Fixing Things

The other morning, I cried in my car. Which happens sometimes when I’m listening, when I’m watching the world. And the other morning was such a time, as I sped along the Taconic, the sky as polished as a shiny new crystal, the leaves on the trees flushed red and gold, and haloed by a dizzying sun. Beyond my windshield was a Count Basie landscape, with saxophones and trombones blaring--fall such a heroic season--and so the tears came, pooling around my kohl lined eyes. I sang along with the radio on that warm October morning, and cried, my heart full of the promise of things. Full of the goodness and beauty of life.

And he says that this is sadness…

He likes to tell me that I need fixing. That I am too thin, too worried, too busy, too caring, too sad. This last one is the latest one. And he tells me this, he says, because he hears sadness in the stories I tell. A sadness he feels that blocks the sun, that will eclipse any chance of happiness for me. And when he says this, I feel the corners of my lips turn up, feel the laugh lines collected around my eyes reveal themselves. Ah, but this man does not understand women. Does not understand me. I am not too thin, too worried, too busy, too caring. Nor am I too sad. I am me—Rachel—going about life in my own flat footed way, moving around in my own banged-up body. Just like him... And perhaps there are days that I am too much of any one thing, too much “too.” Yet there are also many days that I am not. And the women collected like vintage pottery—crackled and patina’ed—on a Friday night at Ruthanne’s table understand this. We sip wine; eat things we shouldn’t; let our kids pull cushions from the couch in the family room and gorge themselves on Doritos and juice so that we can sit at the table, unmolested, under a cobalt blue Star of David hung above the open window. Jew and Gentile women—the unrepentant—all in need of fixing. Instead, we laugh at our younger, more insecure selves…

Tonight he pulls me to him across the expanse of a tremendous bed, and wraps long, sinewy arms around my body; he says nothing for a long time. Later he will tell me that he saw sadness in my eyes this raucous fall night. But while we lie there in the dark, there is only the sound of our chafed and bitter breathing, and the occasional wail of a train passing along the tracks somewhere in the distance. He has hurt me this night--having done what I did not want him to do... You are a sad woman, he whispers at last in the dark. And I hope you will seek out what you need to address that. Which, given the circumstances, means I should get up from this warm bed and our whetted desires, and drive down a dark and quiet road in search of the highway. But I will not do such a thing on a night like this. I will breathe through my sadness and awaken in the morning, knowing that there is another chance for love. Another chance for living. We are, after all, still strangers--colliding in the new world that we have bumped into. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, looking around for the way. And so tonight I curl into my sadness and await the dawn. Which comes, of course, like a promise, or a whisper, creeping quietly along the edge of the window above the bed where the two of us sleep.
***

Illusion

Outside my window is an owl perched on the corner of the roof overlooking the pool area. I notice him for the first time, as I draw open the curtain to welcome the morning. I can’t tell right away that the owl is not real. But when I do, it makes me think about the illusion of things: what I see outside my window--the pool acquiescing to winter, with its thick rubber blanket stretched taut and secured to hooks at even intervals around the perimeter; the white plastic deck chairs stacked neatly under the awning; my own nondescript room here in a hotel an hour or so north of the Thruway. It is autumn outside the hotel, a crisp fragrant day in a quaint Victorian town. The owl is unmoving, vigilant. Still, he keeps the birds at bay so that summer bathers here in this equestrian town can float undisturbed along the surface of the water, as they go about their pretend lives…

Last night we walked down Main Street, past graceful, majestic buildings—all that history, the owl undisclosed in the dark—to have dinner. The leaves fluttered lazily down to the sidewalk and crunched beneath our substantial shoes. It was a mild night, and I felt happy. Felt the stars in the sky—and didn’t want to know about the science of it, the illusion of that radiant showcase. Their light having burned out years ago; what we see not real. As I walked down the street with him on a singular night in October, I was happy. I knew that, and the stars, to be true…

I leave the owl to his perch, and turn away from the window. I shower, dress, and make my way down the carpeted hotel hallway to the early morning session. This is my second conference in less than a week, and I am inspired. This morning is a panel discussion on creativity. Chairs are arranged in a circle, and I take my seat. Look around at the other people assembled here on a spirited autumn morning in this graceful town. What are they expecting? I tug at the hem of my dress, cross my legs, flip through the conference program.

The first woman on the panel asks us to recall our first memory, and she gives us a moment to do so. I remember mine: a 3-year-old girl pushing her doll in a baby carriage along the street—and the rhythmic unfolding of the sidewalk cracks as I walked and walked and walked. I do not recall getting lost, or the hysteria of my mother trying to find me. I remember only the mesmerizing unfolding of those sidewalk cracks… And to this day, I love the sound of car tires moving over the sectioned highway, and the rhythmic click of a train moving along the tracks. But as I recall my first memory here in this morning session, I also wonder about the reliability of it, the truth of it. I wonder if it is something I’ve constructed through my mother’s repeated telling of this story over the years? And then the panel discussion leader confirms this. Tells us that memory is collective. That other than what we dream, everything else is constructed, is collective. And I take this to mean that nothing is real, which I don’t like being reminded of.

