A Work In Progress
By Brenda Freiberg
It seemed to her like just any other day, one of those mornings when she would have slept a little later – until 7. Tom’s alarm had gone off early. He didn’t hear it, but she did in all its 6AM NPR glory. She tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t, so she got up, started to search the city from her twelfth story window. There was the blazing sunrise only seen in the winter before 7, and for or a moment, all else was lost. The sky was particularly intense that morning – red and orange and mustard breaking through the left-over dark night clouds. Both of her sons had loved the canvas of the sky.
Of course, after college they had lived in places with real skies and real weather, not Los Angeles. When she asked her younger son, Michael, “Don’t you miss the ocean?” he used to answer, “The New Mexico sky is my ocean.” She never did get that. Keeping her away from the ocean was like being deprived of oxygen. Even though she didn’t live at the edge of the sand and sea, she could see parts of it from her living room window and just knew it was there and that she could get there in ten or fifteen minutes. Purple mountains and big sky were beautiful, just like paintings, but they just weren’t her thing. A couple of days were enough.
On this morning, the fabulous intensity diminishes as the sun erases the remainders of the night and its sky. Starting to become just another Los Angeles day, and in an hour or two the sky will be its usual hazy, dusty blue. So she went to the computer and checked her email, weeding through the garbage, looking. She used to wake up thinking that each day would bring with it a surprise, but she’s getting too old for that. When she was busy working in Europe and later in India, there was correspondence to deal with early in the morning, to respond to perhaps before offices closed in London or Munich or Mumbai or Delhi or Chennai, but that’s all past for her. Now it’s Pacific Standard Time every day.
The hour less sleep left her lethargic. It was chilly – usually a turn-on for her, but this morning the cold made her long for bed. For a moment, she considered going back under the fluffy duvet. Then her dog, Felix, sat down by her at the desk, looked at her with his big brown human eyes, wagged his tail. She couldn’t resist his pleading.
No question about it – she and Felix needed to go for their walk.
She stepped into the shower. She thought about where she should go – UCLA where John is or Rancho Park where more dogs are? The rhythm of the routine and the water felt good. Wash the hair, blow it dry, apply mascara and lipstick, brush the teeth, pull on jeans, a long-sleeve t-shirt, warm polar fleece jacket, socks, and finally the tennis shoes. When she got out, it was clear to her that today she has to go to UCLA. She needed a John connection. Felix was barking now and jumping with joy. “Yeah, we’re going for your walk,” she said as she pulled his leash from the closet and stuffs the poop bags into her pocket. Then, to walk up to campus or drive? Feeling lazy, she drove.
Park, let Felix out, pay at the station, put the ticket on the dashboard in the car, find Felix who’s already sniffing. It was empty that morning, and for a moment, she felt a sense of freedom, a oneness with her aloneness. No responsibility. Utopia was hers. She wished her whole life could be filled with this nothingness. She walked down the center of campus in the crisp air, by the Kelly green grass. Felix chased the squirrels that taunt him from the trees. Black crows cawed to announce her as she passed the most photographed college set in the world. She never failed to be blown away by Royce Hall’s ubiquitous presence on TV and in films -- Royce Hall the star of campuses anywhere and everywhere in the United States -- West, Midwest, East, South.
As she approached the plaza at the top of the Janss steps, Felix wasn’t there. Where was he? He always waited for her to see if they were going to take the stairs or walk down the side path. Not today. She stopped and started to search for him – first the Royce Hall arcade. Sometimes he found food by the waste cans. Sometimes he was standing right by her leg and she didn’t see him because she didn’t look down. Sometimes he just moved on, oblivious to her. Then she turned to her left and there Felix was, sniffing at closed paper lunch bags on the ground. A group of Asian students had gathered in morning prayer on the ledge by the fountain, their bibles were resting on their knees. The leader was holding up a wooden cross. As she went to get Felix, some of the students picked up their bags and looked at her - annoyed.
“Come on, fellow” she said, “we don’t belong here.” Gone -- the freedom, the absorption in nothing and everything -- that was a nanosecond of illusion. They hastened down the steps away from the group. Organized religion made her feel uncomfortable, even an informal gathering like the one here in the open. Her own prejudice told her that groups like that probably wouldn’t accept her if they knew her story. “We don’t need to be where we’re not wanted, “ she said to Felix. “We have better things to do.”
