Yesterday, my favorite author died. He was not exactly plucked in the flower of youth, being 91 and all. He also hadn’t published anything since shortly after my third birthday. Well, he didn’t ever publish a whole lot of anything, at least not anything I could easily get my hands on. He wrote three books, a collection of short stories, and a novella which appeared in “The New Yorker,” but which I have never found in buyable form. I have been trying really hard not to read anything being written about him right now, not blog posts, not opinion pieces, not even obituaries, because this is a private thing for me. I need a little time to think my own thoughts before I open myself up to a flood of writing about how Catcher in the Rye wasn’t really that great, how Salinger was not really very nice to his wives or his children, or how he was (pick one) overrated, underrated, wrong to become a recluse, right to become a recluse, etc. ad nauseum.
His is the voice I hear in my head when I write, and always has been. Mostly, that’s between him and me.
I started reading Salinger in middle school, stealing ancient copies of Franny and Zooey and Nine Short Stories that had belonged to my uncles. I stole them from my grandmother’s bookshelves, choosing them because they were old, and had funky vintage covers. I loved the short stories first, because they were more accessible; Seymour’s anguish and gentleness in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” slayed me every time. Every frickin’ time. Whenever I had a “free choice” for reading a book and writing a paper in school, I wrote about one of the stories. They had everything: love, resentment, suicide, alienation, irony, total lack of irony…for an adolescent interested in reading and writing, or being alive, it was a goldmine. There is still a copy of the stories, the same copy I stole 34 years ago, next to my bed.
Franny and Zooey took longer; I read it over and over first because I loved the dialogue, and later, because in her confusion about life and love and faith, Franny seemed to me to be a soul mate. I didn’t trouble myself with What it All Meant, I just read it because I loved the language, and the characters. I could have been a member of the Glass Family. I knew my way around their New York apartment, I could have been on “It’s a Wise Child” with them, read the books my older brothers told me to read, thumbed through the scrapbooks affixed to the living room walls. Later, much later, I decided to read The Way of the Pilgrim, the book Franny carries around with her throughout Franny and Zooey. By that time I was twice as old as Franny, old enough to be her mother, and I understood the lure of the beautiful, simple expression of faith and salvation in the book she carried.
Later, my roommate found me a used copy of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, and my Glass Family collection was complete. I had a bound genealogy of a family I knew better than my own, and a ready source of reassurance that I was not the only tightly wrapped, angsty, alienated, person who was not quite what they seemed to be. I wanted to live in New York, ride trains, have a Chesterfield and a Chiffarobe, drink cocktails, smoke cigarettes, and have a background of fame as a quiz kid that I could choose to disregard. I wanted to be able to write like Salinger did, from the pitch-perfect dialogue that rang true to me long after it was theoretically “dated,” to the incredible restraint that allowed the deepest feelings to be portrayed with not a faint whiff of the cliché or the maudlin. He was always the writer I wanted to be, and frankly, I didn’t care whether he was a nice guy, or that he was a recluse, or that he had maybe robbed the world of his gift. I wasn’t going to date him, or even meet him, and it just didn’t matter what he did in his private life.
I read Catcher in the Rye at some point before it was assigned in school, and then again when it was actually required reading; I remember that I liked the book, but that classroom discussion about Themes and Characters just about killed me. It was like a public autopsy for me, that mechanical dissection and parsing of the words and thoughts of someone who was my own. It was too heavy, too regimented, I kept wanting to raise my hand and explain that Salinger, my friend Salinger, had never sat around thinking about Themes of Youth and Alienation. I wanted to tell everybody that it was ironic (!) to be as “phony” about reading his book as Holden Caulfield believed the world to be. I didn’t do it, but I will say that Catcher, the only Salinger I ever had to read, is my least favorite. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have anything to do with the Glass family, but I suspect it has more to do with the classroom post-mortem.
Last fall, having discovered that I could check books out of the Michigan State University library as a “community member,” I decided to read some literary criticism of Salinger’s work. I had just read all of his books again, and (in that way I have of believing my thoughts are invalid unless confirmed by a better informed source) I wanted to see if he really was as great as I thought he was. I do see the problem with that line of thinking, but at the time I was heady with library access, and excited to learn What it All Meant, once and for all. So I started an essay about Freud in Salinger’s work, and within three sentences I felt as if I had bitten into a wormy apple. It was wrong, not what I expected, another example of taking apart everything mystical and beautiful in order to expose…what some other guy thought. I sampled other essays in several books, learned that Salinger wasn’t a really nice guy, learned that he had a long relationship with a young writer who wrote a terrifically unflattering book about it, and learned that he was erratic about religions and diets and philosophies. I took the books back to the library.
So yesterday, when Salinger died, it didn’t really change anything between us; our relationship was carried out entirely between his books and my brain. It seemed like everyone had an awful lot to say about his life, his writing, what they liked, what they didn’t; I think I saw 10 essays in different forums about why various people didn’t really like Catcher in the Rye. All I could think of was Holden, or Franny, observing the commotion and finding it to be a perfect example of what’s wrong with the world: phonies lining up to get a piece of the Big Thing of the Day. Some great writing and thinking, but mostly navel-gazing, snark, and/or intrusive and salacious glimpses into a personal world that Salinger worked very hard to keep personal. He wasn’t Brad Pitt, for God’s sakes.
So it didn’t change anything. I’m sorry that the man who could speak to me across generations isn’t in the world with me any longer, but everything that he gave me is still around, from the four books that are always with me, to the standards in my head about what counts as “good writing.” If there’s a heaven, I’m not sure he’s there. I’m not sure it matters.
[Note: this is the second part of "Andrew's Apartment" and can be read separately, but they work better together].
My roommate in East Hall was a “townie” who had graduated at the top of her class from Oberlin High School, headed to a prestigious womens’ college on the East coast, and transferred to Oberlin for reasons never entirely clear to me. Her family was conservative politically and socially, and reminded me of characters from a 1950s sitcom; her father with a flat top haircut and large glasses with black plastic frames, her mother in a dress or what could only be called “slacks,” reading glasses on a chain around her neck, sensible shoes and no makeup. In the early 1980s her parents were a trope; going to their house for dinner was like turning a corner and finding oneself at the home of Aunt Bee’s dowdy, bookish neighbors.
Betsy, their daughter, my roommate, was smart, and funny, and earnest. A good friend, a hard worker, a runner, she washed her face every night with Noxema and a washcloth, and returned to her half of the room smelling of eucalyptus and virtue. I knew she was a better person than I would ever be, and while part of me slipped easily into our domestic routine of breakfast together, dinner together, mutual respect for quiet study and Saturday nights eating blueberry whole wheat doughnuts from Gibson’s and maybe drinking a little “near beer” at the Rathskeller, I sometimes longed for something darker. I often longed for something darker. I smoked, I pined for gay men, I bought every black, vintage garment I could afford, and still I knew that beneath it all I was really the same kind of nice girl in jeans and a Fair Isle sweater that Betsy was. I loved her, I really did, but I also had the need to make myself separate, as if she were my surrogate parent there in the cornfields of Ohio. Every good thing she did made me want, just a little, to drink straight gin until I threw up, and have sex with strangers, and smoke unfiltered Camels. Unfortunately, no one was offering me any of those options.
When Andrew invited me to the “Come As Your Favorite Whore” party at his apartment over the Taproom, I was ecstatic. Then terrified. We were in Modern American Novels, Andrew and I, and on my other side was Max, the guy who lived across the hall from me, a tall, lanky English Major type who would eventually become an artist of some reknown. Professor Gammon rustled papers at the podium, and I asked Andrew what one wore to such a party.
“Oh,” he answered vaguely, “I don’t really dress for it…lots of drag, the girls dress up in fishnets and heels…you know.” I had no idea. Honestly, I did not have a favorite whore; I wasn’t sure I had ever actually seen one, even when I lived in Boston. Sweetheart that he was, Andrew saw the panic in my face. “It’s okay, doll; you’ll figure it out. Borrow. Borrow from your roommate, and look at all your stuff. You’ll find things.” On my other side, Max snorted.
“Her roommate is, like, the dullest person in the entire world.” He said as Gammon cleared his throat. Half of my brain was on the lecture, he was talking about A Modern Instance by William Dean Howells, I was thinking about my clothes, what I owned that could be worn by a whore, what did whores wear, was Betsy really that boring, if she was really that boring, did people like Max think I was just like her, but no, because if he thought that he wouldn’t have said she was boring in front of me, so clearly, CLEARLY he was saying that she was dull but I was not, and that felt so good that I warmed, and then so bad and disloyal that I felt a stone grow in my stomach. I loved her, I loved the cozy, safe warmth and predictability of having a best friend living in the other half of my room. Couldn’t I also have fishnets, and gin?
The night of the Come As Your Favorite Whore party was cold and windy. I had cobbled together an outfit which included a black skirt rolled at the top to make it short, a black cardigan unbuttoned low enough to show cleavage, and black tights with a couple of holes in them. I didn’t have high heels, and could not have walked across the cobbled Quad in them anyway, so I wore black flats. I had dangly earrings, teased hair and what I believed to be a whorish jangle of makeup bought cheap at the Ben Franklin – red lips, blue eyelids, glittery pink cheeks. Betsy, about to be abandoned by me on a Saturday night, helped me get ready. I noticed that she looked bemused as she cut a little hole in my stocking, and tried to hide the giant bulge at my waist caused by rolling the top of the skirt. Maybe I was my favorite pregnant whore. I was mostly terrified; I had not been back to Andrew’s apartment since the day in the fall when I had met Amy and found her mouton jacket. He said she had specifically told him to invite me. I could not imagine what this party would entail, and if I would know what to do. I chain smoked which, oddly, Betsy didn’t mind; her father was a smoker and she said it reminded her of home.
With my vintage tweed overcoat over my whore ensemble, I left the safe plastic lounge chairs and carpeted halls of East, and headed across the Quad into town, to the Taproom. I could hear it from the street, and I could see silhouetted in the second floor windows, bodies moving. Walking, dancing, bottles in hands. I had very little experience with parties; I had avoided them in high school, there hadn’t been any during my brief tenure at the Conservatory. At Oberlin I had hung out with groups in dorm rooms or lounges, but I had never been to a party off campus, and certainly not with the Persons in Black, who wielded all psychic power in my 20-year-old universe. I pushed the buzzer, and was allowed in. I smelled smoke, beer, perfume, sweat, wet wool, burnt coffee, and old books; as I climbed the stairs, I heard music I didn’t know, loud, percussive, a singer with a flat, nasal voice. At the top of the stairs there were people everywhere, seemingly impenetrable, and I could not see a face that I knew. No Andrew, no Amy, not even any of the roommates. I started to push my way in between a tall, beautiful man in drag, and a small, pale girl wearing what seemed to be a bikini and white vinyl boots. I stepped on her foot.