The second woman on the panel talks about creativity as construction. Frames it all very theoretically, and by the time she finishes talking, I no longer feel I can define creativity. Beside me, a colleague suggests that creativity is not “other,” says that manipulating language in our everyday conversation is an act of creativity. And it disappoints me to hear that… Many years ago, a fortune teller told me that I had an overwhelming desire to communicate, and that if I did not find a way to do that, my life would be one of despair. He found all that in the quiet palm of my hand on a warm afternoon in summer. I knew right away that he had spoken the truth. That words—mine or yours—make things real for me. Keep me from feeling so alone…

A few seats down, a large woman sleeps. I watch as she folds her arms over her substantial belly and leans in as if to listen to the panel discussion more intently, to understand each nuanced point. But instead her heavy lids close—and I wonder if she dreams, and in doing so, participates in the only thing that is real…

The other night he awakens with a start. Gets up and goes to the bathroom, and comes back quietly, lifting the blankets and easing himself back into where it is warm, where it is safe. I ask if he is okay. He says no, says that he has had a bad dream in which he was crucified—nails driven through his long, slender hands. I resist the first reaction, which is to marvel at the hubris of such a dream, but he is trembling still, rattled. Do you know who did that to you? I ask. And he tells me. And he is still shaken, still trying to erase the memory of it—and of the old Jewish man at the end of the dream who yells at him about proving the existence of God… I don’t remember ever having a dream like that. And perhaps that’s because I like my illusions, like the make-believe world that I am creating—right now--under the watchful eye of that owl perched just beyond the hotel window.
***

Disruption

The restaurant smells of pasta, parmesan cheese, and warm, fresh bread. An unassuming place just off the boulevard, across the street from the dive where we used to go dancing. That dump is still there, and from the window of the restaurant I can see three guys in wind breakers and dirty caps, smoking on the front steps. They look as gray and haggard as this town, as gray and haggard as the sky that sits with heavy determination upon us.

Catherine and Maggie take their seats on either side of me at the small wooden table. It wobbles a bit, and I put my size 10 foot on the pedestal base to hold the table steady. We pile our purses on the one empty chair, slip off our coats. I rest my elbows on the paper placemat that features a murky picture of Italy on the front.

This is nice, Maggie says.

It’s Friday night, and we are three older women gathered around an unsteady table in a family restaurant just off the boulevard. Without warning, we have become the women I’d glanced at years ago and was glad I wasn’t. Was sure I would never be. The waitress—a wiry woman with short blonde hair and dark roots—takes our order for two Diet Cokes and a water. Doesn’t anyone want wine, I ask, but Maggie waves me off, and Catherine explains that she is tired, and so we will sit at this feeble table on a Friday night, the three of us with our benign drinks and our purses collected where we can keep an eye on them.

I sigh, look around.

And here I am, back in the town I left so many years ago. The women on either side of me have never left, still have the same jobs they had when I lived here. They envy me my leaving, romanticize the hardship and sacrifices I made, living in a handful of cities before I finally found the one that felt right to me. A place 250 miles south of here, where people dress differently, respond differently. But the women on either side of me tonight also feel sorry for me, I can tell. They think that I have lost something valuable by moving away from this gray and dirty town. But I’m not sure what that thing is. They hint at it, and try to hide their pity.

Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home? Catherine asks. I had phoned them both this afternoon after arriving for a conference and settling my things into the hotel. I suck in my breath to correct her—this is not my home—but decide against it. She is sincere, loving. And why, she says, leaning across the table to gently pat my hand, are you staying in a hotel? I notice the sign of age on the back of her hand and steal a glance at my own quiet hand receiving her touch. She is only a year older than me.

Earlier at the conference, the plenary speaker talks of disruption, and the role of disruption on learning. She tells the audience about a recent trip to Lebanon, to Syria—of cultures and religions colliding. Of having her own preconceptions disrupted. And she explains how she was energized by that—and I have felt that same thing many, many times. Fought back the fear to allow the disruption to take hold. The speaker goes on to tell us of people who choose not to seek disruption, who choose to navigate only the familiar, only what is safe. Talks about the cognitive flexibility that comes with disruption, and I was very glad to hear her put it that way.

