Monday, December 17, 2007
Lazy
It's nigh on Christmas and I have little written that I feel like publishing. More a motivation problem than anything else. I should have some down-ish time later this week and maybe something worth posting. Thanks for checking and merry Christmas.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Part 4 of "All Saints' Day"
Story is complete. Here is a link to the first three parts in one (large) entry. Part four begins below. Thanks for reading; I'd appreciate any specific feedback.
---
Walking down the street, even in the dusk, I felt ridiculous. I’d put on all kinds of weird costumes when I was a kid and walked around. I once dressed up as a ninja and walked over to Brendan’s house in broad daylight, and that was March. What was it about turning thirteen? Since then I feel like everyone was analyzing me with their eyes. Sure I looked a little silly as a six-foot tall clown in a corduroy jacket and plaid golf pants and moon boots, but it was much more realistic than a ninja. At least I had my pillow case to show I had a good reason for looking like an idiot. It didn’t help, though, that I walked past four sets of kindergarteners guarded by moms or dads who gave me funny looks.
I walked up to Katie's house as the dark finally began to take over from the sunny day we'd had. Her house is a split level, white with red trim. When it's spring or summer there are flowers in carefully planted beds and the bushes are all sculpted in neat shapes. Her mom and dad got divorced a few years ago, and I thought the house would fall apart. If anything it got better. Char Tibbets, Katie's mom has more energy, more more time on her hands, than anyone I know.
Arriving early at Katie’s place at 5:45, I became the official candle lighter. Her Mom, Char, who hates being called Ms. Tibbets, erupted in praise over my costume as she would for everyone who showed up at her door that night. Dressed as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz in her plaid blue dress and glittery shoes, she handed me the lighter and set me to work on the eight real jack o’ lanterns, the nine ceramic ones, and the other random candles in the house. A lot of moms like me. I guess it’s 'cause I show up early.
The other guests would arrive at 6:15, so I had plenty of time to answer Char’s endless questions while Katie finished decorating cookies in the kitchen dressed as a doctor in OR scrubs borrowed from her uncle, the surgeon. It’s not that I minded talking to Char, but how was I supposed to bask in the glory of Katie when I have to crane my neck to glimpse her from the living room?
Thankfully, Amina and Corrine arrived to distract Char with their respective costumes, cop and, of course, Tinkerbelle. Amina, short with a baby face and glasses looked so cute it was silly in the cop outfit; it made her look even younger. Corrine didn’t look half as good as she probably thought she did as Tinkerbelle. Plus she was wearing dark leggings because it was so cold. In any case both costumes had very little to do with anyone dying, which I guessed would be good when Brendan showed up.
Kellen, Colin, and Alex all showed up together to face the slightly creepy enthusiasm of Char: "Oh my gosh, look at you three! Avast ye swabs! Don't steal me booty!" Did she really say booty? Yes.
All three were pirates, and they prided themselves on assembling their costumes out of thrift store clothes. The only thing they bought new were plastic swords, one of which they had broken from screwing around on the way over. They had invited me to join them in being a pirate, but I always kind of felt like the three of them had something that I wasn’t a part of. so I said no.
We planned out our route, no one really wanting to stay out for too long. Katie drew a map of the streets we would hit: Lancelot, Guinevere, Camelot, Percival. We could loop back on Percival to Avalon Dr. and have plenty of time for the movie. We would watch Happy Feet, a DVD on Katie’s shelf, which contained many possible choices that had nothing to do with Halloween. I couldn’t stand the thing, but then again, I’d only seen previews and commercials for it. Besides, Katie liked it, and I could try to share some of her interests with her. Love may or may not be blind, but it sure has crappy taste in movies.
At 6:38, a knock on the door raised Char’s energy level to critical as she gripped the candy bowl tightly in her hands and bolted for the door. Instead of the pre-pubescent chorus of “Trick or Treat” I expected, and secretly thought was adorable, I heard a muffled voice from behind a skull mask.
"Hey, Mrs. Tibbets, it’s me, Brendan.” He lifted the mask up as if he wanted to prove it, but I couldn’t see his face from the kitchen. The porch light cast a shadow from the hood over his face.
“Of course, Brendan…Come in.” Char looked a little disarmed by the black-robed figure stalking through her front door wielding a plastic scythe.
It was the same costume Brendan had worn last year. I looked at Katie, expecting her to look at me in some kind of shared disbelief, but she just looked and Brendan, maybe a little sadly.
Brendan smiled at us from beneath the yanked-up skull mask. “Hey guys, two things,” he began. “I’m sorry I’m late, and I realize that this is last year’s costume, but I’ve been busy.” He gave kind of a quiet laugh.
Alex must have felt like he had to say something. “Hey dude, it still looks awesome.” He sounded louder, higher-pitched than usual.
“Yeah, B, it’s still way scary,” added Amina. “And who says you have to be something new every year, right?”
“So enough with the small talk; let’s get candy.” He held up a pillow case covered in black spray paint.
Char, regaining her mom-ness, announced, “OK gang, I want to get a picture of all of us. Stand by the fire place.”
I imagined how the picture would look: the grim reaper surrounded by some of the least Halloween-ish characters imaginable. As if the angel of death had on a busy night visited and collected souls from the Carribean, a police station, Neverland, and a circus. We all grouped together, arms around shoulders, and waited for the red light to start flashing.
“Oooh, Brendan? I just thought of something,” Char interrupted. “That costume might be hard to see. Will you wear my jogging vest?” The camera flashed.
“Sure.” Brendan is never one to turn down a concerned parent’s meddling.
Char opened the downstairs closet and took out a neon orange and green vest with reflective patches on the back. I suppose it works great for reminding those cars not to run into her when she’s jogging. Brendan raised his mask again to put it on. He had a small smile on his face as he slipped his arms through the holes and pulled the vest closed over his robes. “How do I look?” He flipped the mask back down and stood up tall.
“Like the scariest crossing guard ever,” Colin shouted.
I let myself laugh a little bit. It was great having us all here, but I couldn’t let go of what happened to Mrs. Roberts and how she should have been here and how totally unfair and crappy that she wasn’t and her son was dressed as Death himself and having a good old time. I needed to say something, but what? And when?
---
All of us went from house to house on the planned streets hearing about how old we were to be trick or treating. Brendan had bet me a quarter of his haul this year that we would hear it at least 25 times. This sounded a bit too much, but the way things went, it came pretty close: 23 times, many more if you count the number of times people looked like they wanted to say it. We had it coming as gangly teenagers, some of whom needed to shave at least weekly and some of whom had breasts beneath our borrowed doctor clothes. There was no way I would ever trick or treat again, and it felt wrong, like staying after school for no real reason. Everyone wants you gone, and you can totally understand why.
About halfway through, we decided to split up a bit. Brendan went with Corrine, Katie, and Alex. The rest of the pirates and Amina asked me to go with them. Kellen. Colin were about the funniest guys I knew, so a good time was guaranteed. The way things went, it seemed like there was some kind of ulterior motive, though.
Amina practically dragged me into her group. I’m kind of clueless sometimes anyway, but it seemed like there was something going on that they didn’t want me to know about. What was I going to do about it? Call them all out at once and throw a fit?
My group took Percival Drive and the others walked down Lancelot in the other direction. I kept turning my head to see the other group. As they passed under the streetlights, I noticed Katie and Brendan walking together. It seemed like every time the stepped out of the dark and into the zones of light under the lamps they were further behind the other two. Mrs. Tibbets’s jogging safety vest made them even more visible. I tripped over Kellen twice because I was walking with my head craned around trying to figure out what Brendan and Katie might be talking about. Finally, and fortunately for Kellen, I couldn’t see them anymore and I was able to walk like a half-way normal person.
It was getting later, so houses had either turned off their lights or were giving out extra candy because they had bought too much. All the little kids were gone too, just fifth graders and older, really: the kids who probably shouldn’t have been trick or treating anymore.
The half moon had just risen over the horizon, and as if it was sucking the warmth out of the night, we began to wish we had dressed for the cold. A few of the fifth and sixth graders were wearing ski coats that covered up their costumes. We soldiered on and made due. I loaned my jacket out to Colin who was wearing a torn up dress shirt with nothing on underneath. It looked really “pirate-y” but probably wasn’t the best choice for late October in Spokane. Eventually, there were few houses with their lights still on, and it must have been 30 degrees, so we decided to just pick up the pace and walk straight back to Katie’s.
We made good time and walking faster warmed us up a bit. Kellen, Amina, Colin, and I didn’t say much on the way back, so it gave me time to prepare what I wanted to say to Brendan. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t mentioned his mom being dead. I wanted to ask him how he was able to laugh and goof around just like normal. I wanted, no, demanded, to know why I felt worse about his mom dying than he did. And while I was at it, why I had to dress up as a clown while he got to dress up as the guy who takes souls to Heaven or Hell, either of which Mrs. Roberts was in right now.
All my well rehearsed and self-righteous lines fell out of my head like books from an unzipped backpack when I saw Katie and Brendan hugging on the corner of Percival and Avalon in the dusty light of a street lamp. It was way too long to be a friendly hug. My stomach bounced up to my chin and back down, and I knew why I had been separated.
Amina called out, a bit too loudly, “Hey guys. How’d it go?
“It went OK,” Katie called, unlatching her arms from around Brendan as if it was no big deal that my best friend was clearly betraying me with the girl I loved. I had to smile to keep from screaming. I couldn't look at her.
We walked back as a group to Katie’s house with me taking up the rear. There must have been a good 10 feet between me and the rest, but I was grateful. My eyes felt like they were starting to leak. I couldn’t handle it. I rationed my breaths and concentrated on walking. Had anyone asked me anything or looked at me, I would have totally lost it. I tried the vault, but it must have been full of all the bad jokes and things I was never supposed to stay. This was too big to cram in there.
The group clomped up Char’s front porch and headed inside. I don’t know where I got the nerve, or maybe I just couldn’t have taken it if we’d gone inside, but I said, almost shouted, “Brendan can we talk for a second?” I’d said it so fast, I wasn’t sure if he heard me.
Halfway through the front door, he turned and looked at me, then out at the street. “Yeah, man, OK. Hey, Col, an Tyler have his jacket back?”
I hadn’t noticed how cold I was.
We walked down the aging wooden steps of the porch to the cement path that led from the driveway. The half moon looked smaller now, but it still coated the yard and street with a soft blue. Across the way, the streetlamp cast the only other major light. Brendan and I walked down to the end of the driveway without saying anything.
“So what’s up, Ty?”
This was something I should have scripted, but I just started talking instead. "I noticed… I saw,” my hands were shaking, drumming on my thighs, “that you and Katie are kinda, you uhh, what’s going on with you two?”
“I was afraid of this,” Brendan sighed.
“So you guys are going out?”
“No. No, she and I are still just friends. We just hugged as friends.”
“It looked…” Tears. “Like more than friends, man. You know I’ve liked her for a long time.” I sobbed out my words.
“She asked me out, you know?”
I squinted at him. I wanted to hit him, not because of what he'd done, but because of who he was, my best friend.
“She asked me, and I said no.” He breathed hard into his cupped hands. The steam escaped from cracks in his fingers. “I said no, and I said you liked her.”
“You did what?” I was on fire now. My hands shot up near my temples and smudged the clown make up down my face.
“She’s like my sister, dude.”
“But why’d you tell her I liked her?” Having him tell her was not part of my plan. It screwed everything. A car was coming, its headlights like pointed stars through the water in my eyes. It took me a second to realize I had paced into the middle of the street and another second the remember what to do if a car was coming. I walked back toward Brendan on the side of the street, not looking at him, not looking at the car.
“Thanks, I guess.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute. There was a salty, snotty taste in my mouth. I started walking down the street; my steps scraped against the asphalt and grit. Brendan walked with me, but his steps were quieter under his black robe. We passed houses with darkened windows and jack o’ lanterns. I thought of the other kids who might come through and smash the pumpkins in the middle of the street or on driveways. It always pissed me off to see the remains of someone’s carving flat and mushy where cars would run it over in the morning.
