beside my chair, and we then walked out into the bright air together. We shook hands, and for once he had spark of something in his eyes – was it because we were parting? I felt better and awful at the same time. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. I was sad, and even a little worried: what was I to do, if he wasn’t there to help me?

The Big Blue Beyond Over Georgia

I was at my Aunt and Uncle's place in Georgia. Mom and George were there as well, helping them plant a field or build a barn, or something like that. I was outside with some of the local kids; their mom worked for my Aunt and Uncle, I think, but she brought the entire brood along when she had nowhere else to put them. The place was big enough. We were all ouside in the yard, and these kids were carrying on a conversation with their mom, who was standing at a big open window on the second floor. They were laughing back and forth at eachother, even as she was scolding them, and it seemed to me that they were a whole lot happier than me and my family. This bummed me out a little. I was jealous, even if they were poor and scrappy looking. I wished I were that scrappy.

We followed the directions of their mom and went off to play in a field nearby, well within sight of the house. I could still see George and my Uncle working in the nearby field. The kids had one of those really bouncy, red rubber balls, and I told them how in school we used these for playing kickball. "Just like baseball" I explained. There were enough of us to field teams of three and four, but the point of all of this, as far as I was concerned, was to show them just how far I could kick that damn ball. And I did. I booted the first pitch rolled my way and watched it rise like a helium balloon into the sky. It was up there with the whispy white clouds, and for moment I had the vague hope that I might have actually launched it into orbit - in fact, it looked a little like the sun up there in the brilliant blue and white, just before it came down near George and my Uncle. A home run, for sure, but not quite a new sun.

George and my Uncle were laughing as they grabbed the ball and walked it back to us. They could see where the fun was. Being adults with a limited amount of time, they naturally stepped in to take the next couple of pitches. Or George did, anyway. The game probably would have fallen apart after my incredible kick into the stratosphere, so it really didn't matter at that point who took a turn. One of the scrappy kids rolled a pitch towards George, and he went and launched it just like I had before. I watched it go, feeling the happiness just leached out of me as it sailed aloft. That travelling red sphere, once again in the big blue beyond. Up, up, up; it didn't look like it was ever going to come down. This time I was gripped by a vague fear: what if this time it actually did stay up there, becoming the sun that lighted and warmed the whole wide world?

Wheels

As was not unusual, I was in a rundown building somwhere on the South Side. I followed the darkened hallways to their frightening ends and eventually found myself in a storage room that really wasn't all that scary. Just musty. And very dark. I could hardly see what I was doing, although I really wasn't supposed to be doing anything, especially there. Not that I had anywhere else to be. And I wasn't alone: two other guys were there as well, probably because they'd heard me. Or had I heard them?

We were all there scrounging around - looking for something that might help us occupy the time for a little while. There were huge piles of musty old rugs that must have been there for ages - they could have been thousand year old Kermans, but they were of no use to me. They just made it difficult to get around the room. If we could climb up high somehow, use them as a landing pad ... but no. The other two were a little more adept at picking up the big rolls and looking them over, so I left them to it.

After a little hunting I found what must have been part of an old cart - a side of one, two-and-a-half feet high, maybe, and just as long. I thought I might be able to use it as a bicycle, or at least a scooter, so I took it out into the hallway, where the floors were relatively clear of debris. Relatively. There was a little more light, too. My "bicycle" was just three or four straps of metal, with a couple of coasters on one end, but I got a running start and jumped on top of it, saddle style. It wasn't made for this, of course, and it instantly slid out from under me when I jumped on it. After a while I got the hang of it well enough to coast along for a few feet at a time. I don't know why I bothered; I could see at the time that it wasn't going to take me anywhere I wanted to go. But where did I want to go? Nowhere.

Garfunkel and Simon

I was big Simon and Garfunkel fan growing up, and was a little disconcerted when my mom told me they were gay. I was 10 or 11 years old at the time.

"Really?" I asked, furrows scrunched together deeply.