Looking across the steps from the top, there were the six-story high steel cranes promising new dorms. And the usual ROTC unit just finishing training exercises on the lawn below. She considered herself a modern woman, hip even, and certainly without gender bias. A fighter who had worked to eliminateDon’t Ask, Don’t Tell, she was still jarred by the mixture of men and women preparing to defend the country and go to war together. She was born in 1938, and her mother’s white glove values came through from time-to-time. Women don’t bear arms - except Sarah Palin.
A young woman stood behind a bullhorn and yelled, “Connect!” The about-to-be soldiers flopped down on the grass like rag dolls and got up. She yelled, “Connect!” again. Connect to what?
She looked around for Felix once more – already at the bottom sniffing for food. “Come on, we have to get going,” she called. He ignored her.
She clipped his leash on him. He just looked at her - she never put the leash on him here. When she had brought Felix home from the pound, he used to stare at her – eyes unflinching. Playing chicken – who would look away first. “Don’t let him do that,” said her friend, the psychologist. “It’s dangerous. You need to show him who’s boss; you have to be the Alpha dog.”
“Nonsense,” she told her friend. “This isn’t about Alpha or Beta.”
She yanked him out of the bushes. If dogs could glare, he was. “Damn it! Come on,” she snapped. She had to move on – away from the students. She felt tight, a headache threatened, her jaw clenched, and she was grinding her teeth. She could still hear thatConnect!What now?
She stood there, holding on to the leash, trapped like Felix, undecided about which way to go. Right past the Fowler Museum and up the steps to the Anderson School or left and up the hill by the dorms. Left - right, right-left, North or South?? Right was the same old route to the sculpture garden past the Anderson School.
She didn’t want to do any of it – no more students. “Come on,” she said to Felix. “We are going home, and she turned left to go back up the hill to the car. But halfway up, she knew she had to turn back.Connectwas haunting her.
The decision made, she retraced her steps. To the right, right, up the steps to the Anderson School, to the sculpture garden. She passed one of the groundskeepers – one of her buddies. “Hi,” he called out. She always stopped to catch up with him, to see if his job was still secure, how the kids were. Today she barely acknowledged him as she strode past.
At the bottom of the stairs, she took the leash off Felix. He ran up the stairs. Oh, those looming steps! 87 to get all the way up to the sculpture garden level. How today? Her legs felt like lead. Felix stopped on the landing and looked back. She followed, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 – the first group of the 87 done – 78 more to go. If only she’d been able to continue her morning as it had begun – maybe she should have gone back to bed.
When she finally reached the top of the stairs and the Northern Lights Café, she thought about buying Felix a croissant and feeding it to him bit by bit alone in the Robert Graham courtyard. But she couldn’t sit quietly. She felt squirrelly. Nothing was right. She had to move on, get back to the solitude she felt in her condo. She had to get out of her own skin, away from the students.
She started to build a mental list, to concentrate on all that was still undone for Christmas.
But she couldn’t focus completely, the image of the girl calling outConnect!kept returning as she entered the sculpture garden. She still didn’t get it, but the phrase hung over her. Then she managed to get lost in her “to-do’s”, not even bothering to look around her as she walked the path that would take her straight towards the parking place and home. Someone called out loudly, “Hello.”
She knew that voice. It was the voice she was waiting to hear. John! John getting up from his seat on the bench in the furthermost hidden curve of one of the nook - John saying hello and smiling - John walking towards her. Not ignoring her and the world. Not today! She got it.
John -- holding a book under his arm, a cigarette in his right hand, curly greige hair falling just above his shoulders, round Lenin glasses framing his green eyes, only one tooth visible in his mouth, not unkempt, his six-foot frame solid, well-dressed in a black windbreaker and shirt and khakis.
As John looked at her, she knew why she was here. This was herConnect,what the morning was all about.
“What are you doing for Christmas? he asked, then he added,“Do you know who Jacques Lacan is?” And he showed her the cover of the book.
