Who's Crazy Now

One of the hardest lessons life has to offer is this:  If you let crazy into your life, don’t expect it to leave quietly.  Crazy is a hanger-on, a master of disguises and scarier still, it can be contagious.  Crazy adapts.  Crazy takes over.  Crazy is cunning.  Crazy will make you think it's you.

At some point – after we were married – my second husband mentioned that he was what he called sort of adopted.  His mother was his mother, he assured me, but the man she was married to was actually his stepfather.   Out of curiosity, I asked about his biological father and was casually told that he had been a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who died in an asylum.  He knew his name but otherwise claimed to have no memories of him.  I suppose if there had been internet then, I might have done a little research and might have taken note of the fact that schizophrenia seems to be at least partially genetic and is commonly accompanied by alcoholism.  Then again, I might not have.  The negative symptoms – emotional flatness, apathy, lack of speech – were all there in plain view but I saw them more as personality quirks.  He was a very angry man, broken in several places and not looking for help.  He wanted more than anything to drink in peace and solitude, to be left alone with his demons.  Even in later years when things took a turn toward violence, I didn’t see it.  By then I was fairly convinced that I was to blame.  I thought I’d taken a quiet, harmless drunk and turned him into a mean, abusive son of a bitch drunk.  I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end.  My desperation and anger, fueled mostly by fear and shame, finally led me to Al-Anon and Al-Anon eventually led me back to sanity and reality.  I held on for several more years although I think in my heart, I knew that the marriage had almost no chance of survival after my first six months of meetings. Of course what you know and what you’re willing to act on are two very distinct things – it took a long time to learn to change my thinking – it took even longer to learn the courage to leave.

I still think of him every now and again, mostly with a sense of sadness and a powerful regret.

I would like to think that he found some peace of mind, some help, some way to reconcile with his children.  Last I heard and it was years ago, he’d returned to his roots and his first wife in Kentucky.  I haven’t heard anything since and I don’t go looking.  For a long while I was convinced he’d end up dead or in jail – there were some nasty incidents of domestic abuse with his third wife – and I wouldn’t have been too distressed  or surprised to learn he’d come to a bad end.  Turns out he wasn’t the only one who was angry and broken in several places.

Lewis Carroll wrote, “ I can’t go back to yesterday.  I was a different person then.”

Aren’t we all and isn’t it a blessing.

Blind Sided

The fight broke out in without much warning, one brother flying into a rage and pinning the other to the linoleum floor on the sunporch with one thick forearm across the neck and the other smashing his face repeatedly.  By the time my daddy got there, there was a considerable amount of blood  and the brother on the floor was barely conscious. The other was still punching.

Sweet Jesus! my daddy shouted, Stop before you kill him!

It took both hands and all his strength to pull them apart.  Now shouting for my grandmother, he unthinkingly flung the older one aside, sending him crashing into the drop leaf table where countless bridge games had been won and lost.  Snarling and drooling like a rabid dog, the boy recovered and jumped on his back in a blind fury.  Nana, who had been in the middle of making an apple pie, simply raised her flour coated rolling pin and swung. My brother dropped like a stone and my daddy shrugged him off and knelt on the now slippery and blood smeared floor.

I watched it all through the window - my daddy  yelling for my mother before gathering up my little brother and carrying him to the Lincoln, my grandmother keying the ignition and flying up the driveway as if the old town car had wings - even my mother's frantic flight down the stairs and her panicky scream when she discovered her oldest son, only dazed but still flailing.  He cursed her viciously, staggered to his feet and took off like a scared but pretty much drunken rabbit.

I hate you! I shouted as he passed me, I wish you were dead!

Bitch! he shot back, I hope you rot in hell!

Too overwrought and scandalized to move, my sodden heap of a mother began wringing her hands and wailing like a cat in heat.

Serves you right! I shouted at her from the doorway although I wasn't exactly sure of what, You ain't nothin' but a nasty old drunk!  Everyone says so!

This brought on a fresh wave of sobs and I fled for the playhouse.

My mother and daddy both claimed to be blindsided by the attack, although both were careful to call it THE INCIDENT.  Words and phrases like "regrettable" and "fluke" and "surely never happen again" were tossed around until Nana lost all patience.

Here's a word, she told them coldly, sociopath.  It hung in the air like smoke.

These things happen in all families, my mother said with a self-righteous sniffle.

The hell they do! my grandmother snapped, do you think these things just happen, Guy?

My daddy, a kind hearted but helpless soul when it came to this kind of thing, sighed heavily and said nothing.