"Sure," said mom, "Why else would they break up?"

"Hmm," I said, trying to think of an alternative. "Maybe 'cause Simon writes all the songs?"

"There's nothing wrong with being gay," said mom. "It's considered normal now."

"Hmm," I said, trying to picture Garfunkel all over Simon, or versa vice. I didn't like imagining that very much. "Maybe he just wants to be more like Bob Dylan."

"Gay people get divorces too."

"Maybe they don't want to be gay anymore."

Later I took a closer look at their albums: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, Bookends, and many years later, The Concert in Central Park. I had to wonder. Maybe mom was right.

Jimmy’s Gone or The Scrapbook

As I walked into the diner the first person I saw was Dean, directly facing me from the other side of the nearest table. There were two others with him, both seated by the windows, and Dean pushed the fourth chair out with his foot as a way of inviting me to sit down. I did. I was actually looking for my brother Jimmy, and though I knew there wasn’t much chance of learning anything from Dean and Co. I didn’t have a whole lot else to go on at the time.

“This is David,” said Dean, introducing us, “and his brother Kiernan”

“Hmm.” I answered. “That’s funny; I’m looking for Jimmy.”

“Jimmy’s his brother,” said Dean to his two buddies. “Haven’t seen him,” he said to me. “Didn’t even know he was out. He’s out?”

“Yeah,” I said, “couple of weeks now.” David and Kiernan nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, he always turns up,” said Dean. Maybe a little too genially.

A waitress turned up at my side, asking me what I wanted. I didn’t like the looks of the plates in front of the other three at the table. Watery traces of eggs still on the plates, dingy looking forks with the tines all bent out of shape, and partial pieces of what looked like burnt bacon. Cloudy glasses filled with tepid looking water. The whole place smelled like old food. Greasy.

“Coffee and toast,” I said. “No butter.” I was thinking it’d just be more grease.

“That all you want?” asked the waitress, tapping her pad with the eraser end of the pencil.

“Yeah, that’s it”

She wrote it down on the ticket, nodding, and then left without saying anything else.

“He ain’t a big eater,” said Dean to his friends, “or maybe he doesn’t like the looks of the food.”

“It’s good food,” said Kiernan. “I eat here all the time.”

“He usually likes things a little more upscale,” said Dean, laughing as he nodded towards me. “Not like Jimmy.”

I didn’t like that, but let it pass. I wanted to hear what else he might have to say. The waitress brought me a cup and then poured the coffee at the table.

Dean and I talked for a little while; or rather I sat there and listened to Dean. I thought he might know something; he usually did. He’s also a big talker. Usually it wasn’t much worth listening too, or it was more than I wanted to hear, but he was good at keeping himself informed and right then it was information I wanted. So he talked, going on and on about how bad business was lately, about which I only wondered how he could spend so much time sitting on his ass in a grubby diner shoved in between a warehouse and an old taxidermy shop. I didn’t say anything about that, of course; I was hoping he’d get back around to Jimmy.

The waitress brought my toast. I pushed it off to my left.

When Dean saw how bored I was getting, all of a sudden it was ‘Jimmy this’ and ‘Jimmy that’, but it was all old news, stuff that happened twenty years ago and was of absolutely no use to anybody now. David and Kiernan listened, but then they looked like they were used to listening. Dean was about to start in on another story about school when a gal from a nearby booth walked up and stood next to our table.

“You’re talking about Jimmy?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Dean. “His brother,” he added, nodding at me.

“This is Meghan,” he said to me.

“I worked with Jimmy,” she said, naming a place over on Fourth Avenue South. “He didn’t show up last week. Didn’t call, either. Nobody knows.”

“Isn’t that--” started David, but Dean came in a little louder.

“You’re Jimmy’s type, aren’t you?” he croaked, looking her up and down.

He was right: she had long, dark hair. Big chest. Maybe a little too short, but it wasn’t as if Jimmy was all that particular. This could mean something.