She had no idea, but she was scared to death of cutting off this connection if she told him the truth. She took a deep breath and tried to look him squarely in the eye. Not easy, John was looking over her shoulder, but she continued to look right at him. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Well, do you know who Freud is?”
She resisted the responsebetter than I want toand fought the impulse to smile and said simply, “Yes, I’ve heard of him.”
And then he was off and running. “Lacan extended Freud. He was a psychiatrist and a philosopher. He gave lectures here and in Europe . . .with Lacan, there’s no distinction between fantasy and reality.”
She looked at him. Of course, he would be taken with someone who made no distinction between the two. How rational. How could he be rational? He was dressed well today – black windbreaker, black pants, black t-shirt. He stood in place but shifted from foot-to-foot as he talked.
She had told a friend about John, that she thought he was schizophrenic, that he was brilliant, and that she was intrigued by him always sitting and reading. The friend said, “Don’t get too close. Be careful.”
He was speaking faster and faster now, and she struggled to follow him, trying to keep the expression on her face one of knowledgeable interest, though she had no idea what he was talking about. But she got some of the names. . . Freud, Jung, Piaget, semiotics, the structured unconscious. Soon she couldn’t even follow the words. She was mesmerized and just saw his mouth opening and closing, the one pointed yellow eyetooth, the only tooth in his mouth moving up and down, up and down, up and down. How did he eat?
He stopped. “What are you looking at?” he asked. “Nothing, she replied, just trying to take it all in. I know about Freud and Jung, but this is all new to me.”
John put the book back under his arm and turned away from her to go back to where he had been sitting, hidden under the shade of the tree in the nook.
She stood there lost – she had blown it. There was silence, as John continued forward, away from her. He had seen her looking at his mouth. He pulled out a cigarette. He continued back to the dark recesses of his nook, back where he could sit unnoticed, unseen, accompanied on the bench by his ghosts.
She looked at him, hoping he would turn back around, but he didn’t. “Maybe . . . I … you …, please. I’m sorry. ” No response. Words wouldn’t do it. She reached out her hand for his shoulder, something to halt his retreat. She pulled it back afraid of violating his space. This was his nook. How could she have thought this was what she was seeking? Her whole morning - nothing now.
She looked across the path where it was sunny. She saw her own images - her family – Katie’s yellow pigtails flying on a Barbie pink tricycle -- Brett, a speeding ten year old with an intense expression on his face, competitive even then -- Michael on a two-wheeler with training wheels, Michael not worried about where he was going, happy as could be. . . of course he’d bump into something. Yes, once they’d been a wholesome looking family of five. They used to come often on Sundays. Her kids could ride their bikes, safe in this garden away from traffic, away from everyday life, their tri-color collie, Bandido, running alongside. They had lazy Sunday evening picnics when life was mostly about homework and getting the kids up in time to make the day’s carpools. The favorite dinner was fried chicken. She used to spend hours cooking up crisp batches before they left the house.
Now it was just Felix lying in the sun across from her in the garden. An Asian student was walking towards him. Felix had been waiting for her, all thirty pounds alert, watching her, not sure he should leave her here with this man. At first, Felix had come over with her, when John first greeted her, had sniffed at his shoes and pants, and then walked away when John blew a cloud of smoke at him.
“Hi, fellow, or are you a girl? the student said, walking slowly, not wanting to scare the dog, holding his hand out, open. What are you doing out here alone?” Felix stood up, walked towards the outstretched hand, and sniffed it. He let him reach for his collar and look at the tags. The student pulled out his phone and started to punch in a number. She watched all this without really seeing it.
Then her phone started to ring. She looked at the number – not one she recognized, but she answered. She looked up and saw the guy with Felix talking on the phone. “Hey! she yelled. “You’re calling me. That’s my dog!” She hung up and crossed over to talk to him.
He put his phone back. “Well, okay. I was looking for the owner. I was worried that he was lost. What a cute dog – looks just like Benji.” The carillons started to ring. It was 10AM now. “I’m glad he’s not lost. Bye - I’m going to be late for class,” and he hastened off, leaving her alone again in the sculpture garden with Felix and John. Felix started to wander.