“You know I wouldn’t go behind your back like that.” Brendan had taken off his mask. His hair was messy. “Who do you think I am? We’re friends.” I looked at him for a second, as if I’d been waiting for confirmation of the fact for years. I can’t remember a time before that when either of us said we were friends. It had always just sort of worked out that way.
“She’s kind of out of my league, anyway.”
“No. dude, she’s like… not in my league either, and look what happened.”
“I guess I knew what she would say if I ever said anything. God, I was scared for so long.” I’d said it a minute ago, but this time I meant it: “Thanks.”
Brendan pulled out his phone, which was buzzing. He looked at the screen: a text.
“Do you want to go back and watch the movie?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Amina.”
“Let me think: awkward situation at Katie’s house or walking home to go to bed. Honestly, I can’t make up my mind.”
Brendan chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not sure I want to deal with any more drama tonight.” He looked at the jogging vest he was still wearing. “I guess I can take this back tomorrow. Let’s go to your place.”
The temperature hadn’t dropped for a while, but I was tired of the cold that was there. Going home to go to sleep in a warm bed seemed better than any tropical vacation or making out with Jessica Alba (or especially Katie). Brendan called his dad to let him know he’d be home in about a half hour. I pulled my phone out of
the corduroy jacket of my costume, it read 10:31. We took off with quick steps, our hands in pockets or in armpits.
“It’s almost All Saints’ Day,” I announced for no particular reason.
“What day? Oh yeah, the day after All Hallows’ Eve.” Brendan and I had researched Halloween extensively when we were younger. We knew about Samhain and the pagan harvest festivals before Christianity adopted it and tried to make it boring. “Do you feel like the spirits are closer tonight? Like we could commune with them?”
“It’s kind of funny how they thought that on one night dead peoples’ ghosts could talk better or louder or something.”
“Yeah, so they’re ghosts, but normally they can’t hear as well. Isn’t that weird. I mean, why would ghosts stick around anyway.”
“To help catch their murderer. You know the story.”
“But what about people that die normally, like old age or a car accident?”
I looked at him, in the eyes. He caught me looking and looked down again, smiling in the not-happy way.
“I forget like this sometimes, you know? That she’s gone.”
It was too cold to stop or slow down, so we kept walking. I had started to sniff from the cold, and I didn’t want Brendan to think I was crying again. “You seem like you’re doing OK.”
“I am. Sometimes. Most of the time. I sometimes have to just stop what I’m doing and my brain does this reality check on me. I start crying, and I think of how much my life sucks.”
I nodded without looking at him.
“I guess I put on a pretty good show at school. Acting like nothing’s wrong.”
“If I didn’t know what happened, I wouldn’t know.” That sounded dumb, but it was true. I wouldn’t have thought anything was different.
“But it’s easier too, you know? When I was eleven, it was terrible and totally unexpected. When Mom got better, it was great, but I guess…” He let out a shaky breath. “I guess I sort of thought it wasn’t real. I’d gone through all this knowing my mom was gonna die stuff, and then she didn’t, and things got back to normal, only they didn’t really.”
“I’m sorry, dude.”
“Thanks. I guess it feels real now, not like a dream where dead people come back and you know it’s time to wake up. I guess that’s what it feels like, like I’m waking up from a dream.”
Brendan and I were quiet for a while after that. We were a block from my house and seemed to have run out of things to say. I had to break the silence a little. “So what’s it like with Halloween reminding you about death all the time?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re…You know, I hadn’t even thought of that. It’s weird how for like, a week, death is everywhere.”
“Yeah. People putting fake tombstones in their yards.” I laughed a little. “No one buries people on their own property anymore. That’s ridiculous.”
“People die all the time. I mean people say, 'sorry about your mom,' or 'she's in a better place,' but the only time we really pay attention to death itself is Halloween, and then it’s kind of like a joke.”
We stopped at the curb and looked up at the lit porch light surrounded by dark windows that made up my house.
Brendan had taken off his mask but kept the hood on. I saw light from the porchlight on his nose and mouth, but i couldn't see his eyes well. “I guess it’s like how too many Christians were dying in Rome for all the saints to have their own holidays. You know, All Saints’ day?”
“Yeah, like they just gave up and said, ‘Screw it, you all get your own day.’” I paused, then said the most obvious thing ever: “So many people die.”
“I guess.” Brendan was smiling, and for the first time in a long time, I believed his face.
“Dude, do you just want to crash here?”
“Nah, my dad knows I’m coming home. I hate to leave him alone. I hate thinking of him all alone.”
“Yeah.” I found my key in my pocket.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, man.”
“Later.”
I only looked back once on my way up to my door. Walking away, Brendan took quick steps down the street. I watched him, my friend, walk toward home, toward a life I had to really just be a specator for, cheering on the sidelines at best. Mrs. Tibbets’s jogging vest floated just beyond the edge of light from a street lamp, then disappeared. Like the night was wrapping Brendan up, hugging him into itself to protect him from the cold.
---
Walking down the street, even in the dusk, I felt ridiculous. I’d put on all kinds of weird costumes when I was a kid and walked around. I once dressed up as a ninja and walked over to Brendan’s house in broad daylight, and that was March. What was it about turning thirteen? Since then I feel like everyone was analyzing me with their eyes. Sure I looked a little silly as a six-foot tall clown in a corduroy jacket and plaid golf pants and moon boots, but it was much more realistic than a ninja. At least I had my pillow case to show I had a good reason for looking like an idiot. It didn’t help, though, that I walked past four sets of kindergarteners guarded by moms or dads who gave me funny looks.
I walked up to Katie's house as the dark finally began to take over from the sunny day we'd had. Her house is a split level, white with red trim. When it's spring or summer there are flowers in carefully planted beds and the bushes are all sculpted in neat shapes. Her mom and dad got divorced a few years ago, and I thought the house would fall apart. If anything it got better. Char Tibbets, Katie's mom has more energy, more more time on her hands, than anyone I know.
Arriving early at Katie’s place at 5:45, I became the official candle lighter. Her Mom, Char, who hates being called Ms. Tibbets, erupted in praise over my costume as she would for everyone who showed up at her door that night. Dressed as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz in her plaid blue dress and glittery shoes, she handed me the lighter and set me to work on the eight real jack o’ lanterns, the nine ceramic ones, and the other random candles in the house. A lot of moms like me. I guess it’s 'cause I show up early.
The other guests would arrive at 6:15, so I had plenty of time to answer Char’s endless questions while Katie finished decorating cookies in the kitchen dressed as a doctor in OR scrubs borrowed from her uncle, the surgeon. It’s not that I minded talking to Char, but how was I supposed to bask in the glory of Katie when I have to crane my neck to glimpse her from the living room?
Thankfully, Amina and Corrine arrived to distract Char with their respective costumes, cop and, of course, Tinkerbelle. Amina, short with a baby face and glasses looked so cute it was silly in the cop outfit; it made her look even younger. Corrine didn’t look half as good as she probably thought she did as Tinkerbelle. Plus she was wearing dark leggings because it was so cold. In any case both costumes had very little to do with anyone dying, which I guessed would be good when Brendan showed up.
Kellen, Colin, and Alex all showed up together to face the slightly creepy enthusiasm of Char: "Oh my gosh, look at you three! Avast ye swabs! Don't steal me booty!" Did she really say booty? Yes.
All three were pirates, and they prided themselves on assembling their costumes out of thrift store clothes. The only thing they bought new were plastic swords, one of which they had broken from screwing around on the way over. They had invited me to join them in being a pirate, but I always kind of felt like the three of them had something that I wasn’t a part of. so I said no.
We planned out our route, no one really wanting to stay out for too long. Katie drew a map of the streets we would hit: Lancelot, Guinevere, Camelot, Percival. We could loop back on Percival to Avalon Dr. and have plenty of time for the movie. We would watch Happy Feet, a DVD on Katie’s shelf, which contained many possible choices that had nothing to do with Halloween. I couldn’t stand the thing, but then again, I’d only seen previews and commercials for it. Besides, Katie liked it, and I could try to share some of her interests with her. Love may or may not be blind, but it sure has crappy taste in movies.
At 6:38, a knock on the door raised Char’s energy level to critical as she gripped the candy bowl tightly in her hands and bolted for the door. Instead of the pre-pubescent chorus of “Trick or Treat” I expected, and secretly thought was adorable, I heard a muffled voice from behind a skull mask.
"Hey, Mrs. Tibbets, it’s me, Brendan.” He lifted the mask up as if he wanted to prove it, but I couldn’t see his face from the kitchen. The porch light cast a shadow from the hood over his face.
“Of course, Brendan…Come in.” Char looked a little disarmed by the black-robed figure stalking through her front door wielding a plastic scythe.
It was the same costume Brendan had worn last year. I looked at Katie, expecting her to look at me in some kind of shared disbelief, but she just looked and Brendan, maybe a little sadly.
Brendan smiled at us from beneath the yanked-up skull mask. “Hey guys, two things,” he began. “I’m sorry I’m late, and I realize that this is last year’s costume, but I’ve been busy.” He gave kind of a quiet laugh.
Alex must have felt like he had to say something. “Hey dude, it still looks awesome.” He sounded louder, higher-pitched than usual.
“Yeah, B, it’s still way scary,” added Amina. “And who says you have to be something new every year, right?”
“So enough with the small talk; let’s get candy.” He held up a pillow case covered in black spray paint.
Char, regaining her mom-ness, announced, “OK gang, I want to get a picture of all of us. Stand by the fire place.”
I imagined how the picture would look: the grim reaper surrounded by some of the least Halloween-ish characters imaginable. As if the angel of death had on a busy night visited and collected souls from the Carribean, a police station, Neverland, and a circus. We all grouped together, arms around shoulders, and waited for the red light to start flashing.
“Oooh, Brendan? I just thought of something,” Char interrupted. “That costume might be hard to see. Will you wear my jogging vest?” The camera flashed.
“Sure.” Brendan is never one to turn down a concerned parent’s meddling.
Char opened the downstairs closet and took out a neon orange and green vest with reflective patches on the back. I suppose it works great for reminding those cars not to run into her when she’s jogging. Brendan raised his mask again to put it on. He had a small smile on his face as he slipped his arms through the holes and pulled the vest closed over his robes. “How do I look?” He flipped the mask back down and stood up tall.
“Like the scariest crossing guard ever,” Colin shouted.
I let myself laugh a little bit. It was great having us all here, but I couldn’t let go of what happened to Mrs. Roberts and how she should have been here and how totally unfair and crappy that she wasn’t and her son was dressed as Death himself and having a good old time. I needed to say something, but what? And when?
---
All of us went from house to house on the planned streets hearing about how old we were to be trick or treating. Brendan had bet me a quarter of his haul this year that we would hear it at least 25 times. This sounded a bit too much, but the way things went, it came pretty close: 23 times, many more if you count the number of times people looked like they wanted to say it. We had it coming as gangly teenagers, some of whom needed to shave at least weekly and some of whom had breasts beneath our borrowed doctor clothes. There was no way I would ever trick or treat again, and it felt wrong, like staying after school for no real reason. Everyone wants you gone, and you can totally understand why.
About halfway through, we decided to split up a bit. Brendan went with Corrine, Katie, and Alex. The rest of the pirates and Amina asked me to go with them. Kellen. Colin were about the funniest guys I knew, so a good time was guaranteed. The way things went, it seemed like there was some kind of ulterior motive, though.
Amina practically dragged me into her group. I’m kind of clueless sometimes anyway, but it seemed like there was something going on that they didn’t want me to know about. What was I going to do about it? Call them all out at once and throw a fit?
