Writing

Politics

I told her that this wasn’t the engine I started driving with and she doesn’t pay attention. She has given up on metaphors a long time ago.

“But that was ten years ago. You are in a different place now.”

“They ask you questions mom. They ask you questions and you have to be truthful. That is the only way the process works.”

“So what did you tell them?”

I light a cigarette on the back porch. “I told them the truth.”

“But that was years ago.”

“It hasn’t stopped. I don’t think when it starts it can ever stop.”

She doesn’t say much after that. So I continue. “They asked me if it ran in the family. I told them Brian blew his brains out. I told him Grandpas cousin hung her self in the garage.”

“That wasn’t blood.” She tells me. “That was by marriage.” She is silent after that and then tells me. “Grandma’s dad’s brother killed himself though.”

“Why?”

“Cause it was the depression.”

“I got to go mom.”

“Have you been drinking?”

I tell her I have to go. That I have to do things—grownup things. And wonder if that will suffice a hang up. It won’t, but its all I got.

“…Well call me if you need to talk.” She asks of me which feels knee-jerk.

I immediately get online and write to all the women who only know me by driving on the superhighway. I tell them I am a hitchhiker and this is where I get off. They tell me that they do not understand and I offer them the best I can, which isn’t money. It’s not love either and maybe that’s why they don’t accept it.

I go to my ex’s house and give her everything she had her eye on when we broke up. My pickup is enough to contain it all, and I park outside of her house on a night that looks like it is going to rain but never does.

“Are you sure you don’t want this?”

She says this about a hundred times. I think she has forgotten what else to say and she is glad to skip to the same verse. It feels like she is praying. I don’t know who she is praying to and I don’t feel like making fun of her for it. I want to touch her but I know I will never get through. Some peoples lives are all about things. That’s why she is in such disbelief that I am giving those things up. She looks at me like I just made up a new god and its okay because it is the same as the old god and I can only nod.

I leave her at her new place and go to the plaza and look for the last girl I talked to. I know she frequents this transitory type of place. It takes awhile but I finally find her at a coffee shop. She doesn’t notice me until I get real close.

“I’m leaving.” I tell her.

“Where are you gonna go?”

“The Dakotas. North or South. It doesn’t really matter.” It’s the first place that comes to mind and it sticks like a well manufactured hairpin.

“The middle of nowhere?” She smiles and takes a sip of her coffee. “I’ve been there.”

“It’s the middle of everywhere.”

We drink our coffees in silence until she has to leave. She kisses me on the cheek and leaves money for both our drinks. I look at the loose change that she has left on the table and wonder how much of it will make a dollar.

It Pours

He is driving her to the hospital in the Buick. He has driven her to the hospital for the last thirty seven years. It’s his job he thinks. She doesn’t want to learn to drive. It’s her right. He’s a man. What’s the difference? It’s these kinds of difference that have always made them unique as a couple, apart from the ones they knew in California, and definitely from the ones in their sister state Nebraska.

It’s one of those cold/warm days in Cedar Rapids Iowa, flashflood weather. It’s a threat. But it doesn’t come and everyone they drive by seems as bored as they are and waiting patiently for something to happen. She turns on the radio. Stations are not what they used to be; music has turned in on itself and become very foreign to them, compared to the time when music kept the whole country from killing itself. They both know what the other is thinking. That you can’t dance to this stuff, so why bother listening?

He makes a lazy left into the hospital parking lot for her check up. It’s a blood test this time. Routine stuff, just making sure her white blood cell count is still high and enough that they don’t have to check her in. She doesn’t like when they check her in, doesn’t like it when he spends the night with her at the hospital, drinking that lousy coffee, missing household chores and falling asleep in those horribly uncomfortable chairs.

He doesn’t like falling asleep alone and it’s always been worth it to him. And to her even though she won’t admit it, and he knows this. Telling her would ruin it.

She tells him that she feels that this time won’t take long. She has a good feeling. This won’t take long and they will go home and she will make Reubens. She will make them special this time, with a special sauce. That they will taste like they did that one time they were stationed in Salt Lake during the war and had a late lunch at that café where they talked about moving home after the war and starting a family and living in the same house for a very long time with the same clocks and the same yard.

He sits down in a chair that was made for sitting. She is happy that there is a very large stack of sports illustrated to choose from since his social security check got divvied up into hospital bills and he had to give up his subscription.

They all know her by first name there. They say, How you doing Mable? When’s the weather going to make up its mind?

She likes this kind of familiarity but wishes it could have been somewhere else, somewhere more pleasant and he was involved in a more involving way. She looks back to smile but he is already gone. He is slumped over in his seat in what looks to be an uncomfortable sleep. It is hard for her not to scream and it is even harder for anyone not to notice that he has left the building.

A young nurse comes to check his pulse. But it’s more for the wife than anything else, a courtesy because they all know her by name. This courtesy makes her feel uncomfortable because it is all for her. The rushing him into the emergency room, the orders being racketed back and forth like they were all playing for the big game. Even the speech the doctor gave her about a massive heart attack is for her and she can’t help but remember her husband telling her the day before that he was going to have to change the oil of the car, because it’s the blood of the car that the unclean blood will cause the heart to seize up.