She looked back across the path at the nook. John was sitting again, reading. She wished she could start all over with him.Why not, she could do that. Maybe it would be a clean slate.
She put Felix back on a leash and instead of taking the path straight out of the garden, she turned left and went up the little rise, back to the Northern part of the garden, almost up the steps to the Serra sculpture, past the Maillol head dedicated to her mother-in-law, left over the bridge on the Western end, and she came back into the garden as though entering for the first time. She unclipped the leash and let the dog go. Walking past the nook, she heard John’s voice but couldn’t figure out what he was saying. She kept walking. This was the game – it was all John’s call whether they connected or not. Wait! Maybe it had worked! He was getting up as he always did when he wanted to make contact with her.
He came to the edge and asked her, “Hey! What are you doing for Christmas?”
She stood there – silent, mouth open. How could she have him to her home? If she were a true liberal, she would. She could just see the family. One look at John, and how long would it take them to run out the door? An original way to clear out the place.
She wished she could tell her son Michael that she had a new friend. Michael’s homeless friends had been important to him. The last time they had left San Francisco, when she had driven up to move Michael back home, Michael had insisted on stopping at the Civic Center Park to say good-by to his friend Doug. He’d introduced her, and she hadn’t known how to greet him, whether she could manage to shake hands or not. Doug was filthy, covered from head to toe. Michael had watched her carefully, and he smiled when at last she put out her hand. “Glad to meet you, Doug.” She never forgot that smile.
Now she wanted John to like her, to accept her - within the confine of boundaries. She had to rebuild some. As neat as he looked, there was a big round circle at his crotch. She looked at the ground. She couldn’t look him in the eye now, but she took a step closer. She managed, “I don’t know. My brother-in-law is very ill. We haven’t made plans.”
“Well, he said saving her, “My friend who lives in the Valley is picking me up and taking me to his family’s house.”
A rebuke, an acceptance of the situation? He was standing there firmly now. She was shifting from foot to foot.
And then, he shot out, “Do you think we have souls? Socrates says bodies and souls are separate. Souls are out there, souls are in the cosmos flying past each other – I can see millions swirling!”
Like lifting a needle from an old phonograph, he just stopped, eyes focused nowhere, not even looking at the books he always carried.
She stood there, fiddling with the coins inside her jacket pocket. Funny – money. It had never crossed her mind to offer him money. She’d done that with other homeless people on campus, but not John. This was different. Souls? Who would talk about souls? She took her hand out of her pocket and took another small step towards him.
He was vibrant, vivid, manic. “I lost my soul to alcohol, too much alcohol. I’m trying to get it back. AA, that’s where. They’ll give it back if I stay sober. How can I stay sober? I haven’t been able to . . . maybe this time. Plato would say I am not a virtuous man: therefore, I have no soul.”
Don’t respond. Don’t tell him you know all about AA. Keep it impersonal. Just listen. Learn. And she moved a little closer.
John asked now, “Do you think our souls are in our bodies or is everything gone when we die?” Her body tensed. Souls, ghosts. Was there a difference? What did he know of emotion, of motherhood? Besides, how could she possibly respond to his question? What details did she remember of Socrates or Plato or of the cosmos or of such things? A few pages of the Greeks sometime in high school, over fifty years ago. She felt tears starting, but she couldn’t let him see her cry. She looked up, hoping the tilted -back angle of her head would prevent the tears from rolling down her cheek.
The sky above her was filled with a white archipelago of clouds. Maybe the answer was there. Were they there – the dead – children, parents, grandparents, dogs? The ancestors buried she knew not where. Cremated. Sometimes she heard her father helping her through dilemmas, telling her his opinion. Sometimes she felt the flat broad forehead of her dog Blue where she always planted a kiss. Sometimes she expected her mother’s disapproval and was grateful it wasn’t there. And sometimes when she was in a plane and the clouds were billowy like the ones above her now, she imagined one or all of her three sons floating past, smiling in chubby infants’ bodies. She heard them asking, “What happens when I die?”
She never knew if the baby cried. He hadn’t come home – ever.
And her older son Brett cried, twice. Once when his head was on her shoulder. He was 28, and he asked her, “What do you think death is like?” She didn’t cry then. She couldn’t. She had to be strong.