“Ouch!” she said, both of them looking at me as if I had only recently been removed from the bottom of a shoe. “Fucking look where you’re going.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. This was not a good start, not a good start, not a good start. To my right I saw a guy I knew from the radio station, not a friend, exactly, he being a spinner of Social Distortion and Circle Jerks, and I being a spinner of Mozart, but he knew who I was. He sat in a large armchair with a Sherlock Holmes pipe in his hand, not in costume as far as I could tell; on his lap was a famous Person in Black, granddaughter of a prominent art gallery owner in Manhattan. She had a flapper bob with straight bangs and a fluff of black curls breaking out at the end of a smooth curve of hair, her skin was bloodless pale, her eyes heavily rimmed with black and her lips filled in with matte burgundy. She wore fishnets and impossibly high heels, and a small, tight black dress with no sleeves and a neck that plunged down and was gathered around a metal ring between her breasts. She was staring into space, and did not look at me, still wearing my coat, as I approached. “Nick,” I said, “have you seen Andrew?” He looked at me and squinted, as if focusing.
“Andrew….?”
“Andrew who lives here. He invited me, I can’t find him, I don’t know anybody here, and-”
“Haven’t seen him.” He took a puff from his pipe and buried his face in the black curls. Dismissed, I looked around, wishing desperately that I could move away from Nick and his lady friend after having been completely and totally snubbed, but unwilling to give up my inch of floor space until I had a clear plan. Finally, finally I saw Andrew at the kitchen table, talking to Amy. I maneuvered across the room, bumping into arms and bodies when I looked down to avoid stepping on feet. When I got close enough, Andrew could see me, and beckoned me over.
“Annie!” he was genuinely delighted. “Let’s put your coat in my room.” I followed him; the sea of black, patchouli-scented cigarette puffers parted for him as it had not done for me. An arch of irony formed. In his room, I took off my coat and modeled my attempt at whoreishness. He smiled, benevolent as always. “You look absolutely cheap” he pronounced. “Let’s get you a drink.” I followed him back out into the party, silently pleading with him not to leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me. The kitchen table was set up as a bar, covered with bottles of vodka, gin, mostly clear things, littered with plastic cups, and featuring a large, clear glass bowl filled half way with a variety of pills. They were quite beautiful, actually, like candy. in the corner was a keg, and sitting in a chair at the table was Amy, resplendent in a too-tight, bright blue dress with sequins and matching eyeshadow. “Amy, you remember Annie, right?” Andrew asked, gesturing to indicate that I should pick something to drink.
“Uhm, vodka and orange juice would be good” I said, smiling at Amy. We did, after all, have a bond; I was her “favorite friend of Andrew’s.”
“Why’d he come to my fucking party if he was bringing her, piece of shit fucker” she mumbled into her hand. I looked at Andrew, alarmed.
“The guy she likes came with his girlfriend” he explained. “Amy, baby, come with us and see who’s here” he tried, touching her bare, pink arm. Tears started to run down her cheeks, carrying with them a black trail of mascara.
“You’re always so nice to me, always so nice.” She stood, wobbling on pointy-toed black heels, and stepped towards Andrew. “You too,” she said, finally looking at me, “you’re so nice too. You’re Andrew’s friend. and you are soooooo nice to me. Why did he bring her, mother fucking sonofabitch?” There really wasn’t an answer to this; I stood by Andrew, he held Amy, Persons in Black, in drag, in fishnets, in clouds of smoke, broke around us like waves as they moved in for another drink, or to fish a pill out of the bowl. No one spoke to us, even the roommates, who appeared to pull another bottle out of a cupboard or pitch a few discarded cups into the trash; they smiled at Andrew, he smiled back, he kept patting Amy’s sequined back like he was burping a baby. I wasn’t really sure this was fun, I was pretty sure it wasn’t, I was under-dressed, anonymous, sad for Amy, thinking I would like either to get out and go back to my room or be drunk enough that it all seemed normal. I took a long drink of my vodka and made a second cup full.
“Can we do something for her?” I whispered to Andrew. He shook his head. He reconsidered.
“Her sister’s here, somewhere – if you can find her, maybe we can get her into bed.”
“How will I know which one is her sister?”
“She’s wearing a fur coat, a long one, with a black dress under it and black boots. Her name is Patty.” I noticed the black smudges on the front of his white button down shirt. Andrew was not dressed as his favorite whore; he was dressed as a tax accountant on a Saturday.
Back in the throng, I looked for a fur coat; it seemed that every time I was in that apartment I was looking for fur. I saw more men in drag than I had ever seen, noticing, absently that many of the men were far prettier than the women. It occurred to me that all of these people seemed to have, at their disposal, complete and upscale wardrobes of hooker-wear. I did not know a single person who owned fishnet stockings, a sequined dress or white vinyl boots. I was pretty sure I didn’t know a man who owned womens’ clothes, much less a whore outfit, but I didn’t know for sure. It was too much, too fast; wasn’t there middle ground between Betsy’s Noxema and these arch, privileged aliens?
I saw a flash of brown fur and pursued it, pivoting sideways when I need to get though a tiny opening in the crowd. I was getting better at it. The wearer of the coat fit Andrew’s description, and resembled Amy on a smaller, more slender scale. She was standing with her back to the wall, with a tall, nice looking guy in checkered slide-on shoes leaning down towards her. “Patty?” I said. She looked over, clearly annoyed.
“Yeah?”
“Um, I’m a friend of Andrew’s, and he said to find you because Amy’s having kind of a bad time.” She rolled her eyes.
“And Amy is not having a bad time exactly when….?” She took the cardigan-ed arm of the tall guy. “I’ll be back.” She turned towards me, turned back to him, grabbed the front of his sweater with both hands and pulled him down for a kiss. I willed myself invisible. “Okay,” she sighed, stepping away from him as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “where is she?” I led her into the kitchen, where Amy was back in a chair, a cup in her hand. “What’s the problem?” Patty asked Andrew.
“Paul’s here. He brought his girlfriend.” She rolled her eyes again.
“Jesus fucking Christ. He doesn’t even really like her, either; he’s in love with Michael Porter.” She squatted in front of Amy until their eyes were level. “Amy, babes, you’ve got to stop drinking. You know you can’t drink with the meds. I don’t want to have to tell Daddy again.” Amy looked away like a baby avoiding a spoon full of Gerber squash. “You don’t want to have to go home, do you?” Amy turned her face back.
“No, but I’m so fucking sad, he brought that girl.”
“I know, babes, I know…what’s in that cup?”
“Water” answered Andrew. “We made a deal that she could have a real drink in a bit if she just had water for now.” He winked at Patty, barely perceptible.
“K. Let’s get her into bed.” Patty rose and walked to one side of Amy, Andrew to the other. Amy smiled at me as they took her arms, licking a gray tear from the corner of her lip.
“Where’r my manners. You want something?” She nodded towards the bowl of pills, “I like the blue ones. Have a blue one.” They were raising her, gently, and she turned back to me as they led her from the room. “You found my mouton!” I smiled at her, feeling wet heat stinging the back of my eyeballs.
“I’ll be right back,” Andrew told me, as they walked her, slowly, down the hall towards her room. I was an island as they swirled around me, all of the cool people, only briefly deterred by my inexplicable presence between their lithe, ironic selves and the bottles and pills on the table. I wondered, briefly, what a blue one would do for me. Andrew came back, looking tired. “I’m so, so sorry” he said, “she just takes things really hard.”
“Is she okay now?” He smiled at me, his eyes so blue, with crinkles at the corners, like everything good in the world. I loved him so much, I was so terribly sad that he was gay, I felt terrible about Amy, I wanted to go home.
“She’ll be all right. We’ve done this before. Patty put a fan on in her room so the noise isn’t as bad, and she’s sitting in there for a little while.” I nodded.
“Andrew, thanks so much for inviting me, but I think I’ve got to go back to the dorm.” He made a funny, crumple-lipped face that conveyed regret, but no surprise.
“I’ll get your coat. Hang on.” Alone in the room, waiting, I stepped towards the bowl of pills and put my hand in, enjoying the feeling of the tablets and capsules under my sweaty palm, between my spread fingers. Between my thumb and forefinger I grasped a blue pill, and held it as Andrew came out with my coat, helped me into it, and kissed me on the cheek. I slipped the pill into my pocket and threaded my way out of the kitchen, down the stairs, and out into the dark, cold and empty street.
Photo Credit
Blue Pill:http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/images/bluepill.jpg
Yesterday I wrote about one family’s failure to produce an adequate Animal Cell Made of Food for a seventh grade science class. (That would be my family; I just find a little comfort in distancing myself from it all). In the comments on that post, a wise man, the parent of children who are not yet of school project age, raised an interesting question. Why do teachers assign projects? He suggested that it might, perhaps, be for purposes of generating greater parental involvement.
My reflexive answer to the question is that they assign projects because they are inadequately medicated psychopaths who hate parental figures, and unconsciously seek to kill them over a period of years by forcing them to run out and buy poster board, markers, glue dots, candies, string, sugar cubes, beads, binders, foam letters, yarn, wiggly eyes, ball bearings, Pilgrim hats, plaster of Paris and papier-mache, or the ingredients to make An Ethnic Food, A Healthy Food or Something the Indians Ate. I have also considered the possibility that teachers are receiving some kind of kick-back from Michael’s, Joanne Fabric, and/or Office Max. I know that I am not alone in my dark thoughts; other parents (mostly mothers) have been commiserating with me on this topic since first grade, and a recent episode of “The Middle” focused partly on the efforts of an exhausted, working mom to help her youngest child complete elaborate school projects that he had failed to tell her about until the night before they were due. All over America. mothers nodded their aching heads in recognition.
I am not a teacher hater, by the way; both of my parents were teachers. My father, a college professor, had little occasion to demand the creation of “projects,” and my mother taught English in an urban district where she was well aware that many parents had neither the cash nor the time to supervise tri-fold posters about Flowers for Algernon at the end of a long day. Both of my parents were aghast when, in the ninth grade, I informed them that I had to make a diorama about The Old Man and the Sea for English class. Their suggestion, based on their collective years in the classroom, was that I ask the teacher if I could just write a paper instead. I asked, and was refused; the teacher informed me that “there had to be a way for the students who had trouble writing papers to get a strong grade during the semester.” At the time, I grumbled and threw something together involving a shoe box, a doll and a gummi shark. In retrospect, I see that part of the answer about why teachers assign projects may lie in that experience.