“Yeah, well, he was mine. And yeah, we saw each other a bit. He’d already had some trouble with a girl named Val, who also thought she was his type. But she wasn’t. Val didn’t like finding that out.” Meghan sounded like she was trying to put the mark on this woman Val, but it was she herself who sounded bitter.

“What else you got?” asked Dean, beating me to it. Though when it came right down to it, I still thought Dean knew something himself. From what he wasn’t saying.

“I’m working on a graphic novel about us,” she said.

“A what?” asked Kiernan.

“It’s like a comic book,” I said. “For grown-ups.” As if that’s why he wouldn’t know. “What do mean by ‘us’?” I asked her. “You and Jimmy?”

“More than a comic book,” said Meghan, and reached over to her booth and grabbed a thick pile of construction paper. It was all held together in one of those binders we used to use for school reports. She pulled over a chair from another table and sat down next to me at the end of ours.

“You gonna eat that toast?” asked David.

“Nope.” I answered. “Have at it.” He reached for the jelly.

Opening up her book, I could see that she’d put quite a bit of work into it. Not that it looked all that great. It was more like a scrapbook than anything else. There were polaroids and pencil sketches on thin tracing paper falling out all over the place, and when she opened it up she needed to put her hand over the entire page to keep it all in place. Some of the drawings were in color, some were in black and white. Maybe half of each page was pictures, the other half was dialogue, usually in a seven or eight word column at the bottom center of the page. From the page we spent most of our time with, I couldn’t tell whether the pictures were meant to illustrate the text, or whether the text was meant to describe the pictures, or really even what was supposed to go with what.

I looked at the clock on the wall above our table. The hour and minute hands were attached to the nose of a cartoon lion, as if they were whiskers. A few hours earlier they would have been in the right place, although other lines had been drawn on the face to give you the right idea. It occurred to me then that the clock was a kind of mask - that in fact all clocks look a little like masks. I was so stuck on this idea that when I turned back to Meghan and her scrapbook I realized I’d forgotten to take note of the time.

Oh yeah – ‘a few hours earlier’. It was 11:15.

The scrapbook wasn’t all about Jimmy, or even her and Jimmy. In fact, I don’t remember any pictures of him at all. Maybe he was in some of the dialogue, but I hadn’t taken the time to read that. The whole book seemed dedicated to her own various obsessions, which meant mostly herself. There was one big picture of her that stands out, really dark, so that it was hard to tell where her own black hair ended and the darkness of the surrounding background began. Her face was a little out of focus, but that looked like it was intended. You could tell she was looking down, as if she were sad. Featured so prominently, it seemed to me the image she liked best. Below it were some lines of a poem. But there were other pictures on other pages, some of them in color and a whole lot brighter. There was one, a tall, thin rectangular crop that made her look like she was standing in a doorway. Then I realized she was actually lying on her back. She was covered in seashells and flower petals, artfully arranged. Looking at one stretch of skin below that chest I had to guess she was naked underneath. Shells covered her breasts, but there was what looked to be a rose bud as well. Or was it the edge of her left areola? Maybe even the nipple itself, I really couldn’t tell. Was she trying to reveal something, or was she hiding? And there was so much stuff here; it was enough to drive anyone crazy. No wonder Jimmy left.

I pushed the book back towards her. Not that there was much room left at the table. Dean, David, and Kiernan all looked towards the window. Suspicious.

“I didn’t have time for the words. Nice pictures.”

“Thanks”

“But you haven’t seen him?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“And there's no real reason to lie now, is there?”

“No, I guess not.”

“You think he might be with this other gal?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Sogsour

Sogsour was how we found it, so ‘sogsour’ is what we called it. In its creation there were equal parts chance and intention. There was something of that smell of a car mat after-the-window-has-been-left-open-during-a-rainstorm smell about it. Like the end of a second day in the same, sweaty t-shirt, chilly and damp to the touch, or like an old sponge, from which milk has been inadequately rinsed. And there’s something vaguely porcine about it as well: probably not kosher, if not unclean. Ideally the word would never have needed to be invented at all, but so much is thrust upon us. On second thought, chance probably played a significantly greater role than invention. Of course now I am glad we have it. May it one day attain the authority granted only by children in spelling bees: “an adjective describing any object which is both moist to the touch and sour to smell. S, O, G, S, O, U, R: sogsour.”