And Michael cried when the doctor made it clear that he was dying. She couldn’t.
She turned back to the nook.
John had already started back to his bench. She walked up to the outer wall of the nook.
And now at last, in this garden, with this man everyone avoided, holding back the tears that were ready to fall freely. “You’ve just given me your soul,” she whispered. She didn’t know if he had heard her. It didn’t matter. And then the words from him, Aristotle said, “Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” He knew -- this crazy man knew her and her ghosts, not just his. What would her mother say about this man, this friend?
She sat down on the grass where John could see her.
He pulled another book out.
She sat silently, hoping he’d initiate the conversation again, but he didn’t. He was oblivious to her presence. Felix came over from time-to-time to check on her and left when he decided she was just fine. After a few more minutes of silence, she ventured, ‘What are you reading now?”
He looked up and didn’t respond -- more minutes of awkward nothingness. She thought about leaving and turned away and searched for Felix. He was over by the Rickey sculpture now, playing with a little dachshund, unaware of her for the moment. Funny, John never acknowledged Felix even though everyone else on campus did.
“A new book about the Gaia theory,” he answered.
She looked back at him. No idea what he was talking about. She asked, “Who’s Gaia?”
“Not who – what! About our planet – only 200 million will survive.”
“So, it’s about climate warming.”
“No, no, no – about interdependence . . .. . of systems and structures, animals, plants, land, water.” She giggled to herself.Yeah, look at me, dependent on you. Oh, my God, I am!
And then John asked, “How’s your dog these days? He seems depressed. Plato says, ‘A dog has the soul of a philosopher’. He needs a bath. Everything is better when you are clean.” He reached over and stroked Felix and then John was over and out – headed who knows where.
She sat there, alone now, aware again that there were others in the garden too. She looked at her watch . It was almost 11. She stood up and headed back to the car. She was happy to see the students having coffee outside the café on the way back, and even wondered if her sons had sat like this over coffee with friends. And when one approached to ask about Felix, she asked her, “What are you doing for Christmas?” And when the girl answered, “Going home to be with my family; Christmas is very special for us. My father’s a minister,” she smiled and responded, “Merry, Merry Christmas.” She noticed the lovely crucifix around the girl’s neck and wondered if John believed in God. Did she?
Maybe she should try it, but organized religion had never been her thing. Too many people, too many exclusions, too much gossip in the sanctuaries.
Felix was ready now to go. He wanted his snack. She opened the car door and stood there waiting, letting him watch the squirrels, deciding whether to chase one or not. Then she called him over, and he jumped into the back seat. She opened a bottle of water and poured it into the little plastic dish she kept there for him. He lapped it up and wanted more. He’d been out longer than usual this morning.
She sat down behind the steering wheel and stayed there for a minute, not even turning on the music, wanting to go home, wanting to understand what had just happened, wanting to be alone, wanting her life to go back to what it had been, wanting nothing now. Felix jumped into the passenger seat next to her. He licked her cheek. He tasted the salt. He licked again. She rubbed his head, “Yeah, I love you too.”
It was late for snacks, but Felix expected them when they walked through the front door . After all – routine is routine. How else to feel secure in this world? Today, she wished she were a dog with a master to tell her what to do.
What was that feeling John had kindled in her? She was rattled. That’s for sure, but there was more. Something had made her go back, and then she hadn’t wanted to leave. She was drawn to John, a homeless schizophrenic. At one point she had even wanted to hug him. He seemed connected to her as no one else was. It was as though she’d spent the morning in a country she’d never even imagined, with people unlike any she’d ever known. She had even wondered what it would be like to kiss someone like John, with just one yellowed tooth in his mouth. She had crossed the border of this new country and been accepted just for a moment.
Maybe she’d just dreamed it all. Luckily, she had a lunch scheduled, one she hadn’t wanted to accept – she couldn’t take any more grief, but she finally did the right thing by accepting when the woman said, “Well, whenever you can, I’d love to have lunch with you.” She’d created alibis, loads of them until she had run out of ideas. Then she couldn’t bear to have this person feel totally rejected. It hurt too much to be hurt like that. And besides Andrea was still healing from the loss of her husband and the long time she had spent taking care of him. She knew what that was like.