We have also seen many good and useful projects over the years, and I do not believe that any good teacher assigns such things without care and consideration about the purpose of the work, and accommodations for children whose parents are not likely to be willing or able to assist. Sam’s third grade teacher, a model of energy and organization, assigned several projects, but each one came with a clear set of instructions and a rubric so that we knew whether we had done everything that was asked of us. Most involved nothing more than a large piece of paper (generally provided), a set of colored pencils, and some focus. These were projects that an eight-year-old could complete entirely on his own, and while there was more parental intervention at our house because I had the time, and Sam doesn’t like to draw or color, that was my choice. He could easily have done his own, unaided “best” and gotten an acceptable grade. My older nephew showed me a project that involved creating an image of water in various forms; he was working on a beautiful illustration involving an airplane on a runway, precipitation and de-icing. He was working on his own, he was deepening his understanding of the substantive material, and he was (I think) enjoying the process.
I also know that the Animal Cell project that bedeviled us is assigned elsewhere, and used far better as a teaching tool. My niece was assigned the same project in a neighboring district, and apparently understood and completed it without a hitch. A friend (herself a teacher) has told me that her children have all done the project in their district, but that it was done in the science lab during class time; this format relieves parents, reduces drama and inequality, and neatly preserves the point of the project, which is to help students understand the composition of an animal cell.
That is, I think, the main goal of a school “project.” Parental involvement may be a collateral benefit (and I would love to know from any teacher-readers whether that is even a consideration), but it seems that the Big Idea is to give students an opportunity to deepen their understanding of a book, an historical event or a scientific process in ways that take more time or materials than a classroom teacher can allow, to assure that a student has a grasp of material that allows her to present it in a different context, and to create something that can be shared with other students through display or presentation. Also, based on my Old Man and the Sea experience, I can allow that projects of a more artistic and/or mechanical nature are a boon to students who are perfectly capable of understanding the material, but struggle with tests and papers. Although I hated it at the time, I now think that there is more than one valid way to communicate ideas, and that it doesn’t hurt anyone to think outside the box.
So, I’ll give you that there are reasons for projects, that they can be great experiences, and that in the hands of a skilled educator they have enough purpose and value to outweigh the aggravation of driving around looking for macaroni that is the right shape for the minarets on a 3-D model of a palace. I will also admit that, if I am too involved in my kid’s projects because I am concerned about the fact that he cannot draw anything, procrastinates and is generally work-avoidant, that is not the teacher’s problem, but my own. In general, over the years, there have been few projects that were not assigned far enough in advance to allow adequate preparation and materials-gathering, and that could not, really, have been done by an unassisted kid. Loveable? No. Doable? Absolutely.
There are still some issues, though. For a project to have any usefulness beyond busy work and parental aggravation, there should be a crystal clear rubric. I learned yesterday that one of the students in Sam’s science class, who had designed and decorated a beautiful animal cell in cake form had lost 10 points because, in the absence of an actual, written assignment rubric, she had made tiny flags to mark the parts of the cell represented by her cake. The same fate befell at least two other (good) students who believed they were enhancing their finished products by marking the cell parts, but were marked down by the teacher on the basis that such labeling was essentially a “cheat” when it came time to present their project to the class. There should always be a clear outline of expectations, of what one has to do to receive an “A,” and (in this day and age) if the school uses an online grading and assignment system, the assignment and the rubric should be readily available during the time between the giving of the assignment and the due date.
There should also be the possibility of allowances and special dispensations based on family situation. I am pretty darned sure that Sam’s third grade teacher knew exactly whose parents were unwilling and or unable to buy extra things or spend hours planning and assembling a model of the Pentagon made out of bottle caps. Although the much-hated Animal Cell Project was issued with a directive to use “only food that you already have in the house,” who are we kidding? Do you have, right now, in your refrigerator and cupboards, suitable ingredients to construct a decent model of an animal cell that could be transported and hold up for three hours in a school locker? I did not, unless one could be constructed using raw meat, crudites and exotic spices.
There are good reasons, maybe even great reasons for a teacher to assign a project that requires completion outside of school. The fact that the project is part of the curriculum, included in a textbook, or “has always been done that way” is probably not a good enough reason. I will throw my heart and soul into any project that is explained thoroughly, administered fairly and based on a palpable desire to connect students and subject matter. Otherwise, I’m back to gluing gummi sharks to a shoe box and rolling my eyes.
[Note: if you have landed here because you are searching the internet for pages actually related to "humans," "cells" or actual science, you have made a terrible mistake. Hit the "back" arrow, and Godspeed].
It started as such things often do, with a casual remark. As I made change for sweaty, hormonally-scented tweens at the Middle School Activity Night, my friend Patty asked “what we were doing for the cell project.” This meant that there was a project, that her daughter had told her about the project a week ago, that my son was never going to tell me about the project, that it was a big deal, that we were not prepared, and that I would never get the whole story no matter what I did. I had been down this road before.
“I guess I don’t know about it, yet” I answered, hoping that Patty would save me as she had before. She, after all, has a child who is tidy of handwriting, aware of assignments, aware that she has a school-issued planner…she has a child who is a daughter.
“They have to make a human cell out of food. That’s really all I know.” This didn’t help. As I dispensed slices of pizza and unfurled dollars fished from tight jeans pockets, I imagined sending in a pepperoni pizza. The crust could be the cell wall, the sauce the endoplasmic reticulum, the cheese and pepperoni could be all that other stuff. All I could remember was mitochondria, “the power house of the cell.” The pizza could be delivered to his third hour science class, and it would be just like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” I could have my own Spicoli.
Mr. Hand: Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?
Jeff Spicoli: Learning about Cuba, and having some food.
On Facebook, a lively conversation began among the mothers of the putative cell makers. Many had not received the assignment in written form, many found it ridiculous, no one was sure how the finished product was meant to get to school and stay safe until Science class, it was a problem that the teacher (not widely loved) had failed to post it online with other assignments. I sighed in relief. Everyone was in the same boat, and I could just do my best, or, rather Sam could do his best, and we could relax. In the course of the Facebook conversation my sister-in-law posted a link to instructions for making a human cell out of Jell-O. It looked perfect; candies suspended in the gelatin to give a 3-D picture of all of those Golgi Bodies and something-somes. I abandoned Spicoli and the pizza, and told Sam The Plan. We would go out and purchase all of the ingredients on the lengthy list, and then make the thing the night before it was due. For good measure, I made him recite the parts of a human cell, which he was able to do. I was smugly pleased.
The day before the assignment was due, I was a perfect storm of righteous indignation. Sam had told me that this teacher cared more about how things looked than anything else; his “Science Rap” had been down-graded because, although the group knew the relevant material, the music was not properly synced. I muttered to myself about how real learning was the important thing, and what about all of the parents who were living on Food Stamps and couldn’t afford extra food to make a human cell project? What about the parents who couldn’t drive their kids to school so that their projects didn’t get destroyed? How noble was I, going out after work to spend quite a lot of money on Jell-O and an assortment of candy just to please some out-of-touch teacher? I was on fire.
When we got home from the store, I made the Jell-O. The directions didn’t say how much Jell-O, only that it should be “light colored” so that the candy cell parts would show up. We made the pineapple gelatin we had bought, and it didn’t look like nearly enough to hold all of the requisite candy in suspension. We added the box of raspberry gelatin we had cadged from my sister-in-law, and it got very dark. While we let it set for an hour, I looked at my computer. The tide had turned. The children whose mothers had complained were making elaborate, thoughtful concoctions, decorating cakes, working alone or with their parents, making masterpieces. Sam was playing X-box while our too-dark bag of Jell-O failed to thicken in an hour, in an hour and a half, in two hours. I put it in the freezer.
At two hours, after it was already pretty much bed time, we began to follow the instructions about inserting various candies into the Jell-O to simulate the parts of the cell. In order to do this, we had to punch a hole in the Ziploc holding the Jell-O and suspend it from the knob of a kitchen cabinet. We figured that once everything was assembled, we would refrigerate it over night and then move the solid mass into a fresh, un-punctured bag for travel and display purposes. Sam read off the candies and handed them to me so that I could push them down into the mushy, red Jell-O. Immediately, anything with a candy coating began to run; the M & M’s became a smear of opaque darkness, the Skittles blanched white and left a trail of dirty-looking Jell-O. The Airhead Extreme Golgi Body uncoiled immediately after being pushed into the depths, and my fingers left tunnels that did not seem to fill back in. The death blow was administered when I tried to insert the “nucleus,” which was a peach cut in half to reveal the pit. The directions called for a “plum or other stone fruit,” but there are no plums in Michigan in January, and I was damned lucky to have found a peach. It was, however, far too large, it displaced everything else and I had to pull it out, leaving a worse mess. “We could use an olive,” I suggested, rummaging in the refrigerator.
“But I’m supposed to be able to eat this after! I’m not eating Jell-O with candy and a green olive in it. Gross.”
I reminded myself that it was the learning that mattered, not the beauty of the project. I renewed my righteous indignation at having to do this ridiculous thing. I took a deep breath.”Okay,” I said evenly, “get me a Sharpie.” I drew a large black dot in the center of the biggest jawbreaker I could find, and pushed it into the middle of the “cell.” “Don’t eat that one” I told him.
It looked as if someone had eaten a great deal of candy and then vomited it, along with a pint of blood, into a Ziploc. It was unspeakable.
It did not ever “set,” really, and the next morning I sent Sam off to school on the bus with his disaster, secure in the knowledge that we had done our best, that he knew his stuff, and that no one could expect anybody to spend a lot of time, money and psychic energy on something so utterly ridiculous. On Facebook, the conversation continued; everyone else had driven their project to school. I sent the teacher a crisp but polite e-mail informing her that Sam had done his best, that I had done my best, that we had planned well and executed timely, but that I certainly hoped that she recognized that the content was much more important than the perfection of the finished product.
Around 11:30, we received a text from Sam. “Well that was a fale.” He came home that afternoon and told us that everyone else had come in with a better project, and that he was so thrown by the fact that his was so terrible that he was unable to remember all the parts of a cell. He had tried to make a joke out of it to save face; the teacher had told him to “sit down.” I received an equally crisp reply from the teacher telling me that the appearance of the completed project was not part of the grade rubric, but that because Sam had not correctly listed all parts of the cell, his grade was…bad.