My group took Percival Drive and the others walked down Lancelot in the other direction. I kept turning my head to see the other group. As they passed under the streetlights, I noticed Katie and Brendan walking together. It seemed like every time the stepped out of the dark and into the zones of light under the lamps they were further behind the other two. Mrs. Tibbets’s jogging safety vest made them even more visible. I tripped over Kellen twice because I was walking with my head craned around trying to figure out what Brendan and Katie might be talking about. Finally, and fortunately for Kellen, I couldn’t see them anymore and I was able to walk like a half-way normal person.
It was getting later, so houses had either turned off their lights or were giving out extra candy because they had bought too much. All the little kids were gone too, just fifth graders and older, really: the kids who probably shouldn’t have been trick or treating anymore.
The half moon had just risen over the horizon, and as if it was sucking the warmth out of the night, we began to wish we had dressed for the cold. A few of the fifth and sixth graders were wearing ski coats that covered up their costumes. We soldiered on and made due. I loaned my jacket out to Colin who was wearing a torn up dress shirt with nothing on underneath. It looked really “pirate-y” but probably wasn’t the best choice for late October in Spokane. Eventually, there were few houses with their lights still on, and it must have been 30 degrees, so we decided to just pick up the pace and walk straight back to Katie’s.
We made good time and walking faster warmed us up a bit. Kellen, Amina, Colin, and I didn’t say much on the way back, so it gave me time to prepare what I wanted to say to Brendan. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t mentioned his mom being dead. I wanted to ask him how he was able to laugh and goof around just like normal. I wanted, no, demanded, to know why I felt worse about his mom dying than he did. And while I was at it, why I had to dress up as a clown while he got to dress up as the guy who takes souls to Heaven or Hell, either of which Mrs. Roberts was in right now.
All my well rehearsed and self-righteous lines fell out of my head like books from an unzipped backpack when I saw Katie and Brendan hugging on the corner of Percival and Avalon in the dusty light of a street lamp. It was way too long to be a friendly hug. My stomach bounced up to my chin and back down, and I knew why I had been separated.
Amina called out, a bit too loudly, “Hey guys. How’d it go?
“It went OK,” Katie called, unlatching her arms from around Brendan as if it was no big deal that my best friend was clearly betraying me with the girl I loved. I had to smile to keep from screaming. I couldn't look at her.
We walked back as a group to Katie’s house with me taking up the rear. There must have been a good 10 feet between me and the rest, but I was grateful. My eyes felt like they were starting to leak. I couldn’t handle it. I rationed my breaths and concentrated on walking. Had anyone asked me anything or looked at me, I would have totally lost it. I tried the vault, but it must have been full of all the bad jokes and things I was never supposed to stay. This was too big to cram in there.
The group clomped up Char’s front porch and headed inside. I don’t know where I got the nerve, or maybe I just couldn’t have taken it if we’d gone inside, but I said, almost shouted, “Brendan can we talk for a second?” I’d said it so fast, I wasn’t sure if he heard me.
Halfway through the front door, he turned and looked at me, then out at the street. “Yeah, man, OK. Hey, Col, an Tyler have his jacket back?”
I hadn’t noticed how cold I was.
We walked down the aging wooden steps of the porch to the cement path that led from the driveway. The half moon looked smaller now, but it still coated the yard and street with a soft blue. Across the way, the streetlamp cast the only other major light. Brendan and I walked down to the end of the driveway without saying anything.
“So what’s up, Ty?”
This was something I should have scripted, but I just started talking instead. "I noticed… I saw,” my hands were shaking, drumming on my thighs, “that you and Katie are kinda, you uhh, what’s going on with you two?”
“I was afraid of this,” Brendan sighed.
“So you guys are going out?”
“No. No, she and I are still just friends. We just hugged as friends.”
“It looked…” Tears. “Like more than friends, man. You know I’ve liked her for a long time.” I sobbed out my words.
“She asked me out, you know?”
I squinted at him. I wanted to hit him, not because of what he'd done, but because of who he was, my best friend.
“She asked me, and I said no.” He breathed hard into his cupped hands. The steam escaped from cracks in his fingers. “I said no, and I said you liked her.”
“You did what?” I was on fire now. My hands shot up near my temples and smudged the clown make up down my face.
“She’s like my sister, dude.”
“But why’d you tell her I liked her?” Having him tell her was not part of my plan. It screwed everything. A car was coming, its headlights like pointed stars through the water in my eyes. It took me a second to realize I had paced into the middle of the street and another second the remember what to do if a car was coming. I walked back toward Brendan on the side of the street, not looking at him, not looking at the car.
“Thanks, I guess.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute. There was a salty, snotty taste in my mouth. I started walking down the street; my steps scraped against the asphalt and grit. Brendan walked with me, but his steps were quieter under his black robe. We passed houses with darkened windows and jack o’ lanterns. I thought of the other kids who might come through and smash the pumpkins in the middle of the street or on driveways. It always pissed me off to see the remains of someone’s carving flat and mushy where cars would run it over in the morning.
“You know I wouldn’t go behind your back like that.” Brendan had taken off his mask. His hair was messy. “Who do you think I am? We’re friends.” I looked at him for a second, as if I’d been waiting for confirmation of the fact for years. I can’t remember a time before that when either of us said we were friends. It had always just sort of worked out that way.
“She’s kind of out of my league, anyway.”
“No. dude, she’s like… not in my league either, and look what happened.”
“I guess I knew what she would say if I ever said anything. God, I was scared for so long.” I’d said it a minute ago, but this time I meant it: “Thanks.”
Brendan pulled out his phone, which was buzzing. He looked at the screen: a text.
“Do you want to go back and watch the movie?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Amina.”
“Let me think: awkward situation at Katie’s house or walking home to go to bed. Honestly, I can’t make up my mind.”
Brendan chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not sure I want to deal with any more drama tonight.” He looked at the jogging vest he was still wearing. “I guess I can take this back tomorrow. Let’s go to your place.”
The temperature hadn’t dropped for a while, but I was tired of the cold that was there. Going home to go to sleep in a warm bed seemed better than any tropical vacation or making out with Jessica Alba (or especially Katie). Brendan called his dad to let him know he’d be home in about a half hour. I pulled my phone out of
the corduroy jacket of my costume, it read 10:31. We took off with quick steps, our hands in pockets or in armpits.
“It’s almost All Saints’ Day,” I announced for no particular reason.
“What day? Oh yeah, the day after All Hallows’ Eve.” Brendan and I had researched Halloween extensively when we were younger. We knew about Samhain and the pagan harvest festivals before Christianity adopted it and tried to make it boring. “Do you feel like the spirits are closer tonight? Like we could commune with them?”
“It’s kind of funny how they thought that on one night dead peoples’ ghosts could talk better or louder or something.”
“Yeah, so they’re ghosts, but normally they can’t hear as well. Isn’t that weird. I mean, why would ghosts stick around anyway.”
“To help catch their murderer. You know the story.”
“But what about people that die normally, like old age or a car accident?”
I looked at him, in the eyes. He caught me looking and looked down again, smiling in the not-happy way.
“I forget like this sometimes, you know? That she’s gone.”
It was too cold to stop or slow down, so we kept walking. I had started to sniff from the cold, and I didn’t want Brendan to think I was crying again. “You seem like you’re doing OK.”
“I am. Sometimes. Most of the time. I sometimes have to just stop what I’m doing and my brain does this reality check on me. I start crying, and I think of how much my life sucks.”
I nodded without looking at him.
“I guess I put on a pretty good show at school. Acting like nothing’s wrong.”
“If I didn’t know what happened, I wouldn’t know.” That sounded dumb, but it was true. I wouldn’t have thought anything was different.
“But it’s easier too, you know? When I was eleven, it was terrible and totally unexpected. When Mom got better, it was great, but I guess…” He let out a shaky breath. “I guess I sort of thought it wasn’t real. I’d gone through all this knowing my mom was gonna die stuff, and then she didn’t, and things got back to normal, only they didn’t really.”
“I’m sorry, dude.”
“Thanks. I guess it feels real now, not like a dream where dead people come back and you know it’s time to wake up. I guess that’s what it feels like, like I’m waking up from a dream.”
Brendan and I were quiet for a while after that. We were a block from my house and seemed to have run out of things to say. I had to break the silence a little. “So what’s it like with Halloween reminding you about death all the time?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re…You know, I hadn’t even thought of that. It’s weird how for like, a week, death is everywhere.”
“Yeah. People putting fake tombstones in their yards.” I laughed a little. “No one buries people on their own property anymore. That’s ridiculous.”
“People die all the time. I mean people say, 'sorry about your mom,' or 'she's in a better place,' but the only time we really pay attention to death itself is Halloween, and then it’s kind of like a joke.”
We stopped at the curb and looked up at the lit porch light surrounded by dark windows that made up my house.
Brendan had taken off his mask but kept the hood on. I saw light from the porchlight on his nose and mouth, but i couldn't see his eyes well. “I guess it’s like how too many Christians were dying in Rome for all the saints to have their own holidays. You know, All Saints’ day?”
“Yeah, like they just gave up and said, ‘Screw it, you all get your own day.’” I paused, then said the most obvious thing ever: “So many people die.”
“I guess.” Brendan was smiling, and for the first time in a long time, I believed his face.
“Dude, do you just want to crash here?”
“Nah, my dad knows I’m coming home. I hate to leave him alone. I hate thinking of him all alone.”
“Yeah.” I found my key in my pocket.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, man.”
“Later.”
I only looked back once on my way up to my door. Walking away, Brendan took quick steps down the street. I watched him, my friend, walk toward home, toward a life I had to really just be a specator for, cheering on the sidelines at best. Mrs. Tibbets’s jogging vest floated just beyond the edge of light from a street lamp, then disappeared. Like the night was wrapping Brendan up, hugging him into itself to protect him from the cold.
Monday, November 12, 2007
"All Saints' Day" Parts 1, 2, and 3
All Saints' Day
I steered the lawn mower over the grass and loose ponderosa pine needles like a grazing animal fattening up to hibernate all winter in the garage. Each stripe I cut on that late October day brought me closer to those two months or so when I neither had to mow the lawn or shovel the driveway. Sure, the challenge of raking up 10 trees worth of pine needles loomed ahead, but I kind of liked doing that that. The hot Saturday mornings of the pull-start cord and gas fumes were nearly over, but I had still taken off my sweatshirt.Pushing the Craftsman slower into the last quarter of the yard, I inventoried the homework for the weekend Read and summarize Act Four of Macbeth for Soph. Lit: piece of cake. Problems 1-25, the odds for Geometry: blech, but it’ll get done. Answer the questions for Section 2.1 in Bio: no sweat. Call Brendan for the first time since his mom died: next to impossible. Somehow this last task of the weekend made all the rest into a giant pile of time that would disintegrate into nothing in the space between church and sleep on Sunday, a time that’s supposed to be reserved for reading what I want or watching football. But, like math and summarizing, it would have to happen.
I slowed my steps even more, appreciating the shine of sun off the dew on the mowed strips of grass and the cooler air that signaled the earth’s leaning back and relaxing after a busy summer and the start of school. The mower buzzed over the yard and leveled the grass as I padded slowly after it in my green-stained sneakers. It was like I was trying to sneak up behind the mower. Either that, or I was trying to sneak away from something else.
---
I hadn’t talked to my best friend Brendan since he stopped coming to school because his mom’s leukemia finally got her. She had got it back when Brendan and I were finishing 5th grade, and I guess it hadn’t learned its lesson the first time. She’d lost her hair and about half her weight, and her tanning-bed brown had yellowed, but still she had sent the disease spinning into the canvas in remission. I’m sorry for the sports metaphors, but it’s the best I can do to explain leukemia, which is some kind of cancer of the blood or something. The thing made a hell of a comeback two months ago and got its second wind. Mrs. Roberts had grown her hair back of course, but she never was as sturdy as she was before. She had run every day after she recovered, and eating dinner at their house never involved anything like the Domino’s or Pizza Hut feasts Brendan and I had enjoyed in elementary school. (Tofu burritos anyone?) There were steps taken to stay healthy. But she always seemed softer, bendier like an old Gumby toy compared to who she was before.
