Hopping on One Foot
...planxty (an ancient Celtic music form) is not suitable for either singing or dancing, due to its erratic sequencing...the conclusion of a phrase is so framed as to produce the idea of a beginning; and again, the beginning or middle of a phrase so constructed as to seem for a moment the notes of a passage about to close.
---Tom Cowan
Fire in the Head
My new student is on fire, willing to face that she doesn’t know everything. She’s the keeper of a remarkable story. The only glitch is that her favorite slogan is “Get ‘er Done!’ Aside from the hee haw, let’s git that snow cannon up on the mountain and fire some frozen pee at the slopes nature of the phrase, the one work ethic a novel will resist is “Get ‘er done!” It’s a lot more like “’Er gets the writer done!”
The writer doesn’t dance in lockstep. We dance to a choreography that makes us as we go. Here is how it works. When it works:
Ravens dance on the snow in front of my little apartment. It’s not a vision. It’s not a surprise. This morning I scattered corn chips to the four directions: North for the Old Ones, East for Light and Burning, South for a little girl, humming to herself, playing hop-scotch alone every day through a long, hot, wet summer; West for She Who Rules, the Dark shining Lady of Take and Give-Away, the implacable Mistress of Time.
Corn chips on snow in an apartment complex. Cats asleep in the living room. No speed limit. No white line. No danger. No trucks looming around the curve.
“Too easy,” my friend, the planxty, would say. “Never move road-kill off the road. It takes away all the fun.”
Ducking and dodging, running the knife edge, off balance, in. Either way, we’re gonna die. Either way, this may be the last day we have, the last moment, the last breath. The way the ravens see it, so what. This could be the last corn chip and that would be the real tragedy.
One of my students writes about wild turkey. She says they have no vacations. We humans only believe we do. From the edge of the blade, there are no holidays. We step out, and out, and, past a certain point on that shining, we look back.
To a time we could close our eyes and pull our history and fear around us and imagine that, for an instant, we were safe. And, safe moment by safe moment, we died. I am one of you. I look back.
Look back.
Remember when you were safe. You knew the dance. The music was easy. One, two three, one, two three. Moving hand in hand in a straight line. Patterns droning. The first step leads to this one, this one to the next, the middle, the closing, the end. Pause. Breathe. Change partners perhaps. And begin again. One, two, three, one, two, three, in endless circles, moving out, around, coming back, again and again, to the same place. No drums. No back beat. No voice, no harp rising like a clear wild scream. When the ravens hear this same old same old notmusic, they fly away.
Somewhere up north, they know, there’s a two-lane highway so far out the cops forget it. Kids in Cannibal Corpse t-shirts are eating french fries and drinking sweet wine. They have their hands on each others’ thighs and J.R. is driving. There is no sun. Orion rises in the east. Somebody screams. Laughs. J.R. throws his empty out the truck window, grabs Leeanne’s french fries and gives them to the wind. Your raven heart jumps in your gleaming breast like a drum. Starlight glitters off shattered glass. You hop. You scream. You call the others in and, YOU EAT.
Lugh, before battle, hops on one foot and screams. His arms stretch out from east to west. Blue-black feathers. Bright eye. His shining. Hopping on one foot to a tune that has no pattern. Only endings held in beginnings and beginning rising from the end. Screaming. Out of balance and in.
The only safety is the edge. Heading east to the unknown west. Till we meet again.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Pimping Life and Death
I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.
-Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)
I like to watch.
---Chance the Gardener, Being There
I have been a watcher since I was five and my mother went mad in our kitchen. Her terrible wordless singing carried into the bedroom in which I lay in terror. I turned the pages of a coloring book slowly, my eyes tethered to a bunny, a white house, a parrot in a tree. As long as I kept watching, I didn’t have to look up to see what might come through the bedroom door.
I watched as my mother was taken away, as she returned and was taken away again. I watched my hand turning the pages of the Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights, watched the ground fall away and rise as I swung for hours on the playground swing. I watched October light burn blue through the leaves of the apple tree and knew I was safe as long as I kept watching.
I watched other girls, the pure mystery of how they plotted and giggled, of how they cared about dolls and cooking sets and being pretty. I watched the face of my first boyfriend as though it was a living map to safety. I watched his back as he walked away.
I watched America from a 1957 beater Ford as a stranger and I drove I-40 from Rochester, N.Y. to San Francisco. I watched ahead, watched the road disappearing beneath us. I understood the road was my watching.
I watched each of my four children emerge into life. I watched myself walk away from my oldest son. I watched as I wrote in a notebook I had salvaged from a garbage can: The pen moves. The words make themselves. I am safe. He is safe. I have the road and this.
Friday, March 11, the cell phone rattled on the nightstand. It was seven a.m. I was tired from a night of little sleep and let the call go to voice mail. I turned on my side, then felt the uneasiness that is always the summons to pay attention. When I checked the message, my friend’s voice was worried: Is Matthew okay? Just checking.
I jolted out of bed. My youngest son teaches English in Mito, Japan, a little town not too far from the ocean. It is his second time there. He left the first time after the 1995 earthquake devastated Kobe. I logged onto gmail. I’m okay, Mom. Very very scared. I wrote him back, forwarded the message to his brother, sister and father, checked the news. 8.9 quake, tsunami. Sendai devastated. I went to Mapquest, couldn’t find distance from Sendai to Mito. The reports said that power, roads, internet were all down. Had Matt written right after the quake – before the tsunami that might have swept Mito away?
My mind was on loop delay. I have to write about this. It’s the only way I’ll keep from going crazy. Maybe there’s value in this. In not knowing. In having no way to know. In having lost, in the time it took to listen to my friend’s cell message, my great American illusion of safety. I have to write about it…
I didn’t write. I made coffee, fed the cats and birds, said my mantra – For the furthering of all sentient beings; and the protection of earth, air and water and returned to the internet. There was no word from Matt, only steadily worsening reports from Japan. No word about Mito. Nothing.
I remembered when he’d been in the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 95. The phone had waked me from a dream in which he and I had been in an earthquake. We had pressed ourselves against a glass wall in a tall Osaka skyscraper. I’d thought to myself This is the worst place to be. The tremors had stopped. Matt and I had walked outside. The air had felt pure on my face.
I had grabbed the phone and heard my son’s voice as though he were in a tunnel. “I’m o.k., Mom. I’m alive.” The phone went dead. It was three days before he was able again to make contact. I was not on the internet. I don’t own a television. Newspapers were my only source of information. I lived through those three days as though I were made of glass, a human lens watching, observing, ready to shatter in an instant.
Writing. The road. There was always a door marked EXIT, always an on-ramp away from loss. Lost home, lost love, lost friendships, lost forest meadows and limestone outcroppings and softly green wetlands. There was always a way to write about the unbearable losses, a way to use every instant of watching. There was a world of readers, a vast near-empty space into which I could launch the observations of a life not-quite lived. As long as I wrote, there was a way to be a spectator, a way to be a ghost.
Three hours after I read my son’s e-mail from Mito, I drove to the desert east of town and began to walk. The wind slashed through my coat. Gray vapor lay along the tops of the low mountains. The dirt road was frozen mud, coyote tracks like petroglyphs. I planned to gather – light, sage scent, the burn of icy mist on my face, whatever skittered away from my human presence. I could be so busy gathering that I would not think of my son, would not imagine him not so much dead, as trapped in terror.
Later I would write about what I saw. My words would have value – even if he died, even if the loss of him was dry ice in me for the rest of my years. I looked up at a mist-shrouded tree-line. Words failed me. There was nothing to gather. There was only cold and wind and tracks in frozen mud. I stopped.
At home, I logged on. There was a message from Matt’s friend in Kyoto. My son had called. He was unharmed. He was on his way to Kyoto. I forwarded the message to my daughter. Our family began to respond. I realized I was alive with feelings. For long moments, I felt as though I would shatter. Then I began to study what was happening for tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of families in Japan. I spent the rest of the day and the next day and the next reading news reports, opinions and commentaries. The more I read, the more I began to wonder how much of the media, the blogs, the other writers and I were pimps using life, using death – for profit, for recognition, to gain distance, to sustain the illusion of safety. I thought of the moment in the desert that could not be used.
I kept thinking I should write something. Something about the miracle of a son surviving, something about how little control any of us has, something wise and privileged about a family drawn closer because of a tragedy. Instead, I wrote this dispatch. It is sent from a place where in the long run, there is no profit, no survival, no safety. There is only the knowledge that I am done with watching. I am done with protecting myself from raw life, from the certainty of loss and death. I am done with being a ghost pimping life and death.
This first appeared in the Travel Writing section of Matador Network: http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/notes-from-road/notes-on-pimping-life-and-death/
-Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)
I like to watch.
---Chance the Gardener, Being There
I have been a watcher since I was five and my mother went mad in our kitchen. Her terrible wordless singing carried into the bedroom in which I lay in terror. I turned the pages of a coloring book slowly, my eyes tethered to a bunny, a white house, a parrot in a tree. As long as I kept watching, I didn’t have to look up to see what might come through the bedroom door.
I watched as my mother was taken away, as she returned and was taken away again. I watched my hand turning the pages of the Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights, watched the ground fall away and rise as I swung for hours on the playground swing. I watched October light burn blue through the leaves of the apple tree and knew I was safe as long as I kept watching.
I watched other girls, the pure mystery of how they plotted and giggled, of how they cared about dolls and cooking sets and being pretty. I watched the face of my first boyfriend as though it was a living map to safety. I watched his back as he walked away.
I watched America from a 1957 beater Ford as a stranger and I drove I-40 from Rochester, N.Y. to San Francisco. I watched ahead, watched the road disappearing beneath us. I understood the road was my watching.
I watched each of my four children emerge into life. I watched myself walk away from my oldest son. I watched as I wrote in a notebook I had salvaged from a garbage can: The pen moves. The words make themselves. I am safe. He is safe. I have the road and this.
Friday, March 11, the cell phone rattled on the nightstand. It was seven a.m. I was tired from a night of little sleep and let the call go to voice mail. I turned on my side, then felt the uneasiness that is always the summons to pay attention. When I checked the message, my friend’s voice was worried: Is Matthew okay? Just checking.
I jolted out of bed. My youngest son teaches English in Mito, Japan, a little town not too far from the ocean. It is his second time there. He left the first time after the 1995 earthquake devastated Kobe. I logged onto gmail. I’m okay, Mom. Very very scared. I wrote him back, forwarded the message to his brother, sister and father, checked the news. 8.9 quake, tsunami. Sendai devastated. I went to Mapquest, couldn’t find distance from Sendai to Mito. The reports said that power, roads, internet were all down. Had Matt written right after the quake – before the tsunami that might have swept Mito away?
My mind was on loop delay. I have to write about this. It’s the only way I’ll keep from going crazy. Maybe there’s value in this. In not knowing. In having no way to know. In having lost, in the time it took to listen to my friend’s cell message, my great American illusion of safety. I have to write about it…
I didn’t write. I made coffee, fed the cats and birds, said my mantra – For the furthering of all sentient beings; and the protection of earth, air and water and returned to the internet. There was no word from Matt, only steadily worsening reports from Japan. No word about Mito. Nothing.