Sam’s semester grade did not change; it was okay to start with, and it still is. I am a bad mother, and I understand that, going forward, I need to be more on top of these projects and to keep up with the Joneses, a group that apparently includes everybody but us. I would not, however, trade for anything in the world the fun I had with Sam making that disastrous bag of garbage, or how hard we laughed when we decided that it looked like nothing so much as a Ziploc full of vomit. Lessons learned.
Photo Credits:
Fast Times pizza delivery: http://www3.whig.com/whig/blogs/ihavealottoshare/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/123046__fast_times_l.jpg
About a month ago, I wrote a post about the fact that the lead singer of the band “Kings of Leon” had been quoted as saying: “[t]hat woman in mom jeans who’d never let me date her daughter likes my music? That’s f–king not cool.” My post was a letter addressed to the singer, Caleb Followill, explaining my belief that a real artist is trying to express something, and that the success of that gesture, not the relative “coolness” of the audience is the significant benchmark. I neither expected, nor received a reply from Mr. Followill.
I did, however, get numerous comments from devotees of the band, haranguing and pleading with me, in their dogged and semi-literate way, to understand context, coolness and youth, all of which had clearly escaped my gnarled clutches. After a few rounds of this, I found myself sitting at my computer, listening to Vampire Weekend and wearing Chuck Taylors, feeling that I was a complete and total fraud. It seemed that if someone came into the house and started peeling a little bit at the top of my head, the entire facade of “hip middle age” would unzip and fall away, revealing…what? A toothless crone with a cane and an AARP card tucked into her largely vacated brassiere? A retro mom with roller “set” hair and a nice tweed skirt listening to Lawrence Welk? When did I stop being as young as I feel, and start being “older,” if not actually “old?”
As a sensitive type, I am keenly aware of the perils of mutton dressed as lamb. I do some things to avoid appearing dowdy – I color my gray hair, I avoid wearing orthopedic footwear and shapeless pastel sweatsuits emblazoned with screen prints of adorable kitties – but I promise that I am not poring over Teen Vogue trying to figure out whether I would look cuter in the peasant mini or the schoolgirl kilt with my new Uggs. I do not run to iTunes to download Brittney’s latest, mostly because I don’t particularly like her music, but I do keep an eye out for new music* from several indie bands that I enjoy. I read all of the Twilight books, and I have been known to watch “Gossip Girl,” but I also read and watch far more complex offerings. I want to know about Skype, Twitter, Tumblr, sexting, and Limewire. None of this means that I secretly believe myself to be sixteen again. It means I like to know stuff, like I always did.
I also remember the need to separate from my parents (particularly my mother), and the importance of asserting that I was Young and Free and understood Gary Neuman and The Tubeway Army. I do not try to be a peer to my son or his friends; mostly I find 13-year-olds to be as repulsive as I found them when I was one of them. My interest in cutting edge culture is not about being young, it is about being alive. I am even capable of groaning audibly in a car filled with boys when that idiotic song about “Fireflies” comes on the radio, affirming to them, to my son, and to myself that I am not glomming on to their music in some desperate attempt to have a second youth, that I still have my responsible mom credentials and am not afraid to use them.
None of my choices come from some inchoate desire to be young and cool; it has been my belief, as I aged, that I was developing a good sense of who I am and what I really like, and that I was free to pick and choose from everything the world offered. Part of the “good sense” meant that I knew that I didn’t look good in clothes designed and cut for teenagers, and that it would be unattractive for me to insist on shopping at Abercrombie. (Aside from the fact that the clothes are apparently designed to fit exhibitionists who eschew solid food). I am aware that “getting down” while I am chaperoning a middle school dance would have mortifying consequences, and I limit myself to the most discreet tapping of my foot behind the concession window. I know that my Chucks make me happy, but also do nothing to lengthen my legs in boot cut jeans; I rarely wear them outside the house. I have felt free, for many years, to create playlists that include Van Morrison, Beatles and Muse, to work something trendy into an outfit, to work with a cross-generational palette when creating my daily life.
Aside from the odd creaky knee or the shock of an impending 20th high school reunion, I don’t feel old, and other people my age don’t seem old. People older than I am, from Meryl Street to Helen Mirren seem to me to be beautiful, and without a discernible season that has passed. Why do I have to slip quietly into that good night of old age, to be seen and not heard, to stop looking for anything new, and to admit that I don’t understand these newfangled songs, or the allure of a nicely looped scarf?
Yesterday, another commenter vented his spleen on my “Kings of Leon” post. His alphabetical summation of my failings concluded with this one: “[a]nd finally, ‘d)’: you’re only young once. Clearly you miss spent your spell in the younger years.” Overlooking my young critic’s inability to spell, I felt sad, and tired and old. I felt like I had only just come in from standing on the porch and yelling “hey you kids, get off of my lawn!” I felt judged, and categorized and pathetic about my most recent iTunes downloads, my long hair, and my secret desire to have a tattoo. We are “only young once,” and I, a very serious and somewhat stodgy young person, had wasted that time which I would never get back. I was now consigned to some middle-aged hell in which I ranted about hip-hop “not being music,” and had trouble programming my cell phone. It seemed that the only appropriate role for me at 47 was “seen and not heard,” accepting of cruel and short-sighted opinions if they came from a Rock Star, and essentially, culturally, dead. I might as well put on my sweater set and pearls and complain about that Elvis and his nasty dancing. (And, by the way, why did any of these people think I had bought a copy of Spin in the first place, given my total inability to understand…anything? Did they think that I was planning to request legislation mandating separate “Rock Star Bathrooms,” and required a good, current list of those prospectively banned from sharing my commode?)
Here’s the thing, though, and I think it’s a real and important thing. What bothered me most about the “mom jeans” comment was not that it was age-ist (although it was). What bothered me, and what was missed by all of Mr. Followill’s ardent supporters, was that his comment was viciously unkind in a way that I dislike in any context. Although less dramatic, it is the kind of flip, judge-y dismissal that I associate with racism, sexism, religious conflict, and anything else that divides groups of people into “us” and “them” and permits free-flowing potshots at “bad them.” I can allow youth to engage in the necessary and painful process of individuation and separation; every generation needs, in some way, to have their own revolution and to re-create the world that they will inhabit (until their own children make them redundant and take over). I cannot accept that it has to be accomplished with cheap shots and cruelty. Vitriol might more appropriately be directed at the government, at large banks, or at a troubled educational system than at middle-aged moms who seek a little happiness by listening to “new” music instead of Billy Joel.
I will not disappear. I will not apologize for my age, or my taste, or my need to speak up when I feel wronged. I am not ready to lower my standards and accept glib cruelty as “the way things are, now,” or to become an inadvertent proxy for the Repressive Older Generation. I am not ready to be old, much less dead at the age of 47.
Photo Credit:
Old Lady: http://www.sequenza21.com/s21%20Little%20Old%20lady.jpg
It has been a long, long time since there’s been a restaurant in this town that was the automatic choice for a celebration, or a sophisticated out-of-town guest. Two of the most adventurous restaurants in the area have closed, leaving Dusty’s, which is the “go-to” for many people, but which I have honestly found uneven at dinner service. There are lots and lots of chain restaurants, some, like Mitchell’s are quite good, but particularly in this economy, I’d always rather give my money to the local guy. There are also some brilliant sushi restaurants with attractive setups, including Sansu and Maru, but many people don’t eat sushi (more’s the pity) which removes them from contention for many occasions. Indian, Chinese, Ethiopian, Middle Eastern and Thai food are all well represented in these parts, but mainly in the form of laminated table joints where the food is great, but no one would take visiting relatives for a family dinner. (Well, not my visiting family, anyway). Beggar’s Banquet is a sentimental favorite, but I have had so many badly cooked meals there in the past couple of years that I would not be willing to take a chance on them for an important meal. There are a lot of great choices in Lansing, Troppo and Mediteran are elegant and the food is good, but they are farther than I generally want to go. (I do realize that they are also “local” restaurants, and I do patronize them, but really “local” for me is East Lansing and maybe Okemos). The Soup Spoon Cafe is beyond wonderful, as are Sawyer’s and Mama Bear’s, but none of them is the kind of place one could take a visiting uncle who likes his cuffs French and his martinis dry.
Last summer, The Place We Were Waiting For appeared at a somewhat soulless junction near the City of East Lansing’s soccer fields and acres of cloned apartments and houses, on the road from East Lansing to Bath. On one end of a strip mall sits Enso, which (in my humble opinion) is a restaurant, where one can easily forget the unimaginative surroundings and believe that they have fetched up in the “real” restaurant city of their choosing. It is locally owned, the dream of one owner of the beloved Lou & Harry’s franchise and a partner, and the menu, decor and concept are based on a lengthy study tour of restaurants across the country. It is not a restaurant that would leave a jaded Mannhatanite breathless, but it is beautifully and imaginatively appointed, and the menu shows great care in balancing the local foodie’s need for something new and exciting against the fact that many people in this area just don’t eat Weird Stuff, and are likely to arrive at dinner with children in tow. They have it covered.
Enso’s decor is Asian-flavored, dark, and spare. The light fixtures are elegant, the fabrics dark and rich, and the bar long and inviting. The room a large one, is filled with options – tables for two and four on the main floor, raised roundtops for as many as eight, a lounge located near the coat check, the ample bar and a large room at the back that seems to be large enough to hold at least twenty. I am told that there is outdoor seating in warm weather, and a fire pit. Blazing torches outside the restaurant are visible from the large room at the back of the restaurant, enhancing the sensation of a real “getaway” in the middle of urban sprawl. There is an energizing mix of folks dining and drinking, as well; arrestingly attractive and well-dressed young things from the University, families in casual clothes, City of East Lansing employees in suits having a beer after work, and distinguished older couples discussing the movie they just saw. It is lively, inviting, and not at all intimidating.
The service has been flawless on each of my five trips, including the first when the restaurant was barely a week old. It is clear that there is an on-site human training and supervising the staff, and the ethos is a lovely combination of Beautiful People and Genuinely Nice Kids. They are beautiful; I have not yet seen one who wasn’t, and they are neatly dressed in head-to-toe black with no distracting “flair.” They have also been surpassingly kind to, and patient with my father who doesn’t hear well, groups of children, and requests for more fizzy Coke, a different table, and a reservation for a large party on a busy night. Pretty is as pretty does, and Enso’s staff passes on both accounts. Maybe there are some perks to living in Deepest Midwest?