Morning Routine, With Variations

After my morning work-out in the gym downstairs I usually make my way back up through the kitchen for a small glass of orange juice, wiping the sweat off my forehead and face with a couple of paper towels on my way back down the hallway. Which Lisa hates, so I hide the bally mess in my waistband as I step into the bedroom in order to grab some fresh clothes. Morning light is now coming over the top the curtains like a row of flying buttresses – one of them propped up on the bedcover by Lisa’s foot. It isn’t necessary to hide anything, I should have realized: Lisa is splayed out on the bed as usual, looking as if she’d fallen onto it from about 10 stories up. She tries to turn over, and at the same time I hear laughter from the bathroom, but I’ve already turned the corner to investigate myself, and she slumps back down into the pillow, face first.

Our three year-old Lisa Jr. is squatting in the shower, playing next to a stack of tiles and support beams I’d dug up to take out a bad section of dry rot. It’s a fairly dank and grimy mess, especially so amidst the pristine whiteness of the tiles. ‘Sorry, honey, but daddy needs to take a shower now,’ I say, throwing the wad of paper into the waste bucket underneath the counter. I reached in to the shower to pull her out by her free arm and had her dangling over the threshold when I heard Lisa groaning from the bedroom. I look over and see that she’s now turned herself over and is propped up somewhat on the pillow. ‘Go ahead and have her shower with you, John. David drew all over her face.’ I check and see and, sure enough, she has a goatee drawn on her chin, with a curlicue mustache spread out across her upper lip.

‘All right,’ I say, dragging it out a little to emphasize that I’m not entirely happy with the situation, ‘you’re off to the showers with me!’ and lift her out of the shower by her forearm as she’s reaching into the pile of tiles with the other hand, and then swing her up to my chest as we walk towards the shower in the bathroom off the main hallway. She takes off her clothes next to the bathtub, kicking her pajama bottoms as far as she can across the bathroom floor. I hoist her up into the bathtub and draw the curtain closed behind me with one hand while I turn on the water with the other.

I pick up Lisa Jr. to hold her head under the faucet, and she’s smiling and laughing as she ducks from the stream a little and holds out her hands for shampoo. ‘What in the world were you two thinking,’ I say, and begin going after the mustache with the loofah. ‘Davey said I had to be the bad guy,’ explains Lisa, plaintively. When I’ve finished I set her down for a quick shampoo and a rinse, and then I turn off the water to let her know that our time together is over. ‘Can you dry yourself off while I shampoo myself?’ I ask her, not really asking. I hardly draw back the curtain as I swing her back out onto the bathroom floor. ‘I need to move fast now.’ ‘Sure, daddy,’ says Lisa Jr., and takes the big step onto the linoleum floor. I pull down a towel and drape it over her head. She giggles, looking and sounding a little like Tinky Winky.

It’s then that I finally peel off my shorts and soap myself down quickly. I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair when I notice something down by faucet. It’s a loose tile, but when I touch it with my finger I manage to dislodge two more right next to it. ‘Damn!’ I say without thinking, and squat down to test the others around them with my fingers. I never was much good at tiling. It’s there in the squatting position, the water pounding my head from above, that I notice a dark shadow to my right, and then the more specific outline of Lisa Jr.’s head. She’s got her hands around her eyes, binocular style, her face pressed into the shower curtain to try and find out what new shenanigans dad is up to in there. ‘It’s nothing, honey, just a little trouble where the water comes out. Go get your mom up, and then I’ll be out in a second.’