I was sent to my room without supper that night but my little brother came home with a broken nose, two blackened eyes and a line of ugly stitches from his cheek clear to his chin.  He wouldn't talk about the fight.  It was Cap who eventually brought my other brother home after finding him hiding in the ferry's wheelhouse. Apart from denying responsibility for the fight, an old and worn out tactic that never failed to work with my mother but failed miserably with everyone else who saw him for what he was, he had nothing to say.  Both boys were docked two weeks of allowance and grounded for the upcoming weekend and THE INCIDENT was considered closed.  My mother fought hard for a lifting of the punishment, finally brow beating my daddy into restoring the younger brother's allowance but refusing to budge on the other.

I know you can't admit it, Jan, I overheard him tell my mother in an uncommon display of backbone, but no matter who talks or who doesn't, you know as well as I do who started it.  

My mother protested but he couldn't be moved.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

Scott Adams

  

A Thoroughly Disagreeable Little Man

The line at the pharmacy counter was six deep with unhappy, impatient customers.  They muttered and complained, shifted from one foot to the other and cleared their throats with frustration.  The hapless cashier, a frozen it’s-not-my-fault smile on her face, was doing her best but she was badly outflanked by the little man with the pageboy haircut and the overflowing grocery cart.

He wasn’t but four and a half foot high and clearly oblivious or indifferent to the traffic jam behind him, was engaged in a whiny, nasal and protracted conversation with the cashier.  He wanted someone to block print the directions for his prescription on a sheet of paper.

 Letter size paper,  he demanded, White with black ink.

The cashier assured him the pharmacist would be happy to oblige if he wouldn’t mind waiting and allow her to wait on other customers.  He stamped one small foot defiantly.

Certainly not, he snapped.

In that case, she countered, perhaps she could begin to ring up his purchases to save time.

He glanced at his grocery cart, piled so high it towered over him, and shook his head vehemently.

Not until I get my directions, and there was an edge of sneer in his tone, I’ll wait.

There was a rumble of discontent behind him and he glanced over his shoulder, wrinkled his nose.

I have as much right to be here as you do, he announced arrogantly and the rumble began to sound more like a growl.

They’s a dozen lanes open, fool, a tired looking but hefty black woman said clearly, Carry your skinny ass to one of them and come back later.  Ain’t no need to hold the rest of us up!

I’ll do no such thing, he declared, And you can’t make me!

Try me!  the woman invited and took a step closer to him.

The disagreeable little man paled, hitched up his high water pants nervously but stood his ground.

You wouldn’t dare, he mumbled.

Now ya’ll hold on, a younger black man intervened smoothly, Leave him be, Mama, can’t you see he ain’t right?

And indeed, I realized, there was something off about the little man in the long sleeved check shirt, loafers, and khaki pants with the belt cinched so tightly that they rode up and exposed his bare ankles.  His pageboy hair was only pageboy’d on the back and sides – from the top and front he was shiny bald with wispy muttonchops and a tragic goatee – I could barely see his eyes through the thick lenses of his glasses and what I suspected was a permanent part of his wardrobe, a black imitation leather pocket protector, was sturdily attached to his shirt pocket.  Then there was his cart.  Everything was in 12’s – 12 quart bottles of Pepsi, 12 bags of bird seed, 12 light bulbs, 12 granola bars and 12 of 12 kinds of candy bars. 

The black woman gave the cart a nasty jolt with one knee and the little man began to panic, I could see it in his face.

Mama!  The young black man snatched her arm and pulled her back, Mama, leave him be!

Just as I was deciding I didn’t need to know how all this would end, the harried, young pharmacist materialized at the counter and slid a sheet of paper toward the little man.  There was a collective sigh of relief as he inspected the paper, folded it 12 times, tucked it into his pocket and began unloading his cart.  One item at a time and keeping an eagle eye on the cashier and the computer screen.

White folks!  I heard the black woman mutter as she shook off her son’s arm, elbowed her way past the others in line and stalked out, Some be crazy as bedbugs!

There was an uncomfortable silence as everyone digested her words.  The wide-eyed cashier continued to ring up the little man’s purchases although it was a slow and tedious process as he would only lay the one item at a time onto the counter and then wait for her to scan it before reaching for the next one.  It looked and felt like intentional gridlock.  The pharmacist returned to his pill counting and the black woman’s son lowered his eyes and made his way out, murmuring apologies as he went. The line continued to lengthen, finally attracting the attention of a managerial-type who surveyed the situation and immediately sent in a second cashier to move things along. 

The thoroughly disagreeable little man was finally done but as he chose to plow his cart into and through the now double line – it was impossible not to believe that this was an intentional effort to displace as many people as possible since there were clear paths on either side of him – he felt the need to make a parting shot and announced nastily that he’d never felt so ill-treated all day.

Give it time, an anonymous voice from somewhere in the line called after him, Day’s still young.

This brought some scattered laughter and humiliated and infuriated, he immediately fired back with that if people like that were going to shop here, then he would take his business elsewhere.  

It’s them or me,  he crowed confidently.

The managerial-type looked from him to the line of customers and back again, shrugged and smiled.

We’ll miss you, he called politely.