Brendan had gotten off at my stop the last time we talked. Neither of us was cool enough to get a ride with anyone who had a car; it was the Yellow Limousine for us every day. It wasn’t weird for him to walk home with me or anything. Unless we had something to do or an after school sport, we always went to one of our houses to hang out or blow each other up infinite times on the XBOX. He’d seemed quiet on the ride, and we never actually discussed whether he was coming over, he just started walking with me.
“My mom’s in the ICU again,” he had said.
I’d had a little joke in my head about the ICU being more like, “I never C U again.” That was one of those inside jokes you only have with yourself. So inside you want to bury it deep and never even remember it much less blurt it out.
“I’m sorry, dude,” I offered instead of the joke.
“She’s been at the hospital for a few days now. It looks like it,” he said. His voice was even and quiet. I had to listen carefully over the noise of the few cars rolling by that belonged to juniors or seniors in Camelot, our housing development.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be OK. This is one of those things we saw coming.” He was right, but I hadn’t even know the cancer was back. How long had he known?
“If you need anything…”
“Actually, I do.” His voice rose a little as if he just remembered something. “I need you to talk with Katie about what we’re doing for Halloween.”
“What if your Mom, you know…”
“Dies? That’s probably not a what if. She told me not to worry about it.” He took a breath, like he was trying to recall a line in a play. “I can’t let this get in the way of my life. The best thing I can do for her is to do what makes me happy.”
“Well, I don’t know what’s going on with Katie this year. You and I should do something not matter what, though.”
“Just keep me posted, dude.”
We laughed our way through Simpsons reruns and did a few math problems together that evening. Brendan ate dinner with my family and said something pretty vague when my mom asked about his. I can’t remember much else about it. The next day he wasn’t at school, or for the two weeks after.
I knew he’d be back on Monday because the counselor had pulled me out of P.E. to talk to me about Brendan’s situation and how I could help make his return as smooth as possible. Sitting in her windowless office, fiddling with her magnet toys she set out to help fidgety boys open up, I wanted to tell Ms. Nakagami that the last two weeks had been like a vacation for me. Brendan had crept into my thoughts but was easy to dismiss and lock out when I had other things going on. I wanted to put this in my vault with the ICU joke, but they wouldn’t stay put. While I was brushing my teeth or trying to go to sleep, anything where your brain has free time, I’d think of Brendan and his dad sitting quietly at home, or eating at McDonalds, waiting for Mrs. Roberts to die. I wondered if he was crying. He’d cried a whole ton when he’d learned that his mom might die the first time. It sucked to be around him because what was I supposed to do? I was only eleven.
---
The last stripes of lawn fell to the mower and I released the handle, shutting down the mower and letting the quiet of the fall day sneak back into the yard. I unhooked the bag and took the grass back to the compost heap in the back yard. This late in October, it was as high as it would be. It’s layers of brown to yellow, sea foam to olive had built up slowly since March when I had first rolled the mower out from behind the shovels and rakes we had never really put away. I thought back to what was going on at each layer, tried to remember each mowing, but they all heaped together. Memories of a routine: why bother if it’s always the same?
Shaking out the last of the bag I wandered back to the front of the house. I still wasn’t in any hurry. Technically, I was done mowing the lawn, but each step in parking the mower back in the garage had me wondering if I would mow again this year. I replaced the bag and wheeled the Craftsman onto the coarse cement of the driveway and onto the smoother surface of the garage. I put the mower in its usual stall next to Dad’s tool chest. The white drywall surface of the garage walls caught slanting light from outside. Something in the light told me that this would be the last mowing of the year. It seemed like an early-snow kind of light, if you could call it that.
Using my thumb and pinky I hit both buttons on the garage-door opener, and the door shuddered and began its descent, carving the light as it went.
Inside the house I made a turkey sandwich and sat down with my mom and dad in front of the UW game on T.V. I never cared much for football. Baseball is right up my alley. So is golf, I guess. But I don’t mind watching a Husky football game if they are playing well. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t their season for playing well. My Mom went there, she has to care, but my Dad went to Central Washington University, which is a school with no real allegiance to the Huskies.
Mom sat on the couch making all kinds of noise about calls and the lazy offensive line while Dad graded papers and looked up every now and then, mostly at Mom. He was there to offer his moral support with a red pen and a stack of middle school science tests. I was just there to eat a sandwich. When that was over, watching my Mom grimace and care too much or my dad give out grades and smiley faces seemed not very worthwhile. And the Huskies were down 20 points in the third quarter, so I decided to do some math.
It’s not that I like math much. It’s just that when there’s something I don’t want to do, I don’t put it off. I can put off assignments or projects I care about or want to do good on for days, but I like the feeling of buckling down and getting something out of my way. It was funny how this worked for everything but calling Brendan.
That was pretty much Saturday. I called or texted some friends that night (everyone but you know who) and tried to get someone to hang out, but everyone was busy. Pretty lame way to spend a Saturday, but I did get to talk to Katie, who I kind of have a thing for, about Halloween.
“Brendan wants to come,” I said as if he was some new kid I needed permission to invite to her party. Katie and he had lived in the same cul de sac for as long as I knew them. Until she started maturing (wink, wink), they had pretty much been best friends. I kind of became his best friend by default after she got hotter.
“Well, that’s… OK. I knew he was coming,” she let each word out very slowly.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’ve already talked to him about it. It’s just that, we’ll kind of have to change things around a bit.”
“Like what?”
“Like pretty much everyone’s costume, and the activities, and the movie.”
“What do you mean?” I had some idea, but I wanted her to be the one to say it. I couldn’t believe Katie had talked to Brendan first. What kind of friend was I? Was I really that much of a pussy to not call him sooner?
“OK, so…what are you coming as?”
“A vampire. Pretty original, right?”
“See, that won’t work. Vampires are dead.” She paused. “I was going to be a witch, but then I thought witches put curses on people, and then I thought of the Salem witch trials where they burned all those people, and I thought it might remind Brendan of what he’s going though, his mom being cremated and all.”
“Wait, I didn’t know his mom was cremated.”
“Yup, anyway, I really don’t want him to feel uncomfortable.”
I thought for a second, “So, I guess I could get some face paint really quick and borrow some of my dads clothes. I’ll be a clown or something harmless.” I didn’t bring up the fact that five weeks of allowance had paid for my Hollywood-quality vampire makeup kit and costume complete with top hat, cane, and cloak. For some reason I can never complain to Katie though. I guess I can store the vampire gear until next year.
“We’ll go trick or treating instead of doing the séance I had planned. Do you think we’re too old?”
“Fifteen? Nah.” How could I argue with her? “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” What was a séance? I had to remember to look that up. I hate sounding stupid.
“And we have to think of a movie, a funny one to lighten the mood, you know? Keep it casual for after trick or treating.”
“How about Young Frankenstein? It’s funny and kind of Halloween-ish.”
“Um, hello? They like dig up dead bodies in that movie.”
“Guess not.”
I wrapped up my call with Katie. Pushing the end button quickly, I flipped my phone closed before my mouth blurted out something stupid like, “I’m in love with you,” or “I can’t stop thinking about you.” These things needed to stay in the vault. They could do a lot of damage.
---
Planning Halloween was really more of a Brendan and me thing. This year would be our first spent going to a party with actual girls. Usually, we plotted ways to scare trick-or-treaters or build haunted houses in the garage.
I remember the year we built our first haunted garage. We started planning in the July before 5th grade by making a tape to play in the background as kids walked through our haunted garage to get to the candy. We were never impressed with the ones available in the stores, so we scripted out what we thought would cover one side of a 90-minute tape. It was pretty much this:
• Wind and lightning
• Growling and snarling
• Slamming doors
• Screaming
• The ghost attack
• More growling
• The Grim Reaper speaks
• Whispered threats
We figured that would be enough and hooked a microphone to an old stereo with a tape deck in his parents’ garage. It was going to be great: 45 minutes of the scariest noises known to man. Making it happen was actually harder than it sounds. After we ran out of things to growl, moan, or whisper, we realized that no one would be spending 45 minutes in the garage, so ten minutes looped over and over would work. We also didn’t think about how high-pitched our voices were. I have to wonder now how it sounded to people to hear our ten-year-old voices making threats or laughing maniacally as they made their way toward candy. Maybe it was extra creepy if it wasn’t totally stupid-sounding.
We drew up plans for hanging canvas tarps to block off certain sections of the garage into various “rooms”. There would be a spider “room” full of rubber spiders and a strobe light to make it look like they were moving. The “victims” would go from there to the chainsaw guy room. My dad removed the chain from an old electric model for me; it still made noise but wasn’t going to cut anyone. The talking head room would feature Brendan in a box with his head sticking out next to a stuffed dummy. We spent 20 bucks in fake blood alone in that room. Finally, the kids would wind up at the witch’s lair where Mrs. Roberts would dispense candy from her cauldron, which was actually set up with dry ice in water around the edges to give off steam. She was our biggest backer on the project and even let Brendan spend some of his Christmas fund early on supplies. It was amazing how much money we blew on this thing.
We spent three weekends getting ready with the help of our parents. I got to climb up and use a staple gun to attach canvas to the beams of the Roberts’s garage. We got everything arranged as we wanted, and even though we knew it had problems it felt great to work together on it as families. The spiders weren’t as menacing as I’d hoped, and hearing my own voice on the tape recorder gave me a funny, embarrassed kind of feeling, but the chainsaw was cool and my costume featuring a lab coat and demon mask looked more threatening than a 5-foot-tall ten-year-old should. Mrs. Roberts really got into it; some of the little pixies and Spidermen wouldn’t go near her and walked out without their Candy.
The night went quickly and I had a blast, but what I remember most was watching Mrs. Roberts take off her makeup in the mirror of the downstairs bathroom. I was standing there in the dark hall, letting the light fall out of the doorway onto me. It was fascinating for some reason, watching the cloth erase the witch and transform her back into the woman who was so ordinary, who reminded me to take off my shoes before I came into her house. She talked to me but watched the washcloth remove the green makeup and warts from the woman in the mirror.
“So what do you think?” she asked when she noticed me watching.
“Well, I think the tape could have been scarier, and I didn’t like it when the big kids came and made fun of it.”
“Yeah,” she closed one eye and wiped over it. “You noticed how they came in as groups and wouldn’t shut up? Well if they were quiet and alone they’d have been about as scared as the little kids.”
“Yeah,” I had to giggle a bit at the thought of the tall, deep-voiced 8th graders cowering in terror from the fake spiders. I knew she was trying to make me feel better, but somehow I needed it.
“I think you guys did a great job planning this whole thing yourselves.” Her eyes in the mirror looked into mine and she smiled. I felt like I was wrapped in a blanket.
“You and my parents helped out a whole lot, though.”
“We wouldn’t have done it without you; I think your dad enjoyed it as much as you did.”
I stood there watching, saying nothing. Mrs. Roberts’s face was almost back to its (not exactly natural) tan. “I guess I’ll go home. Do you need me to come clean up tomorrow after school?”
“No, I mean, yes, but let’s wait ‘til Friday to clean up. It’s late. Go ahead and get some sleep for school tomorrow.”
It was ten by the time my parents drove home, but I couldn’t sleep. It was as if watching Mrs. Roberts remove her makeup gave me some kind of clue to a mystery I hadn’t even thought of. I wonder now if some part of me knew she was getting sick. Maybe it was something else, but by May of that school year, she was getting chemotherapy.