Hummingbird

Bauer had held onto the idea of moving back into his childhood home for at least a couple of years. Maybe he’d always had it, or at least since his mother had sold the place when his younger sister had moved out back in 1985. A few weeks before he’d been making one of his annual drives around the old neighborhood during a free afternoon, and when he saw the ‘For Sale’ sign by the mailbox – same post, different box, he’d noticed for who knew how many times – he’d driven straight into the driveway rather than follow the arterial turn down towards the Steinberg and the Conroy houses, still named by him for people who hadn’t lived in the neighborhood much longer than his own family.

The current owner, an accountant who’d bought the house in 1997, had been happy to show him around the home, Bauer never letting on that he’d actually lived there himself twenty years ago. He had the first agent he reached at John L. Scott make an offer on the old home, and when that was refused he decided to just meet the asking price without any bargaining. It wasn’t about money to begin with, so he let the accountant have his way. They closed the sale on a Wednesday and on Friday he was back in the house tearing up the carpet in the accountant’s office, his sister’s bedroom.

He had lunch delivered by an Indian restaurant that hadn’t been there twenty years ago and ate while staring out in silence at the backyard. It was a big yard, bounded on two sides by the edge of a green belt and on the third by a ten foot wooden fence, put in by his father about a year before he’d moved out to separate their yard from the small marijuana crop growing in the neighbor’s. Looking at the backyard gave Bauer an idea, or rather it gave him the will to act on an idea he’d been nursing for years, and so he made a couple of phone calls. The first was to his friend Mike, one of the Conroys who’d lived four houses down on the right. Mike seemed happy enough to hear from him, although he was used to hearing from him every few months, and if he thought it was strange that Bauer had bought back the house he’d grown up in he never let on. They hung up after promising each other a game of golf. This was just a warm-up call.

He was happy to see her, and Laura looked pleased enough to see him, awkward though it might be. After getting the call from him she’d driven all the way down from Everett that very afternoon, which was a lot to do for a first boyfriend she hadn’t seen at either of the reunions, let alone in private, let alone without her husband in tow. She said that she was making a trip to Seattle that afternoon anyway, so it would be easy enough to drop by. He somehow doubted this was true, although he certainly wouldn’t fault her for making something like that up. He offered her some of the Chicken Marsala, but she declined. Without knowing what might be in the fridge he asked if she wanted anything to drink.

“What do you have?”

Looking down at the shelves he was able to say, “Milk…looks like soy milk.”

“Yeah, sounds okay.”

He pulled it out of the fridge and realized there was nothing to pour it in.

“I was just being polite anyway,” she said

“What about some coffee?” he asked, reaching for the thermos he’d brought.

“Sure. With some of that soy milk.”

He poured the milk first, and then added too much coffee. He picked the thermos top out of a beige puddle and handed it to her with a grimace. “Klutz…sorry about that.”

He asked how Steve was, and she said fine – he was getting back from a conference in Los Angeles in the evening, so she couldn’t stay long. Maybe this was true as well, although he wouldn’t fault her for making that up either. After standing in the kitchen exchanging small talk for a few minutes he showed her around the place; first the garage, where his grandfather’s workbench still stood after being inherited by his mother in the early 70’s. It had been brought over from St. Louis by a great-grandfather who had emigrated from South Africa after the Boer War, and since the bench had made another kind of journey through several owners, Bauer felt lucky to have gotten it back. They moved into the living room where as teenagers they had once spent so much time together, looking out at Canadian geese landing in the backyard for a breather on their way south. Once he’d even seen a beaver ambling out of the creek for a twig that seemed to fit its needs. That had been in the fall; now it was May and twenty-five years later, the overgrown garden was in bloom, and neither goose nor gander or beaver was anywhere in sight.

Laura shifted her weight a number of times before walking out of the space where the couch had once been and stood with her back against the far wall, by the fireplace. Only then did he realize how uncomfortable she was in the room, and felt like an oaf for asking her there in the first place.

“Let me show you what I’m doing in the back.”

They walked down the hallway past his former bedroom without a word, but peaked into the main bathroom to make a show of interest. Same crack in the mirror, he noticed for the first time.

