Driving Away

I dropped my brother off to do some grocery shopping and asked him what he was going to get.  He said he’d poke around and figure it out.  Reckless!  Or, at least as reckless as he gets nowadays.  As he was getting out of the car, a friend motored up to my car window in his wheelchair and we talked briefly about the recent operation on his arm, my sister’s boyfriend’s recent death, the ravages of addiction, the shitty cold winter weather, and other pleasantries.   As he was leaving, I told him that he always keeps it interesting, and we laughed.  And so I was carelessly amused inside for a moment, and shifted into drive.   The sun was working its way through the gray overcast clouds and so the Lord giveth and he taketh away. 

But isn’t it all really a process of taking?  Taking my brother’s recklessness, my friend’s legs, my sister’s partner, the ‘party’ life?  

Or is it a giving?—the adventures that my brother indeed had, my friend’s High School hockey career, the good 16 years that my sister had with her partner before he OD’ed, the current clarity and strength of my friend’s sobriety and mine?

Time gives and takes, and we end up at the bottom, having fallen down stairs to where we suddenly lay in a heap of age to assess the treasures and trinkets and tatters at our feet.  It is not a giving, or a taking—but a falling, a falling through events, and time can only add to the difficult experiences, it cannot subtract. The occurrence of difficulty and remembrance of despair is cumulative but rarely dissipates, even in the face of subsequent cheer.  It is the coffee stain on that white couch, and we must all drink coffee on that couch every day.  It is the essence of a day, and, though spills are not wanted, nor generally expected, the stains happen and begin to color all things. 

I took my foot off of the brake.  I was thinking of all of this as I was driving away from the grocery store, turning it over in my mind like a coin I was inspecting carefully to see if it is real. 

OK.

So, I thought I’d swing by the place where I grew up to see if anyone was outside.  Thus, the ritual continues.  Ever since I returned home a couple of years ago, after being gone for 33 years, I’d take the merest excuse while driving to swing through the housing project where I grew up and see if anyone was hanging around outside my old place, or arriving or leaving.  The idea is that I’ll offer twenty or forty dollars to tour the inside for just a few minutes.  I want to see how small it all is, to imagine the picnic table in the kitchen where we all ate, all nine of us, and to see the few bedrooms and imagine the bunkbeds, the bureaus, the shoes everywhere, the toys, and the clothes.  I wanted to remember the single bathroom, the window out onto the small roof from where we’d jump into the yard, just clearing the fence, as a rite of passage when we grew brave enough. 

Oddly, though the place was obviously inhabited, there was never anyone there I could approach. There are always toys strewn about the yard, cars in the parking lot, and even lights on sometimes, but I didn’t want to knock. It’s not part of the deal. When I actually see someone outside, I’ll approach harmlessly and with great deference, making the money reward more substantial at the merest balk, and assuring whomever that the place couldn’t be any more chaotic than when I served years zero through eighteen there. These are my terms, it had to be this way, and I was always prepared to wait. The waiting didn’t seem to bother me, and only increased the value of the tour for the day it would happen.

But I didn’t expect to wait years—and it’s been years.  And, believe me, I drive through there once or twice a week.  I thought I’d catch someone there in the first few weeks, or maybe months at the most.  But, time after time, the duplex apartment just stood there with nobody around, and I’d stare at the bricks as I drove by.  Adjacent apartments would occasionally feature people outside, but not mine. 

So one day, I pulled over and waited.  I stared at the cement back step where all us kids would occasionally be treated to pizza on a hot summer night, or we’d play jacks there or wait for the ice-cream truck there. I wondered if the new people there, the children, hung out on that back step too.  After a few moments I left, embarrassed.  I was cutting into the dignity of the mission by lurking. 

But I did it again a few more times, I hung there, just to force someone to arrive or leave.  I watched the yard and saw us all out there with a water hose in the searing summer heat, or playing board games on a blanket, or playing breathless tag games in the fall, or making enormous snow forts during the blizzards.  Always, I left after a moment, having caught myself cheating again.

Goddamn, what are the odds that my driving by has never caught anyone there?  The math is unbelievable.

So, after dropping my brother off and talking to my friend, I wound my way through the inner city, over the railroad tracks and up the road adjacent to the old place and, yet again, pulled over.

There was a woman sitting on the back step. 

Clearly, it was the mom.  Just the right amount of confidence, wariness, weariness, haggard and yet ready to laugh, hug a kid or shoo someone off her little patch of dirty grass all at the same time.  I know that look. 

She was smoking a cigarette.    

I began to organize the trash on the floor of my car, and put everything into a big brown paper bag.  Then I stood the bag up neatly, banging out a few dents. I looked up and she was still there.  She was looking at me and I looked back.  She didn’t recognize me from the neighborhood and I felt a protective flicker behind her eyes.  I tried to look innocuous, and concentrated on the radio dials in my car for a moment.

Then I drove away.

She followed me with her eyes, and then got back to her life.

And, at last, I got back to mine.