She and Andrea went way back to grammar school when they had both been tomboys. When she was eleven and twelve, she used to flirt -- playing handball and throwing baseballs to attract the boys. Her friend, Andrea, was a good athlete and could play a good game of catch so they spent time together out on the playground. Often she went home with elephant skin on her arm from the kick balls they used for handball. Her mother’s disapproval didn’t stop her. When the boys ran their fingers down her spine to feel the bra strap, she knew she was getting them to pay attention to her new body. Their lives were now so different, but the roots of time created a twisted, knotted, impermeable connection.
She thought about how she would tell Andrea about this morning. She could see it now.I spent the morning with a homeless bipolar man with one tooth, and we talked about souls and psychoanalysis and Aristotle and friendship. He made me feel different.Andrea wouldn’t get it. Get what? What had happened? Had anything really happened?
She was exhausted, depleted, often running on empty. But then, in the past couple of years, the needle had changed and now was up to full on her gauge. Finally, after so many years of caretaking and sitting and holding the hands of those who were dying, she was living - a full life, a life where she didn’t think every minute about one of her sons, a life of acceptance and even fun. Yet still a life with her loss dragging behind her like the weighted down train of an ancient gown. A life where her smile covered it all. A life where she still never knew how to answer the question, “How many children do you have?” A life where she kept hoping to go around the corner and find herself face-to-face with one of her sons. She had felt that was possible when she was with John.
She wanted to go back to bed and pull up the covers, but she couldn’t. That was okay - It felt good to be here in the kitchen. She had remodeled it lately, and the color palate of giant flat taupe tiles on the floor, shiny black granite counters, dark taupe glass tiles on the walls, soft enamel white cabinets made her feel good - anchored. How lucky she hadn’t let the color consultant talk her in to robin’s egg blue on the walls. Not her, not at all. This was crisp, sophisticated.
Okay, pull out the Oral Care snacks so Felix doesn’t lose all his teeth like John. Maybe that was it – she’d created John because she was so worried when the vet said, “You must take better care of Felix’s teeth or he risks losing them all.”
Maybe it was real. Give Felix the chicken poppers he loves. Brush his teeth. Decide what to wear. Check out the window – bright sun gone – clouds gathering, not just white ones. Opt for something warm. Go to the closet. Off with the dog-walking clothes. Pull on navy slacks. Grab a sweater. Pull out shoes.
She looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Same 5’3” woman with brown hair, mostly shot with gray now but sometimes looked blonde. Same blue eyes, same slightly overweight body. But who was she really looking at? She prided herself on being stylish just like her mother, even though she still hated the memory of her mother’s vanity. Who was that in the mirror? This morning, she’d managed to pull out a black sweater instead of the navy one she wanted and brown shoes to go with the navy pants. Today, she looked just like the turmoil she felt inside. Even John put himself together better than she could now. What was going on?
A grown-up version now of her daughter Katie on school mornings years ago. Those days when she was about four --huge blue eyes -- blond pigtails -- biggest smile you ever saw. Each day to go to school, Katie took a great deal of time deciding which knee socks to wear -- one leg green, one purple – maybe yellow and blue - sometimes red and pink. It looked so random, so haphazard, but it had all been carefully deliberated.
Keep it simple, classic. Muster your coordinated defense against the flash of life on the West side of Los Angeles
Today it was that final check before going out the door - this image in the mirror was truly unintended. Or was it? Was it even real or a dream perhaps just like the morning at UCLA? She looked at the mismatch she had created, She couldn’t do the lunch, not now. She should call and cancel with Andrea. But she was still caught hearing her mother say, “Always do the right thing.”
What would Michael say? Of course, “Mom, do what you want!” Michael, shoulder length hair in the conservative Midwest, cut to corporate banker’s length when he moved to Santa Fe where short hair was not the thing.