And the food. Having eaten at Enso often enough to have tried a variety of things, some of which were actually on my own plate, I call it a triumph. Not everything is great (about which more in a minute) but most everything is good, and some things are superlative. The meal starts with a basket of chips which have the texture of thin, deep-fried pita. The chips are served along with a good, rustic salsa rich with cilantro (although it is a little sweet for my taste) and a version of queso dip. A word about plates, here – the selection of plates, bowls and serving pieces has been done carefully and well. Soups and salads are served in large white bowls that tip up and towards the diner from a low pedestal, sushi is served on long, rectangular plates and the chips are served in low, flat vessels with a large space in the center for chips and two half-moon wells at either end for the sauces. I am sure that some of the pieces are standard restaurant supply offerings, but they are aesthetically pleasing, conservative of precious table space, and clean in a way that reflects the Zen-ness of the room.
They are very good with soup – I have eaten the Fire Roasted Tomato, a menu standard, a version of the tomato with crab included, and, on my last visit, Curried Pumpkin Soup. All three were wonderful, but the Pumpkin made my heart sing; rich, thick, spicy but not overwhelming, with clearly discernible pumpkin flavor and some vegetables left a bit chunky for texture. I have also tried the Chop Chop Salad, the House Cut fries in both sweet potato and Portabella mushroom, the Tempura and the Calamari. The fries are very good, appearing at the table in a paper cone on a stand; the large serving with an assortment of three sauces (I particularly love the Smoky Bleu Cheese) would be a filling meal for a couple of vegetarians.
My only disappointment in the arena of soup, salad and appetizers was the Vegetable Tempura, which I ordered as an entree. Although it, and the accompanying sauce tasted good, the tempura batter was far heavier than I had expected, more fritter than tempura. Anticipating the delicate, shatter-y covering found in traditional Japanese tempura I was surprised to find actual density of batter, and ended up peeling off a fair amount of it in a way that (I hope) didn’t mortify my dining companions. I will also warn you that the Sweet & Crunchy Chicken Fingers are very sweet, indeed; there is no false advertising, the texture is great and the flavor is pleasant enough, but if you are dining with children who will expect “regular” chicken fingers, this is not a good choice. My own child, who is pretty game about trying new things, tried manfully to eat them but was so put off by the combination of chicken and sweetness that he gave up and ate my food, instead.
I have ordered or tasted many entrees, including the House Pulled Pork Roll and General Tso’s Chicken roll, the BBQ Pulled Pork Stacked Burger, the Roasted Boneless Stuffed Chicken Breast, and the Grilled Boneless Short Ribs. Everything was good, honestly, and the American Sushi gets major points as an interesting idea and fusion of flavors and cultures. The Stacked Burger, Sam’s favorite, is a wondrous pile of choice burger, sharp cheddar, pulled pork and onions which are apparently grilled and then fried. All of this is served on ciabatta bread, with a hearty side of very good fries. The short ribs are tender and rich with flavor (and not at all fatty), the chicken breast moist and flavorful, and everything beautifully plated. The only entree about which I have heard “a discouraging word” was a pasta special with eggplant which the eater described as “meh.”
Also, they are good with dessert. The Warm Mini Cinnamon & Sugar Donut Bites are not a total novelty; restaurants (including local chain rib joint Smoky Bones) have been serving warm donuts for years. That being said, these donuts are a revelation of all that donuts should be. They are crisp on the outside, light (!) on the inside, and have a delicious and addictive flavor that I can’t quite identify. The elegant addition of Mango Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing and Creme Anglaise for dipping is lovely, but having tried both…I eat mine plain. They are that good. The Mini Ice Cream Sandwiches (three per serving) are nothing exotic, but a great choice for kids or picky eaters – nothing to surprise anybody, but soft, warm chocolate chip cookies embracing vanilla ice cream, with artistic swirls of hot fudge. The gelato is also quite good (because what gelato isn’t?!) and is offered in a variety of flavors to please anyone from the unadventurous (Strawberry) to the foodie (Banana Cashew).
Bottom line: Enso is what every local restaurant diner in the area has been asking for, and if we don’t support it, it will go the way of All Seasons Bistro and Villegas. It is The Local Guy, and that wouldn’t be enough if the food and service weren’t up to par, but they are. Hard work has clearly gone into planning a venue that could offer something for everyone from MSU students to families with small children, and great effort goes into training a staff that treats all comers with respect and kindness. Enso has class without pretension, creativity without triviality, and sophistication without intimidation. Support them.
I was born in George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., the day that the Queen of the Gypsies died there. Around the same time that one member of the throng of gypsies, assembled to sit vigil, stole the expensive overcoat of my mother’s obstetrician, another took my father aside on the Labor and Delivery floor and told him, all dark skin and gold teeth, that the soul of his Queen would enter one of the babies born on that day and in that place. For forty-seven years I have been looking for signs that the baby was me.
Unfortunately, there is not much of the gypsy in my soul, aside from the Hungarian part that makes me cry over Brahms, and anything scored for a cymbalum. I have always been rather more Goth than flamboyant in dress, and am rarely given to spontaneous dancing. Saddest of my Gypsy Failure, for me, is the fact that I have never been a successful jewelry wearer. I envy women who can carry off a pile of necklaces, an arm full of bangles, or an eclectic mix of chunky Turquoise. vintage enamel and deco rhinestones, but I can’t. Most metal makes me itch, and in the summer I can’t even wear my wedding rings; they are consigned to a safe drawer until the first cool winds of October. I am symbolically available during June, July, August and September, putting my rings back on only for formal events or on days when I am feeling so irresistable that my ring-less self might give false hope to my admirers.
In addition to the itching thing, there is the matter of cultural programming. I was raised by a woman who objected to piercings in general, and who, when I suggested that I might add a second hole in one ear, reminded me that Jaqueline Kennedy would never have done such a thing. She tended towards a tasteful assortment that included her wedding band, a signet ring and something colorful and cheerful because she often worked with children. I also internalized the rule that one “does not wear mixed metals;” my mother’s friends wore all gold or all silver, and one lamented the inheritance of a beautiful platinum ring that “didn’t go” and must be re-plated or put into storage. In the early 80s, this sense that there was an 11th Commandment involving the wearing of jewelry was confirmed by the “Color Me Beautiful” system which divided us all into “seasons,” and told us that if we wanted to look out best, we must wear the metal that suited our assigned color scheme. As an “Autumn,” I was told that I should, in addition to dressing in mustard, pumpkin and brown, stick to gold jewelry.
All the years that I was a jewelry minimalist for reasons of epidermis and culture, I continued to envy those who could pile it on and make it look natural. I was on a moot court team with a woman who cried when our coach (a Uniform Commercial Code professor with newly planted hair plugs) told her that she must remove the pile of delicate gold bangles she always wore, because they would be distracting when we competed. She said that she had worn them since her confirmation, that she never took them off, that it would throw off her performance if she took them off. He made her take them off. I considered what it would be like to have jewelry that meant so much, that was never removed, that represented not mere fashion, but part of her identity. Honestly, I was jealous.
In my declining years, I have discovered that the only things that really matter to me (and I do mean material “things” and not “things” in a way that encompasses people or ideas) are those that have some history and some meaning. I live in an old house which I believe to be inhabited by ghosts seen only by Teddy the Cat. I am thrilled to receive an ancient metal coin bank that belonged to my husband’s grandfather, and I routinely rescue maudlin and inept watercolors sold at garage sales, because someone worked hard on them, and loved them. It occurred to me one day, contemplating a pile of inherited and gifted jewelry that some of it had real meaning to me, and, quite possibly, supernatural and talismanic properties. It wasn’t all silver, or all gold, it did not “match” in any way, but it was part of my identity. If I could sort it out and wear it all, I would not only be breaking the Jewelry Curse, but possibly channeling the Queen of the Gypsies, who I imagine in her prime wearing stacks of clinking bangles, ropes of beads and amulets around her neck, and rings on most of her fingers. (I think I’m mixing her up with “Carmen,” but surely you’ll indulge me in a little cross-cultural stereotyping, here).
The one I always wear, strung on a leather cord so that it cannot possibly make me itch, is a triangular Buddha given to me by my father. It is a rich, reddish metal; possibly bronze or copper. He brought it back from a trip to China years ago, a perk of being a professor of Chinese Humanities, and had forgotten about it until I began to speak often about my increasing interest in Buddhism. He gave it to me, still in the gaudy pink plastic box given to him by the seller, and told me that he thought it was old, probably valuable, sold by someone in desperate need of money before the economic boom that characterizes modern China. I wear it all the time now, because it reminds me to be “present,” and because it was a gift from someone I love dearly, and I feel his presence when the Buddha feels cold against my chest, or falls heavily against me after a sudden move.I don’t mind that it usually doesn’t show; it would be the very antithesis of all that is Buddhist to flaunt my interest.
The next one is a gold chain with two gold charms. One is a Maltese cross that belonged to my paternal grandmother, a Roman Catholic. I wear it because it was hers, because I think it’s beautiful, and because in my muddled faith life there has always been room for the meaning of the cross. It hangs along with a tiny, gold heart given to me by my maternal grandmother. She bought it in Dartmouth, England where we were visiting family friends, and had luck with the horses. She used her winning from the track to buy the heart for me at a little jewelry store near the Angel Pub, and it reminds me, always, of that day and of her warmth.
Highest up, on a silver chain is a tiny, enameled four-leaf clover that also belonged to my paternal grandmother. She didn’t have much, an orphan raised in severe poverty by relatives who saw her as valuable only as another pair of working hands, she was rescued by her older brother and her aunt and eventually became a scientist. It was mostly perseverance and brains that got her through the years of constant cold and hunger, reading “Penny Dreadfuls” by match light in the outhouse to avoid punishment, but I also like to think that Helen Murphy had a little of the Luck of the Irish. Her clover reminds me of both duty and serendipity.
So they are not at all fashionable, these ill-assorted necklaces of mixed metal that I wear most of the time. They get tangled, they make me itch, and they have not, thus far, transformed me into a Gypsy. (Or, or that matter, a Tramp or a Thief). They do stand for the proposition that I am “over” following a certain kind of conformist standard, and that I am willing to scratch a little in exchange for the sense that I am protected in some way by my mixed expression of ancestor worship, religious affiliation and New Age-Eastern Mystical-HooDoo. It may not help, but it probably can’t hurt…even if it does, I have a tube of prescription steroid cream in the bathroom.