“Remember the bathtub full of fish?” she asked, laughing a little. “I thought your mom was going to kill you when the aquarium broke!” This eased the tension somewhat. It was good to hear her laugh, one of the things he’d always enjoyed about her most.

“Yeah, those poor fish. Well, most of them made it.” He saw again a Fringetail flipping and flopping on top of the soaking carpet, gills straining at the air all around with what Bauer had even then sworn was a desperate look in its eyes. “Bulging, even for fish eyes,” the young man had said. Bauer remained silent for a moment.

“Anyway, I’ll show you what I’m working on in the back room – Stephanie’s room. You remember.” This seemed to be a relatively neutral space in the house for Laura, and she seemed a little more at ease. After they had both stood in the entrance to the room for a moment, he walked over by the window where the hardwood floor had been exposed. She stood on top of the underside of the carpet that had been pulled up. In turning it into an office, the accountant had of course changed a number of things, and since she’d never spent much time there in the first place, he proceeded to tell her about some of the changes.

“In the first place, there was a kind of pink shag rug in here when it was Stephanie’s room. Okay for a young girl, I guess, but I can see why he’d want to change it out. And the wallpaper matched the carpet – you can still see some of it in the closet here.”

Bauer opened up the closet door as widely as possible to show her a section of wallpaper hanging dog-eared, right in the center.

“Why is it in the closet?” she asked

“That’s mom for you.”

After a pause she said, “I like the hummingbirds.” The print consisted of pink ribbons running vertically for two-foot stretches, each separated from one another by a flower about the size of his palm. Next to each flower was a tiny hummingbird, its wings nicely blurred and the tail feathers pulled back under the body, so that it looked like a floating bass clef. Even in the the closet it was light enough to see the white throat, the brown feathers of its arched body, and the long beak reaching into the blossoming flower for nectar.

“Looks like you have bees.”

“Huh?”

She nodded towards the window behind him. He turned out of the closet to see what she was motioning towards and saw the huge rhododendron. He remembered the plant when it was young and realized that it must now be about as old as himself. Hanging from one of the branches next to the window was a bees’ nest, nearly a sphere, just the size and shape of basketball and with a surface that looked just as leathery.

“Jesus, you’re right.”

“It looks like the Death Star.” From the way the bees were hovering on the other side of the side of the nest he had a pretty good idea of where the entrance was. What was a wonder was how the rhododendron could support it. He looked down the length of its branch and guessed that in fact it was sagging quite a bit. But it was hard to tell.

“Funny how I missed that during the tour. I think I saw something in the garage for it.”

Without saying anything else he ran out of the room, leaving Laura to contemplate the bees through the protection of the glass. While staring out the window she tried to remember Bauer when he’d been fifteen. He’d been just about as tall has he was now, though certainly thinner, and with much longer hair. He’d been so self-assured for his age. The years hadn’t been overly kind to him, although he certainly had enough money. Something else seemed to have worn on him. He’d been married briefly, then divorced, and had never remarried. The phone call had been right out of the blue. And who buys the house they grew up in? She was staring at the hummingbird in the closet when she’d heard a shout.

She turned and saw Bauer through the window, aiming at the bees’ nest with an aerosol can as long as a night stick. He was leaning to his right with an outstretched arm to get around one of the branches. He waited for her acknowledgement, as if he’d only wanted to make sure that she’d seen him through the glass, and then turned his attention back to the bees’ nest. He pressed down on the button at the top and let loose a stream that was strong enough to force back his hand. The concentration was just as she’d remembered it, and it occurred to her that it was this expression that he’d wanted to be sure she had seen. She understood that he needed to be seen like that and smiled back even after he’d looked away, but she couldn’t help but think of the day the aquarium broke. And of a Fringetail flipping itself over on a soaking wet carpet, its eyes bulging out on either side as if to say, “Help me.”