I remembered when he’d been in the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 95. The phone had waked me from a dream in which he and I had been in an earthquake. We had pressed ourselves against a glass wall in a tall Osaka skyscraper. I’d thought to myself This is the worst place to be. The tremors had stopped. Matt and I had walked outside. The air had felt pure on my face.
I had grabbed the phone and heard my son’s voice as though he were in a tunnel. “I’m o.k., Mom. I’m alive.” The phone went dead. It was three days before he was able again to make contact. I was not on the internet. I don’t own a television. Newspapers were my only source of information. I lived through those three days as though I were made of glass, a human lens watching, observing, ready to shatter in an instant.
Writing. The road. There was always a door marked EXIT, always an on-ramp away from loss. Lost home, lost love, lost friendships, lost forest meadows and limestone outcroppings and softly green wetlands. There was always a way to write about the unbearable losses, a way to use every instant of watching. There was a world of readers, a vast near-empty space into which I could launch the observations of a life not-quite lived. As long as I wrote, there was a way to be a spectator, a way to be a ghost.
Three hours after I read my son’s e-mail from Mito, I drove to the desert east of town and began to walk. The wind slashed through my coat. Gray vapor lay along the tops of the low mountains. The dirt road was frozen mud, coyote tracks like petroglyphs. I planned to gather – light, sage scent, the burn of icy mist on my face, whatever skittered away from my human presence. I could be so busy gathering that I would not think of my son, would not imagine him not so much dead, as trapped in terror.
Later I would write about what I saw. My words would have value – even if he died, even if the loss of him was dry ice in me for the rest of my years. I looked up at a mist-shrouded tree-line. Words failed me. There was nothing to gather. There was only cold and wind and tracks in frozen mud. I stopped.
At home, I logged on. There was a message from Matt’s friend in Kyoto. My son had called. He was unharmed. He was on his way to Kyoto. I forwarded the message to my daughter. Our family began to respond. I realized I was alive with feelings. For long moments, I felt as though I would shatter. Then I began to study what was happening for tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of families in Japan. I spent the rest of the day and the next day and the next reading news reports, opinions and commentaries. The more I read, the more I began to wonder how much of the media, the blogs, the other writers and I were pimps using life, using death – for profit, for recognition, to gain distance, to sustain the illusion of safety. I thought of the moment in the desert that could not be used.
I kept thinking I should write something. Something about the miracle of a son surviving, something about how little control any of us has, something wise and privileged about a family drawn closer because of a tragedy. Instead, I wrote this dispatch. It is sent from a place where in the long run, there is no profit, no survival, no safety. There is only the knowledge that I am done with watching. I am done with protecting myself from raw life, from the certainty of loss and death. I am done with being a ghost pimping life and death.
This first appeared in the Travel Writing section of Matador Network: http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/notes-from-road/notes-on-pimping-life-and-death/
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Gibbon Mother: a brief lesson in love
Thirty-five years ago I took a break from the American Psychological Association Convention. I needed to clear my mind of theory and debate. The zoo was within walking distance of the big hotel in which I'd been sitting in rooms with no windows, listening to words that seemed to suck the air from the already airless rooms.
I wandered the zoo, from panthers to moon bears to aardvarks and tapirs. After an hour or so, I found myself in front of a big fenced island with living trees. The morning sun glowed in the pale gold fur of the gibbons swinging from branches, ambling over the fake rocks and sitting crouched at the edge of the moat around the island.
A mother swung down from a tree. Her baby rode her hip. She sat on a low boulder and groomed the baby. It looked up at her with bright dark eyes. The baby began to wriggle. The mother pulled it closer. The baby wriggled harder. The mother looked down. The baby suddenly scooted out of her grasp - and waited.
The mother gibbon laid her arm across the baby's shoulders. The baby slowly crept away from her, but not out from under her arm. Everything slowed down as I watched. The mother's arm seemed to stretch impossibly far. The baby looked back at her and opened its mouth wide. I could have sworn the little ape was laughing.
Just when it seemed the baby gibbon would escape it's mother's grasp, she slowly drew her child back to her. And then? The baby wriggled and began to creep away. The mother's arm sheltered. The baby kept scuttling. It reached the far limit of it's mother's arm. She drew the little ape back. The baby snuggled for a few seconds, then headed out again.
The mother gibbon and her child played their game a half dozen times. Then the baby cuddled on her breast and began nursing. I understand that I had watched not only a game, but...
I'll spare you my conclusions. By now, you have your own.
note: I have been posting on the Psychology Today blog site for nearly a year. For reasons that seem unclear, they have shunted a dozen of us into a category Personal Preferences, which means we no longer appear on the main Home page. It also means that our posts disappear into click click internet land. From now on, I'll post all my PT writing here, as well as on Marginalization Today - little humor there.
I wandered the zoo, from panthers to moon bears to aardvarks and tapirs. After an hour or so, I found myself in front of a big fenced island with living trees. The morning sun glowed in the pale gold fur of the gibbons swinging from branches, ambling over the fake rocks and sitting crouched at the edge of the moat around the island.
A mother swung down from a tree. Her baby rode her hip. She sat on a low boulder and groomed the baby. It looked up at her with bright dark eyes. The baby began to wriggle. The mother pulled it closer. The baby wriggled harder. The mother looked down. The baby suddenly scooted out of her grasp - and waited.
The mother gibbon laid her arm across the baby's shoulders. The baby slowly crept away from her, but not out from under her arm. Everything slowed down as I watched. The mother's arm seemed to stretch impossibly far. The baby looked back at her and opened its mouth wide. I could have sworn the little ape was laughing.
Just when it seemed the baby gibbon would escape it's mother's grasp, she slowly drew her child back to her. And then? The baby wriggled and began to creep away. The mother's arm sheltered. The baby kept scuttling. It reached the far limit of it's mother's arm. She drew the little ape back. The baby snuggled for a few seconds, then headed out again.
The mother gibbon and her child played their game a half dozen times. Then the baby cuddled on her breast and began nursing. I understand that I had watched not only a game, but...
I'll spare you my conclusions. By now, you have your own.
note: I have been posting on the Psychology Today blog site for nearly a year. For reasons that seem unclear, they have shunted a dozen of us into a category Personal Preferences, which means we no longer appear on the main Home page. It also means that our posts disappear into click click internet land. From now on, I'll post all my PT writing here, as well as on Marginalization Today - little humor there.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Cyndra Won't Get Out of the Truck
Cyndra Won’t Get Out of the Truck
If she had known how completely crazy J.B. was, even BEFORE he shipped over to Iraq, she would not have married him. Even if she had been seventeen and him twenty-one with pale blue eyes, with shoulders that wouldn’t quit, with a manner of kissing that said “I completely respect you girl, and I completely want you.”
But it was too late to take it back. There was Kelli who was two and cute as a puppy; and there was L’il J.B. who was too l’il for anybody to tell whether he was going to be cute or not. Kelli was at her mom’s. L’il J.B. was attached to Cyndra’s left boob on which he was sucking as if his life depended on it. Which it did. Which was why it was too late to take back that dumb second when she had looked up into J.B.’s eyes and said, “I do. I surely do.”
Cyndra and L’il J.B. were in the front seat of J.B.’s King Cab on a Sunday afternoon in August in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The air conditioner was blasting and Cyndra was squinting into the dashboard t.v. She could barely make out the picture because the King Cab was parked smack dab in the pure hell of the Mojave Desert. J.B. was not in sight, but Cyndra could hear the bad boy roar of his dirt bike, even though the windows were closed and she had her earbud in so she could listen to a duet between Faith Hill and Tim Mcgraw that was causing her to sob and drip tears on L’il J.B.’s tiny bald head.
She and L’il had been stuck in the King Cab for four hours. J.B. would zoom up every hour or so and say, “How ya doin’, baby? I’ll just do this one last run and we’ll head in for pizza and home and who knows what.”
As if. As if she could even stand for him to touch her. As if all she needed was another something nuzzling her boobs. The t.v. flickered and went black. The cell battery was dead due to her listening for two hours to her somewhat best friend bitch about how there was nothing to do in this totally boring place. Which meant there was really nothing to do. Nothing.
She had a pile of her mom’s magazines next to her on the seat because she had planned to leave them at her sister’s salon. She glanced down at the top one. "How to welcome your soldier hubby Home." Right. There would be---she didn't have to look---a recipe for The Most Outrageous Triple Chocolate Torte and two articles on how to lose weight. For your soldier hubby. Both of them so stupidly hopeless, the cake which J.B. would not eat because he would have slammed eight Dos Eq longnecks during dinner; and gorgeous skinny her if she was ever gorgeous skinny her again, because if J.B. did touch her, it would have everything to do with want, and nothing to do with respect.
Her sister's salon? Three stations and an ex-biker chick who called herself an aesthatician coming in about once every six months to do some old lady’s toenails. Tyra herself was the sister from hell. No details thanks, except for how the bitch had managed to steal away Cyndra’s true love when they were teenage chicks. And, Cyndra all perfect boobs and butt and heart-shaped face and Tyra, the Tyrant ha ha, 250 lbs. with boobs that would be hanging to her knees by the time she was 23. Yeah, and now Cyndra was pushing 225.
Cyndra realized L’il’s mouth had fallen away from her breast. She set him on the magazines and pulled down her blouse. She was a mess. She was a slobby mess. Once she would have wiped off the milk and tucked herself into the nursing bra. Now she didn’t even wear the nursing bra. She looked down at her top and saw the tiny star of wet spreading out.
Now what.
If it weren’t for the air-conditioner she would...what...she would who knows. The last time J.B. had cruised up to the truck he had smelled like a brewery. He'd taken a 12-pack out with him strapped to the back of the bike. He was drinking every day, sometimes he'd already popped a few on the drive back from the Marine Base. And it seemed like the only time he ever wanted to fool around was in the morning when he had a hang-over woodie. Cyndra could not figure out why guys had to give such ugly names to the act of love.
Suddenly she had one of those lousy memories, the ones that made her skin crawl, the ones that she thought had gone away when she was first in love with J.B. Back then when he put his arms around her, she knew she had escaped her past. Everything was new. Everything was magic. Like normal people. Like normal love. Not like her mom and dad. And there it was - the friggin' memory - her dad's voice in her ears, even louder than it had been back in the trailer. Her mom was crying, not mad crying, but pitiful crying. And her dad was saying those ugly words. Who puts a roof over your head? Who puts clothes on the god-damned kids? Who deserves a little pussy now and then – not twice a year?
Cyndra cranked the volume on the I-pod. There was a new voice. She had no idea who it was. She'd downloaded a mix from a website. It was a woman singing quietly, a sad guitar behind her. Cyndra had never heard it before, but the song was about making mistakes and running away and Cyndra wondered if it had been written for her.
She thought about just starting the truck and driving away, but she knew J.B. usually rode the damn bike till he was running on vapor. Pissed-off as she was, she didn't want to kill him, which is what pushing a dead dirt bike back to where he could hitch into Yucca Valley in ninety-eight degree heat would do. She checked the gas gauge in the truck. There was a good half tank left. But she turned down the air conditioning just to play it safe.