At the end of 1981, I discovered that I was not a musician. This was a complicated thing, because I was enrolled (at great expense) in a Conservatory of music nearly a thousand miles from home. It was difficult to separate the realization that I had no heart for musical performance from the fact that my “boyfriend,” an oboist named Patrick, had told me that he was gay. He had shown me the toothbrush he carried to breakfast in his pocket, fresh from an overnight with a Boston Symphony Orchestra flutist, and listened to me plead and cry for as long as he could stand it. Early one morning in November, I went to the payphone on the corner and called my parents, collect. I told them I wanted to leave the Conservatory, that I could hang on until the winter break, but that I would not return in January. My parents said that was fine. My parents said “just come home; we’ll sort it out.” My parents, thousands of dollars i nthe hole, for something that they had told me not to do, never said “we told you so.”
After Christmas, we made a plan. I would apply to “regular” schools as a transfer student. I could just make the deadlines to apply for admission in the fall of 1982, and, while I was waiting, I could take courses to fill some of the requirements that would not possibly be met with a transcript reflecting my proficiency in Keyboard Harmony, Jazz Improvisation, and Solfege 101. It would also be a good idea, my parents suggested, if I got a job. No matter how generally shattered I might be, I could see that it was the least I could do. I toughened up, I looked around, and across the field near my parents house I saw my answer: The Burcham Hills Retirement Center. I could walk there, which was a good thing since I had no car and both of my parents worked. Many people I knew had worked there in high school, mainly in the dining room, so I knew it had to be fairly easy work. Best of all, if they hired me, I wouldn’t have to drive around interviewing, or look through the Classifieds, or think about it any longer. It was a job, literally, right in my own back yard.
I was hired by Ginger, a vision in a lavender suit with a lace blouse, and hair that resembled apricot cotton candy. She showed me around the dining room, furnished in a kind of Faux Provincial, but clean and pretty, filled with elderly people and the smell of lunch room food. I saw young women bustling around in hideous gold polyester zip-front tops with matching babushkas, and men in gold vests, white shirts and black bow ties. I smelled canned green beans, perfume, and a faint hit of urine. I filled out forms. Ginger gave me an Employee Manual, called somebody “in laundry” to bring me a uniform top and “kerchief,” and told me I was “going to be on the schedule starting Monday so please remember to come in fifteen minutes before your shift and find Bikkhu, who is your direct supervisor. Do not forget to clock in, people do not remember to clock in, and it causes all kinds of problems. Please remember to check the schedule and write down your shifts. People are not good about that. Please remember that you can come in early and have a meal, but you have to be finished and clocked in on time. If you smoke, you have to smoke on breaks. It’s all in the Manual, there. Questions?”
I had no questions, and besides, it was “all in the Manual.”
On Monday, I showed up 30 minutes early for my lunch shift, wearing the black polyester pants I had bought for the occasion, a pair of white Adidas left over from high school, and the hideous, gold waitress smock. I chafed at the babushka thing; I had a round face, and didn’t look good with my hair pulled back, let alone hidden under what appeared to be a cloth napkin. In the dining room I found Bikkhu, a guy I vaguely remembered from high school. He was part of a huge immigrant family living in my neighborhood, a family in which everyone had at least one job, and relatives were regularly imported to the United States from, was it Pakistan? He was friendly, going into his slip of an office to locate my newly engraved name tag, and introducing me to my new co-workers as they arrived to fill plates with something called City Chicken, which was, apparently veal covered in a viscous and shimmering layer of gravy. I met Cheryl, blonde, pretty in a pinched way, snapping her gum. I met Chuck, her boyfriend, wiry and antsy, his shirt collar and bow tie too large for his neck. I met Jen, who had vivid, cystic acne and a greasy ponytail with tiny, sparkly barrettes holding her bangs back. In turn, they acknowledged me, took plates filled by the “chef,” and moved to the un-clothed table nearest the kitchen door.
Although I had already eaten a far more appealing lunch of yogurt and an apple, I followed their lead, took a hot, wet, white plate and held it out to be filled with brown glop, white glop, green things and tan gravy. I had never had a real job before. I was smart enough to see that my new co-workers were not, in all likelihood, between The New England Conservatory and (with a little luck) Oberlin, Dennison or Grinnell. I wanted them to like me. I wanted them to help me. I wanted to succeed at this, after failing at everything else. I knew that I was not part of their group, that none of their talk or laughter had anything to do with me, or anything I knew about. None of them were dying for my company. I also knew that it would be social suicide to sit, alone, at another table as if I were better than they were. Even if it was really just because I was terrified. I carried my plate of congealing industrial food to the table where they had gathered; conversation stopped as I sat down.
“Hi,” I opened, hopefully. Chuck didn’t look up, busily cutting his City Chicken into pieces the size of BBs. The girls both looked at me, assessing me, neither friendly nor hostile.
“College student?” asked Jen.
“Actually, I’m between schools, I-” Cheryl giggled, and I could feel a bump as she kicked Chuck under the table. “
I heard them from the kitchen as I set up after lunch, swiping cloths and napkins from the tables, carrying a load to the giant wheeled hamper near the kitchen, and returning for more. “Actually, I’m between schools,” in a fake English accent. “Actually, I’m a princess. My name is Umbria…”. They laughed, the dishwashers clanked giant pots and pans, my face burned, I felt hot and sick and furious and sad and galvanized. It was not novel for me to be teased about my vocabulary or manner of speaking, but I had been away from it for more than a year, safe among music nerds who were not threatened, and did not tease. This was like a return to public school, but I was determined not to fail this. I would be cool, this time, I would make them like me.I finished, clocked out, pulled the kerchief from my sweating head and walked home, across the field, analyzing where I had gone wrong.
We were allowed to listen to the radio while we set up the dining room for the next meal. The next day was a dinner shift. “Jack and Diane,” “Hurts So Good,” then “Tainted Love” played as we grabbed folded tablecloths, smoothed them over tables and went back for napkins and silver. Plates and glasses were delivered on our trays, full of whatever a resident had ordered (unless what they ordered conflicted with the dreaded Dietary Cards). There were new people working with me, in addition to Cheryl and Jen. There was Bikkhus’s younger brother, who stayed near Bikkhu and seemed to do twice as much work as any of us in half the time. There were also two other girls, one small and sallow and one large and frizzy-haired. Bikkhu, in a great hurry, told me that the smaller girl was Ida, and the larger was Kara. For a moment, watching Kara lumber through the room, bumping into tables and swearing under her breath, I had a “better than” fantasy. She was heavier, frizzier, clumsier than I was; wouldn’t they prefer me? Couldn’t I effectively remove her as a pawn, and advance closer to Cheryl and Chuck, clearly our own “Jack and Diane?”
This fantasy was short-lived. The second the last table was prepped, they all disappeared, except for Bikkhu and his brother (Salim? Raheem?) who remained in a corner, heads together over a clipboard. I approached them, hating to interrupt. “Uhm, where did everybody go? I mean, am I supposed to be – should I be-”
“They’re smoking in the break room” said the brother. “You can go down, if you want.”
“Show her, she’s new” said Bikkhu, returning his gaze to the clipboard. Reluctantly, as if he hated to be be separated from Importamt Managerial Business, the brother motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen, through a door behind the steam table, down a flight of cement block stairs. I could hear them behind a heavy metal door, talking and laughing. My heart beat faster, and I stared at the knob.
“In there,” the brother said, a little impatiently. He turned back towards the stairs. I turned the knob, cold metal, and pushed it open to reveal the four of them sitting at a laminated, rectangular table. The room was filled with smoke, and each of them held a cigarette, in various stages of completion.
“Oh, hi,” said Kara, raising her cigarette to her lips and taking a long drag. “You smoke?”
“Maybe she’s the Smoke Narc,” suggested Jen, darting her black-rimmed eyes to Cheryl for approval.
“We’re allowed to smoke in here,” said Cheryl in a tone of aggrieved weariness, rubbing out her stump in an ashtray, “Ginger said.” She looked down at her uniform top, pressing her chin tight against her neck, picking off specks of ash with long, metallic pink nails. I noticed that they were chipped. “She don’t smoke, she’s a goody two shoes.” She looked up at me, and four pairs of eyes bored into my pathetic, goody two shoes soul. I needed this to work, I needed to do the opposite of whatever I would have done before, I needed to show them that they were wrong about me. I needed to smoke.
“I do smoke,” I lied, hoping that I sounded smooth, adult, maybe a little bit like I had smoked a pack of unfiltered Camels daily, since middle school. “I forgot we could smoke here. I don’t have any on me.” In my head, I mocked myself. “I don’t have any on me. Seriously?!”
“You can have one of mine,” said Cheryl, reaching into a gigantic, shirred tan bag and pulling out what looked like a glasses case. She opened it, and pulled out a cigarette. I took it, sure that the end with the band around it was the mouth end. She pulled a lighter from the case, flicked it and held it out. I sat down next to her and leaned in, holding the cigarette and thinking fast, thinking that I could do this. I held the tip against the lighter flame, as if it was a candle.
“You sure you smoke?” she asked, raising a tragically denuded eyebrow. From the corner of my eye I watched the little one, Ida, strike a match, hold it to the end of a cigarette decorated with some kind of vine, and suck.
“Yeah. Shit, I’m not used to having someone light it for me.” I liked that “shit.” Worldly, bold. Not something a goody two shoes would say. I leaned in again, cigarette in my mouth, and sucked until I felt smoke fill my mouth. It was acrid, mentholated, oddly clean. “Thanks” I said, leaning back. I tried to remember how people smoked in movies. The gangsters who roamed the streets with Cagney held them between thumb and index finger, other fingers raised up, and away. Women, as I recalled, held cigarettes as if cradling them in a peace sign. I settled on the latter course, trying not to inhale deeply enough to make me cough, quickly seeing that no one tapped off their ash until it was so long that it appeared likely to fall under its own weight.
As I studied, they resumed their conversation. Chuck, according to Cheryl, was a “dickhead” because they were supposed to go out and see a movie (“48 Hours”), but he”got shitfaced with his dickhead friends and then he couldn’t drive because he already had two DUIs” and she couldn’t drive because it was his brother’s car and he didn’t like other people driving it. Little Ida commiserated; her mom was supposed to watch TJ and the baby, but she cancelled because “that asshole Roger” called and acted like nothing had happened, and she wanted to see him. It seemed unwise to report that I had spent the previous evening reading Dorothy Sayer’s “The Mind of the Maker” for a 300-level religion course, and then watched some “Masterpiece Theater” with my parents.