So I have decided to go back to church, Maggie says—and I can tell she’s relieved to have that off her chest. I pull the shades down over my eyes and remember Maggie and me scoffing at religion, at all those rituals. Two Recovering Catholics out dancing in high heels on a Friday night, the boys crackling like Pop Rocks candy around us. Maggie wore Damnation Red nail polish on her fingers, her toes. I wore fishnet stockings brought back from my first trip to London. We laughed at the world, at the boys, at the music—at the possibility of becoming three older women bunched around our Diet Cokes and water on a colorless Friday night.

Good for you, I say, and I think about how cyclical it all is. That desire to turn inward, to look homeward as we age. But I can’t imagine ever pulling up to one of these broken streets with a U-Haul in tow, reclaiming whatever it is that Catherine and Maggie feel I have lost.

The waitress comes back to our table with enormous bowls of steaming pasta and says, as she’s putting down each plate, Can I get you anything else? Her feet are already moving to the next table, because what more could three older women clustered around this decrepit table on a Friday night, possibly want?

My friends wave her off, pick up their forks. Yes, I say, holding up my hand before she can get away. I want a scotch on the rocks. And Catherine and Maggie raise their eyebrows at me; and when the waitress looks at them, they shake their heads, wrinkle their noses. I have never tasted scotch, never ordered one. But tonight I want to. And while I wait for the waitress to come back with my drink, I take my steadying foot off the pedestal base of the table, and think about the long drive home the next day.

***

Shaggy

We’re on the Thruway, with the rhythmic swipe of lazy wipers, a sad and cold night beyond the foggy windshield—and my boy says from the back seat, Make sure it isn't a shaggy hotel. He has his head down, watching a SpongeBob DVD. I laugh and catch the lighted dashboard of a car passing alongside me on the highway. I wonder about the driver—alone in his car—and where he’s headed on a night like this; I wonder, too, how my boy would know about such things as a shaggy hotel. The boy in the back that I have wrapped my armored self around so the world cannot get at him.

No, I say, smiling, no shaggy hotel room for us. And we drive a few more miles along the Thruway, up around the capital, and continue heading west. Rain falls in heavy drops that are almost snow. Too early for that, even up here where deserted factories sit silent and decayed just beyond the highway, their windows like cracked teeth. All the life exhaled out of them a long time ago… I do not want my son to know this. The inherent sadness up here, the loss, the fear that creeps like rust along your bones, your spirit. I am an Upstate girl, moved away many years back. What is there to give him from that? My friend Sally, in her braids and her blackness, tells her blonde-haired daughter that she is a black girl. Remember that, she tells her. And what do I have to give my boy to remember? A closed fist that, once opened, is empty. Like our bellies long ago, our pockets…

The rain has stopped and night time is undiluted beyond the car windows. I feel a heaviness creeping along my neck, in the muscles in my jaw, behind my eyes. I watch for a hotel sign beckoning from the highway. And eventually it appears: a grating yellow sign for a hotel that I’m hoping won’t be shaggier than the two of us can handle. At the end of the exit ramp, a tired green sign tries to announce two local points of interest. But the images are too faded to read. Beyond, is the raffish yellow sign of the hotel, a gas station, and a bit further down the road, a diner flashing neon. The rest—if there is anything out there—is shrouded in night time. I follow the sign for the hotel, driving over a corrugated parking lot, and park between two pick-up trucks.

Inside, the woman behind the desk wears a stained and pallid polo shirt with the logo of the hotel on the lapel. She is weighted down by life, by junk food consumed in front of the TV. Her sooty hair is pulled straight back into a ponytail secured by a brown rubber band. She wears smudged, wire-rimmed glasses. And when we come in, my boy and me, she flashes a genuine smile—revealing the telltale sign of her poverty. And suddenly I remember sitting in Janie’s kitchen all those years ago, as Janie took pliers to her mouth, and pulled out her own howling tooth. My mother and me across the table from her, sipping tea—the only thing left in the cupboards before we walked down to the armory the next day for the government cheese, for the free black & white cans labeled “meat.”

The woman at the check-in desk engages my son, chats with me—and I am audacious, dismissive. Wrinkle my nose, want to know about the room, wave a self righteous hand in disdain when the woman asks whether I want a smoking or non-smoking room. Behind her on the wall is a typed sign that says there is a $10.00 fee for pets. I show my horror at such a thing as pets in a hotel.

And the woman behind the counter in her rubber band ponytail and her melancholy teeth is patient, kind. Doesn't expose me for the fraud I am--the daughter of a Welfare mother, who is obviously still running, still trying to shake the rust from her shoes. I enter my Westchester address on the form, give her my 914 area code, wait for her reaction. And of course there is none. She smiles, hands me the room key, wishes me a lovely night, teases my son. And, she adds, as we head for our room, there is continental breakfast in the morning. And as we pass the counter where breakfast will be set up, my son squeals in delight at the cereal dispenser, and skips down the carpeted hallway of this shaggy hotel tonight.
***

East Division Street

It’s a pock marked town now, kicked square in the teeth by a bunch of dirty work boots when all those industries moved out. Just another sorry personality up there in the Rust Belt. But back then, it was a bit of a city, with lights and highways and people doing things. And on the lower North Side, where we lived, it was mostly Italian-American families making the gravy on Sundays, grandmothers in mourning, worrying the rosary beads.