She went to get a glass of water. For some reason she was unusually thirsty. It wasn’t even summer. Opening the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of water, the blast of cold air made her think about the tendrils she had left twenty years ago sticking out of Michael’s ancient little frig in his kitchen in the Tesuque house. The house didn’t even have heat. He was convinced becoming a raw food vegan would heal him. His marketing list for her was sprouts, legumes, quinoa. She’d never heard of that then. She brought them home, filled the frig, closed the door as best she could, walked out the door to drive to Albuquerque to catch her plane, imagining Michael’s laughter when he went to the refrigerator. She always provided too much food.
Okay, she didn’t want to go to lunch. She wanted to return to the garden, to the way John made her feel. Screw it! She decided. She picked up the phone to call Andrea and cancel. She stood there unable to even punch the buttons. And then she forced herself, and received a recording that the phone number no longer existed. Surely, she’d made a mistake. She pressed redial to see if she had dialed correctly and looked at the number on the little screen on the phone. She had called their old house, the house where they’d lived for almost twenty-five years while the kids grew up and went to college and came home and got married and died. She hadn’t dialed that number in over fourteen years – not once since they had moved.
Now she’s a still-frame. She keeps looking at the number, hearing the recording over and over and over again until it stops and there is a void – no voice at all. She stands there holding the receiver and finally hangs up. She walks into the living room and plops into a chair looking out the window, over the rooftops, the treetops, beyond the gardens into the space before her.
After the death of their younger son, Michael, they had reluctantly sold the family home.
Their house, a rambling Eastern ranch style, not of California, gray clapboard and red brick and shuttered windows, occupied a corner. Surrounded by a lush garden, winding brick paths fostered many fantasies, large trees sheltered squirrels and owls and nests, and a white picket fence ran from one end of the property around the corner to the other. It had been designed by Allen Siple, who loved all things English, the garden by the landscape architect Edward Huntsman-Trout. The limited grounds resembled a miniature urban park.
That garden fourteen years ago! It is about 10 P M a few days before they were to move. She has just returned from chairing a Board meeting of AIDS Project Los Angeles, has parked her car in the driveway on the side street, is walking up the brick path from the street that leads to the back door. She stops. Outside the back door a possum is drinking water out of the cats’ water dish. It lifts its head, looks at her and resumes its drinking. It is not full-grown, perhaps an adolescent. She thought full–grown ones were scary, but this one – it was a Dr. Seuss animal. She stands there quietly, determined not to disturb him. Soon, their gray tiger cat, Soren, joins them. Michael had named Soren after Kierkegaard, his favorite philosopher. He had loved his emphasis on personal choice and action. True to his name, Soren stops and just stands -- choosing quiet respect for the possum. Next a raccoon ventures forth, undoubtedly the one that sat outside Michael’s dormer window, the one that had watched over him when he returned from the hospital after his suicide attempt. Like Soren, he stops and stands opposite her forming a square. Then, Kashmir, Katie’s black cat, stops and stands in place, and the square becomes a circle.
They are at the bottom of the three steps that lead to the kitchen door. Her husband comes to the window to see if her car is there. He stands silent as well, his silhouette motionless. She and the animals are almost under the large avocado tree, the one that was a perennial cornucopia of fruit, but the family never ate even one of the avocadoes. Each always had little squirrel teeth marks.
And now, showing respect for one another, respect for other species, respect for this moment in time, they leave one by one in the order in which they had arrived.
Now, all these fourteen years later, she wraps her arms around herself, still incredulous, still, fourteen years later, the same chills up and down her spine.
How had the animals known to say goodbye? Was it really a goodbye, or a hello from souls who had previously lived there? What would John in his garden at UCLA think if she told him the story? That’s it – she’ll grab her car keys, go back to the garden and see if John is really there. She looks at her watch. She thinks it says 10:50, but she’s not sure. She can’t see the numbers clearly.
There is still had time to call her friend. What was Andrea’s number? If she was going to cancel, at least she had to give her friend some warning. But she didn’t have the strength to get up, to leave the sky, the memories:
Move-in day almost forty years ago. They were five or seven including the large tri-color collie, Bandido, and Brett’s pet rat, Mowie.
Brett, the oldest, had the first choice of a room. He had selected the one downstairs next to the master bedroom, their room. She had thought he’d want to be as far away from his parents as possible, but he’d chosen wood-paneling and a private bath and no sharing with younger siblings. Very Brett -- strong, arrogant, angry and smart as hell. He had plunged in and set his room up completely that first day – like a grown-up, not like the fourteen year-old he was.