Looking back at the haunted garage, my parents put in way too much money. It makes me feel terrible that there are tons of homeless people in Spokane, and we blew a huge amount of cash on one night one something nobody needed. People downtown could have used it for food or something. Still though, I worked harder on that haunted garage than I ever had before on anything, and harder than I will on most school work this year. It felt good to have us all working together, as if we were building a country. It was how I imagined the founding fathers felt. When we looked out as the garage door opened onto the slowly darkening Halloween night, it felt like a new nation, conceived in liberty.
---
Sunday morning, I was on my way to church, keeping my hands at ten and two, watching the speedometer as much as the road. My mom sat beside me and gripped the handle of the door at every turn. It didn’t give me a lot of confidence, and really it bugged me. On the other hand, the fall morning was cool with the sun making the frost on the colored leaves sparkle and I was in a pretty good mood. It was one of those days that reminds me how great I’ve got it. Still, I wanted to get that learner’s permit phase done with so badly, just so I could drive in peace and maybe go about three or so miles over the limit.
“You’re getting pretty good at this. I haven’t seen you speeding once,” my mom praised, or at least tried to.
“What’s the hurry? We’re always early anyway,” I replied.
“Well, when you’re on time for dates and job interviews, you’ll thank me.”
I eased on the brakes for a red light at an empty intersection. On two corners, diagonal from each other, two houses seemed to compete for Halloween decorations. A giant inflatable spider clung to one roof while store-bought cobwebs smothered a big, leafless tree on the other. The other two houses didn’t seem to notice or care and were happy with their own neatly trimmed hedges and leaf-free lawns.
“I like the spider,” Mom said.
“Yeah.”
“It reminds me of what you and Brendan used to do.”
“We would never have used something like that. I mean, it’s like smiling. Not scary enough.”
“It’s fun; I wonder where they got it,” she seemed to genuinely wonder. This wasn’t just small talk for her.
The light turned green and I brought the car up to 35 M.P.H (exactly). Houses scrolled past in the order I had memorized from years of following this same route to church. It struck me how much I relied on them in some weird way that I couldn’t really describe.
“Speaking of Brendan, have you talked to him?”
“I’m going to today.”
“I would have thought you would have called by now. I mean, he is your best friend.” It was the should/ shouldn’t have done it voice. The words didn’t matter; I knew I’d screwed up.
“Yeah, but it’s not that easy. You know?” I waited for her to tell me to just do it already, but she said nothing as we caught a green at the last intersection before the church. It wasn’t until we had parked and I had shut off the car that she spoke.
“This must be hard for you. I get it. But down the road Brendan will appreciate it.” She checked her lipstick in her mirror. I fiddled with the keys in my hand. “You guys have had a lot of fun together. Maybe this is how you earn it. By being there when he needs you.”
I like church, but I don’t think I really believe most of it anymore. That’s kind of funny because I believed it all when I was little, and I hated sitting through the worship service. Maybe it was because I’d be able to not go in a little over two years, I kind of liked it. It gave me time to think, at least. Sometimes that was the problem.
The pastor spoke, something about some girl drying Jesus’s feet with her hair. The communion grape juice tasted tart and the bread was stale. Old women and men shared hymnals. I thought about what I would say to Brendan. I thought about how Katie had talked to him before I did. Mostly I thought about how I was letting everybody down. I tried to put that in the vault, but it wouldn’t stay. 5:00 and I would call.
---
The afternoon had rolled by slowly. I had worried that time would fly and 5:00 would be there before I knew it. What happened was almost worse. I had hoped to fill the time with reading and summarizing Act 4 of Macbeth (It’s the shortest act; that didn’t take long.) Instead I had more down time than I thought to rehearse what I was going to say to Brendan.That's one thing I do, analyze what I'm going to say too much. I make a big fuss over planning this "speech", and then I always screw it up. I could have made 10 phone calls in the time I spent procrastinating.
4:55 became 5:00 on the VCR/DVD player in the family room, and I had no choice but to call now. Sitting on the middle cushion of the downstairs couch, I flipped open my phone and hit the contacts button. Why did his name have to begin with B? I didn’t even have to scroll down. There it was under Alex, Amina, and Andrea. I selected his name and hit “SEND”. My body tensed up, and all of my well-rehearsed speeches seemed worthless; the best I could hope for was to leave a voice mail.
Three rings in, Brendan picked up.
“Hey, dude,” he said. I listened for a difference in his voice? Was it quieter? Was he crying?
“Hey…Brendan. It’s me.” I knew my voice was quieter.
“Yeah, I know. Your ring came on.”
“Oh yeah. So…How you been?”
“I guess fine. What about you?”
We continued to discuss how fine each of us was doing until he realized what I really wanted to talk about.
“I guess you heard I’ll be back at school tomorrow. What have the teachers been saying?”
I stood up from the couch and began to pace back and forth, wiggling my free hand. “Mr. Yang says you are at an extended family activity, like some kind of vacation, and Cargill sat us down for a big discussion.” We had killed a whole fifty minutes BS-ing about death.
Brendan laughed. He laughed, and I was supposed to be comforting him.
“Are you going to Katie’s party?” I said, trying to change the subject, as if I could somehow comfort him, as if he needed it.
“Yeah, but I don’t have a costume for this year. Maybe I’ll wear one I’ve already got.” A man, his dad, said something in a quiet voice in the background about dinner. I couldn’t hear his muffled reply as he covered the phone. “It starts at eight on Wednesday, right?” he said after a few seconds of muffled discussion with his dad.
“Not anymore. We’re trick or treating.”
“I thought you and I vowed only to hand out candy and stuff after fourth grade?”
“We did, but…something came up. We’re meeting at six. Can’t use her house until nine.” An OK lie. Not great.
“I guess it doesn’t matter to you as long as it’s with Katie, right?” He knew I liked her. Any crap he had given me about it was gone. He sounded so adult to me. “Hey, dude, I have to go. Should I call you later?”
“Nah, it’s OK. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. OK. Later.”
“Sorry about your m-.” The phone clicked. I had passed the test, but why did it seem like his mom being dead was worse for me than for him?
---
Monday isn’t that much of a hassle for me. A lot of kids whine about it and act all grumpy all day. I kind of like seeing all my teachers and friends again.
Brendan and I rode the bus without saying much. The green vinyl seats were cold but warmed up and there was enough fog on the window for me to run my fingers over it and feel the cold. Through my finger streaks, colored leaves and frosty grass scrolled by and slowed to a stop as kids got on. I thought again about getting my license and not having to ride the Yellow Limousine with all the froshes and middle school kids. It would be cool to crank up some AC/DC or Green Day and pick up Brendan at his house, maybe hit Starbucks for some mochas. Somehow, I’d miss riding the bus, though.
We arrived at school, our breath turning to clouds as we exited the bus. Nobody stood around too long outside because of the cold. Brendan and I shuffled into the flat brick building with the rest of the students toward the commons. I could sense more eyes on Brendan than usual. He isn’t a short guy, plus he’s pretty good looking (Is it gay to say that?), but it seemed like people saw him and had to look again. Then, they had to turn to their friends and whisper. It was like clockwork, the kids noticing that the kid with the dead mother had returned. I swear I can’t read lips, but that day I learned what “mom”, “died”, “sucks”, and “too bad” look like. It was like a bunch of compassionate mimes or something.
The teachers were a little more direct but still tried to show they cared. Mr. Yang hunkered down next to Brendan while we were reading a social studies chapter and said, “Hey, if you need anything, let me know. I’ll do my best to make everything work for you.” It reminded me of the server we had once at the Olive Garden, who squatted down, leveling his goatee to our faces, to take our orders and wines to my family. Apparently, if one of your students’ parents dies, your job is to act like a really good waiter.
---
During lunch Brendan and I sat with the usual group of Katie, Amina, Colin, Kellen, Alex, and Corrine at the round table in the busy cafeteria. A pizza pocket cooled in my hand after the first searing bite.
“So my mom was like, ‘There’s no way you’re going as a French maid at fifteen years old.’ So I thought about it and said, ‘How ‘bout Tinkerbelle?’” Corrine drew a breath, possibly to add suspense to what she was going to say. “And she totally went for it. I mean, the Tinkerbelle costume shows as much if not more leg than the French maid costume.” Corrinne took pride in her legs and probably talked them up way too much. Sure they were long and always shaved smooth, but the more a girl brags about something, the less I guess I care.
“I always thought Tinkerbelle was hot,” Colin pointed out.
“You would. Been wearing out that copy of Peter Pan lately?” Kellen teased.
"Oh yeah, I had to go buy another DVD of it at Best Buy, and that’s the second this month. You know me.” Colin has the kind of voice where sarcasm sounds sincere and the other way around sometimes. I wouldn’t have put it past him.
“You guys are gross,” Amina declared.
At this point I remembered Brendan was back and sitting next to me, dipping his fries in honey mustard dressing and laughing at what Colin had said. I looked at him for a second; it was like nothing had happened, and my other friends laughed and talked with him like it was months ago. Was it just me who Mrs. Roberts’s dying bugged so much? I looked away and met Katie’s gaze from across the table for a second. Had she been looking at me? At Brendan? At me looking at Brendan? She smiled the kind of smile where you don’t show teeth and aren’t really happy.
Kellen finished his fries. “So, I guess the question is, and this applies to any of us here, who is, like, the hottest Disney character, I mean who do you want to do? Colin, yours doesn’t count ‘cause she’s only a foot tall. I’m talking life size.”
“Sick,” Amina declared.
“Yeah, so, who would it be?” Brendan challenged her.
“Fine, Beast I guess,” she gave in.
“Before or after he changes back to a guy?”
“Gross.”
It didn’t make sense to me: his mom dies and he’s joking around like anyone? It almost pissed me off.
“All right, how about you, Alex?” Kellen really wanted to keep this going.
Alex looked up from his science questions, which were due in about 10 minutes, to mutter, “Princess Jasmine,” and then get back to furiously scribbling his answers.
“Thanks. Katie?”
“I guess I had a crush on Eric from Little Mermaid when I was little.”
“Good enough. Moving along, Brendan?”
“Pocahontas.”
We wrapped up this monumentally important discussion as the bell rang, yanking us back into what was supposed to be “thinking and learning” mode. I let my prepared answer to Kellen’s question (for the record, it’s Pocahontas, too) slide into the big gray trash can with the rest of my lunch and marched off to P.E. I’d have time waiting to rotate in on the volleyball court to think about what exactly was bugging me about Brendan and what I could do about it, if anything.
---
Halloween slows things down a little bit, even in high school. The teachers get a little bit festive. For example, Mr. Cargill posted two tomb stones, where he wrote “dead words” like “good”, “fun”, “freaking out”, and “dumb”. The point was to make us choose better words. I don’t know if it worked, but the two poster-board tombstones came down from his back wall before Brendan came back.
Ms. Hrcek had a little skull fountain that was also a candy bowl on her desk, but she replaced that with a plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin, like a four-year-old might carry, when Brendan left two weeks ago.
I couldn’t blame them. They are pretty cool teachers, and I guess they didn’t want to hurt Brendan’s feelings. I probably would have done the same thing. But seeing as how he seemed to be doing, I’m not sure it made any difference.
Tuesday was pretty much the same. Brendan and I riding the bus. Goofing around at lunch with our friends. Teachers and students being extra nice to Brendan. On the other hand, he did seem quieter, not as sad as maybe he could have been, but not really like yesterday either. I caught him zoning out a couple of times. He stared at a map of the world in Mr. Yang’s class without really seeing it, and then in Math, he looked at his calculator like it was showing a really important video rather than the answer to a problem.
I was going to ask him how he was doing, but then on the way home, we started goofing around on the bus. He and I were laughing about the one Halloween we had climbed up on to my roof and lowered a life-size plastic skeleton as a way to give out candy. It had a noose we’d tied with yellow rope around its neck. The roof was pretty hard on our butts, but we were in love with the idea. That was in seventh grade, and it didn’t work quite as well as we’d hoped. Some kids would have to yell, “Hey, where’s the candy?” at us from the front door. We had to tell them it was in the pillow case masking-taped to the skeleton’s hands.