Seemed like that was all she ever did now - play it safe. Make sure J.B. and the kids ate more or less right. Try to watch her weight while she felt so empty all the time. Listen to her sister bitch about the salon - how Gennifer was a bitch and Margo was a bitch and D'wanne was nothing but a bitchy faggot - and never tell her sister what she really thought, that Tyra was the real bitch. And why couldn't she just tell her that? - because sometimes, if Cyndra was realllly understanding, Tyra would offer to babysit and Cyndra could take a long luke-warm shower, go out on the patio in her wet t-shirt dress and sit in peace while the hot air evaporated the water from the dress and her skin, and she could pretend it was March in Phoenix, Arizona where she and J.B. had gone for their honeymoon. The air had been perfect. Soft. Little night breezes. If she closed her eyes the evaporation felt like that kind of heaven - or maybe even J.B.'s fingers all delicate on her face.
What had happened to wild Cyndra? What had happened to the girl who didn't hardly drink or smoke pot, but who would walk away from the Luna Mesa Full Moon keggers on the BLM land, out into a silver desert where if she lined herself up just right with the big fat moon, her shadow would walk ahead of her? Or the girl who would run right out into the heart of a thunderstorm when one slammed in, like a miracle you could be terrified of and love how your heart pounded in your chest? What had happened to the girl who was going to be the first person in her family to go to college - right over at Copper Mountain College where she wasn't going to get some dumb girl degree, but major in computer programming?
Gone. Vanished in the instant it took for her to welcome J.B. into her body and whisper, "I'm going to drive you crazy, bad boy." Ten million years ago. L'il J.B. snorted, whimpered and clutched his tiny hands in the air. Cyndra pulled him up to her breast and plugged him in. She heard the giant mosquito whine of the dirt bike. There had better be something new pretty damn soon.
"So how long were you stuck out there?" Tyra said. She had her "snooping for gossip but pretending she really cared" tone in her voice.
"Six hours all told." Cyndra shrugged. "It wasn't a big deal. At least I had my music. And I could just think for a while without somebody nagging me about something or other."
"You need a break," Tyra said. She had her gossip so she could afford to be charitable. "I sure do," Cyndra said. She figured Tyra was going to offer to watch the kids for an hour so she could take her bath and sit on the patio.
"I've got a surprise," Tyra said. "Tell J.B., you and me are going down into Palm Springs to get some stuff at Target. Call him so he doesn't get shit-faced on the way home from work. He can watch the kids. He owes you. You deserve to have some fun."
Cyndra thought of the heat in Palm Springs and the old people who all looked like they had never made a mistake in their lives. Plus a hundred and fifty bucks had disappeared from their savings and she didn't want to spend money. "We're almost broke till the end of the month," she said.
Tyra laughed. "You don't need money, baby sister. I hit it big over at Morongo last night. I've got five hundred bucks free money and a postcard from one of those fancy Palm Springs casinos that's good for two buffets, free drinks and fifty dollars in free slot play. We're gonna get wild."
"Play it safe" was hovering in Cyndra's mind like Casper the Cautious Ghost. It smiled it's cutesy-poo smile. She wanted to strangle it. Cyndra straightened her shoulders, looked her sister in the eye and said, "Pick me up at 7."
"You won't regret it," Tyra said. "I left out the best part. I got tickets for Tim McGraw. He's playing there tonight."
"Without Faith?"
"Without Faith. It's some kind of benefit dealie. You put on that sparkly black dress, you know, the one cut down to your knees and we just might have to get ourselves in the front row and when you stand up to cheer, stick your chest out and he's gonna' tell Faith 'bye-bye, baby!'"
"Like I said, pick me up at 7."
"See you later, mamagator."
On cue, L'il J.B. hollered from his crib in the kids' room. Kelli raced in from the dusty patio and grabbed Cyndra around the legs. "Let me go, babygirl, I gotta feed your brother." Kelli clung tighter. Cyndra pried her away and crouched down next to her. "I'm sorry, sugar," she said. "Let's get you an ice cream and then you come help me get him up and you can sit next to me while I feed him and you can have your ice cream. L'il's gonna be all jealous of you."
Cyndra never knew if Kelli really understood what she was saying to her. She just tried to keep her voice all momsy and loving. Kelli reached up and patted her face. "O.k. then, good girl," Cyndra said, "let's get it going."
It was mid-afternoon by the time Cyndra got L'il back to sleep, the ice cream off Kelli and the couch, Kelli down for a nap and herself charged up enough to call J.B. He didn't answer. He'd always been like that - blah blah no woman's gonna be the boss of me blah blah. Cyndra dug through the back of the big walk-in closet and found the black dress. She hung it in the bathroom with the shower on to steam a few wrinkles out. When she tried it on, the zipper almost didn't close. She sucked in her breath till it hurt and felt the zipper close. There would be no more ice cream bars. None.
When J.B. finally called his voice was all puffed-up and important. "What's up? I got a minute." Cyndra rolled her eyes. She was so over almost everything about him. "Honey," she said, her words racing to get everything in before he could say no, "I was hoping you could come straight home tonight. Tyra's gotta see a doctor down in Palm Springs and she's scared. I told her I'd see if you'd be willing to watch the kids so I could keep her company...see that way, she owes us and maybe you and me can get a little alone time on the weekend while she watches the kids back as a favor. You know, we haven't had any alone time in too long."
J.B. laughed. His voice softened. "You mean special alone time? Real special my-girl knows-what-I like alone time?"
Cyndra grabbed an ice cream bar from the freezer. She did it so quiet he'd never know. "Uh huh," she said, "real real special alone time." She ripped the wrapper from the ice cream bar with her teeth.
"I can come right home," J.B. said. "You bet I can. You got yourself a deal."
Cyndra bit off the first inch of the ice cream bar and damn near swallowed it whole. "That's real sweet of you, baby," she said. "Bye bye."
She still couldn't believe it had been so easy. J.B. had screeched into the drive, shoved open the door and stopped dead in his tracks. "Damn," he'd said, "you look good. You look damn hot. You gotta promise me you'll wear that dress when we have our real special time alone." Cyndra hadn't said anything. She'd just walked up to him real slow, pressed up against him for a second, backed away and grinned. Tyra had pulled up, beeped the horn and Cyndra was gone gone gone.
And now, right this minute, she was sitting on the most comfortable chair she'd maybe ever sat in. It had a seat that seemed to be made just for her butt, a nice high back and it was exactly the right distance from the glowing rainbow screen of a Cleopatra slot machine. She'd just bet forty nickles and three golden tiger things had bounced down in front of her and there was music playing and a bunch of free spins about to happen at THREE TIMES THE NORMAL WIN and her damn sister was tugging on her sleeve, saying "Come on, we gotta get to the seafood buffet while the crab claws are still there...plus Tim's on in forty-five minutes. Come on!"
"Wait up," Cyndra said, "just give me two more minutes..."
It shoulda been easy. It looked easy when Cyndra did it. Taking care of two kids, a baby and a toddler, not like the seven kids in his family, plus he kinda liked both of them. But, L'il J.B. was yowling and Kelli was tugging on his t-shirt, whining dadeee dadeeee dadeeeeeeeee and it was about 100 and f--k degrees and he hadn't had a beer since the stashed one in his office at the Base. Which had been two hours ago, two hours that felt like two centuries. J.B. was not a happy boy.
He'd fed L'il J.B. He'd settled Kelli in front of the t.v. with a bowl of spaghetti-O's which was one of the three things she would eat. He'd even nuked the bowl of tuna casserole Cyndra had left in the fridge and made himself eat it. He wasn't used to solid food this early in the evening. He'd usually go for the three basic Food Groups: beer, beer and more beer. J.B. thought about putting the kids in their car seats and heading into Ranch Foods in 29 for a case of Food Group, but it was 100 and f--k and he couldn't figure out what he'd do with the kids while he ran into the store. He wasn't scared of much, but thinking of kids cooking in a car in the Mojave heat made him want to go back to being a hard-shell Baptist.
J.B. picked up L'il J.B. and held him close to his chest with the kid's head on his shoulder. He'd seen Cyndra do that. "Hey, Mini-me," J.B. said. "Give us one of those bad boy belches." L'il kept yowling. There was a stink in the air. J.B. patted his baby's butt. Yep. J.B. sank down onto the couch, hollered and jumped up. He'd landed on one of Kelli's friggin' Barbie Dolls - and a half-eaten bag of pork rinds. He held L'il out in front of him. "O.k., you little booger, I know what we'll do. We'll call mom!"
Kelli hadn't let go of J.B.'s shirt the whole time he'd been standing and sitting and jumping up. "Momeeeeee," she whined, "I want my momeeeeee."
"You and me both," J.B. said. That instant he saw Cyndra's cell phone lying on the kitchen countertop. "What the f--k! You dumb b---h. Sorry, Kelli, daddy said a bad word - make that two bad words." He swiped the Barbie doll onto the floor. Kelli shrieked. J.B. dropped down onto the couch with his daughter attached to his shirt. He tried to think of how hot Cyndra had looked as she went out the door. All it did was piss him off. That's how she'd hooked him. That's how he'd landed in Marine housing in the middle of hell, drier than the sand around him, with a piss-stinking baby and a sobbing little girl for company. "I'll never have sex again," he said to his kids. They just kept stinking and sobbing.
Cyndra vaguely remembered something about Tim McGraw and crab legs and Girls Night Out. It seemed like a dream she'd had a million years ago. Her life seemed like a nightmare she'd been living even longer. If sitting in front of a friendly slot machine drinking from a bottomless glass of diet pop and vodka was self-destruction, it suited her just fine. Tyra appeared at her side now and then. Each time they were both more loaded. The last time she'd showed up she'd just laughed and plunked herself down next to Cyndra. "Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
She shoved a twenty into her machine. "Look," she said, "it's all cool and spiritual." Cyndra glanced over. There were Aztec pyramids and heathen gods. Tyra drove her nuts with all her back-dated New Age bullshit. And then, two moons and three suns popped up on the screen, Tyra shrieked, they both watched the credits rocketing up and Cyndra figured maybe there was something to the machine's ancient powers.
"I just love this," she said. She and Tyra watched the bonus round spin gloriously. "You know," Tyra said, "when you get the little thingies that say you hit the Bonus round, it's just like the seconds right before a guy you want to kiss comes forward to kiss you. You just know all you gotta do is sit back and EN-joy!"
The three golden lions dropped into place on Cyndra's screen. Bonus round! She remembered the first time J.B. had kissed her and watched the memory wash away in a rising flood of credits - at a nickle a credit! "I don't ever want to go home," she said. "This is the most fun I've ever had."
Tyra stared at her slot screen. "That says a lot for romance, doesn't it?"
Cyndra didn't even bother to answer.
It had to stop. It flat out had to stop. Yes, the kids were finally asleep. Yes, J.B. had logged into his favorite Girls Gone Wild site. Yes, he'd had two nice intimate experiences with the girls. Yes, for once Cyndra wasn't nagging him about something. But...but...but he'd started watching the clock. It was 1:30 a.m. and no Cyndra. He hadn't had a drink since the last hit of Nyquil, which had finished off the bottle. The crappy supermarket stopped selling booze at 2 a.m., meaning that if Cyndra didn't get her butt home in the next ten minutes, there was no time to head into town for a beer or twelve.