Weeks later she had found in the middle of his desk the love ode that Brett had written to “the boy on the bicycle”. In his bathroom was a window seat with a hinged lid with Brett’s pin-ups – all male – and she had shut the window seat lid down hard . Too late now. She walked over to a photo on the shelf. The five of them on the wall of the Roman Coliseum ruins in Arles. A good-looking bunch!
Enough! Too late now, too much pain. Lunch with Andrea. That was it . She looked at her watch . She couldn’t read the numbers.
All she could see was their old house, the kids’ rooms. Step-by-step she went up the staircase, to the Dutch door to Michael’s room, to the closed window on the top half. The shade was half-down. She heard QUEEN –we will we will rock you, we will we will rock you reverberating through the house, through her -- seductive, rebellious, frightening, powerful, sexuality bursting forth.
Shaken, she walked away from the photos and the memories back to the kitchen now in their apartment to make herself a cup of tea. Something soothing. But pulling out the box of tea bags, it was as if she were taking it from the red open shelves of their old kitchen.
And then she was back up the stairs again in their old house, this time at the door of Katie’s room seeing her sitting on the bed talking on the phone, laughing with that smile of hers -the bed floating on the bright green carpet that was meant to be grass. She heard the neighborhood kids running on the twisty paths in their old garden, calling out, “Ready or not, here I come!”
Damn it! She took the kettle off the stove. She didn’t want that tea.
What was she doing? What was going on? Where was she? She looked at the clocks – all of them – on the stove, on the microwave, on the electric coffee maker. They all said the same thing – 11:17AM.
She turned to Felix, snoring gently now on his bed in the kitchen, satiated by his morning snacks. His routine was in place. Just another day for him. Why wasn’t he a wreck like her? Someone had almost walked off with him, or had he?
It was not just another day! Maybe she was cracking up.
Where was the truth? Did John exist? Where was he?
“A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing,” said Albert Camus.
She had always considered herself an honest person, one who valued the truth above all, but now she didn’t even know what truth she was seeking. Her boys were gone. That was the truth. But John said they were souls swirling. Did that mean she could find them if only she could remember them, if only she weren’t so rooted in the reality of daily life, if only she allowed the irrational, the spiritual to dominate. If only she didn’t feel numb. But where were they –ashes, ashes, all fall down.
She headed towards the bedroom to put on the right clothes, but she had trouble leaving their old garden. She imagined the voices of the young neighborhood kids playing, running through the twisting paths, calling out, “Ready or not, here I come!”
As if answering a prayer, taking her away from her obsession, the phone rang. Maybe it was Andrea calling to cancel. She caught it on its third ring. “Hello.”
“Oh, hi, honey. Oh. Okay; how’s your day going?” It was Tom.
“No, I’m fine – spent longer than usual up at UCLA this morning.”
“No, no, really I’m okay, just running a little late for that lunch with Andrea – you know the lunch date I was reluctant to make.” She did not want to talk to Tom about John. She couldn’t. She couldn’t share what her morning had been.
Tom talked in his usual full-length sentences, thinking like the lawyer he is – it all had to be logical, and even though she knew where he was going and what he was going to say, she willed herself to keep her mouth shut and not finish his sentences. She had read about a (two) character(s) named MamaPapa in a book. Not for her! Never! No matter how many years they were married, how old they were.
“Okay, got to run and get dressed, bye. Love you, too.”
She put the receiver back. She had to keep the lunch date now. It was 11:25. They are supposed to meet at noon. Too late to call.
As she folds a sweatshirt and puts it back in the dresser drawer, she avoids looking at the photos hanging above the dresser – the portraits of the kids in the garden when they were little. She pulls on the black slacks, finds black and tan shoes, pulls out a scarf, gets her watch and earrings, transfers from the wrong color handbag to an appropriate one, checks her make-up – cleans up smudges from mascara that has run, freshens up her lipstick, puts music on for Felix and is ready to walk out the door. She looks at her watch. The numbers are clear now. It is 11:40 – she might be late. It is just another day.
© Brenda R Freiberg 2011