That night, after work, I walked to the 7-11 and bought a package of Salem Lights, which was what Cheryl smoked. In my food-flecked uniform top under my open coat, I felt authentic, a Real person stopping after work to buy a pack of smokes. I asked for a pack of matches, and the ancient, Elfin guy behind the counter told me that they didn’t give matches away; I had to buy a lighter. I bought a lighter. I had a pack of Salems and a lighter, and I walked home, across the snowy field, having a practice smoke. I inhaled some, stopping by a stand of birches to steady myself as my head swirled and my stomach flipped. It passed, and I continued to puff as I walked towards home, where my parents (both of whom had quit smoking before I was born) were innocently waiting. At the edge of the field, I bent down to extinguish the cigarette in the snow, considered flicking it away, and then thought better of it. That was polluting. I put it in my pocket and continued to the house, where I had planned to drop it into the trash can, but what if my dad saw it? On the back steps, I fished the sodden butt from my coat pocket and stuffed it into my purse; once inside I said quick “hellos” and rushed into the bathroom where I threw it into the toilet and flushed it.
Every day, in every way, I became a more proficient smoker. In a day when Prozac was just a gleam in Eli Lilly’s corporate eye, it calmed me, smoothed things over so that my mind stopped racing and my heart stopped pounding. I loved it, no matter how well I knew the dire warnings about cancer, heart disease, emphysema, bad breath and social exclusion. I loved it. Gradually, I became a part of the conversation during Burcham Hills smoke breaks carefully editing my own story so that it would play well. I had heard enough about “fags” from Chuck to understand that my true, sad story would not be greeted with sympathy; I changed it to a garden-variety breakup, a dramatic parting, the need to “get away” from that place and that man. They got this. They thought I was funny, and they started to ask me things because I was smart – could they really fire you for not wearing your name tag? Was it really against the law to take your own food into the movies and eat it? What about a flask?
Is it so terribly, terribly wrong that I am using my child as a kind of Blog Topic Magic Eight Ball? It worked once before – I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to write about, I asked him as he left for the day, and he gave me an idea. I know that I can count on him to come up with something that is not depressing, that is absolutely not whatever I had already considered and rejected, and that is, in most cases, not the product of even the faintest husk of a thought. (We call that “whimsical”). Today, he said I should write about “math finals,” and so I will.
You will no doubt be shocked to learn that he has a math final today, or, more accurately, the second part of a two-part episode of a math final. (The exciting conclusion in which Rational Number breaks the bonds imposed by his evil opposite, Pi Face, and saves the fractious hostages). He has been “studying” after a fashion, a process that seems mainly to involve total avoidance until fifteen minutes before bedtime, followed by hysterical pleas for help from his father. No one in their right mind would ask me to help them study for a math final. I am, in that context, not only non-essential parental personnel, but a potentially damaging influence, quarantined in my office until someone needs to know what a “gerund” is. I did raise my stock the other night, when, hearing a discussion about expressing the fact that some-number-or-other in an equation might be more than zero, but was not, necessarily more than zero, I yelled from my office that they needed the “greater to or equal sign.”
They decided that I was right. Never mind that the only reason I remember the existence of the “greater than or equal to” sign is that when I first learned about it, it reminded me very much of the kind of eyes drawn on the figures adorning Egyptian tombs. I used to draw a little dot in the small, closed end (the apex?) of the wedge part of the sign to make them into eyes. Sometimes I got distracted and drew people on the edges of my worksheets, legs and feet impossibly separate and parallel, heads adorned with jeweled bands, eyes expressing the dark mysteries of the greater than or equal to sign.
Back to the math finals. I do not remember having final exams earlier than middle school, at which time they had some kind of hip, 70s name like “Unit Comprehension Review.” I rarely comprehended the unit. I got hopelessly lost some time around fourth grade; I think long division was the last thing I really understood. Well, that isn’t entirely true: I remember bits and pieces of things that I somehow managed to learn. I know my away around a fraction, and I can reduce, find least common denominators, add, subtract, multiply and divide them with great panache. I was actually a very good geometry student, and pretty good at the “story problems” that seemed to plague other people. Comforted, I think, by the inclusion of actual words in a problem, I could get from them the essence of what was called for, and turn it into numbers and signs. Sometimes, coming in from that kind of success, I could even solve it.
Aside from geometry, high school was a wasteland of non-feasance in my arithmetical, or more accurately, algebraic education. My freshman year, an “experimental math program” in Algebra I, a soft-covered, fake-looking textbook, a frustrated teacher, a curriculum so unfamiliar that my father couldn’t help me any more. “You are so smart,” the teacher said to me in the middle of the year, “I don’t understand why you don’t do better work.” My grades heading south for the winter, for the year, forever. The finals looked, like all other quizzes and homework: pages of numbers and symbols and a lot of “x” and “y” stuff. I had vague ideas about what I might do with them, and usually started out optimistic and willing to try (at least the first year) but began to hyperventilate and give up after three or four problems. I dissociated, I looked at the page and squinted until I saw patterns. I tried again, and it wasn’t any better. Eventually, I got to the “what are they going to do to me, anyway?” stage and sat, polite and giving all appearances of being focused, until I could turn the test in and forget about it until the sledgehammer moment when it was returned to me with some terrible grade and a scrawled indictment of my intellect in red marker.
It was no better in Algebra II. It was worse. Sines, cosines, curlicues that looked like fancy earrings, or a new kind of snack food. I was mostly interested in hearing stories from Janie Mancato, who had lost her virginity at lunch one day (at the home of her boyfriend, who lived right near the high school, and had a car) and returned to us most 4th hours thereafter, breathless and flushed with her new experiences. Even if I had been interested in algebra, it could not have competed with that kind of show.
A conversation with my Algebra II teacher:
Me: “Why does anybody need algebra? Do you use it in later life?”
Mr. D: “It is an important part of developing your ability to think logically. You won’t necessarily use algebra, per se, although some people will, but no matter what you do, it will be good for you to have the ability to solve problems in a logical way.”
Me: “Oh.”
The finals in that class were even worse. I had no idea what I was looking at, or what I was supposed to do. I am a good test-taker, and a fabulous bluffer, but there was no way to “game” an Algebra II test without so much as inhaling a faint whiff of trigonometry or the thing with the graphs and arrows. In addition to my impressive lack of comprehension, I felt guilty this time; I could not claim that this, like my failure in Algebra I was the fault of The Man who had forced me to fail despite my pathetic attempts to learn something. This was all my fault, my fault for not paying attention in class, my fault for failing to study or do my homework, my fault for failing to avail myself of the help offered from many sources. I failed. Lots. I got a “D,” the worst grade I ever got anywhere. It went on my permanent record. I became “a problem like Maria” (only less charming and unable to sing) for my guidance counselor, trying to reconcile my status as a National Merit semifinalist with That Grade. What college would admit me with that grade? How would it be explained?
He, and everyone else heaved a sigh of relief when I announced my plans to go into music, where no one cared about a “D” in Algebra II. There was never another math class; although it might have been amusing to see what I came up with in Calculus, no one suggested that I try it. There was no math at the Conservatory, and when, later, I transferred to a fine liberal arts school, my advisor gently advised me not to take any math classes, because “it didn’t seem to go too well for you in high school.”
Here’s the thing, though. If I had it to do over, I could do it, and do it well. I have a brain that seems to be evenly split between the logical part that makes sounds and persuasive legal arguments, and the creative part that wants to play with words, and colors, and take a nap, maybe, and see if my face changes if I stare at the mirror for a really long time. That logical part does not amuse me nearly as much as the other part, and if I had to have some kind of Sybilectomy I would definitely tell the neurosurgeon to cut all the strings that make the logical thing happen. For now, though, it is a part of me, and it works, and it didn’t die no matter how hard I tried to kill it in high school. I am not Jack Kerouac. I am a person who can figure out how many boxes of spaghetti we need for the spaghetti supper, subtract the number of parents who will blow of the request, and divide up their contribution evenly among the parents who will actually help.
I was living in the middle of someone else’s life. A sublet on Montgomery Street, stuffed with her large-scale Victorian furniture, abandoned clothes, books, spices and grocery lists on the refrigerator. Barely enough room, in the tiny bedroom closet, for my own clothes and shoes, a 3×3 square cleared on a shelf for my tiny television, my own pans and cookbooks and spices boxed and in storage in someone else’s basement; no room for my own furniture, books, or pictures. It was an amazing coup of Boston apartment-jockeying in so many ways that I should really have been happy. Really in the City proper after four years of endless bus and subway rides to and from Jamaica Plain, I was now only a 10-minute walk from my job in Copley Place. I was so close, that even if I had wanted to take public transportation, I was too close. Because I was actually in the City, the view out the bedroom window, from the high, massive old bed included both the Prudential Center and the Hancock Tower, often in picturesque juxtaposition to the silver slip of a crescent moon. It should all have made me very happy, indeed.
I had finished law school, taken the bar, passed the bar, and found work managing a very glamorous retail establishment that sold Rosenthal china to Lydia Shire, and objets d’art to members of the Gamble family, as in “Proctor and.” My story was that the bottom had fallen out of the economy in and around Boston just as I got my law degree, and indeed, the tech start-ups on Route 128 were hurting. Really, I had not figured out what I was going to do with a law degree, I didn’t do how to do anything of a practical nature, and the one interview I had gotten with a Real Business in the Financial District had concluded with the interviewer,a kind friend of my Uncle Murray’s, telling me that I should probably think about what I really wanted to do before I had another interview. He really had wanted to offer me a job, he said, but I just didn’t seem to want to work in that kind of environment. He saw, that kindly gentleman in beautiful shoes, what it would take me years to see.
I got a job in retail, The Devil I Knew, and stayed in Boston after law school ended. I wore black clothes, high heels, red lipstick and perfume samples begged from the Chanel counter at Neiman Marcus. My old roommate, who I had lived with for four years, moved away. The man I had followed to Boston in the first place was cruel, and then involved with someone else, announcing that she had “done things for him” that I could never do. He still called when he wanted to talk to someone smart, or when he was sad or tired or longing for home; mostly he was unreliable and likely to tell me about Her fabulous job, car, apartment, summer share on the Cape, and sexual technique. I had neither the time nor the cash to do any of the many things that Boston had to offer, I had friends, but I was terrified to go anywhere alone after dark, so my social life was limited to the odd brunch or to places where someone had a car and could drive me home.
My cat, Ben, disappeared. I thought he had jumped out the window while I was smoking, and that he was gone into the City, leaving me really, entirely alone. I called my parents in Michigan, hysterical; they were kind, but my father asked, not unreasonably, what I thought they could do about a missing cat 780 miles away? I called the Ex, who said he didn’t want to drive all the way from Cambridge, although he was fond of Ben. He said he would ask Her to look for the cat, since She lived a couple of blocks from me, in the already-gentrified part of the neighborhood. I declined. I cried for hours, trying to interest myself in a book or something on TV, until I heard faint, cat-like sounds coming from the cavernous closet near the front door, where the owner of my apartment had stuffed years of accumulated garbage, and which I had topped off with my own, small collection of boxes, bridesmaid dresses and shopping bags full of law school notebooks. Out came Ben, dusty and blinking, embarrassed by my hug and the feel of fresh tears on his soft back.