One Morning At the Mini Mart

On Thursday morning I walked into the food mart of a nearby garage and gas station, carrying an opened container of canola oil margarine. The reason for this must remain somewhat obscure, as an absolutely truthful account of anything must remain an impossible ideal - and yet an account must be given, and if other versions should be rendered later – added, collected, sworn to, whatever – we should all bear in mind that to the first version must always go some special acknowledgement or preference. Perhaps deference is not too strong a word.

‘Why,’ one might ask, ‘must these reasons remain obscure?’

‘Because,’ I would respond, ‘explanations are overrated.’

‘But you’re the one who started this little story,’ one might protest.

‘And now you have interrupted it,’ I would then be forced to interject.

‘But what about the other…’ one might try to add, before trailing off into a hollow whisper surrounded by a veritable vacuum of sound under a look so withering it might have belonged to a pair of twin suns, rather than the steady gaze emanating from the dual orbs illuminating this particular universe.

At any rate, I can say with total certainty that I was holding the lid onto the tub with my two thumbs rather than sealing it shut. Perhaps I was looking for jam, but I emphasize that earlier I had left the lid at least partially open. I say all this to point out that my original intentions were certainly pure. And they remain, at least in their essentials, honest. I also realize that one might possibly assume that the lid just hadn’t been fastened to the tub by an overzealous machine on a speedy conveyer belt. Some of those plastic lids can be fairly tricky affairs, I must admit. I myself have some difficulty with the second largest of my own Simple Snap locking plastic containers. But, I hasten to add, not once have I had the least bit of difficulty with one of those margarine containers. Not once. Not the brand I buy.

So there I was, standing in front of the cooling shelves, or whatever they’re called. You know the kind I’m kind I’m referring to here: slightly refrigerated and yet open. What I mean to say is, without a door. So that something could just fall in there, as it were; dropped perhaps, by someone distracted by one of the many beer advertisements on display, or even just looking over at the register to see how long the line is. But not before noticing with some dismay that there were no other tubs of butter substitute to be had. It was at this point, standing by the open refrigerator bin, that I realized I’d left something at home. Possibly it was a question of whether or not I had enough jam. Or maybe my own refrigerator door had been left ajar. Maybe it was a pot of water boiling on the stove, I really don’t remember. What I did not do was lose my nerve, because I most certainly was not stealing.

I ran out the door, jumped into my car, and drove off to check on the amount of jam remaining, or turn off the stove, or whatever it was that needed taking care of. I might have though about having my toast without butter substitute, but no, damn it, I’d already paid and I intended to have that toast exactly the way I like it. When I’d finished I drove straight back to the garage in only slightly less haste than I’d driven off in moments before. I specifically remember stopping once at a traffic light. I specifically remember looking away from that traffic light to search around the interior of my car. At that moment I wasn’t exactly sure why I did this, but I did. Then, in a flash of insight not unlike those dreams in which one realizes one has walked onto the playground without any pants on, I remembered it all too clearly. I’d left it, dropped it actually, right where I was standing, leaving it amidst the cold cuts and the wine and whatever provisions they always keep in those open refrigerator bins. And since I’d already observed that no other tubs were available, there was but one simple question with which I confronted myself: Would it still be there when I returned?

When I got back to the gas station I parked my car in front of the unlit garage, dark and mysterious as any cave on a deserted island. I paused outside the door before going in, looking through the glass wall at the man behind the cash register, who for the moment was busy with a short line of customers.

And how short was that line?

Well, it was much shorter, actually. Very much shorter indeed.

Rather than explain why I’d come to retrieve a tub of margarine I’d left in his cooling bin I decided I would just dart in and grab it - assuming it was still there - and dart out again while he was helping the next person in line. I went in, I looked down, it was still there. Just as I’d dropped it, with that lid raised and slightly off kilter on one side. I grabbed it, turned to leave, and made straight for the door. The store seemed much more crowded at this point. The door closed behind me, the bells were still ringing in my ears, and then again I looked under the lid to check for contents I already knew were missing. My mistake was in glancing back into the store after I’d made it outside. I looked to see if I’d been noticed, looked back at the man at the register, and then discovered that I certainly had been noticed. He glared back at me with a face that expressed both confusion and anger, and then mouthed the words ‘Get back in here!’ I did. Once inside the door I held onto the tub of margarine with both hands and explained that I’d simply retrieved this tub that I’d accidentally dropped there just a few minutes earlier.