It was cold on the roof, and some high school kids stole one of the skeleton’s legs, but we didn’t have the money or time, or we didn’t care as much as we had in fifth grade, to build another haunted house. Where could we go from there but down?
We’d given up and come inside to just give out candy like most every other house. We felt like people were looking at us and expecting more. It was pretty pathetic, and we really felt like crap at the time.
For some reason though, it was really funny on the bus that afternoon. We even did funny, high-pitched voices mocking our younger selves:
“Man, this sucks. I hate high school kids.”
“I hate Halloween. I’m just gonna sit here and eat candy in the dark until I’m a real fatass.”
“I thought everyone would like us and want to be our friends because we lowered a fake-looking skeleton with masking tape holding on a pillowcase off a roof.”
“I hope my voice changes real soon. I’m tired of sounding like a Charlie Brown character.”
It was amazing how the pain was funny now to us. How getting out of middle school had made it seem so ridiculous. But it felt natural, too, to be laughing with Brendan on a fall afternoon bus ride with the sun shining. It felt so right I forgot to ask if he was OK. Oh well, I thought. He’s doing fine.
---
We don’t get to dress up anymore for school. Miller H.S. had decided long before we got there that costumes were inappropriate. I think the Bible-thumpers with their “Harry Potter is evil,” and hatred of all things fun might have had something to do with it. Kids might wear something special now or dye their hair, but people with elaborate costumes actually get written up. It kind of sucks, but it gets me out of having to dress up an extra time. That year, it bought me an afternoon to make a clown costume from a vampire one.
Leaving promptly at 2:30, I walked to the Rite Aid down the street. My dad would pick me up as soon as he could leave work. That’s one good thing about having a teacher for a parent: he can pick you up after school just about whenever you need it.
The empty hooks and few remaining priest and nun costumes reminded me (or did the opposite of remind, really) how well-stocked Party Surplus was when I went to get my costume back in mid-September. A few bottles of crème make-up, some green hair spray, and that was about all I was going to get. I’d hoped to find a red foam clown nose, but they went along with the George W. masks and Spiderman costumes long ago. I figured I could use the makeup I had and borrow some of my parents’ old clothes to finish the clown costume.
I stood outside the entrance with my little plastic bag and waited for Dad to pick me up. The sun was bright and the sky was cloudless. It could have been the perfect summer day if there was any kind of warmth in the air. I knew it would be a cold night, but I enjoyed the sun on my skin as I stood out front. Waiting’s OK, but if I’m waiting where people can see me, I get fidgety. I checked the time on my phone at least a dozen times and read the back of each package of makeup I bought before my dad finally pulled up in the Subaru.
“Hey, Amigo,” he blared over the sound of NPR as I dropped my backpack in the rear seat.
I closed the back door and could still hear the radio a bit. Why he needed to hear a bunch of boring people talking so loud was beyond me. I opened the front door slipped into the passenger seat. “Thanks for coming to get me,” I said, quietly so he would have to turn down the radio; it’s a little game I like to play, one of the ways I can control him.
Sure enough, he lowered the volume before he asked me how my day was. I told him I was fine.
“Can I borrow some of your old clothes for tonight?” I asked.
“ I guess so, but you bought your costume already, right? Vampire?”
“Yeah, but Katie asked me to change it because Brendan is coming tonight.”
“So?”
“His mom?”
Dad took a breath and ran one hand through his rumpled brown hair. “I guess she wants to not remind Brendan of death, right?” Dad usually figured things out pretty quick.
“Yeah, but…Doesn’t it seem kind of stupid? I mean, he knows his mom died. We all do.”
Dad pulled out of the lot and headed toward home. I thought he was going to turn off the radio and launch into one of his patented “heart to heart” chats, but he was quiet for a while. I watched the shadows of ponderosa pine whiz by on the road as he drove. The voices of the radio blended in with the engine and tire noise.
We were a few blocks from home before he let out a sound. “It reminds me of when your grandpa died,” he finally said. “I tip-toed around the subject with your mom for months. I mean, I didn’t talk about him unless she brought it up, and I didn’t rent any movies about people dying, even though there were some good ones I wanted to see.” He watched the road, occasionally glancing over at me. I didn’t look back at him, just listened an noticed the houses that had put out pumpkins already.
“She seemed better after a while, months,” he continued, “but one day I kind of made a joke, and it got to her.” He hit the turn signal for our street and used one hand to steer. My Mom’s dad died when I was two. What I remember of him is a big man laughing at the TV, and then I heard that he had “passed away” when I was three. “She didn’t blame me, though,” my dad added.
We rolled past the familiar houses, the beater Ford Tauruses and Pontiacs of kids I had played touch football with in elementary parked at their curbs. I thought of something about time, but I couldn’t put it in words.
“I guess you have to ask yourself, what would Brendan want? But you can never really know. If someone’s going through a tough time, they are sort of on their own.” We turned right into our driveway, and Dad killed the motor. We both turned away, got out, and looked at each other over the top of the Subaru.
“I want to do something, though,” I said. “Like it doesn’t feel right to just leave him alone.”
“Well, by hanging out with him, you are kinda doing something.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. He was right, usually a better than .500 average. I was batting closer to .150. I knew I couldn’t do anything, but I felt so helpless.
“How’s Mom doing with it now? Doesn't she seem like she’s OK?” I hated these rhetorical questions of his. Mostly because of how right he was.
“Wait, I know; ‘These things take time, but everything will be fine,’ right?” I said in a voice he didn’t deserve.
“Aren’t they usually?”
“Have you read a newspaper?”
“Touché.” He smiled a bit and walked toward the front door.
We didn’t say much the rest of the night. I ate a turkey sandwich for dinner and washed it down with a Mountain Dew. It wouldn’t take me long to put on my make up and the clothes I had borrowed, but I was kind of in a hurry because Katie wanted us to show up around six. I walked out the door towards Avalon Drive at 5:30. I’d be early, but maybe I’d get some alone time with Katie, for all the good it would do me.
to be continued
Monday, October 15, 2007
No poem this week
I'm currently working on a short story, which I will post here in serialized form. If I get inspired, I'll have a poem for you.
Until then.
Until then.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Poem 45
This post is a week late, but I wouldn't have written this poem if I had posted then.
I've always had an ambivalent stance on repairing cars. Even simple tasks like changing a light bulb can frustrate me and sometimes I'm just plain clueless. I once needlessly swapped out an alternator when the problem was in the fuel system. After I'm done, though, and washing my hands in hotter water than I normally use, I get a feeling I find nowhere else. It's certainly accomplishment but a variety all its own.
Instructions for Replacing a Headlamp in a Honda Accord
First you must put it off
for a few days even after
patting yourself on the back
for visiting the parts
department the morning after
noticing that half the road
faded sooner into dark.
Once Wednesday night
delivers a load of papers to grade,
use replacing the bulb
as a break and plan for
about a fifteen minute job.
IMPORTANT: do not
prepare. Do not
consult any kind of guide
before stomping downstairs
to the parking garage.
Grasping a flashlight,
the offset
screwdriver you
think you will need,
and a 7/16 confidence,
open the hood and
look at how the air intake
looms up against
the back of the light
like a boss.
It is too close,
no matter how your skinny
fingers grip the clamp
on the bulb
and try to turn
it clockwise.
Sweat into the coat.
After 10 minutes
of swearing and wondering,
plod up the stairs
to the laptop
to firmly Google a variety
of phrases until,
on a forum somewhere,
you figure out what to do.
Return to the garage
grip the air intake
like a handshake
before a wrestling match.
Lift and tug until
you think you will
screw your whole car
up. Look at your watch
and notice how 10 p.m.
creeps from shadows
behind the Mazdas and
Fords, the Jaguar.
Suppose you can
get along for a few more days
and resolve to finish
the job Saturday.
Take the elevator,
you’ve earned it,
and sulk about how
incompetent your car
has made you feel.
On Saturday, wake
up and return.
The air intake will
pop easily from the socket,
leaving a hand’s
worth of space for
you to turn the bulb
counterclockwise
(even without the
WD-40 you bought).
Being careful not
to touch the bulb,
insert it and turn clockwise.
Clamp the cord on.
Close the hood
and check the lights,
the victory song of the
lights-on alert
will resound until you
shut the door.
Turn off the lights
and lock up.
Mop up Wednesday’s
struggle and cursing
from the concrete
with a standard nap
and the feeling of
floating, like releasing
the parking break
after trying to drive home
from the movies.
I've always had an ambivalent stance on repairing cars. Even simple tasks like changing a light bulb can frustrate me and sometimes I'm just plain clueless. I once needlessly swapped out an alternator when the problem was in the fuel system. After I'm done, though, and washing my hands in hotter water than I normally use, I get a feeling I find nowhere else. It's certainly accomplishment but a variety all its own.
Instructions for Replacing a Headlamp in a Honda Accord
First you must put it off
for a few days even after
patting yourself on the back
for visiting the parts
department the morning after
noticing that half the road
faded sooner into dark.
Once Wednesday night
delivers a load of papers to grade,
use replacing the bulb
as a break and plan for
about a fifteen minute job.
IMPORTANT: do not
prepare. Do not
consult any kind of guide
before stomping downstairs
to the parking garage.
Grasping a flashlight,
the offset
screwdriver you
think you will need,
and a 7/16 confidence,
open the hood and
look at how the air intake
looms up against
the back of the light
like a boss.
It is too close,
no matter how your skinny
fingers grip the clamp
on the bulb
and try to turn
it clockwise.
Sweat into the coat.
After 10 minutes
of swearing and wondering,
plod up the stairs
to the laptop
to firmly Google a variety
of phrases until,
on a forum somewhere,
you figure out what to do.
Return to the garage
grip the air intake
like a handshake
before a wrestling match.
Lift and tug until
you think you will
screw your whole car
up. Look at your watch
and notice how 10 p.m.
creeps from shadows
behind the Mazdas and
Fords, the Jaguar.
Suppose you can
get along for a few more days
and resolve to finish
the job Saturday.
Take the elevator,
you’ve earned it,
and sulk about how
incompetent your car
has made you feel.
On Saturday, wake
up and return.
The air intake will
pop easily from the socket,
leaving a hand’s
worth of space for
you to turn the bulb
counterclockwise
(even without the
WD-40 you bought).
Being careful not
to touch the bulb,
insert it and turn clockwise.
Clamp the cord on.
Close the hood
and check the lights,
the victory song of the
lights-on alert
will resound until you
shut the door.
Turn off the lights
and lock up.
Mop up Wednesday’s
struggle and cursing
from the concrete
with a standard nap
and the feeling of
floating, like releasing
the parking break
after trying to drive home
from the movies.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Poem 44
The area in which I live is home to mostly families. I find myself shopping next to people with full carts and dodging kids in aisles. Most times I can get in and out using just the plastic baskets and briskly choosing my items. Sometimes I just need to get too much and the basket is too small, but I use it anyway. Perhaps my refusal to use a cart is due to my ambivalence about "growing up" and starting a family. I think this poem is about the allure and hazard of family life.
Bachelorhood
The supermarket basket
holds the gravity
of two mini-pizzas,
three bananas,
a pint of ice cream,
a loaf of bread it might take
a week for me to use
and a pint of milk,
most of which will find my drain
the driest mouth.
I’m holding it together,
pressing the top pizza down
like a lid.
Fingers aching against handle,
I think about getting a cart with room
for economy-size toilet paper,
a 24-pack of bottled water,
and jumbo bags
of generic Trix.
I cling to my plastic basket like
an anchor in shopping waves,
dragging it to checkout lines.
Hauling myself up on a shore
of Us Weeklies and mints,
I smile at the toddler behind me
riding in her seat on a cart
that would gape
like an empty room
if I pushed the metal
cage from aisle to aisle.