1:31.59. 1:32. 1:32.01. J.B. logged off and checked on the kids. They were both sound asleep. He considered the deep crap he'd be in if he left to buy some beer and Tyra brought Cyndra back and they both walked in to find the kids alone. It wasn't like he'd never been in deep crap before. But Tyra had a voice like a chainsaw and as ragged as his last nerve was, he didn't need to hear that.
He stepped out into the backyard. He loved that damn Mojave sky. He hated all the rest of the friggin' desert, but he loved the big bad black above him, the way the stars looked like diamonds, the way the flares from the bombing runs to the north burst like alien spaceships. Without thinking, he locked the back and front doors, climbed in the truck and headed into town. The kids would be o.k. He'd be 15 hot minutes to the store, five minutes grabbing a couple six packs and 15 hot minutes driving back. No way any tragedy would happen. Especially since he'd busted his ass at the job all day and been a real sweetheart about Cyndra taking off.
Cyndra slid the card into the ATM. The message flashed. "Funds unavailable." Tyra looked over her shoulder. "You hit your daily limit, sistuh. What is it?"
"Five hundred bucks," Cyndra said. She stared down at the card. "WTF do I do now?"
"You borrow a few bucks from me," Tyra said cheerfully. "And we just hunker down for a little longer."
“But, what if…?”
“No “what if”, you been losing so long on that machine, it’s gotta hit.”
The beer run had gone smooth. Market open, the cute Philippina chick at the register. J.B. popped a brew as soon as he'd cleared town. That big bad sky was grinning down at him. Desert wind poured through the truck windows. He slid a Merle Haggard CD in the player and cranked it up. Life was sweet again. Then he saw the flashing red and blue lights.
J.B. checked his speed. A mile under the limit. He grabbed a rag off the seat, shoved it into the beer and dropped the can on the floor. He saw the future like you were supposed to do when you were drowning. The cop's face in the window. The faint whiff of brew in the air. The bust. Cyndra and Tyra storming into the house. The end of his life - as crummy as it too often was. Merle was singing The way I am don't fit my shackles. WTF, J.B. hissed, what do I do now?
“I’m going out to the car,” Cyndra said. Tyra looked up. Her eyes were like Night of the Living Dead. “Huh?” she said. Cyndra slowly stood up. Her feet were numb, her legs shaky and there was a hot-cold lump in her stomach. “I’m going out to the car. I don’t have any credits left and I think I might have died in front of that machine and this is hell.”
“Whoa,” Tyra said. “You are such a Drama Queen. Take this.” She handed Cyndra a handful of twenties. “Sit down! You’re not leaving me here. Besides, it’s still body temperature out there and if you open the windows, the midges from the pool will eat you alive.”
Cyndra couldn’t remember the last time Tyra, or anybody else, had given a flying f—k about her comfort. “O.k.,” she said, “but it’s 3 a.m. and I can’t feel my legs and I think I gotta pee, so I’m going to go to the john. Save my machine.” Tyra tilted Cyndra’s chair up against the machine. “Woo hoo,” she said, “I just hit another bonus."
There was nobody in the Ladies’. Cyndra sat in the Handicapped stall. She felt handicapped and all of a sudden she’d felt like she never wanted to be closed in anywhere. She rested her head against the tile wall. It felt sweetly cool and when she peed, she decided that peeing when you were about to explode was possibly the best feeling in the world – except maybe seeing the five gold pyramids drop into place on the slot screen. Which they had. About six hundred bucks ago.
“I’m dead meat.” J.B. realized he’d said it out loud. Who the f—k was he talking to? The sky? His pal, the open 12-pack on the seat? It sure wasn’t god, not the god of his childhood, not the god he’d stopped talking to when the IED took out Jackson and Martinez and Mr. Strak, Christopher Morgan Benson, the Third, himself.
Something was listening. The blue-red dazzle zoomed by. He watched the cop’s tail-lights fade into the dark. He wondered if you could have a heart attack at 23 even if you were nothing but muscle and beer. “Thanks,” he said to the god he didn’t believe in and headed home.
“Hey.” The voice was familiar. “Hey. Wake up.” Cyndra jolted out of a dream of spotlights and sequins. Tyra shook her again. “We’ve got to go. It’s four a.m.”
“Holy shit, we won’t be back till morning, Cyndra said. “J.B.’s gonna kill me.”
“Undoubtless,” Tyra said. “Has he called you even once?”
“The phone’s on the kitchen counter. I left it there on purpose.”
“No worries. I got it figured out. Come on, let’s get outta here.”
Cyndra checked around the machine. There was nothing there. All she’d left behind was eight hundred and sixty-five bucks. She patted the machine. She’d seen other players do that. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I don’t get mad. I get even.”
“Dad-DY! Dad-DY! Wake up. The little phone ringing.”
J.B. pulled the pillow over his head. Evil little fingers poked his stomach. Poked again. It wasn’t the dream he’d been having that had been a whole lot like some Hobbit-nightmare. “DAD-DY!! Mommy’s on the phone.” J.B. peeked out from under the pillow. “Ha ha,” Kelli giggled, “Daddy play hide a seek. Here.” She handed J.B. Cyndra’s cell.
“What?” he said.
“Oh hi, Cyndra, gee I’m glad you’re o.k., honey. Glad nothing happened,” Cyndra said. “Weren’t you even worried?”
“Worried about what?” J.B. checked the clock. 4: fuckin’ 10. “Where the fuck are you?”
“We’re o.k. Tyra’s tire went flat out in the middle of who knows where. She had to take a short-cut home which just happened to go by this guy she like’s house up on the mesa. Of course he wasn’t home so then we got lost. There wasn’t any phone reception. We’ve been sitting in the car waiting for somebody to come along since about ten. Finally, some old rancher drove up on his ATV.”
“Jesus,” J.B. yelled. “Can you just cut to the chase?”
“No yell, Daddy. No say bad word.” Kelli climbed up on the bed and snuggled next to him.
“I’ll be home in a half hour. Can you get the kids breakfast?”
J.B. pressed the cool phone against his forehead. It was already ninety-fuck in the bedroom. He felt like he’d been boiled. The cool spot on his forehead felt like rapidly fading hope.
“Yep,” he said.
“You’re not mad?” Cyndra’s voice went little girl.
“Nope.”
They said goodbye. “How the fuck,” he said to Kelli, could I be mad when now I’ve got time to clean up the living-room and haul the bottles out to the desert?”
“No say bad word,” Kelli said.
Tyra pulled into the driveway and leaned her head on the steering wheel. “Oh! My! God! That was soooooo much fun. Just leave me here for a few minutes. I’m not going home. I gotta get to the spa by 8 and set out my stuff.” Cyndra picked up her purse from the floor and grinned. “We have to go back, you know that? I told my machine I don’t get mad, I get even.”
“As if!” Tyra said. “As if we wouldn’t go back again. I’ve still got food comps and a room comp, so next time if we perhaps underestimate our enthusiasm and all of a sudden it’s 3 a.m., we’ll just crash in our room.”
“If we make it to the room,” Cyndra said. “II could play slots forever. I think I just found a reason to go on living in this hellhole.” She opened the door and stood. The sun was already cooking all living anything out of the air. “Want me to leave the door open?” Tyra sat up. “Naw, I’ll head out. I’m o.k.”
J.B.’s truck was gone. Cyndra let herself into the apartment. It was such a shack. You walked right into the living-room/dining-room/kitchenette and if you moved too fast, you were then heading out the back door into the patio which was dirt, more dirt and one shriveled creosote bush. There were two beer cans under the coffee table – “Heh heh, should call this a beer table!” was one of J.B.’s favorite endlessly repeated jokes. A crushed bag of Doritos poked out from one of the couch cushions. There was, of course, no coffee brewing in the maker. There were no kids. There was a note on the kitchen counter.
Welcome home, party girl. I took the kids to Sally’s. She doesn’t have to go to work till 1:00. Try to get your fat butt over there before she leaves.
Cyndra laughed. Once upon a time, once upon a verrrrry long ago time, like yesterday, the note would have hurt her. No more. She made a pot of coffee and heated up a couple waffles. Then, she sat in her fancy dress, at the breakfast bar and drank three cups of coffee and a whole box of waffles – with butter AND maple syrup. “I’ve got my own thing now,” she said to the empty apartment. “Nobody’s the boss of me anymore.”
If she had known how completely crazy J.B. was, even BEFORE he shipped over to Iraq, she would not have married him. Even if she had been seventeen and him twenty-one with pale blue eyes, with shoulders that wouldn’t quit, with a manner of kissing that said “I completely respect you girl, and I completely want you.”
But it was too late to take it back. There was Kelli who was two and cute as a puppy; and there was L’il J.B. who was too l’il for anybody to tell whether he was going to be cute or not. Kelli was at her mom’s. L’il J.B. was attached to Cyndra’s left boob on which he was sucking as if his life depended on it. Which it did. Which was why it was too late to take back that dumb second when she had looked up into J.B.’s eyes and said, “I do. I surely do.”
Cyndra and L’il J.B. were in the front seat of J.B.’s King Cab on a Sunday afternoon in August in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The air conditioner was blasting and Cyndra was squinting into the dashboard t.v. She could barely make out the picture because the King Cab was parked smack dab in the pure hell of the Mojave Desert. J.B. was not in sight, but Cyndra could hear the bad boy roar of his dirt bike, even though the windows were closed and she had her earbud in so she could listen to a duet between Faith Hill and Tim Mcgraw that was causing her to sob and drip tears on L’il J.B.’s tiny bald head.
She and L’il had been stuck in the King Cab for four hours. J.B. would zoom up every hour or so and say, “How ya doin’, baby? I’ll just do this one last run and we’ll head in for pizza and home and who knows what.”
As if. As if she could even stand for him to touch her. As if all she needed was another something nuzzling her boobs. The t.v. flickered and went black. The cell battery was dead due to her listening for two hours to her somewhat best friend bitch about how there was nothing to do in this totally boring place. Which meant there was really nothing to do. Nothing.
She had a pile of her mom’s magazines next to her on the seat because she had planned to leave them at her sister’s salon. She glanced down at the top one. "How to welcome your soldier hubby Home." Right. There would be---she didn't have to look---a recipe for The Most Outrageous Triple Chocolate Torte and two articles on how to lose weight. For your soldier hubby. Both of them so stupidly hopeless, the cake which J.B. would not eat because he would have slammed eight Dos Eq longnecks during dinner; and gorgeous skinny her if she was ever gorgeous skinny her again, because if J.B. did touch her, it would have everything to do with want, and nothing to do with respect.
Her sister's salon? Three stations and an ex-biker chick who called herself an aesthatician coming in about once every six months to do some old lady’s toenails. Tyra herself was the sister from hell. No details thanks, except for how the bitch had managed to steal away Cyndra’s true love when they were teenage chicks. And, Cyndra all perfect boobs and butt and heart-shaped face and Tyra, the Tyrant ha ha, 250 lbs. with boobs that would be hanging to her knees by the time she was 23. Yeah, and now Cyndra was pushing 225.