‘How do I know it’s yours?’ he asked, or rather said, pointedly. ‘We have that same brand.’

‘Indeed you do.’ I said, ‘I’ve bought some here many times before, but not this one. Or what I mean is, not this time. It still has fork marks in it.’

This last, desperate, defiant remark despite my deepest shame. And I was ready to show those marks, if circumstances required, and circumstances certainly did require, and already I had taken off the lid and was extending the tub with an outstretched arm when he then made it clear that there was no need for a display, no need for any further discussion at all, and there I was, still holding the tub out at arm’s length as he averted his eyes, even closed them, turning his head slightly, turning it towards the refrigerator bin, and then, then I knew that I had to put my margarine back.

I stood there knowing I’d lost and yet not knowing what to do next. I couldn’t bring myself to return the tub. It was patently ridiculous to leave an open container of butter substitute from which one full third of the contents had already been forked onto someone’s morning toast. There could be crumbs inside. There most certainly were crumbs inside. What would the next customer think? And no, there is no guarantee that next customer would be me. Possibly? Yes. Probably? Maybe. Certainly? Absolutely not.

By this time I’d gotten the attention of the rest of the people there - a couple of customers and a few employees, one beefy garage attendant in particular, wearing a blue muslin jacket and rolling his shoulders over a broom. I didn’t know what to do, I was stuck, and I felt the warm flush of tears rising inside me like a vase under a fast flowing faucet. I realized only then that the clerk wanted me to pay for the tub, and this I simply would not do. I started crying. Whether or not those tears were in the end forced I cannot say, but it is clear to me even now that they were abundantly available. They made not the least little impression on the man behind the counter. The mechanic in blue obviously thought I was being ridiculous, and grinned at me wildly as I slowly walked the margarine back over to the open bin.

I stacked the container on top of some cold cuts. Disease-ridden, most likely. But with that lid merely placed. Not fastened. No one else should suffer what I have suffered.

I turned back towards the people in the mini-mart. Tears of hot shame were still streaming down my cheeks as I faced them, for I wanted them to see me, no longer ashamed of my shame, as if abject weakness might somehow prove victorious in the end. It did not. The clerk, believing his word was truly final, was implacable as ever, already assisting the next customer in line, already heedless of any presence of mine. After glancing over at me once or twice as I stood by the door, the mechanic went back to his simple chore, shuffling his steps as he swept the floor.

I stood there sobbing while everybody looked away.

I stood by the door, and one by one they shuffled past me: a pack of cigarettes was stuffed into a shirt pocket, a candy bar was freed from its wrapper, and a wallet was slipped into a back pocket, accompanied by a dismissive shake of the head. Nobody understood. Everybody left.

Leaving me.

My Conversation With the Checker at Target

Today I was in Target buying razor blades (goatee needs a little upkeep), and I was surprised to find that when she rang me up the total came to exactly $9.00.

"Nine even, huh? Betcha don't see that too often," I said, somewhat blithely.

"No, not too often," said Amy, happy (I like to think) to be stirred from her routine.

"Well, you check out a fair number of people every day... approximately how often?"

"I don't know; two, maybe three times a day."

"How bout that?" I said.

"If that," she said, clearly giving the matter some more thought. "And what's really weird is when you get two, sometimes three people in a row with the exact same total. Not shopping together or anything."

"Okay, that is weird"

"I mean, it's not like it's the same stuff they're buying or anything... really freaky deaky, I'm saying."

"Man, that is wild"

"Yeah huh," she said, nodding while bagging the blades. "Have a nice day!"

"You too, have a good one!" I said, waving.

Yep, really freaky deaky.