And that’s where the six of us landed: in a big Victorian rental with a bum front porch. On East Division Street. Right off Park.

I claimed the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. I had a double bed, a radio, a handful of records, and my Bob Seger poster. Later I would acquire an old Kent drum set, which I set up in the corner, practicing my double-stroke roll under the watchful, energetic eye of that Midwest man. My room had 3 east-facing windows, and mornings announced themselves boldly, like a parade marching through. Which was great for me, as I have always liked mornings; but my lover at the time—a dark haired, late-night musician—would groan, would pull the pale pink coverlet up over his face to block out the sunlight drumming on his eyelids. Still, it never prevented him from stepping up the creaky wooden stairs after his late night gig, and crawling in beside me, the smell of bar smoke and beer on his clothes, his skin. I’d hear the quiet thud of his Les Paul case set upon the floor, his Chuck Taylors kicked off; the sound of jeans and heavy belt landing. And then him beside me, reaching, ready. I loved being awakened like that, loved the ache I felt as he pulled me toward him…

But not every night unfolded like that. In fact, many did not. That old white house, with its slanted stairway, its stained glass window, came alive at night. Shook the cobwebs from its windows, forgot about its age, and remembered instead how it once stood--young and cocky--on that plain and muted street. Around midnight is when the music really started: always Andy at the upright piano in the living room, and then guitars, bass, violin; even cow bell once that I remember. We inhaled music in that house, and lived our lives as if nothing else mattered. The six of us, bringing our wounded souls together: me, Helen, Rick, Nancy, MaryAlice, and Jeff. We talked of music, painting, sculpture, acting, dance. Left our haggard pasts behind. We painted, we wrote, we read--made and played music. Lots and lots of music. And when the dawn started to whisper, people crept off to bed, sometimes alone, but not very often.

And that’s where I fell in love. In that house, on that street, in that neighborhood. In love with many things. The dark-haired man with the pursed lip smile, who giggled when he laughed, who unveiled the shadowed streets of his neighborhood as we rode our bikes at 3am. The only ones awake, the two of us with the wind in our hair as we rounded Butternut Circle and coasted down that vigorous hill. The world is ours, Rachel, he said one night, with a sweep of his muscular hand. The strumming one. The one that made its way over my body hungrily each time… We lifted our faces to the night sky and laughed. He told me once about his father coming at him, and he not wanting to lift his guitar-playing hands to protect himself—of just letting the blows land… I love you, he said huskily later that same night, in my bed, the streetlight peeking in through closed blinds. Both of us falling… Better than Keats’ urn and his nubile lovers, captured in their forever youth. We didn’t want that. We wanted the sweat, the pulse of heartbeat, a cry escaping from parted lips...

Upstairs, in the attic, is where Jeff lived. One of those gentle beings the world sometimes delivers—too fragile on the inside to make it. A Darwinian experiment... Jeff had his grandfather's fishing pole, a bed, his well thumbed Bible. And a pair of Klipsch la scala speakers that could bring that old house to its knees—and, along with it, the quiet rush of police cars pulling up to the curb whenever he cranked Southside Johnny, or the Clash’s London Calling.

That dark-haired musician made me tremble with love, with want—with exhilaration those nights that we listened to music, and tumbled into bed. And Jeff. He taught me about the dignity of all living things... He in his illiteracy, his drunk. The entire natural world was a marvel to him, was something sacred. He believed in the goodness of everyone and everything. Even after his mother traded him in for drafts at the Elks; even after he never learned to read--still he believed that we lived in a holy place. On the nights that my lover didn’t come, we’d sit and talk about all manner of things... Walked out onto the street to study the stars, listen to the crickets, watch how the wind moved through the sunflower stems dancing proudly along the fence. A gift, Jeff told me one night, smiling his gap toothed smile. A set of drum sticks in his wiry hands. He’d beat out the rhythm to the song that was playing—on the Klipsch la scala speakers, or a song playing brashly in his head, that only he could hear. Listen, Rachel, he’d say. Listen.

And I did listen. And I still do, Jeff. Even though you are gone, dead at 36. But my old dark-haired lover is still up there in that beaten town, still protecting his hands, still strumming. And it’s me—Rachel—down here saying thanks. Saying thanks for the joy, saying thanks for making me think of you both today.
***