Cyndra realized L’il’s mouth had fallen away from her breast. She set him on the magazines and pulled down her blouse. She was a mess. She was a slobby mess. Once she would have wiped off the milk and tucked herself into the nursing bra. Now she didn’t even wear the nursing bra. She looked down at her top and saw the tiny star of wet spreading out.
Now what.
If it weren’t for the air-conditioner she would...what...she would who knows. The last time J.B. had cruised up to the truck he had smelled like a brewery. He'd taken a 12-pack out with him strapped to the back of the bike. He was drinking every day, sometimes he'd already popped a few on the drive back from the Marine Base. And it seemed like the only time he ever wanted to fool around was in the morning when he had a hang-over woodie. Cyndra could not figure out why guys had to give such ugly names to the act of love.
Suddenly she had one of those lousy memories, the ones that made her skin crawl, the ones that she thought had gone away when she was first in love with J.B. Back then when he put his arms around her, she knew she had escaped her past. Everything was new. Everything was magic. Like normal people. Like normal love. Not like her mom and dad. And there it was - the friggin' memory - her dad's voice in her ears, even louder than it had been back in the trailer. Her mom was crying, not mad crying, but pitiful crying. And her dad was saying those ugly words. Who puts a roof over your head? Who puts clothes on the god-damned kids? Who deserves a little pussy now and then – not twice a year?
Cyndra cranked the volume on the I-pod. There was a new voice. She had no idea who it was. She'd downloaded a mix from a website. It was a woman singing quietly, a sad guitar behind her. Cyndra had never heard it before, but the song was about making mistakes and running away and Cyndra wondered if it had been written for her.
She thought about just starting the truck and driving away, but she knew J.B. usually rode the damn bike till he was running on vapor. Pissed-off as she was, she didn't want to kill him, which is what pushing a dead dirt bike back to where he could hitch into Yucca Valley in ninety-eight degree heat would do. She checked the gas gauge in the truck. There was a good half tank left. But she turned down the air conditioning just to play it safe.
Seemed like that was all she ever did now - play it safe. Make sure J.B. and the kids ate more or less right. Try to watch her weight while she felt so empty all the time. Listen to her sister bitch about the salon - how Gennifer was a bitch and Margo was a bitch and D'wanne was nothing but a bitchy faggot - and never tell her sister what she really thought, that Tyra was the real bitch. And why couldn't she just tell her that? - because sometimes, if Cyndra was realllly understanding, Tyra would offer to babysit and Cyndra could take a long luke-warm shower, go out on the patio in her wet t-shirt dress and sit in peace while the hot air evaporated the water from the dress and her skin, and she could pretend it was March in Phoenix, Arizona where she and J.B. had gone for their honeymoon. The air had been perfect. Soft. Little night breezes. If she closed her eyes the evaporation felt like that kind of heaven - or maybe even J.B.'s fingers all delicate on her face.
What had happened to wild Cyndra? What had happened to the girl who didn't hardly drink or smoke pot, but who would walk away from the Luna Mesa Full Moon keggers on the BLM land, out into a silver desert where if she lined herself up just right with the big fat moon, her shadow would walk ahead of her? Or the girl who would run right out into the heart of a thunderstorm when one slammed in, like a miracle you could be terrified of and love how your heart pounded in your chest? What had happened to the girl who was going to be the first person in her family to go to college - right over at Copper Mountain College where she wasn't going to get some dumb girl degree, but major in computer programming?
Gone. Vanished in the instant it took for her to welcome J.B. into her body and whisper, "I'm going to drive you crazy, bad boy." Ten million years ago. L'il J.B. snorted, whimpered and clutched his tiny hands in the air. Cyndra pulled him up to her breast and plugged him in. She heard the giant mosquito whine of the dirt bike. There had better be something new pretty damn soon.
"So how long were you stuck out there?" Tyra said. She had her "snooping for gossip but pretending she really cared" tone in her voice.
"Six hours all told." Cyndra shrugged. "It wasn't a big deal. At least I had my music. And I could just think for a while without somebody nagging me about something or other."
"You need a break," Tyra said. She had her gossip so she could afford to be charitable. "I sure do," Cyndra said. She figured Tyra was going to offer to watch the kids for an hour so she could take her bath and sit on the patio.
"I've got a surprise," Tyra said. "Tell J.B., you and me are going down into Palm Springs to get some stuff at Target. Call him so he doesn't get shit-faced on the way home from work. He can watch the kids. He owes you. You deserve to have some fun."
Cyndra thought of the heat in Palm Springs and the old people who all looked like they had never made a mistake in their lives. Plus a hundred and fifty bucks had disappeared from their savings and she didn't want to spend money. "We're almost broke till the end of the month," she said.
Tyra laughed. "You don't need money, baby sister. I hit it big over at Morongo last night. I've got five hundred bucks free money and a postcard from one of those fancy Palm Springs casinos that's good for two buffets, free drinks and fifty dollars in free slot play. We're gonna get wild."
"Play it safe" was hovering in Cyndra's mind like Casper the Cautious Ghost. It smiled it's cutesy-poo smile. She wanted to strangle it. Cyndra straightened her shoulders, looked her sister in the eye and said, "Pick me up at 7."
"You won't regret it," Tyra said. "I left out the best part. I got tickets for Tim McGraw. He's playing there tonight."
"Without Faith?"
"Without Faith. It's some kind of benefit dealie. You put on that sparkly black dress, you know, the one cut down to your knees and we just might have to get ourselves in the front row and when you stand up to cheer, stick your chest out and he's gonna' tell Faith 'bye-bye, baby!'"
"Like I said, pick me up at 7."
"See you later, mamagator."
On cue, L'il J.B. hollered from his crib in the kids' room. Kelli raced in from the dusty patio and grabbed Cyndra around the legs. "Let me go, babygirl, I gotta feed your brother." Kelli clung tighter. Cyndra pried her away and crouched down next to her. "I'm sorry, sugar," she said. "Let's get you an ice cream and then you come help me get him up and you can sit next to me while I feed him and you can have your ice cream. L'il's gonna be all jealous of you."
Cyndra never knew if Kelli really understood what she was saying to her. She just tried to keep her voice all momsy and loving. Kelli reached up and patted her face. "O.k. then, good girl," Cyndra said, "let's get it going."
It was mid-afternoon by the time Cyndra got L'il back to sleep, the ice cream off Kelli and the couch, Kelli down for a nap and herself charged up enough to call J.B. He didn't answer. He'd always been like that - blah blah no woman's gonna be the boss of me blah blah. Cyndra dug through the back of the big walk-in closet and found the black dress. She hung it in the bathroom with the shower on to steam a few wrinkles out. When she tried it on, the zipper almost didn't close. She sucked in her breath till it hurt and felt the zipper close. There would be no more ice cream bars. None.
When J.B. finally called his voice was all puffed-up and important. "What's up? I got a minute." Cyndra rolled her eyes. She was so over almost everything about him. "Honey," she said, her words racing to get everything in before he could say no, "I was hoping you could come straight home tonight. Tyra's gotta see a doctor down in Palm Springs and she's scared. I told her I'd see if you'd be willing to watch the kids so I could keep her company...see that way, she owes us and maybe you and me can get a little alone time on the weekend while she watches the kids back as a favor. You know, we haven't had any alone time in too long."
J.B. laughed. His voice softened. "You mean special alone time? Real special my-girl knows-what-I like alone time?"
Cyndra grabbed an ice cream bar from the freezer. She did it so quiet he'd never know. "Uh huh," she said, "real real special alone time." She ripped the wrapper from the ice cream bar with her teeth.
"I can come right home," J.B. said. "You bet I can. You got yourself a deal."
Cyndra bit off the first inch of the ice cream bar and damn near swallowed it whole. "That's real sweet of you, baby," she said. "Bye bye."
She still couldn't believe it had been so easy. J.B. had screeched into the drive, shoved open the door and stopped dead in his tracks. "Damn," he'd said, "you look good. You look damn hot. You gotta promise me you'll wear that dress when we have our real special time alone." Cyndra hadn't said anything. She'd just walked up to him real slow, pressed up against him for a second, backed away and grinned. Tyra had pulled up, beeped the horn and Cyndra was gone gone gone.
And now, right this minute, she was sitting on the most comfortable chair she'd maybe ever sat in. It had a seat that seemed to be made just for her butt, a nice high back and it was exactly the right distance from the glowing rainbow screen of a Cleopatra slot machine. She'd just bet forty nickles and three golden tiger things had bounced down in front of her and there was music playing and a bunch of free spins about to happen at THREE TIMES THE NORMAL WIN and her damn sister was tugging on her sleeve, saying "Come on, we gotta get to the seafood buffet while the crab claws are still there...plus Tim's on in forty-five minutes. Come on!"
"Wait up," Cyndra said, "just give me two more minutes..."
It shoulda been easy. It looked easy when Cyndra did it. Taking care of two kids, a baby and a toddler, not like the seven kids in his family, plus he kinda liked both of them. But, L'il J.B. was yowling and Kelli was tugging on his t-shirt, whining dadeee dadeeee dadeeeeeeeee and it was about 100 and f--k degrees and he hadn't had a beer since the stashed one in his office at the Base. Which had been two hours ago, two hours that felt like two centuries. J.B. was not a happy boy.
He'd fed L'il J.B. He'd settled Kelli in front of the t.v. with a bowl of spaghetti-O's which was one of the three things she would eat. He'd even nuked the bowl of tuna casserole Cyndra had left in the fridge and made himself eat it. He wasn't used to solid food this early in the evening. He'd usually go for the three basic Food Groups: beer, beer and more beer. J.B. thought about putting the kids in their car seats and heading into Ranch Foods in 29 for a case of Food Group, but it was 100 and f--k and he couldn't figure out what he'd do with the kids while he ran into the store. He wasn't scared of much, but thinking of kids cooking in a car in the Mojave heat made him want to go back to being a hard-shell Baptist.
J.B. picked up L'il J.B. and held him close to his chest with the kid's head on his shoulder. He'd seen Cyndra do that. "Hey, Mini-me," J.B. said. "Give us one of those bad boy belches." L'il kept yowling. There was a stink in the air. J.B. patted his baby's butt. Yep. J.B. sank down onto the couch, hollered and jumped up. He'd landed on one of Kelli's friggin' Barbie Dolls - and a half-eaten bag of pork rinds. He held L'il out in front of him. "O.k., you little booger, I know what we'll do. We'll call mom!"
Kelli hadn't let go of J.B.'s shirt the whole time he'd been standing and sitting and jumping up. "Momeeeeee," she whined, "I want my momeeeeee."
"You and me both," J.B. said. That instant he saw Cyndra's cell phone lying on the kitchen countertop. "What the f--k! You dumb b---h. Sorry, Kelli, daddy said a bad word - make that two bad words." He swiped the Barbie doll onto the floor. Kelli shrieked. J.B. dropped down onto the couch with his daughter attached to his shirt. He tried to think of how hot Cyndra had looked as she went out the door. All it did was piss him off. That's how she'd hooked him. That's how he'd landed in Marine housing in the middle of hell, drier than the sand around him, with a piss-stinking baby and a sobbing little girl for company. "I'll never have sex again," he said to his kids. They just kept stinking and sobbing.