Turning the other cheek is a noble notion and a worthy goal but in the real world, sometimes you just have to speak your mind and return fire.

  

Touching the Moon

Follow your inner moonlight, Allen Ginsberg writes, Don't hide the madness.

On one of those summer Saturday nights when the moon was so bright, so huge, and hanging so low you think you could reach out and touch it, we sat on the steps in the village square and listened to the tide as it washed against the rocks.   Someone had brought a tiny transistor radio and Kitty Wells was singing Dust on the Bible  while someone else was following along on a guitar.  We passed around a pack of Export A's and a half full bottle of Canadian Mist - a vile blended whiskey with the capacity to burn your throat raw, one sip was enough to rock you on your heels and getting caught with it would've meant the direst of punishments - but it was well past closing time in the square.  The general store was shuttered and dark except for the lights in the third floor living quarters and even the barber shop's brisk Saturday night business was done for the night.  Anyone not at the show - yet one more Martin and Lewis comedy, we sighed - or not getting ready for the dance was home and out of sight.  Just past ten, we ditched the empty whiskey bottle and the crumpled up cigarette pack and began to drift lazily toward the dance hall.  Only the Sullivan twins, who to no one's surprise had been drinking steadily since noon, lagged behind.

On the way, we picked up Gene and Buttons, the old retriever had a spring in his step still and trailed happily after us.  When we passed the Howard place, both defiant sisters - their daddy would've come after them with a shotgun if he discovered them sneaking out - came slinking out of the shadows and doing their best to be invisible, joined up with us.  Last but not least, we came to the Blackford house and someone let out a long, low whistle.  We heard Blackie call a good night to his folks and out he came, dressed to the nines from the Spiegel catalogue and ready to dance his size 13's off.  There wasn't a girl on the entire island who would turn down the chance for a spin around the floor with him - he was our own unlikely Fred Astaire - and every girl in his arms became an even more unlikely Ginger Rogers.

With the moon lighting our way, we made our way down the dirt road until the dance hall came in sight.  The clouds, backlit and edged with silver, moved aimlessly across the sky.  We were so young and so mostly innocent - not a care in the world - I don't think we knew there was magic and a little madness in the night. We paid our quarters at the ticket booth and slipped through the doors into the strobe lights and the music.

Marty Robbins was crooning A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation when the Sullivan twins came crashing through the door and onto the dance floor.  They were bruised and bloody and locked in a tangled version of a bearhug-combination-chokehold, each grunting and attempting to beat the other senseless.  Blackie stepped in almost immediately, efficiently grabbing each by the hair, pulling them apart and swinging them sideways clean off the floor.  This produced two identical wails of protest followed by two colorful streams of obscenity when he delivered a well aimed kick with those size 13's but he was persistent.  He cracked their skulls together - once, twice, three times in all - until they crumpled like flour sacks and slid to the floor in a useless heap.  Calmly, he took each twin by a handful of shirt collar and dragged them through the door and down the steps, flinging them into the dirt with very little effort.  It was only a flurry of madness, no where near enough to ruin the evening and Marty Robbins was still singing when it was over.

Midnight came and we danced the last dance then reluctantly began the walk home.  The moon was so pale and so near, we imagined reaching out and running our fingers over its surface.  Nowadays when I see such a moon, I wonder if maybe there isn't just a little madness and Marty Robbins in all our moonlit nights.  If there's not, maybe there should be.

And The River Keeps Rising

The swollen river spills over the banks and mercilessly sweeps away everything in her path.   Street signs and cars and parks go under without the first chance to defend themselves.  You can kneel on the railroad bridge and almost touch the muddy water.  Some home sites are turned into islands, owners left stranded.  A brightly painted doghouse drifts lazily down a residential street, carried on the water as lightly as a feather.  And the river keeps rising.

It’s been several days since there’s been any rain but the damage is already done.  The utility companies prepare to cut power in a half dozen neighborhoods and the mayor’s office issues emergency evacuation orders.  The river will reach a full foot above flood stage in a matter of hours and slowly but surely we’re running out of higher ground.  They say it may be July before the waters recede.

A number of small minded and self-righteous folks begin posting comments to the flood pictures about how and where homes ought to be built, as if the victims had brought this on themselves and suggesting that it’s retribution for their being money’d.  It’s cruel and thoughtless – but not really surprising - and there are immediate rebuttals.  Nature doesn’t target the rich, someone else points out and floods don’t discriminate.

In the very midst of all this chaos, there comes a freak wind born of a violent thunderstorm and it rages through one of the oldest and most historic sections of the city, leveling trees and fences and power lines and leaving a path of wanton destruction.  It’s 2am and the sounds of chain saws are singing people awake.

Regardless of what we’ve accomplished and how far we think we’ve come, nature still has her own agenda.  She cares not where we build our houses or how much we depend on electricity.  She speaks louder and more fiercely than all the victims put together and her mood these days is foul.