They ask her later if she wants to be driven home by one of the multiple nurses that she all knows by name. She declines. They ask her if she wants a cab. She declines. She tells them that all she needs is a bus schedule, that she will catch the bus like everyone else.

She goes to the bus stop, passes their car and waits. She is holding a plastic bag with his belongings inside them, in the same listless Midwestern rain that has been there all morning long and has finally made up its mind to pour. The bus is late to come pick her up from this place. So she is looks inside the bag at his untied shoes, his unbuttoned shirt that she wished she had washed before they came, and his watch. She takes this out and looks at the sun struggling to make its way through the clouds before the day ends and the rain completely takes over. She watches the shadows strain through the trees and tries to set the watch right, to make sure it is right this time, this time and not off by one solemn second.

Home Again, Home Again

He looks out his rectangular bay window to the street below. It is very quiet on this Sunday afternoon in April. There are no cars passing by, everyone is inside resting with their feet up from their weekend getaway trips, and probably watching baseball because the season has just started. He has to do inventory tonight at a local grocery store. It’s his job and he has to do it, rent is high and the bills won’t pay for themselves. He has an electricity bill on his mind cause he has spent too much time staying up late reading, drinking and watching TV; while his girl is doing the same thing early in the morning every day. They are on the same wavelength but it is very expensive for both of them.

He drives towards work. He drives fast cause he wants to get the whole thing over with and the faster he drives, the more he fantasizes that if he gets there early, he might get home early as well and not fall asleep with an empty stomach. But there are so many things on the way to there that get in the way. There is a traffic jam that has everyone who is getting back from their weekend retreats screaming into their rearview mirrors with white faces gone red and sick, towing along sweaty babies in the backseat with mom pawing at the window in need of a drink. There are kids still high off the fumes of spring break, blooming with hangovers, clenching their teeth to get home and into their mom’s pool and the bosom of her wallet. But he just bides his time. The light will go green eventually.

When he gets to work it is a real shit storm. People are counting boxes and freaking out about numbers and percentage points. They have papers in their hands and are studying them like professors with dictionaries. He doesn’t let it get to him though because he knows that in two weeks he will be gone from this place. That he will be using that inheritance money to really let loose and let the sun in and get drunk with his girl and fuck, and do the same everyday for two weeks straight. He will let go and fuck, which he doesn’t remember ever doing before or even saying the words. He feels raw and bright when he says this and pays attention to the blood in his veins. He thinks to himself that maybe he won’t even use a condom because he has gotten so used to taking things as they come that he is now ready to confront what might come next. When he walks around his department he is sure of himself, doesn’t mind that some of his contemporaries are half his age, or half his experience, or half his thoughts. They are just thoughts, and tasks, wants and needs, and he his happy that he has a handle on the ever growing number of them.

The day ends at around two in the morning and he walks back to his car with a beer in his hand, a big bottle, because the nights have grown long. The street smells sweet and the grass is wet and only a few houses have lights on and he thinks that maybe they forgot to turn the lights off and are asleep in their easy chairs with their TVs still on humming commercials and that that’s pretty good. That it’s a good thing to fall asleep being happy and content with a remote dangling from your fingertips. He feels pretty happy about this and thinks that all the bad news today at work will just becomes plain old news and things he will formulate small talk around and eventually forget.

There is a thickness on the window when he gets into his car, like the condensation had gotten comfortable and didn’t want to wake up from its nap. He starts the car and drives not being able to see to far ahead of himself and something glides across the asphalt and he knows exactly what it is, and he feels it under the rubber of his tires and the soles of his feet and quickly pulls to the side. He gets out and sees a black cat scraping with its claws against the blacktop. It doesn’t make much of a sound and he can tell by the damage that it is not long for this place. He quickly picks it up and instinctively pets it until it stops making sounds and looks around to see if anyone has seen him, or noticed that something was missing from their living room floor. There is a mailbox on the side of the road and he thinks it looks like a coffin, painted black with its smooth curved roof and he think about putting the cat inside—but this is an absurd idea, and he looks down at the cat that has bled through his thin cotton jacket which is too light for the weather tonight completely expecting the cat to look up and understand that he was only joking. That it was a joke for both their benefit.

He sits on the curb holding that cat for awhile contemplating which house he should knock on first. It could take awhile doing this kind of legwork and the cat has all the time in the world and the more as he thinks about it, so does he.

When he gets home she is in bed, and he lies down next to her in his work clothes and stares at the ceiling, doesn’t even take off his boots. Tells her that the world isn’t right, and he was gonna tell them so (let them know) and they were all gonna listen, and he thought that she would tell him that she knew and would simply run her hand down the moist arch of his brow and tell him that is was gonna be alright, that it was all gonna be alright. But it’s late now, and she has to get to sleep early cause she has to be at work in the morning. He starts to cry a little into the palm of his hand, muffling his soul from reaching her, and she doesn’t hear him from where he is at because she is fallen asleep to the shallow murmur of the sound of the fridge in the kitchen. He doesn’t want to wake her cause she has to get up early and sometimes that’s just the way it is.