Cyndra vaguely remembered something about Tim McGraw and crab legs and Girls Night Out. It seemed like a dream she'd had a million years ago. Her life seemed like a nightmare she'd been living even longer. If sitting in front of a friendly slot machine drinking from a bottomless glass of diet pop and vodka was self-destruction, it suited her just fine. Tyra appeared at her side now and then. Each time they were both more loaded. The last time she'd showed up she'd just laughed and plunked herself down next to Cyndra. "Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
She shoved a twenty into her machine. "Look," she said, "it's all cool and spiritual." Cyndra glanced over. There were Aztec pyramids and heathen gods. Tyra drove her nuts with all her back-dated New Age bullshit. And then, two moons and three suns popped up on the screen, Tyra shrieked, they both watched the credits rocketing up and Cyndra figured maybe there was something to the machine's ancient powers.
"I just love this," she said. She and Tyra watched the bonus round spin gloriously. "You know," Tyra said, "when you get the little thingies that say you hit the Bonus round, it's just like the seconds right before a guy you want to kiss comes forward to kiss you. You just know all you gotta do is sit back and EN-joy!"
The three golden lions dropped into place on Cyndra's screen. Bonus round! She remembered the first time J.B. had kissed her and watched the memory wash away in a rising flood of credits - at a nickle a credit! "I don't ever want to go home," she said. "This is the most fun I've ever had."
Tyra stared at her slot screen. "That says a lot for romance, doesn't it?"
Cyndra didn't even bother to answer.
It had to stop. It flat out had to stop. Yes, the kids were finally asleep. Yes, J.B. had logged into his favorite Girls Gone Wild site. Yes, he'd had two nice intimate experiences with the girls. Yes, for once Cyndra wasn't nagging him about something. But...but...but he'd started watching the clock. It was 1:30 a.m. and no Cyndra. He hadn't had a drink since the last hit of Nyquil, which had finished off the bottle. The crappy supermarket stopped selling booze at 2 a.m., meaning that if Cyndra didn't get her butt home in the next ten minutes, there was no time to head into town for a beer or twelve.
1:31.59. 1:32. 1:32.01. J.B. logged off and checked on the kids. They were both sound asleep. He considered the deep crap he'd be in if he left to buy some beer and Tyra brought Cyndra back and they both walked in to find the kids alone. It wasn't like he'd never been in deep crap before. But Tyra had a voice like a chainsaw and as ragged as his last nerve was, he didn't need to hear that.
He stepped out into the backyard. He loved that damn Mojave sky. He hated all the rest of the friggin' desert, but he loved the big bad black above him, the way the stars looked like diamonds, the way the flares from the bombing runs to the north burst like alien spaceships. Without thinking, he locked the back and front doors, climbed in the truck and headed into town. The kids would be o.k. He'd be 15 hot minutes to the store, five minutes grabbing a couple six packs and 15 hot minutes driving back. No way any tragedy would happen. Especially since he'd busted his ass at the job all day and been a real sweetheart about Cyndra taking off.
Cyndra slid the card into the ATM. The message flashed. "Funds unavailable." Tyra looked over her shoulder. "You hit your daily limit, sistuh. What is it?"
"Five hundred bucks," Cyndra said. She stared down at the card. "WTF do I do now?"
"You borrow a few bucks from me," Tyra said cheerfully. "And we just hunker down for a little longer."
“But, what if…?”
“No “what if”, you been losing so long on that machine, it’s gotta hit.”
The beer run had gone smooth. Market open, the cute Philippina chick at the register. J.B. popped a brew as soon as he'd cleared town. That big bad sky was grinning down at him. Desert wind poured through the truck windows. He slid a Merle Haggard CD in the player and cranked it up. Life was sweet again. Then he saw the flashing red and blue lights.
J.B. checked his speed. A mile under the limit. He grabbed a rag off the seat, shoved it into the beer and dropped the can on the floor. He saw the future like you were supposed to do when you were drowning. The cop's face in the window. The faint whiff of brew in the air. The bust. Cyndra and Tyra storming into the house. The end of his life - as crummy as it too often was. Merle was singing The way I am don't fit my shackles. WTF, J.B. hissed, what do I do now?
“I’m going out to the car,” Cyndra said. Tyra looked up. Her eyes were like Night of the Living Dead. “Huh?” she said. Cyndra slowly stood up. Her feet were numb, her legs shaky and there was a hot-cold lump in her stomach. “I’m going out to the car. I don’t have any credits left and I think I might have died in front of that machine and this is hell.”
“Whoa,” Tyra said. “You are such a Drama Queen. Take this.” She handed Cyndra a handful of twenties. “Sit down! You’re not leaving me here. Besides, it’s still body temperature out there and if you open the windows, the midges from the pool will eat you alive.”
Cyndra couldn’t remember the last time Tyra, or anybody else, had given a flying f—k about her comfort. “O.k.,” she said, “but it’s 3 a.m. and I can’t feel my legs and I think I gotta pee, so I’m going to go to the john. Save my machine.” Tyra tilted Cyndra’s chair up against the machine. “Woo hoo,” she said, “I just hit another bonus."
There was nobody in the Ladies’. Cyndra sat in the Handicapped stall. She felt handicapped and all of a sudden she’d felt like she never wanted to be closed in anywhere. She rested her head against the tile wall. It felt sweetly cool and when she peed, she decided that peeing when you were about to explode was possibly the best feeling in the world – except maybe seeing the five gold pyramids drop into place on the slot screen. Which they had. About six hundred bucks ago.
“I’m dead meat.” J.B. realized he’d said it out loud. Who the f—k was he talking to? The sky? His pal, the open 12-pack on the seat? It sure wasn’t god, not the god of his childhood, not the god he’d stopped talking to when the IED took out Jackson and Martinez and Mr. Strak, Christopher Morgan Benson, the Third, himself.
Something was listening. The blue-red dazzle zoomed by. He watched the cop’s tail-lights fade into the dark. He wondered if you could have a heart attack at 23 even if you were nothing but muscle and beer. “Thanks,” he said to the god he didn’t believe in and headed home.
“Hey.” The voice was familiar. “Hey. Wake up.” Cyndra jolted out of a dream of spotlights and sequins. Tyra shook her again. “We’ve got to go. It’s four a.m.”
“Holy shit, we won’t be back till morning, Cyndra said. “J.B.’s gonna kill me.”
“Undoubtless,” Tyra said. “Has he called you even once?”
“The phone’s on the kitchen counter. I left it there on purpose.”
“No worries. I got it figured out. Come on, let’s get outta here.”
Cyndra checked around the machine. There was nothing there. All she’d left behind was eight hundred and sixty-five bucks. She patted the machine. She’d seen other players do that. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I don’t get mad. I get even.”
“Dad-DY! Dad-DY! Wake up. The little phone ringing.”
J.B. pulled the pillow over his head. Evil little fingers poked his stomach. Poked again. It wasn’t the dream he’d been having that had been a whole lot like some Hobbit-nightmare. “DAD-DY!! Mommy’s on the phone.” J.B. peeked out from under the pillow. “Ha ha,” Kelli giggled, “Daddy play hide a seek. Here.” She handed J.B. Cyndra’s cell.
“What?” he said.
“Oh hi, Cyndra, gee I’m glad you’re o.k., honey. Glad nothing happened,” Cyndra said. “Weren’t you even worried?”
“Worried about what?” J.B. checked the clock. 4: fuckin’ 10. “Where the fuck are you?”
“We’re o.k. Tyra’s tire went flat out in the middle of who knows where. She had to take a short-cut home which just happened to go by this guy she like’s house up on the mesa. Of course he wasn’t home so then we got lost. There wasn’t any phone reception. We’ve been sitting in the car waiting for somebody to come along since about ten. Finally, some old rancher drove up on his ATV.”
“Jesus,” J.B. yelled. “Can you just cut to the chase?”
“No yell, Daddy. No say bad word.” Kelli climbed up on the bed and snuggled next to him.
“I’ll be home in a half hour. Can you get the kids breakfast?”
J.B. pressed the cool phone against his forehead. It was already ninety-fuck in the bedroom. He felt like he’d been boiled. The cool spot on his forehead felt like rapidly fading hope.
“Yep,” he said.
“You’re not mad?” Cyndra’s voice went little girl.
“Nope.”
They said goodbye. “How the fuck,” he said to Kelli, could I be mad when now I’ve got time to clean up the living-room and haul the bottles out to the desert?”
“No say bad word,” Kelli said.
Tyra pulled into the driveway and leaned her head on the steering wheel. “Oh! My! God! That was soooooo much fun. Just leave me here for a few minutes. I’m not going home. I gotta get to the spa by 8 and set out my stuff.” Cyndra picked up her purse from the floor and grinned. “We have to go back, you know that? I told my machine I don’t get mad, I get even.”
“As if!” Tyra said. “As if we wouldn’t go back again. I’ve still got food comps and a room comp, so next time if we perhaps underestimate our enthusiasm and all of a sudden it’s 3 a.m., we’ll just crash in our room.”
“If we make it to the room,” Cyndra said. “II could play slots forever. I think I just found a reason to go on living in this hellhole.” She opened the door and stood. The sun was already cooking all living anything out of the air. “Want me to leave the door open?” Tyra sat up. “Naw, I’ll head out. I’m o.k.”
J.B.’s truck was gone. Cyndra let herself into the apartment. It was such a shack. You walked right into the living-room/dining-room/kitchenette and if you moved too fast, you were then heading out the back door into the patio which was dirt, more dirt and one shriveled creosote bush. There were two beer cans under the coffee table – “Heh heh, should call this a beer table!” was one of J.B.’s favorite endlessly repeated jokes. A crushed bag of Doritos poked out from one of the couch cushions. There was, of course, no coffee brewing in the maker. There were no kids. There was a note on the kitchen counter.
Welcome home, party girl. I took the kids to Sally’s. She doesn’t have to go to work till 1:00. Try to get your fat butt over there before she leaves.
Cyndra laughed. Once upon a time, once upon a verrrrry long ago time, like yesterday, the note would have hurt her. No more. She made a pot of coffee and heated up a couple waffles. Then, she sat in her fancy dress, at the breakfast bar and drank three cups of coffee and a whole box of waffles – with butter AND maple syrup. “I’ve got my own thing now,” she said to the empty apartment. “Nobody’s the boss of me anymore.”
Friday, January 1, 2010
Circling
(I offer Circling to the unknown reader who once underlined sentences in my book, Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest and posed a haunting question in the margin of the essay Compromise: Ghost Dance of the New West? Should chance bring you to this blog, please get in touch with me. My gmail is bstarr67@gmail.com)
We circle around
We circle around
We circle around
The boundaries of the earth.
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
We circle around…
---1986, a song from sacred land work
There is a full Blue Moon and partial eclipse tonight. Today is the last day of a year that, for some, has been akin to being extruded through a basalt tube that is only 2 inches wider than the body. If you read this, you have made it through. Perhaps unscathed, perhaps not. It’s a good bet that you’ve learned more than a little about how some things circle out and return---and some circle out and are gone.