The Flood of 2015 will be talked about for years and remembered for decades.

And the river keeps rising.

A Handful of Time

Every so often I think about scooping it up by the handful and safely stashing it away, this mysterious thing called time.  It's a treasure, unappreciated and undervalued until it's a memory in the rear view mirror, dusty with age, a little distorted and fading fast.

Spend it wisely, my daddy used to say about time and money.

Until we parted ways, I had always been a daddy's girl.  He taught me to play piano and ride a bike, helped me with my homework, made the rounds with me when it was Girl Scout Cookie time, taught me a lifelong habit of books - especially satire - and gently helped me to think through crossword puzzles.  We shared a common love of language and music, a frustrating contempt for cold weather and all things mathematical, and we both thought horses were the smartest animals alive.  We had the same phobic fear of things that crawled on their bellies. We were both fascinated by history and politics and had no use for the next door neighbors.  He showed me how to water down alcohol - except for his beloved Chivas, which he treated with respect bordering on reverence - and I learned how to make one drink last a whole evening.  We made snow angels on the front lawn in winter and played badminton on the green grass in the spring.  The dead, he told me over and over again, were just shells, remnants of those who had once been.  I learned I had nothing to fear from them but even so we didn't talk about our own mortality.

And like those handfuls of time, we kept a great many secrets locked away, routinely conspiring to keep my mother in the dark about things she wouldn't have approved of - certain friends, a little supplemental allowance, the after-church visits to the drive through ice cream place - and later, after I'd been married for a few years, even his ladyfriend, a pretty young widow he used to bring to our tiny apartment to play bridge. She was well mannered and well kept company and she made him laugh but my heart absolutely froze at the thought of the risk they were taking.  She eventually moved to a small town in Maine and the affair died a natural death but I still remember the feelings I had and how utterly strange and surreal it was to be an accomplice in his adultery.

After some thirty years of these small - and not so small - conspiracies, my mother became terminally ill and everything changed.  My adulterous, secret-keeping and always-on-my-side daddy changed, insisting that I put aside my feelings and reconcile with her.

Spend it wisely, I remembered him saying about time and money and I said no.  Besides offering a half hearted apology, it was the last thing I ever said to him.  It made me sad - and angry - for a very long time but I never regretted it.  I let that particular handful of time slip right through my fingers and given the chance, would do it all over again.  

Money, like time, can only be spent once.






  

Ohney and The Revivalists

The day had started clear as a bell with bright sun and high cotton clouds.  By the time the factory whistle had blown at seven, Nana had stoked the old cast iron stove, made coffee, squeezed oranges for fresh juice and hung half the Monday wash.  By mid-morning though, the skies had begun to turn pale gray and a fog bank was forming off Peter's Island.  The air was thickening and rain wasn't a threat, it was a certainty.  

Well, I'll be damned! I heard my grandmother say as she noticed the light fading, Hurry, child, help me bring in the clothes!

I snatched the wicker clothes basket and hurriedly followed her out the back door.  We beat the rain but only barely and there was no time to organize and fold neatly as she liked - this put her in a mild temper - but it was nothing compared to what would come later that afternoon when Aunt Pearl and Aunt Vi arrived with the news that the Pentecostal caravan had arrived and set up their revival camp in Ohney Elliott's back pasture.

Charlatans! she snapped, unnerving Aunt Vi so badly that she nearly dropped her tartan patterned china coffee cup, Con men and snake oil salesmen!  What was Ohney thinking? 

I imagine, Aunt Pearl said calmly, she was thinking about ten dollars a day for that land.

I'd give her fifteen to throw their ragged asses off'n it, Nana scowled, Ain't nothin' but a bunch of money grubbin' frauds and Ohney's a pure fool to be part of 'em.

Ohney Elliott, just in her early forties that summer, had been what the village liked to call a widow woman for going on three years.  She lived alone in a modest little home on Highwater Hill, raised chickens and pigs and the occasional goat and had developed a habit of keeping to herself.  She knew about hard times and hard work - more than she'd ever wanted, she'd confessed to my grandmother one early evening at the post office -
and with her savings rapidly depleting, she'd been thinking about selling off some of the pasture land.  There wasn't much of a market back then but the factory people had made her a decent offer for five acres and it was weighing on her mind the day the Pentecostals arrived and offered to rent it.  Thinking it might be a sort of trial period to letting it go - and in sore need of cash money - she'd decided it couldn't do much harm and said yes.  

It's a ten day revival, Miz Elliott, the slick young preacher man assured her, That's a hunnerd dollars spendin' money you surely ain't got now.

When she hesitated, he took her small, roughened up hands in his and smiled.

We're doing the good Lawd's work here, Sister Ohney, he said with a smile that chipped away at the last of  her reluctance but it was the crisp ten dollar bill he slipped into her apron pocket that won the day.  