Bachelorhood
The supermarket basket
holds the gravity
of two mini-pizzas,
three bananas,
a pint of ice cream,
a loaf of bread it might take
a week for me to use
and a pint of milk,
most of which will find my drain
the driest mouth.
I’m holding it together,
pressing the top pizza down
like a lid.
Fingers aching against handle,
I think about getting a cart with room
for economy-size toilet paper,
a 24-pack of bottled water,
and jumbo bags
of generic Trix.
I cling to my plastic basket like
an anchor in shopping waves,
dragging it to checkout lines.
Hauling myself up on a shore
of Us Weeklies and mints,
I smile at the toddler behind me
riding in her seat on a cart
that would gape
like an empty room
if I pushed the metal
cage from aisle to aisle.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Poem 43
I don't have much to say about this poem other than putting it away and looking at it again made it seem better. Sometimes that trick works. Been going through a bit of a block/ lack of motivation lately. Hope this isn't a huge lapse in quality.
I hope I get another bank calendar soon.
Calendar from the Bank
I opened the credit union envelope,
prying out the new calendar, the pictures
flapping by as I fluttered the pages.
I tacked the booklet above my desk,
like a cage of days, to hang and let
one day at a time wriggle through
grid lines and numbers opposite
pictures of winter peaks
and summer in the Skagit Valley.
Each day flew over my desk
to perch on my window
and sing before flying off
to join the others. By November,
feathers and spilled seed below,
the lonelier dates, still confined,
waited, tilting their heads to hear chirps
in a sealed brown envelope.
I hope I get another bank calendar soon.
Calendar from the Bank
I opened the credit union envelope,
prying out the new calendar, the pictures
flapping by as I fluttered the pages.
I tacked the booklet above my desk,
like a cage of days, to hang and let
one day at a time wriggle through
grid lines and numbers opposite
pictures of winter peaks
and summer in the Skagit Valley.
Each day flew over my desk
to perch on my window
and sing before flying off
to join the others. By November,
feathers and spilled seed below,
the lonelier dates, still confined,
waited, tilting their heads to hear chirps
in a sealed brown envelope.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Poem Unlikely
Getting back into the swing of things at school, so I'm not likely to post this week. See you next time.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Poem 42
I got the idea for this poem while reading Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop, a good book that is not about salt or corporate mascots. The girl and her little smile caught in my brain and eventually I thought about here little two-dimensional cylinder of a world. It reminded me of remembering mundane things, how they come back around and catch us as if we were walking a cylinder of our own.Th Morton Salt Girl is a trademark of Morton International Inc. It has iodine in it to help prevent goiters.
The Morton Salt Girl
Dress buttoned at the top
but doing nothing to protect
her legs from the wind
as it slants rain into nylon,
she glows in the blue of night.
Under her arm,
the one grocery her
mother requested
spills out even in rain
that would clump flour
and starch.
Kept flowing by calcium silicate,
the salt finds the sidewalk
to be trod under
the feet of men,
to turn puddles into oceans.
Smiling at her own footsteps
as they splash into the dark,
she barely notices the
nutrition information like neon
that gleams to light her way
on the back of the container.
Here, walking by herself at night,
she listens to rain against umbrella
even as it masks the sound of salt
and her mother’s future complaint.
It’s one of those things
that you’re supposed to forget:
a simple chore in fall weather.
Not much going on,
but traipsing the cylinder,
each step pushing forward,
you’ll be here again,
spilling salt or
walking with the rain,
in yellow.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Poem 40
See Poem 37 for an explanation as to what's going on here.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
Impromptu spring,
better known as forgizia,
includes but is not limited to:
Grass still green in late August.
A bare pond bed alive
with plants hugging the muck
like fog.
Closing windows at night.
A sense of buds opening
even under old leaves.
Rain.
Four days of staying inside,
reading, without guilt
for not visiting the lake.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
Impromptu spring,
better known as forgizia,
includes but is not limited to:
Grass still green in late August.
A bare pond bed alive
with plants hugging the muck
like fog.
Closing windows at night.
A sense of buds opening
even under old leaves.
Rain.
Four days of staying inside,
reading, without guilt
for not visiting the lake.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Poem 39
See Poem 37 for an explanation as to what's going on here.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
Winter’s shrug,
sometimes known as
beige spring,
occurs around the last of Februrary
and the first greening of March.
Rituals mark this time
of now-useless precautions.
In one instance
Dakota Schultz,
patient for nothing specific,
kicks traction gravel around
a high school parking lot.
It's Tuesday morning.
Behind the fence
the grass lies flat
and yellow in fields,
and the sky shares its
blue when it sees fit.
On these days
he may notice
white clouds in the sky
behind the branches of a tree.
Mr. Schultz should not be alarmed
if these turn out to be blossoms,
eager for the emerging warmth.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
Winter’s shrug,
sometimes known as
beige spring,
occurs around the last of Februrary
and the first greening of March.
Rituals mark this time
of now-useless precautions.
In one instance
Dakota Schultz,
patient for nothing specific,
kicks traction gravel around
a high school parking lot.
It's Tuesday morning.
Behind the fence
the grass lies flat
and yellow in fields,
and the sky shares its
blue when it sees fit.
On these days
he may notice
white clouds in the sky
behind the branches of a tree.
Mr. Schultz should not be alarmed
if these turn out to be blossoms,
eager for the emerging warmth.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Poem 38
See the previous post for an explanation as to what's going on here.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
Citarania
In some northern states
this hard-to-define season
lasts only the few hours
when a child
can stand and watch
snowflakes buzz
through the coating of glow
around street lamps.
Often lost among the rubble of winter,
this season was discovered
by archeologists excavating
Bronze Age snow forts
and using brushes
to dust the jaws and femurs
of snowmen buried in volcanic ash.
Further research shows
the ancient Fydyrrnians
believed that the frost lords,
who hated school,
rewarded prayerful children
with a lavish citarania.
The modern child, dressed in gray
snowpants and green coat,
should breath a sigh of relief;
good news will emerge
tomorrow when he sifts through
AM static to find stations
indicating cancellation.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
Citarania
In some northern states
this hard-to-define season
lasts only the few hours
when a child
can stand and watch
snowflakes buzz
through the coating of glow
around street lamps.
Often lost among the rubble of winter,
this season was discovered
by archeologists excavating
Bronze Age snow forts
and using brushes
to dust the jaws and femurs
of snowmen buried in volcanic ash.
Further research shows
the ancient Fydyrrnians
believed that the frost lords,
who hated school,
rewarded prayerful children
with a lavish citarania.
The modern child, dressed in gray
snowpants and green coat,
should breath a sigh of relief;
good news will emerge
tomorrow when he sifts through
AM static to find stations
indicating cancellation.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Poem 37
I had a recent revelation about the arbitrariness of seasons recently. It wasn't anything major that caused this, but it occurred to me that there's nothing significant about the four seasons in and of themselves. Sure, on some days we have more light or dark than any other time of the year, or we are more likely to have temperatures in the 90's than the 20's, and as significance junkies we like to think these are important divisions of the year. Discrepancies, however, abound. I know one person who checks this blog lives in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are different. She does not experience seasons the way I do, and I think all of us experience "personal" seasons of one kind or another.
I intend to post five poems about such obscure seasons this week. Please stay tuned.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
False Autumn
marks the onset of premature
nostalgia fits,
yanked out like sweaters
from closets for a morning chill.
At such a time,
when few yellow leaves at the tips
of branches
surprise the end of a rainy August,
Sue Xiong realizes the four months
before Christmas.
She would be wise
to keep the rake in the garage.
Even as one leaf scratches
the sidewalk on a breezy jaunt,
millions dangle and flutter,
demanding further sunshine.
I intend to post five poems about such obscure seasons this week. Please stay tuned.
from Fulton’s Guide to Unofficial Seasons
False Autumn
marks the onset of premature
nostalgia fits,
yanked out like sweaters
from closets for a morning chill.
At such a time,
when few yellow leaves at the tips
of branches
surprise the end of a rainy August,
Sue Xiong realizes the four months
before Christmas.
She would be wise
to keep the rake in the garage.
Even as one leaf scratches
the sidewalk on a breezy jaunt,
millions dangle and flutter,
demanding further sunshine.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Poem 36
I try to avoid writing cutesy poems, but this one comes as a special request. When I was in late elementary school, one of my friends had a miniature dachshund named Hotdog. The name could have been more original, but the dog was one of the most endearing creatures I've ever encountered. She acted like you were doing her a tremendous favor just by showing up to hang out with your friend. I remembered this dog fondly on Saturday, how warm she was, and my girlfriend suggested I write a poem about it. This one is not about my friend or me. I made it up.
As I wrote this I realized that with the demise of the VCR many of us will lack a glowing green clock in our living rooms. It was sort of a lame joke that no one knew how to set theirs, but if a person took some time, it wasn't such a chore to do. Perhaps DVD/VCR combos still have this feature, but for how long?
Wiener Dog
A key turning the deadbolt
and two wet steps later
he crouches down on hardwood
with the door hanging
open a crack.
The boy looks
like he is gathering
a flock of sparrows.
He cradles 11 pounds
of twittering body, tongue,
ears, tail: a dachshund
who has gathered winter
light into her own
bloom of heat on the carpet
by the bay window
all afternoon.
She perched her front paws
on the sill when the junior high bus
stopped up the street
and aimed her arrow body.
To shoot her head
into the boy’s open coat
like he’s stealing clay
that can’t hold its shape.
He laughs from the tickling nose
and glances to the VCR’s clock;
it will be 24 minutes
before he will share this warm
skittering with his brother.
Seventh grade,
even with locker rooms
of trouble,
means extra afternoon
with the snow melting off
boughs outside and the sound
of two sets of lungs.
As I wrote this I realized that with the demise of the VCR many of us will lack a glowing green clock in our living rooms. It was sort of a lame joke that no one knew how to set theirs, but if a person took some time, it wasn't such a chore to do. Perhaps DVD/VCR combos still have this feature, but for how long?
Wiener Dog
A key turning the deadbolt
and two wet steps later
he crouches down on hardwood
with the door hanging
open a crack.
The boy looks
like he is gathering
a flock of sparrows.
He cradles 11 pounds
of twittering body, tongue,
ears, tail: a dachshund
who has gathered winter
light into her own
bloom of heat on the carpet
by the bay window
all afternoon.
She perched her front paws
on the sill when the junior high bus
stopped up the street
and aimed her arrow body.
To shoot her head
into the boy’s open coat
like he’s stealing clay
that can’t hold its shape.
He laughs from the tickling nose
and glances to the VCR’s clock;
it will be 24 minutes
before he will share this warm
skittering with his brother.
Seventh grade,
even with locker rooms
of trouble,
means extra afternoon
with the snow melting off
boughs outside and the sound
of two sets of lungs.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Poem 35
I started this poem based on houses in older neighborhoods in Spokane and Bellingham as well as my experiences growing up around retired people. Belonging to a church when, whatever I believe now, gave me many opportunities to connect with older people and watch them age and sometimes deteriorate (sometimes die less-expectedly). It was originally just a poem about the houses themselves until I noticed a sign for an assisted living community a few weeks back. I like the idea of assisted living (I think we all need more "assistance") but wanted to show how resistant to losing independence I think most of us are.
Many of these details come directly from my grandmother's experience, but, as usual, the poem is not autobiographical. "A person" is a phrase I've heard people in her generation use to refer to themselves. I like it
Assisted Living
The old houses know how to wait.
Their rattling,
thin windows, driveway cracks
listen to the fidgeting leaves
and sprinklers wetting
close-mowed lawns.
Men with veins,
calluses, and bent nails
prune shrubs and patch concrete.
The old men, the old women
fight with dirt, with sag
and rain.
Shaking fingers smooth quilts
and store away plates.
Routines blossom in these times:
a closed linen closet at 3,
a microwave hum at 6.
a daughter’s tired child at 8.
