Circas
Circa 1980
Virtue words, stricken by sudden short-term memories and reminded of bliss; household détente tempered by mere passage of days. In a few short years, I’ll be FULL-GROWN, and the calm will come to end, and only years later will I realize it was never peace. Realize my parents lived in a sort of youthful fear, dreading the walls closing in as the empire collapses at the edges. Concessions not made in childhood become tiny revolutions. The psychology of the struggle, backfired.
In those first few months, we breeze through the rough patches. After one fight, a night of yelling, both of us in this strange house of strange smells, an uneasy week of placing our meager belongings into more space than we’d ever known. Children find comfort in the claustrophobia, sharing tight quarters, even beds, I think. Having your own room at 5 years of age, your own door, your own darkness must seem like exile. We wait it out. The gate opens and she rushes in. “Tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“Just TELL him.”
She wills into us the words that will make this patch breeze. But I suppose we’ve lost that connection. I say the first thing that comes to mind.
He rolls his eyes and walks away. She gasps in desperation, and won’t look at us. That night she sleeps in the car.
* * *
Circa 2000
“I saw him last night sleeping in his car.”
She’s a neighbor, we think the woman who called 911.
“I joked that he should sleep in my car, since it’s bigger,” she laughs half-heartedly, pointing to an Explorer with a yellow ribbon sticker.
“His wife left him. Took his daughter. Poor man.”
Inside, he’s shaking, but smiling, the show of defiance in the face of breakdown that always melts away with the first question. Everything comes out, years of glittering generalities, peppered with black-and-white fallacy. It’s almost funny when the private ambulance driver arrives and says, ‘Well, you can come with us in our big, warm fancy Holiday Express, or you can spend the night again in your car.’ Propaganda, you see.
“Your insurance will need to cover the cost of the ride, since this isn’t an emergency,” one of us says.
“Oh, I’m all right,” breaking into sobs as soon as he hears himself.
“You know, you probably shouldn’t stay by yourself tonight,” and the neighbor adds, “I can stay.” She explains that her husband is overseas in one of the conflicts, I forget which one. She’s been rubbing his hand the whole time. He does seem better. The private ambulance driver rolls his eyes and walks away.
* * *
Circa 1990
Euphoria is showing up early to the warehouse because Shipping/Receiving has hired another pretty, troubled girl. Management does this to us, falsifying golden benefits who are forced to smoke their cigarettes by the loading dock.
“There’s a party tonight,” he tells her, elbowing me later in the ribs. “There you go.” I roll my eyes and walk away. This was towards the end for me, anyway. In 1994, I had just turned my grades around, got back to the straight edge. I would leave soon.
Barely 4 hours after work, she stumbles through the dark room, giggling, and lays down on the couch beside me. “Play with my hair.”
My fingers uncover bits of twig and leaf, as though she had been chased here by fauns or satyrs. She shivers. Join the crowd, I think. My hands through her hair the unstated assumption. Covering her with a blanket as I walk away the stereotype.