These are sinful days and Jesus needs all the help He can get, he told her, Your pasture could help us save a powerful number of souls.

And so the caravan rolled in and in a matter of hours, the glory tent was raised and Ohney (and anyone else within a half mile of the pasture) could hear the choir practicing "Brighten The Corner Where You Are" and "Standing On The Promises".   She wasn't all that much of a church goer - had in fact never quite forgiven God for the freight-train-fast cancer that had taken her husband before he turned forty - but she did love the old hymns and hearing the music made her smile.  

'Ceptin' for the music, she told Aunt Pearl, A body'd hardly know they was here.  She didn't mention the young preacher's daily visits or the ten dollar bill he forgot to bring each time.  Nor how much she looked forward to seeing him tramping down the footpath in his open throated white shirt and black frock coat.  She especially didn't mention that some of those visits lasted a little longer than needed but Pearl was a sharp-eyed observer and nobody's fool when it came to traveling preacher men and salvation.

More'n music's bein' played over there, Alice, she told my grandmother darkly, I don't reckon I much like admittin' it but seems like you mighta been right.

Nana reached for her Kent 100's and seemed to be considering.  

'Pears to me, she finally said, that we might oughta mind our own beeswax.  Sometimes Ohney don't have the sense God give a grasshopper, I know, but she's still a fully grow'd woman and I reckon she's entitled to her own mistakes.

I ain't worried about her virtue none, Aunt Pearl replied, lowering her voice to just above a whisper, I reckon that's between her and whoever she's......spendin' her time with...... But I know for a fact she's countin' on that cash money and she she ain't seen a nickel since the first night.

Lay down with dogs, git up with fleas, Nana said practically and shrugged but I had an idea that wasn't exactly what she was thinking.  She inhaled, exhaled, watched the smoke with a studied look.  She chain smoked when she was troubled or about to make an important decision and now she stubbed out one cigarette and immediately lit another.

You know, Pearl, she remarked casually after a small silence, mebbe we ought to drop by the service tonight. I heard tell that preacher man's a regular spellbinder when he gits wound up.

Oh, ay-uh, Aunt Pearl nodded, Jesus saves.


Sitting cross legged and pretty much unnoticed on the floor with my dominoes, I'd lost the thread of this conversation some time back (beeswax?) but I could sense a sharp edge in the air.  Nana went to the old black telephone in the dining room and called Elsie - her switchboard had lit up like a Christmas tree, so people said later - and by early evening the house had filled with women chattering like chickens.  Just a few minutes before eight, they all packed up and left, marching to their various cars and pick up trucks with military precision and grim, determined looks.  

I never did find out exactly what happened but the revivalists folded their tents, three days early, and slipped away with the fog the very next morning.  From the looks of the pasture, they might never have come at all and Ohney had a fistful of ten dollar bills - twice what she'd asked for - and more than enough to see her through the summer and into the fall.

The Lord helps those who help themselves, Nana declared serenely over lunch on the day of the mass departure.

And heaven help them's that gets in the way, Aunt Pearl added.

Amen.

Three On A Match

Sitting cross legged behind the shelter of the rocks and random driftwood, Betty Jean tossed her braids smartly and produced a filched pack of du Mauriers and a small box of kitchen matches.  Wrinkling her nose at the brief flare of sulphur, she lit Ruthie's cigarette, then mine, and finally her own, inhaling and exhaling smoke like a pro. 

Three on a match, Ruthie said in between coughs, S'posed to be real bad luck.

Old wives tale, Betty sneered at her unkindly.

It ain't!  Ruthie protested, It's from the war!

She's right, I said, remembering my daddy telling me about the origin of the idea, when the first solider lit his cigarette, the enemy soldier would see the light - when the second soldier lit his cigarette, the enemy soldier aimed - when the third soldier lit his cigarette, the enemy fired.  Besides, Betty Jean was being her usual know-it-all self and I felt the need to back up Ruthie.

I say it's an old wives tale, Betty scowled, but ain't smokin' some slick!

Til we get caught, Ruthie muttered and swiped at her watery eyes.

Don't be a baby!  Betty snapped at her, Ain't nobody makin' you!  Give it here!

Ruthie shook her head and determinedly held onto the du Maurier, squinting her eyes to avoid the smoke and trying not to cough.  Stolen cigarettes didn't come easy.

Betty Jean was fourteen, two years older than Ruthie or I, and she was citified, having lived in Halifax for a time and even gone to a fancy boarding school for a year.  She smoked openly and hung with an older crowd like the kids who would climb into the back seat of Pete Smith's old Chevy and drink vodka with orange juice for the thrill of it.  

She does other stuff too, Ruthie had said ominously yet with a hint of self satisfaction, with boys.  I heard the Sullivan boys say she's "easy".