With arms and legs borrowed
from ancestors, the grandparents
wind down like music boxes,
keeping up with vitamins,
physical therapy.
They line up prescription bottles
and do alright for themselves,
even when a husband passes away.
But when the houses get too large
and the beige grass
overpowers the green,
and the grandson hauls
old firewood from the porch,
a person has to call someone
to put away towels
and seed the iced walk to the garage
with carefully de-iced steps.
The walk to the bathroom
begins to wind like a trail
and the basement,
it may as well be China
because she can’t get there.
Her phone grows legs and arms,
strong from bank account meals,
to shovel, haul, and clean.
A person even moves the phone
next to her chair in the living room
so she doesn’t have to go far
when it rings.
And after she changes the channel
when a commercial about
assisted living comes on during the news,
she can call her grandson
to ask what his girlfriend does for a living.
At the edge of town
on curved suburb drives
complexes beckon
with elevator song and the smell
of meals without microwave trays.
A knock at the door brings
bathing and linen services,
and community gardens
don’t cry out for weeding.
Their shuttle buses,
decaled with “Manor”, “Village,”
“Retreat” run daily to malls
and doctors’ offices.
But a person can still drive
and she has a daughter
who can get to the store.
It will be a few years
before she sits by the window
and looks four floors down
and three miles West
to the house where she planted irises
and took the basement stairs
two at a time, carrying
home-canned peaches
for a grandchild’s desert.
Many of these details come directly from my grandmother's experience, but, as usual, the poem is not autobiographical. "A person" is a phrase I've heard people in her generation use to refer to themselves. I like it
Assisted Living
The old houses know how to wait.
Their rattling,
thin windows, driveway cracks
listen to the fidgeting leaves
and sprinklers wetting
close-mowed lawns.
Men with veins,
calluses, and bent nails
prune shrubs and patch concrete.
The old men, the old women
fight with dirt, with sag
and rain.
Shaking fingers smooth quilts
and store away plates.
Routines blossom in these times:
a closed linen closet at 3,
a microwave hum at 6.
a daughter’s tired child at 8.
With arms and legs borrowed
from ancestors, the grandparents
wind down like music boxes,
keeping up with vitamins,
physical therapy.
They line up prescription bottles
and do alright for themselves,
even when a husband passes away.
But when the houses get too large
and the beige grass
overpowers the green,
and the grandson hauls
old firewood from the porch,
a person has to call someone
to put away towels
and seed the iced walk to the garage
with carefully de-iced steps.
The walk to the bathroom
begins to wind like a trail
and the basement,
it may as well be China
because she can’t get there.
Her phone grows legs and arms,
strong from bank account meals,
to shovel, haul, and clean.
A person even moves the phone
next to her chair in the living room
so she doesn’t have to go far
when it rings.
And after she changes the channel
when a commercial about
assisted living comes on during the news,
she can call her grandson
to ask what his girlfriend does for a living.
At the edge of town
on curved suburb drives
complexes beckon
with elevator song and the smell
of meals without microwave trays.
A knock at the door brings
bathing and linen services,
and community gardens
don’t cry out for weeding.
Their shuttle buses,
decaled with “Manor”, “Village,”
“Retreat” run daily to malls
and doctors’ offices.
But a person can still drive
and she has a daughter
who can get to the store.
It will be a few years
before she sits by the window
and looks four floors down
and three miles West
to the house where she planted irises
and took the basement stairs
two at a time, carrying
home-canned peaches
for a grandchild’s desert.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Poem 34 -completed
Here is the completed version of the poem. I'm pretty satisfied with it, but still can't shake the feeling that I'm being presumptuous in writing it.
Bjorn came as a guest speaker during my Holocaust unit this year to present to my students. He wanted to talk about the Holocaust, but he really wanted to put the whole war into perspective and even the 20th century. He had done impressive research and had many numbers to share, but it was the stories he had that interested us (aren't they always?). I tried to represent what he said here in this poem as well as its effect on the class.
I thought about writing two separate poems about Bjorn's experience and listening to his presentation. However, it seemed like what I'm trying to get across needs both at once. I struggled with how to present the man's experience as a secondary source without creating too many fictional details. I feel like no one else will write about this, but I don't want to pervert the story somehow. It helped to imagine him reading it.
This is one of my few poems involving death, so bear with me. I hope it isn't too melodramatic. I'll write a poem about shining shoes or eating grapes soon to make up for it.
Bjorn came as a guest speaker during my Holocaust unit this year to present to my students. He wanted to talk about the Holocaust, but he really wanted to put the whole war into perspective and even the 20th century. He had done impressive research and had many numbers to share, but it was the stories he had that interested us (aren't they always?). I tried to represent what he said here in this poem as well as its effect on the class.
I thought about writing two separate poems about Bjorn's experience and listening to his presentation. However, it seemed like what I'm trying to get across needs both at once. I struggled with how to present the man's experience as a secondary source without creating too many fictional details. I feel like no one else will write about this, but I don't want to pervert the story somehow. It helped to imagine him reading it.
This is one of my few poems involving death, so bear with me. I hope it isn't too melodramatic. I'll write a poem about shining shoes or eating grapes soon to make up for it.
For Bjorn T.
The reams of facts and numbers
gathered in your arms like a harvest:
you are ready today
to share what you know
or could re-know with some internet hours.
as you researched
the numbers
you want to put it in perspective,
you tell the class.
A picture of Himmler,
a mass grave of Polish Jews,
6 million, 11 million, 262 million;
each figure on the screen
arrives like a late notice for a bill.
Your hands, --wedding-ringed,
veined, grandfather hands--
Lower the paper to the document camera,
like eggs into a soft somewhere,
which reminds you.
And the oceans of numbers are wearing
attention spans into pebbles,
so you decide to tell the story.
you saw the Nazis at work
how they paraded
in your town.
Things got normal enough
and they were building things,
catching the country up
with wire, brick, and metal.
Plus, they had brought Soviet prisoners,
thin men in gray who cleared roads
and hung cable between poles,
the ones who carved toys
and traded for food.
Erik’s carved peacock,
almost flapping on a string
above his bed,
opened the door to the coop
and eased your hand under fat hens
to steal eggs that would
light the eyes
of the prisoners
and bring out carved pine
worked into fish,
horses, birds their knives
had nurtured from elm and spruce
belted in the bottom of your knee pants,
slowed your giddy steps
to where the prisoners
strung the telephone wire.
A week before, the Germans
waiting by the swastika-ed truck
hardly cared when Erik had traded
his mother’s bread for the peacock.
With their guns leaning against
the truck and their hands
leaving pockets only to light cigarettes,
the soldiers had smiled a bit to see
village boys trading with the Russians.
And so you watched the prisoners
scale the poles, wire looped around shoulders
and not the trucks.
With your eggs that morning,
you hardly noticed
the new men with black uniforms
and their SS lapels.
Trying to keep yourself together
in front of 14 year olds,
the classroom quiet,
like after the shot.
And how the past comes like a bullet
loaded and aimed over decades
hitting targets, scattering like shrapnel
into young ears.
And yet the bell rings,
the students, having forgotten to pack,
applaud for what you’ve said.
They have PE and band ahead,
but they will whisper your story
to neighbors in third-period math.
of the SS man as you ran,
knees battering the shells
and forcing the sticky grief
into the bottoms of your knickers.
How that man had fallen,
then the other,
as the third’s hands took flight
like startled birds chained by his arms.
for scolding from your father.
The day had whittled you down too much
to remember what he shouted.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Poem 33
I hope all is well with you and yours. Thanks for reading. I have nothing much to preface this poem.
I can never figure out where to look when people are singing happy birthday. I assume you're supposed to look at the cake.
I can never figure out where to look when people are singing happy birthday. I assume you're supposed to look at the cake.
Birthday Cake
she waited through
the song, not sure where to look.
Fourteen people in the two-bedroom
with the lights silent,
the room shivered,
our song fluttering 32 candles.
We knew more volume than key
and fought each other for notes
somehow agreeing at the end
that F would cue a year
full of things we wished for her:
promotion and marriage,
a new car.
Her breath escaping
the wrapping of her lungs,
she blew out most,
then all of the glow.
As night leapt in
from the corners,
we cheered the arrival of dark
before the host
flapped on the kitchen light
and rattled the drawers
for a good knife.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Poem 32
I'm currently house sitting in West Seattle and for the first time in a long while, I have to worry about a lawn. My anxiety about the grass rose recently with the temperature, and yet I love going out in the evening with the hose and spraying down the small yard. It's a wasteful use of water, grass, but there's something about a lawn that I can't get over.
Watering the Grass
Like I wish I could write,
the water from the guts
of the house
reliably spouts from the metal
end of the hose.
With my thumb over the tip,
shaping the fan
of spray just right
I gallop the water over the moaning
parts of the yard.
In this way we battle the sun.
As it moves on to blast
another hemisphere,
we sneak out of houses
in sandals, some of us
without shirts,
to revive green comrades
in lawn and bed,
each of us more nurse
than soldier,
and yet isn’t that what we all become?
Soothing grass with
clear balm
as if each drop were a kind word.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Poem forthcoming
I'm in the middle of moving and house-sitting, so I'll post later this week (Thursday likely). Thanks for checking!
Monday, July 02, 2007
Poem 31
Here's something I wrote at the tender age of 20. At the time I was still heavily under the spell of e.e. cummings, but I rarely wrote this way. I must say his poems were usually more coherent, but I like the lack of coherence (and punctuation) for this one. I retooled this one very little for posting here, but that may be mostly because I don't really know what to change without changing the effect. I think the effect was to convey how quickly a summer day in my childhood felt when remembered. I'm sure they mostly dragged on.
I think I wrote this after trying to take a nap on a sunny day.
I think I wrote this after trying to take a nap on a sunny day.
Retina (a day in June)
leap barefeet onto grass
greengreengreen
sprungtime here and went
out sliding glass doors
into swimsitpools
in backyards and to the
waterslides in the Valley
closed eyes to sun
so red I can see veins
flashfire for retina
bicycle curbhooping,
up and down the block
hurryrushing over pavement
splotched black with
drying water till swingset
and dad’shome
Monday, June 25, 2007
Poem 30
I'm not entirely satisfied with this poem. I tried to go for a certain repetition in the first few stanzas, but then the poem needed to go somewhere else. I'll probably change it later this week if a good idea pops into my head.
This is probably the only poem I've written about my mom.
This is probably the only poem I've written about my mom.
For My Mother
With a used Grand Prix
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Poem coming soon
I'll publish a poem tomorrow evening, but until then you can read some of the writing my students have done. They did much of the layout for this literary journal as well. I polished it a bit, but their work is what I hope shines here.
Tolt Middle School's Revisions magazine
Tolt Middle School's Revisions magazine
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Poem 29
My friend Rachel has asked when I would write a haiku. Since I usually disregard formal poems, I tend to resist even this approachable form. Today I have for you five non-haiku and one "real" one. Rachel, there is your haiku. I may take other requests for forms, but I do not guarantee any kind of proficiency.
For those of you who don't know, Shari's is a chain of 24-hour diner-style restaurants where a person can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner, at a reasonable price. It's somewhere between fast food and an Applebee's or Chilli's. Breakfast is my favorite.
For those of you who don't know, Shari's is a chain of 24-hour diner-style restaurants where a person can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner, at a reasonable price. It's somewhere between fast food and an Applebee's or Chilli's. Breakfast is my favorite.
Five Non-Haiku and a Haiku About Breakfast at
i.
Green apron tied below
her pregnancy:
she is my server today.
A man sipping coffee
puts it down but gets none
when the waitress comes
The woman in tan
knee-highs and sandals -
a seat to watch the cars.
The strong hands of the
dishwasher, his
He sweats and stacks plates.
Bacon, ham, and sausage:
three kinds of meat.
He drinks one glass of water.
The hardboiled egg -
I chip away at it now,
fingers like a beak.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