Winter Solstice I surrendered to that which has left in these last twelve moons. I had imagined that I would make my good-bye on the wooden bridge over the Deschutes River. I envisioned a somber ceremony, a quiet sadness that accompanies releasing beloveds become ghosts. No-one had died. No town had been bombed into molecules. And yet there is no possibility of reclamation of that which is gone: three once-dearest friends; my story of the one I had believed to be the One; a town I believed would be my real home forever; the last shreds of not being old.
The ceremony was not what I had in mind. A mallard had other plans.
That morning, I wrote messages to my beloved dead on scraps of yellow notebook paper. Fifteen minutes before a pale sun dropped below the horizon, I stuffed the notes in my jacket pocket and left the house.
I walked down Broadway past little houses catching last light in their windows; took the narrow dirt path to Idaho Street and saw the river gleaming a few blocks ahead. I picked up my pace. You gotta move when you’re racing the sun.
I reached the bridge with a few minutes to spare. Mallards and Canada geese huddled on the shoreline. I turned to the west and thanked the sun for the day. I thanked the 12 moons for a year filled with healing and grace. “And damn hard work,” I muttered.
I turned again to the east side of the bridge and looked down at the black and frosted water. A flock of mallards moved toward me from the northern shore.
I took the first note from my pocket: Dear X, I am deeply sad our friendship ended. I wadded the paper into a ball and dropped it into the river. The lead mallard sped up and gobbled the note. Before I could say, “Sorry pal, it’s not food,” he shook his head and spit it out. And waited for something tastier.
I took the last five notes one by one – their contents are unremarkable and perhaps the most bone-bare words I’ve written – wadded them up and dropped them in the river. The mallard snatched each one, shook his head and spit it out. I was laughing by the time I read: “Flagstaff, every day, I miss who you were.” I had no tears. Clear-eyed, I watched the notes drift down-river. The mallards hung around for a few minutes, then swam back to shore.
We circle around…
I often buy used copies of my books to give away. When I opened the old Bonelight a few days ago, I found that the reader had circled and starred a few sentences in the essays I'd written between 1994 and 2001 - and asked a hard question. I was startled by what the reader had unwitting sent forward to me. The words were what I need now:
* Here is, perhaps, the only question that counts: how do we love?
* ”I love you,” he had shouted. “I love you, Mary!”
So what? I think. All of it, so what?
* I knew that the inheritance we are squandering in casinos is not just money.
Those of us hunkered in front of our machines, bent over the craps table, hunched over a losing hand are giving away our time, our knowledge and our stories. What we might once have passed on to our children, our children’s children remains locked in our hearts and minds. We gather in casinos, in gated communities, in exclusive golf clubs and leave the younger generations to piece together what they can.
* The Buddhists tell us that joy lies in limitations. We Americans are taught the opposite. More is better. Go for it all.
* I prayed in the only way I know. Talking to a Great Friend, then listening. In silence, I understood that vengeance can never be a moral act.
The reader wrote one question:
11/13/02: So with kids, how can we show them a better way, the Way, once they become addicted to stuff, to over-indulgence and greed?
Dear reader, I wonder if in seven years you have found answers to your question. And, do you look back on that mid-November in 2002 and long for what now seems like a simpler world? Do you look at your children, now seven years older, and see in their eyes at least a few answers to your questions? I would love to hear from you. Mary Now
We circle around
We circle around
We circle around
The boundaries of the earth.
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
We circle around…
---1986, a song from sacred land work
There is a full Blue Moon and partial eclipse tonight. Today is the last day of a year that, for some, has been akin to being extruded through a basalt tube that is only 2 inches wider than the body. If you read this, you have made it through. Perhaps unscathed, perhaps not. It’s a good bet that you’ve learned more than a little about how some things circle out and return---and some circle out and are gone.
Winter Solstice I surrendered to that which has left in these last twelve moons. I had imagined that I would make my good-bye on the wooden bridge over the Deschutes River. I envisioned a somber ceremony, a quiet sadness that accompanies releasing beloveds become ghosts. No-one had died. No town had been bombed into molecules. And yet there is no possibility of reclamation of that which is gone: three once-dearest friends; my story of the one I had believed to be the One; a town I believed would be my real home forever; the last shreds of not being old.
The ceremony was not what I had in mind. A mallard had other plans.
That morning, I wrote messages to my beloved dead on scraps of yellow notebook paper. Fifteen minutes before a pale sun dropped below the horizon, I stuffed the notes in my jacket pocket and left the house.
I walked down Broadway past little houses catching last light in their windows; took the narrow dirt path to Idaho Street and saw the river gleaming a few blocks ahead. I picked up my pace. You gotta move when you’re racing the sun.
I reached the bridge with a few minutes to spare. Mallards and Canada geese huddled on the shoreline. I turned to the west and thanked the sun for the day. I thanked the 12 moons for a year filled with healing and grace. “And damn hard work,” I muttered.
I turned again to the east side of the bridge and looked down at the black and frosted water. A flock of mallards moved toward me from the northern shore.
I took the first note from my pocket: Dear X, I am deeply sad our friendship ended. I wadded the paper into a ball and dropped it into the river. The lead mallard sped up and gobbled the note. Before I could say, “Sorry pal, it’s not food,” he shook his head and spit it out. And waited for something tastier.
I took the last five notes one by one – their contents are unremarkable and perhaps the most bone-bare words I’ve written – wadded them up and dropped them in the river. The mallard snatched each one, shook his head and spit it out. I was laughing by the time I read: “Flagstaff, every day, I miss who you were.” I had no tears. Clear-eyed, I watched the notes drift down-river. The mallards hung around for a few minutes, then swam back to shore.
We circle around…
I often buy used copies of my books to give away. When I opened the old Bonelight a few days ago, I found that the reader had circled and starred a few sentences in the essays I'd written between 1994 and 2001 - and asked a hard question. I was startled by what the reader had unwitting sent forward to me. The words were what I need now:
* Here is, perhaps, the only question that counts: how do we love?
* ”I love you,” he had shouted. “I love you, Mary!”
So what? I think. All of it, so what?
* I knew that the inheritance we are squandering in casinos is not just money.
Those of us hunkered in front of our machines, bent over the craps table, hunched over a losing hand are giving away our time, our knowledge and our stories. What we might once have passed on to our children, our children’s children remains locked in our hearts and minds. We gather in casinos, in gated communities, in exclusive golf clubs and leave the younger generations to piece together what they can.
* The Buddhists tell us that joy lies in limitations. We Americans are taught the opposite. More is better. Go for it all.
* I prayed in the only way I know. Talking to a Great Friend, then listening. In silence, I understood that vengeance can never be a moral act.
The reader wrote one question:
11/13/02: So with kids, how can we show them a better way, the Way, once they become addicted to stuff, to over-indulgence and greed?
Dear reader, I wonder if in seven years you have found answers to your question. And, do you look back on that mid-November in 2002 and long for what now seems like a simpler world? Do you look at your children, now seven years older, and see in their eyes at least a few answers to your questions? I would love to hear from you. Mary Now
Sunday, November 1, 2009
What Now?
“What kinds of things do you write?” asked Martha...
”I’m not exactly a writer,” Sam corrected her. “I’m a listener. I’m listening for clues about day-to-day life on the planet.”
“But do you write things down?” asked Jessie.
“Of course,” said Sam.
“Are you writing a book?” demanded Martha
“No,” said Sam. “I’m saving stories. So a hundred years from now people will know how it was with us…”
---Nancy Willard
Sister Water
I have finished writing She Bets Her Life, the book on women and compulsive gambling. Seal Press accepted it last Tuesday to be published April 2010. In some ways, I put a year of research and nine months of writing into it; in other ways, fourteen years of my thoroughly enjoyable gambling addiction carried the book more than any of my discipline or effort.
I loved playing slot machines. I wouldn’t have quit except that my body told me, “Stop. Now.” After seven months of being clean---it would have been a year and a half except for an anger-driven episode in a Yakima casino, an episode marked by rapidly escalating boredom and rapidly de-escalating numbers in my savings account---I know a little more about the chimera of the thoroughly enjoyable.
I look back now and see that while my casino time was mostly childlike bliss, the days between my binges were not. That is the nature of addiction. A real addict only feels normal when they are using. In between my casino runs, I was a deeply irritable, mean and ungrateful woman – a woman terrified of her aging, a woman longing for the childhood she barely had.
So last week I finished the book, the press accepted it and I waited to feel the rush. There was nothing. Then I remembered the nineteenth of the twenty questions Gamblers Anonymous asks its members: “Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?”
Yes. Always. For fourteen years.
Not this year. Instead of grabbing my slot cards, twenty $5 bills and driving to Reno, I ate as though I’d just lived through a famine and played video games till my fingers ached. It didn’t do the trick. I turned off the computer, walked out to the front stoop, looked up at the cloud-veiled stars and said, “What now?”
“What now?” and “What the fuck.” are the addict’s mantras. But, this time I asked the question not of my addiction, but of toothy Mahakala, the ogre deity who eats everything and gives much. I knew it was time to do nothing.
The next day I felt bleak. I haven’t felt depressed in years. Panic is my m.o. I moved slowly through the day, planted poppy seeds for the Spring, re-potted an avocado, opened the freezer door at least five times to contemplate the Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and closed the door firmly – it was what my pal, Michael and I call a yuppie crisis.
I waited till late afternoon to walk downtown. Bend’s hub of local shops and restaurants lies adjacent to Drake Park, a beautifully designed haven of grass, flowers and pine trees along the Deschutes River. I mailed my letters, stopped at Dudley’s Bookstore to talk with my friend Terri, the owner and took the side alley to the park. I hoped sitting by the river would remind me of what matters – and if it didn’t, there would be the silvery water and ducks laughing at the setting sun.
I walked across the grass toward the steps that go down to the river bank. A woman was on the path ahead of me. She walked slowly, not with the stroll of a desperately laid-back tourist, but with the careful steps of a person whose joints were stiff with arthritis. She had pure white hair. She wore a black sweater, gray slacks and beige walking shoes. Her back was straight as a young dancer’s---and she carried a long-stemmed orange carnation carefully in front of her.
She came to the steps and started down. I held back. I am a woman who walks alone at twilight and midnight. I know what I feel when someone comes up behind me. She reached the dirt path at the bottom of the steps. I started down.
The woman stopped and stood at a railing between the path and the river. She looked out over the water. The white hair. The black sweater. The perfect orange carnation. I walked toward her. She turned. We smiled.
“What now?” came into my mind.
“May I tell you something?” I said to her.
“Of course.”
“I saw you up above. I wondered why a woman would be walking the path this time of day carrying a carnation. I thought to myself, ‘There is a story there.’”
“My son died here.” Her face and voice were gentle.
“I’m so sorry.” I touched her arm. She didn’t pull away.
“He was on an outing with his church group,” she said. “He came down here to be alone. He loved it here. ‘It is so quiet,’ he always said. There were three young men. They wanted money for drugs. When he wouldn’t give them any, they beat him to death.”
She paused. “I don’t live here in Bend, but my daughters do. We always come here each year. They were both busy so I told them I would go to the park by myself. They were worried, but I told them I wasn’t afraid.”