I only had a fuzzy idea of what that meant but it seemed nasty.  I thought of how Nana got grim and tight lipped when Betty's name was mentioned and once I'd heard her tell my mother that Betty was Rancid!  Spoiled worse'n than bad butter!  I had to look up "rancid" in one of Cap's library dictionaries and it gave me a funny feeling.  I thought it might be one of those things I'd understand when I was older like when my mother said Nobody marries tramps like Betty Jean only I didn't have to look that one up.  

She couldn't have been more wrong, Ruthie wrote me years later when we were grown and I didn't get to come to the island every summer.   As soon as she turned eighteen, Betty had hit the road running with barely a word of goodbye.  For some time she dropped completely out of sight and was mostly forgotten, becoming one of those where-are-they-now girls who no one thought much about.  Four marriages and one misspent youth later, we heard about her death - homelessness and a heroin haze ended her life and she overdosed alone in a Halifax back alley - it was four days before anyone noticed and another week before she was identified. 

A hard, sad ending to a hard, sad life, Ruthie's letter read.

In the early years of my second marriage, I made - although I didn't know it at the time - what would be my last trip home.  On a sunny, sweet smelling afternoon I made my way to the old graveyard where Betty was buried and Ruthie soon would be.  I sat in the cool shade of the Memory Garden and thought about childhood and destiny and city life.  On my way back to the house at The Point, I stopped at the general store and bought a pack of du Mauriers and a box of kitchen matches.

It was a good visit and a good way to say one final goodbye.

At the Corner of Happy & Healthy

There’s no getting around it.  I miss the days when things just worked.

The pharmacy is deserted save for the surly old pharmacist, a nasty piece of business, as my British friends say, a man who clearly has nothing but contempt for his customers and who carries a chip on his shoulder the size of Montana.   He knows I’m at the drop off window but his eyes never leave his computer screen, hoping that if he ignores me long enough I might go away.

Excuse me, I finally say in as friendly a tone of voice as I can muster and hold out an empty prescription bottle, Can you please tell me how much it would be to fill this?

He sighs massively and I remember more clearly why I don’t patronize this particular pharmacy.

Have to look it up, he mutters but makes no move to climb off his stool.

Fine, I say, trying to keep an even tone but already tasting anger in the back of my throat.

He continues to type, scowling at the screen.

I’ll wait, I say helpfully and he glares at me.

Have to call the pharmacy that originally filled it for you, he says as if I’ve asked him to sacrifice a virgin, Takes time to transfer a prescription.  Another massive sigh.

Now afraid that I might throw something at him, I set the empty bottle on the counter and nod toward the row of chairs.

I’ll wait, I say again.

Twenty five minutes later when there’s been no word, I approach the counter.  He’s back on his stool, face locked in a death stare of perpetual resentment.  A third massive sigh.

They’re not answering, he tells me, Been on hold with’em ever since you came in.

This is so clearly a lie that I almost laugh.  When I say as much, his face darkens.  I reach my hand for the prescription bottle and when he hands it to me I snatch it like a hot rock.

You ought to try a different line of work, I snap, Something that doesn’t involve people.

A fourth and final massive sigh and as if I’d wished him a long and happy life, he returns to his computer screen.

About the pharmacy, I’m telling the store manager minutes later, You really need to up your game.

He looks at the floor and apologizes, explaining to me that this is a complaint he hears on a daily basis – and has been hearing for years - and that there’s nothing he can do.

It’s corporate, you see, he says sadly as if that explains everything.

And indeed it does. 

The following morning I take my prescription elsewhere – same company, different pharmacy – and am welcomed with a smile and a cheerful attitude.  Who says there’s no such thing as a geographic cure?

A House on Fire

Such a morning, Mr. Rabinowitz smiled as my daddy and I entered the dim little pawnshop, God is good, you should pardon my mentioning Him.  He leaned on the glass display case and winked at me, a shaggy haired little man with wire rimmed spectacles and a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.  He's neatly starched and pressed, just this side of elegant as a matter of fact, a regular Dapper Dan, I remember thinking.

Ida!  he called over his shoulder, Ida, come and see!  Guy's here and you should see he brings a lady with him and it's not his wife! 

Deaf I'm not, Rabinowitz, you old fool, a woman's voice calls back and it makes my daddy smile.

There's a slow, scraping sound and I see the top of a head coming through the doorway.  A midget, I think excitedly, but it turns out to be an old woman in a wheelchair.  She emerges from behind the glass cases, peering with sharp eyes and a curious expression.  Her thick silver-ish hair hangs long, straight and well past her shoulders.  A pencil is tucked over one ear and a pair of half moon glasses hang around her neck by a beaded chain.

Not his wife, you say? she demands, Oy, Rabinowitz, from your lips to God's ears, you should excuse the expression, where is..... 

Seeing me, her voice trails off.