Some time in the spring, after I had closed the store, walked home, kicked off the 3-inch heels and fed Ben, the phone rang. This was long before anyone had a cell phone; if I’d had a cell phone I would simply have disconnected the land line on which half of the incoming calls were for the real owner of the apartment. Over and over, I had to explain to disgruntled friends, and, in one case, an unhappy creditor that the real Lady of the House was in California for a year. There was always a chance that it was for me, so I always answered it. A diversion would be nice, a call from a friend, or my mother, or even my insane boss; I was somewhere beyond lonely and into some deep valley of denial and isolation. Mistakes had been made. There was no trail of breadcrumbs.
“Hello?” I said into the receiver of the ancient, black rotary phone. A throat cleared on the other end.
“Hi, is Mike there?” a deep, somewhat phlegmy voice. A fat man. No one calling for me.
“I’m sorry – you have the wrong number.”
“Sorry.” I moved my hand to replace the receiver, but he was still talking. I raised my hand to my ear again. “-could talk for a little while?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you…”
“Oh. I said you had kind of a nice voice, and maybe we could talk for a little while.” Nothing really shocked me any more; I had seen a dead guy in the lobby of the Boston Public Library, I rode around on the subway with transvestites, and I had briefly defended the criminally accused in deepest, darkest Roxbury. What could this guy do to me over the phone?
“Okay,” I said slowly, “who are you?”
“Steven. Who are you?”
“Ann” came out before I thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Hi, Ann. You have a really sexy voice, you know. You could do phone sex.”
“Uhm, thanks” I answered, thinking that I had probably just made another mistake, another bead to add to the endless string of wrong judgments, overestimations, backwards hunches. “I’m not really into that, though. I don’t really want to talk about that.”
“Oh, I bet I could think of something that would get you hot, I was-”
“I DON’T want to talk about that!” I could have hung up, but I didn’t.
“Well okay, baby…we don’t have to talk about that.”
“Don’t call me ‘Baby,’ either.”
“Touchy, touchy. You know I can’t leave my apartment. I’m fat, and I take lots of medicine because I have mental problems.”
“So you just call people all night and pretend it’s a wrong number?”
“No!’ he answered, sounding genuinely affronted. “I really thought I was calling Bob!”
“You asked for Mike.”
“Shit. I was confused, It’s the meds.”
“Okay, this is too weird for me. I’m hanging up now.” I did. I took a shower in the claw-footed tub with a jury-rigged shower head that fell onto my own head one of every three showers. I could hear the phone ringing, the click of the answering machine, no voices. I dried off, fixed a bowl of cereal, and played the messages.
“Hi, this is Steven The guy who just called you? I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just get so lonely, and you have such a nice voice, and-”
“Hi. Steven again. Your message thing is really short. If you want to talk, call me at 555-12121. I’m always-”
“Sorry to keep calling. It’s Steven, if you were wondering. I’d really like a call, I mean if you have time, I’m-”
I shook my head as the tape re-wound inside the machine. I couldn’t change my number, because it wasn’t “my” number. He would have to get sick of it when I didn’t call back or answer. I settled down on the lumpy horsehair sofa, covering myself with my own quilt that smelled comfortingly of fabric softener. I switched on the tiny TV. The phone rang, and I jumped.
“You have reached 555-1213,” I heard my own voice, sounding nasal, “we aren’t available to take your call right now, but if you leave your name, your number and the time of your call, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks, and have a great day!”
“Hi, Ann, it’s Melanie-” I jumped on the phone, happy to talk to the ditzy-beautiful employee who had given me a bag of “magic” mushrooms for my recent birthday. The conversation took me through bedtime; she had a Bad Boyfriend, and there was much to discuss.
The next night when I got home from work, the answering machine tape was full. Three baffled messages for the missing sublessor, the rest for me, from Steven, in various stages of contrition, annoyance, cajoling and pathos. I didn’t call him back. The next day at work, as I dusted glass display cases and created a new window display with a frilly blown-glass vase holding a single, ironic Bird of Paradise, I told my staff about the man on the phone. They agreed that it was creepy, and were all pretty sure that there was no way he could find me, just from the phone number. I thought about Steven, felt sorry for him, was afraid of him, wondered whether my voice really was all that sexy. I wondered what would have happened if I’d taken him up on his offer. I wondered whether other men would pay to hear me “talk dirty,” and if I could come up with enough material about caressing feet, and ball gags, and donkeys.
Time passed, and during the Los Angeles riots I called my friend Michael, who lived in West Hollywood, telling myself that I wanted to make sure he was okay. I really just wanted to hear his voice. Steven kept calling, filling the machine with messages. On days off I went to the remaindered book store, bought novels and devoured them in coffee shops, taking breaks to wander up Boylston or Newbury Street to the next place with coffee and chairs, listening to REM on my Walkman. My ex broke up with Wonder Woman, showed up days in a row to cook dinner with me or drive me back to his apartment to hang out. She was crazy, he said; she drove around his house when he wouldn’t answer the phone, and had once climbed in through an open window and stripped, waiting for him in his bedroom. They got back together, and he stopped coming over.
One night in March or April, I was heavy with sadness, alone at the end of the work day, having forgotten to buy cat food at the grocery store on my lunch break and unable to go out in the dark, past the old guys drinking malt liquor on the steps. I made Ben an omelette, tried to read “The Cape Anne,” tried not to cry. I could see myself from the outside, like a movie: the single 30-year-old woman with a cat, her younger brother getting married in June, no prospects for boyfriends, her only real friends far away, or busily married, pregnant, starting Serious Law Jobs, her work “friends” currying favor because she was their manager. The phone rang, shattering the mood and making my heart leap at the prospect that somebody was reaching out to me. Somebody cared. Out of habit, I let the machine pick up.
“Hi,” a heavy sigh, “it’s me. Steven. I’m not giving up on you. I-”
Reader, I picked up the phone.
“Hi!”he said, surprised.
“Hi. I don’t want to talk about sex, I don’t want to talk about anything personal.”
“Okay, okay…whatever you want. You sound upset.” Familiar, like we talked every night. Like we shared something.
“Nope. I’m fine. Just a long day. How are you?”
“Okay; I’m watching pornos. Sometimes I like to watch real people doing it, but-”
“WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!” I yelled. From the floor below, the crazy guy who lived, sans furniture, in what had once been the ballroom of the grand house before its tragic division into apartments, banged on his ceiling with a broom. “What,” I hissed “is wrong with you? You keep calling and calling, and you don’t want to talk to me, you just want phone sex, which I TOLD you I’m not going to do. Jesus!” There was a long pause.
“What else would we talk about?” he asked. “I don’t even know you.” I hung up.
That night. I dreamed that my brother was dead. It was that kind of vivid, agonizing dream that seems entirely real, and stays with you through the next day. It was a stress dream, and a bad omen. Two nights later, I dreamed that my father had been killed. The night after that, in the high bed, looking out at the tallest buildings in the City and feeling none of the old magic, I heard a voice say “go home. It’s time to go home.”
I had never heard a voice before. I was pretty sure I wasn’t schizophrenic, I was entirely sober, and I was wide awake. I wanted to discount the voice, but it was right; it was time to go home. The Dream, whatever had gotten me there, and kept me there all those years, was not my own; it was a shoddy montage of a man who was pathologically unkind, a mistaken belief that law school would point me in a socially appropriate and lucrative direction, and a professed love for urban living when I could not begin to take anything the City offered besides dirt, fear, and an obscenely high cost of living. It was time to stop playing at all of that, to cut my losses, to break up with the image of myself as Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis. She was prettier, had a better job, and lived with Rhoda instead of a cat.
The next day, I told my crazy boss that I wanted to go home for my brother’s June wedding, knowing that it conflicted with a trade show she planned to attend with her husband, the even crazier boss. She yelled at me, she told me I was “ungrateful,” and that if I wanted to go to “my stupid brother’s wedding” I was fired. I had never been fired, before. I walked out past the people who had, fifteen minutes earlier, worked for me; they had all heard the yelling. I walked home, called my parents and told them that I was coming home in a month, when my lease was up. I went to a temp agency, and worked 9-5 shifts at banks, and ad agencies, and the Boston branch of the Federal Reserve, I boxed up as much as I could and sent it home, I made arrangements to rent a car to carry me back, along with a few un-mailable and prized possessions, including a large oil painting done by my Uncle David, and, of course, Ben.
Steven kept calling. He was sorry. He missed me. He “just wanted to see how I was doing.”
The last day of May, my ex drove me to the rental place where he put the rental on his credit card, I paid him back in cash, and he drove me back to my apartment. He helped me carry out the few things of mine that remained, we loaded the car, gingerly putting Ben in the back seat after everything else was stowed. I had visions of Ben escaping somewhere on the drive home, sprinting out at a rest stop. I had to take the “long way” home instead of driving through Canada, because I couldn’t enter a foreign country with a live animal in my car.
We sat on the curb having a cigarette, not talking at all about the five years we had spent in Boston in and out of each other’s lives and apartments and hearts and brains. We stood up, brushed the dirt off of our pants, and hugged; I gave him the envelope addressed to my apartment’s real tenant, containing her key and the final rent check. He walked away, and I got into the unfamiliar car, careful to locate Ben and murmur some comforting words to him. To me. I slid my parting gift from the ex, Annie Lennox’s newest, into the car’s cassette deck and drove out of Boston listening to her sing “Why” as the tall buildings shortened in my rear view mirror.
Yesterday, my favorite author died. He was not exactly plucked in the flower of youth, being 91 and all. He also hadn’t published anything since shortly after my third birthday. Well, he didn’t ever publish a whole lot of anything, at least not anything I could easily get my hands on. He wrote three books, a collection of short stories, and a novella which appeared in “The New Yorker,” but which I have never found in buyable form. I have been trying really hard not to read anything being written about him right now, not blog posts, not opinion pieces, not even obituaries, because this is a private thing for me. I need a little time to think my own thoughts before I open myself up to a flood of writing about how Catcher in the Rye wasn’t really that great, how Salinger was not really very nice to his wives or his children, or how he was (pick one) overrated, underrated, wrong to become a recluse, right to become a recluse, etc. ad nauseum.