I didn’t ask her the logical questions. There didn’t seem to be any. “How old was he?” I say. I imagine a boy in his teens or twenties.
“Forty,” she said. “He left behind a wife and a teen-age daughter.
“At the trial, my grand-daughter stood up and faced the killers. ‘You took my father from me,’ she said and she read a piece she’d written about her dad – about how they would go camping together and how much he loved the quiet places. I was so proud of her.”
We looked out over the water in silence for a few minutes. I said, “You are going to put the carnation in the river, aren’t you?”
She smiled again. “I am. It’s for him. You see, we never know how long we have – with another.”
We embraced. She turned back to the water. I walked along the dirt path. The light had gone silver, the water dark. I listened to the rowdy ducks. I wanted the light and cold air and the ducks’ laughter to last forever. I thought of how I cling to everything, how I would capture every sweetness if I could.
A few hours later, I made my supper. I read while I ate. Nancy Willard. Sister Water. I found the words I hadn’t known I was looking for and understood that capturing is what a writer does, for as long as it takes to witness, remember and record. After that, there is only this:
“…look over there,” said Sam. “A turtle.”
The turtle was making its way slowly toward the water like a man exercising for his health.
“Oh let’s catch him!”
But Sam made no move to catch the turtle. He kept on paddling in dreamy circles around Stevie. “I wonder if he’s carrying a message,” he said at last. “He’s headed straight for us.”
“Let’s catch him,” said Stevie. “Come on, Sam. Let’s catch him.”
“If you catch him, he can’t do his work.”
Sister Water
”I’m not exactly a writer,” Sam corrected her. “I’m a listener. I’m listening for clues about day-to-day life on the planet.”
“But do you write things down?” asked Jessie.
“Of course,” said Sam.
“Are you writing a book?” demanded Martha
“No,” said Sam. “I’m saving stories. So a hundred years from now people will know how it was with us…”
---Nancy Willard
Sister Water
I have finished writing She Bets Her Life, the book on women and compulsive gambling. Seal Press accepted it last Tuesday to be published April 2010. In some ways, I put a year of research and nine months of writing into it; in other ways, fourteen years of my thoroughly enjoyable gambling addiction carried the book more than any of my discipline or effort.
I loved playing slot machines. I wouldn’t have quit except that my body told me, “Stop. Now.” After seven months of being clean---it would have been a year and a half except for an anger-driven episode in a Yakima casino, an episode marked by rapidly escalating boredom and rapidly de-escalating numbers in my savings account---I know a little more about the chimera of the thoroughly enjoyable.
I look back now and see that while my casino time was mostly childlike bliss, the days between my binges were not. That is the nature of addiction. A real addict only feels normal when they are using. In between my casino runs, I was a deeply irritable, mean and ungrateful woman – a woman terrified of her aging, a woman longing for the childhood she barely had.
So last week I finished the book, the press accepted it and I waited to feel the rush. There was nothing. Then I remembered the nineteenth of the twenty questions Gamblers Anonymous asks its members: “Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?”
Yes. Always. For fourteen years.
Not this year. Instead of grabbing my slot cards, twenty $5 bills and driving to Reno, I ate as though I’d just lived through a famine and played video games till my fingers ached. It didn’t do the trick. I turned off the computer, walked out to the front stoop, looked up at the cloud-veiled stars and said, “What now?”
“What now?” and “What the fuck.” are the addict’s mantras. But, this time I asked the question not of my addiction, but of toothy Mahakala, the ogre deity who eats everything and gives much. I knew it was time to do nothing.
The next day I felt bleak. I haven’t felt depressed in years. Panic is my m.o. I moved slowly through the day, planted poppy seeds for the Spring, re-potted an avocado, opened the freezer door at least five times to contemplate the Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and closed the door firmly – it was what my pal, Michael and I call a yuppie crisis.
I waited till late afternoon to walk downtown. Bend’s hub of local shops and restaurants lies adjacent to Drake Park, a beautifully designed haven of grass, flowers and pine trees along the Deschutes River. I mailed my letters, stopped at Dudley’s Bookstore to talk with my friend Terri, the owner and took the side alley to the park. I hoped sitting by the river would remind me of what matters – and if it didn’t, there would be the silvery water and ducks laughing at the setting sun.
I walked across the grass toward the steps that go down to the river bank. A woman was on the path ahead of me. She walked slowly, not with the stroll of a desperately laid-back tourist, but with the careful steps of a person whose joints were stiff with arthritis. She had pure white hair. She wore a black sweater, gray slacks and beige walking shoes. Her back was straight as a young dancer’s---and she carried a long-stemmed orange carnation carefully in front of her.
She came to the steps and started down. I held back. I am a woman who walks alone at twilight and midnight. I know what I feel when someone comes up behind me. She reached the dirt path at the bottom of the steps. I started down.
The woman stopped and stood at a railing between the path and the river. She looked out over the water. The white hair. The black sweater. The perfect orange carnation. I walked toward her. She turned. We smiled.
“What now?” came into my mind.
“May I tell you something?” I said to her.
“Of course.”
“I saw you up above. I wondered why a woman would be walking the path this time of day carrying a carnation. I thought to myself, ‘There is a story there.’”
“My son died here.” Her face and voice were gentle.
“I’m so sorry.” I touched her arm. She didn’t pull away.
“He was on an outing with his church group,” she said. “He came down here to be alone. He loved it here. ‘It is so quiet,’ he always said. There were three young men. They wanted money for drugs. When he wouldn’t give them any, they beat him to death.”
She paused. “I don’t live here in Bend, but my daughters do. We always come here each year. They were both busy so I told them I would go to the park by myself. They were worried, but I told them I wasn’t afraid.”
I didn’t ask her the logical questions. There didn’t seem to be any. “How old was he?” I say. I imagine a boy in his teens or twenties.
“Forty,” she said. “He left behind a wife and a teen-age daughter.
“At the trial, my grand-daughter stood up and faced the killers. ‘You took my father from me,’ she said and she read a piece she’d written about her dad – about how they would go camping together and how much he loved the quiet places. I was so proud of her.”
We looked out over the water in silence for a few minutes. I said, “You are going to put the carnation in the river, aren’t you?”
She smiled again. “I am. It’s for him. You see, we never know how long we have – with another.”
We embraced. She turned back to the water. I walked along the dirt path. The light had gone silver, the water dark. I listened to the rowdy ducks. I wanted the light and cold air and the ducks’ laughter to last forever. I thought of how I cling to everything, how I would capture every sweetness if I could.
A few hours later, I made my supper. I read while I ate. Nancy Willard. Sister Water. I found the words I hadn’t known I was looking for and understood that capturing is what a writer does, for as long as it takes to witness, remember and record. After that, there is only this:
“…look over there,” said Sam. “A turtle.”
The turtle was making its way slowly toward the water like a man exercising for his health.
“Oh let’s catch him!”
But Sam made no move to catch the turtle. He kept on paddling in dreamy circles around Stevie. “I wonder if he’s carrying a message,” he said at last. “He’s headed straight for us.”
“Let’s catch him,” said Stevie. “Come on, Sam. Let’s catch him.”
“If you catch him, he can’t do his work.”
Sister Water
Monday, October 19, 2009
Grape Popsicle
This is her story. I barely know her. We met at a gem and mineral show in the Little America hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona at least fifteen years ago. I bought a raw opal from her. She gave me two more for free. She had dug them from her little claim in Australia.
The sun fire opal was a rough blue cylinder no bigger than the first joint of my little finger. The surface was matte. She had chipped off a sliver so the gleaming interior was visible. “Put it in water,” she said. “That way you’ll see the fire.”
The second opal was the size of the nail on my fourth finger. It was a puddle of glint and pale blue against rough brown. I can’t remember the nature of the third opal. I think I gave it to some one – a gift beyond measure.
The brown opal is also gone---stolen, I suspect, by an unfortunate visitor to my cabin in the Mojave. The sun fire opal is here with me. It is time to put it in a vial of water. It is time to see how it holds and gives back the Central Oregon sun. The delicate flicker will bring her to mind.
Two days ago I received an email from her:
Mary, thank you for sharing your beautiful dispatches with me.
I am sad to tell you of what is the speeding up of the beginning of the final journey we all must take. I was rushed from Australia in direstraits...inoperable pancreatic cancer stage iv so am here in texas with my two sons and all my grandkids. We are in a large 3500 square foot house...rents are cheap in texas. and am laughing with them daily and resting some from chemo...a light chemo...hoping to give me a few more months.
I ate a magnificent grape popcycle the other night in the dark hospital room, with curtain drawn wide open so as to catch the thunder lightning show and the sheets of poring rain cascading over the glass as the grape jusce cascaded over my sore throat instantly soothed by the wonder of it all. I am wishing you well in your new start. I am so glad you own the black opal nobbies that I mined so many years ago. May it be your companion on many new adventures ole gypsy girl you.
Love, BVM a aka Eskimo Nell
I wrote her back and asked her if I could use her words in a new Dispatch. “It is gorgeous and others need to read it.” She wrote back:
Yes, dear Mary, Feel free to use it. I write and all writers want to be read. I treasure our brief meetings too Mary. Regards, Barbara
Here, Barbara, are your words. And, you can know that you are being read. You are on my mind. And today, the sky is gray and the Oregon light is opal.
The sun fire opal was a rough blue cylinder no bigger than the first joint of my little finger. The surface was matte. She had chipped off a sliver so the gleaming interior was visible. “Put it in water,” she said. “That way you’ll see the fire.”
The second opal was the size of the nail on my fourth finger. It was a puddle of glint and pale blue against rough brown. I can’t remember the nature of the third opal. I think I gave it to some one – a gift beyond measure.
The brown opal is also gone---stolen, I suspect, by an unfortunate visitor to my cabin in the Mojave. The sun fire opal is here with me. It is time to put it in a vial of water. It is time to see how it holds and gives back the Central Oregon sun. The delicate flicker will bring her to mind.
Two days ago I received an email from her:
Mary, thank you for sharing your beautiful dispatches with me.
I am sad to tell you of what is the speeding up of the beginning of the final journey we all must take. I was rushed from Australia in direstraits...inoperable pancreatic cancer stage iv so am here in texas with my two sons and all my grandkids. We are in a large 3500 square foot house...rents are cheap in texas. and am laughing with them daily and resting some from chemo...a light chemo...hoping to give me a few more months.
I ate a magnificent grape popcycle the other night in the dark hospital room, with curtain drawn wide open so as to catch the thunder lightning show and the sheets of poring rain cascading over the glass as the grape jusce cascaded over my sore throat instantly soothed by the wonder of it all. I am wishing you well in your new start. I am so glad you own the black opal nobbies that I mined so many years ago. May it be your companion on many new adventures ole gypsy girl you.
Love, BVM a aka Eskimo Nell
I wrote her back and asked her if I could use her words in a new Dispatch. “It is gorgeous and others need to read it.” She wrote back:
Yes, dear Mary, Feel free to use it. I write and all writers want to be read. I treasure our brief meetings too Mary. Regards, Barbara
Here, Barbara, are your words. And, you can know that you are being read. You are on my mind. And today, the sky is gray and the Oregon light is opal.
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