Ida, Sy, my daddy says, still smiling, This is my daughter.  He looks down at me and gives me a gentle nudge forward.  This is Mr. and Mrs. Rabinowitz, he tells me, My very old and dear friends.

Shy you shouldn't be, bubbala, the old woman tells me encouragingly, Rabinowitz, bring the rugelach and honey cake!  Thin like her father the child is, you should pardon my saying so!

The four of us sat on wooden folding chairs around a scarred up card table.  I had my first bagel and my first taste of lox and cream cheese - the first became a lifelong love, the second something I've never again felt the need for - and then the honey cake and sweet pastries, all washed down with strawberry fruit punch.  It was a good day and it became a good memory.  I remember how at ease my daddy was, how he laughed and seemed so at home in the dim little pawnshop.  No one mentioned my mother until we walked back to the car and he suggested we keep the visit to ourselves.

She doesn't like Jews? I asked carefully.

She doesn't like different, he told me sadly.

A dozen years later, two young men - armed with handguns, high on cocaine and out of money for more drugs - decided to rob the pawn shop.  On a peaceful, mid-spring afternoon, they forced their way in, surprising Mr. and Mr. Rabinowitz and demanding cash and valuables.  Mr. Rabinowitz discreetly stepped on the silent alarm and opened the ancient cash register, calmly handing over the bills and still managing to shield his wife. They shot him anyway then pistol whipped the old woman right in her wheel chair and left her for dead.  According to the The Chronicle, the two thugs then made their way out the same way they'd come in and straight into a phalanx of uniformed police from the station directly across the street.  Rather than surrender, the drug dazed thieves fired on the officers and for a few brief seconds, Central Square turned into a war zone.  When the smoke cleared, both young men lay stone cold on the bloody sidewalk.  Inside the pawn shop, Mr. Rabinowitz was dead and Mrs. Rabinowitz was unconscious.  She died in the ambulance.

Until that April afternoon, I'd never known anyone who'd died a violent death.  I felt suffocated with shock and horror and my daddy, wrapped up in his own grief and devastated by the two bodies now lying in his morgue, could not offer much comfort.  It was a long time before I could walk those particular Cambridge streets again and even longer before I accepted the fact that life can be senselessly, unimaginably cruel.  I never came to terms with the random obscenity of murder.  Evil is sometimes in the luck of the draw.

We all live in a house on fire.  No fire department to call.  No way out.  

Tennesee Williams

Artificial Sweetener

Truth is, I've never much cared for chihuahuas.  It's their way or the highway.

They tend to be high strung and temperamental, snappish to a fault and often wildly unpredictable and impulsive.  Sweetie is all those things - much like her owner, I think but am careful not to say although Michael would likely be the first to agree - a tad schizophrenic, grimly hot tempered, likely to bite without the slightest provocation.  If one of the big dogs as much as passes by her, her lip curls into a thoroughly unattractive sneer and she begins to make what Michael calls chupacabra noises. One minute she is comfortably snuggled in my lap, content to be petted, tail wagging like a fan belt.  The next, her head whips around and she sinks her tiny teeth into my wrist and gnaws fiercely.  She's too small to do much damage but it does tend to startle me and not for the first time, I think how disasterously mis-named she is.  Michael has taken to calling her Artificial Sweetener.

She doesn't care for anyone who might be innocently walking past the house, apparently considering it a serious form of trespass.  Anyone waiting at the bus stop is a personal affront and God help us all should another dog appear - stray or leashed matters not - she flies at the iron fence like a demon and is only deterred by the fact that she's too fat to get through most of the bars.  The doorbell is a call to arms but far and away, the greatest threat and her most bitter enemy is the mail truck.  The moment she sees it, she's out the side door and running mindlessly up and down the length of the fence, barking non-stop and causing quite a chihuahua-ish scene. 

If she happens to come when called, it's a matter of coincidence and no amount of coaxing will get her where she doesn't want to be or conversely, get her away from where she does.  She terrorizes the big dogs out of their food and steals their toys, defends her territory fearlessly and loudly snarls at just the sight of the brush.  Michael's last attempt to give her a pill was a dismal failure and he nearly lost a finger trying.  She could out-stubborn a mule without breaking a sweat.

And yet.  

There is something undeniably adorable about watching her waddle down the stairs or grin at the prospect of a treat.  She rolls onto her back and burrows into the couch cushions, kicking her little legs like pistons, twisted like a pretzel and oblivious to having an audience, a bipolar ball of fluff with fangs.  Watching her trot down the hallway to greet me each morning makes me smile.

Even chupacabras need love.

The Wildebeest at the Door

I do my best not to laugh but the sight of my friend Michael, with his face screwed up as if someone had slipped him a dose of castor oil, is too much.  He's telling me a story about a fellow model from his runway days in New York - a beautiful boy, he freely admits - but bereft of style.

Common, he says with a grimace and a shake of his head, Just so very common.

There's no greater transgression in Michael's world, no greater fault or flaw.  He has just turned 50, nowhere near as thin and far less gracefully than he'd anticipated or intended and he likes to relive the glory days, the hard body, brooding good looks, on the prowl days. We argue constantly about age, weight, hair loss and plastic surgery - in short, we argue about vanity - as anyone who has seen The Devil's Advocate knows, Satan's favorite sin.  I never make much progress.  It's like trying to reason with the John Birch Society.

We also argue about politics, gun control, music, issues of race, social programs, how to housebreak a dog, Fox television, the worth of cats, Coke vs Pepsi, and how warm or cold to keep the office.  But vanity is always first on the list.  I despair of his obsession with it.  He dismisses my lack of appreciation for it.

Rummaging for aspirin in the upstairs bath, I have to make my way through a veritable black hole of cosmetics.  Night creams, day creams, wrinkle creams.  Jars of foundation and skin care products, face powder and false eyelashes.  Lighteners, darkeners, a cup of eyebrow pencils.  Astringents, blemish treatments, hair gel, pricey colognes.  Concealers, a dozen small containers of blush and bronzers, hair spray.  Spray on tanners and hair color, designer soaps, moisturizers, exfoliants and custom shampoos.  

It's revoltingly superficial, I scold him, and it's costing you a fortune.

Try some of this natural argon oil, he tells me absently, it'll revitalize your hair and nails. 

No, thanks, I say, I'm ok with un-revitalized hair and nails.

He gives me a critical look, appraising my hair and nails I'm pretty sure, than shrugs and steps on the scale. This is followed by a deep sigh.  Disapproval is written all over his face and I decide to avoid the inevitable debate and look for aspirin elsewhere.  I'm halfway down the stairs when the door bell rings and the dogs go wild, all three charging past me and barking explosively.

Gawd-dayum!  I hear Michael shout in frustration, his favorite expression in times of crisis, What wildebeest is here at this godforsaken time of day?

In the best of times, he's not what you'd call a morning person and without coffee and Prozac, he can be uncommonly bad tempered but it's almost eleven and I decide to ignore him.  The dogs are running in circles, barking furiously and feverishly assaulting the front door.  When I battle my way past them and slip out, I'm confronted with something straight out of a homemade People of Walmart video - all 200 pounds of her - in shorts and a skimpy tank top, fishnet stockings and patent leather heels, gold streaked dread locks past her ample shoulders.  What's left of her makeup is stale and doesn't do much to hide the scars and pockmarks and she smells like a brewery.  Instinctively I back up a step and try to hold my breath.

Dis be the model place? she wants to know, followed by Dem dogs bite? and finally a request for bus fare.  A single gold tooth glints in the sun and she actually reaches out a grubby hand toward me but her eyes keep darting to the behind me where where the dogs are now frantically howling and storming the door.  When I tell her I'm going to let them out and we'll see if they bite or not, she curses colorfully and waddles off, her sequoia-like legs scraping together like sand paper.  It's a truly cringe-worthy encounter.

Go sell crazy somewhere else.  We're all stocked up here.
Jack Nicholson, "As Good As It Gets"

Nothing Beats a Good Sulk

If she had'em, they'd be made of brass, I think as I watch the kitten walk confidently up to the small brown dog and nose her out of her own food dish.

Too timid to protest, the dog takes a few steps backward and then sits with a pitiful look on her face.  I shoo the kitten off, not once but several times and finally have to add a spray of tap water to make my point.  She retreats indignantly but not but a minute later is back, nonchalantly approaching the little dachshund and his dish.  This doesn't go quite so well - nothing happens for a few seconds - then I hear a warning growl.  It's very soft, very low and throaty, not menacing but not exactly frivolous either. The kitten looks up in astonishment then slowly backs away and the little dachshund gives me a quick glance as if he's expecting a reprimand.  When none comes, he sits back down and resumes eating. The kitten sits several feet away, pretending to groom herself but I know a sulk when I see one and I'm not buying. She's a quick enough study about many things but she also has a short memory and a wicked stubborn streak.  I have no doubt that this will happen all over again with the next meal.

Take a lesson from this, I tell myself thinking of the saying about insanity and expecting different results. Much as I know better, it's still something I struggle with.  In hindsight, the lessons I learned as a child all seem negative and I often find myself wondering why there wasn't room for this single, useful and positive thought. Maybe I crowded it out.  Alas, maybe I still sometimes do.

I'm not completely sure but I think as a learning ground, age whips youth's butt in the important stuff even if you're a kitten.  I'd never take on a teen or twenty-something about technology but ask me about the dynamics of addiction and I'll clean your clock.

Do you know how to (insert any computer chore that he doesn't want to learn) Michael says to me.

No, I tell him, And I'm learned out.

That's what you think, he snaps back smartly.

 I forget that Michael knows a sulk too.