Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #4

All things being equal, it's mostly your fault

"That make no sense," Chris said. "It's not my fault. At least, not mostly. We were once in this together, you know." He watched Cindy to see if she'd flinch, but she didn't bat an eye. He gave her credit for that self-control.

Cindy was eating a vanilla ice cream cone. She said she'd have been on time if not for the idiot behind the counter who hadn't served plain vanilla in so long he didn't know which bucket to scoop from. "It is mostly your fault, Chris," Cindy said. "Or, now, I guess "was" is the correct word. It was mostly your fault."

"I'm the person I've always been, Cindy. How can you hate me so much now when you loved me so much then?"

Cindy concentrated on the stream of ice cream that had melted onto her thin ring finger. Chris could see that the skin beneath where the ring had been was still slightly lighter than the skin around it. He wondered how long the tan-line would take to disappear.

"I don't hate you," Cindy said. "I have never said that."

"I feel like you do."

"You feel wrong, then. And you're not the same person as you once were; that's stupid. Nobody stays the same. At least, nobody should stay the same. I'm not the same, I know that. I think that's what happened: we changed, but we didn't change together."

"We didn't give ourselves long enough. We could have...I don't know, tried to change differently."

"We've been through this. And now it's too late. We've gone our separate ways. I like things now. I feel different--better. More relaxed. We did nothing but fight for nearly two years."

"I know. But I'm angry now. I was hurt before, and now I'm just angry."

"We can't get back together."

"I didn't say I wanted that."

"I feel like you're about to say it."

"You're wrong, Cindy. Anger doesn't necessarily equal desperation."

"I'm sorry. Maybe I'm angry, too," she said when she sat across from him again.

"Why didn't you say that before, that you thought this was all my fault?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'm stronger now."

"What does that mean, anyway--that's it's my fault? What is my fault?"

"We're not together again, are we."

"That's my fault? I'm not the one who wanted things to end."

"We've been through this."

"I'm not sure we have. Not all of it. Each time we talk, I learn something new about how you feel. Or felt."

"Chris...".

"Don't be so deadpan about this."

"I'm not. I'm tired. I don't want to keep living this over and over, Chris. Let's just do this. I want to go home."

He looked at her, and from the look on her face he could tell there was nothing else to say. He liked how the cool breeze brushed against the sweat beneath the hair on his neck.

"Here," Cindy said. She stretched her arm across the table and dropped her wedding ring into the palm of his hand.

He looked at the shiny gold and the smallish diamond. "I remember when we bought this," he said.

"I want yours," she said plainly.

"Yes, you do," he said. He pulled his ring off his finger, looked at the scratches on it, and dropped it onto the table.

She picked it up without a second glance and dropped it into her purse. "I wanted silver, you know," she said.

"Silver?"

"Rings. I never wanted gold. I wanted silver."

"What? Why didn't you say anything?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't want to hurt your feelings. You got so excited about these. It was nice."

"Silver would've been fine."

She stood up, set the strap of her purse onto her shoulder, and looked toward the parking lot. "You think these are worth anything now?"

He laughed. "They weren't worth much then. They were all we could afford."

She started walking away. "I've got to go." And she did.

Chris watched for a minute, at how here heels wobbled a bit in the high grass. He closed his fingers around the ring and thought that it seemed heavier than it did years ago.

I Read the News Today, Oh, Boy

Someone could tell me right now that I look like I've lost my best friend, and that wouldn't be too far from the truth. At least, a boyhood best friend, someone I have not seen for at least 2 decades. He was replaced by other best friends over the years, but, perhaps because of other things going on right now, his dying seems especially cutting.

Our fathers worked together for many years, until our family was sent into California exile at a time in my life when I shouldn't have been going anywhere. But, sometimes we have choices; sometimes we don't. He was more of a trouble-maker and certainly braver than I ever was, but we shared many escapades, some of of which were downright dangerous and life-threatening but even today are also secret. Hell, now that he's dead, the secrets are even stronger. My grandfather met him once and told me later that "the has the devil in him." He was right.

Until my family moved to California, though, I was able to keep him out of serious trouble if not potentially serious danger. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't smarter; I was just more of a coward. But, from California, I couldn't do much for him. He ended up in more jail cells than I know of, and, I think in Southern California where he lived with a Mexican woman and her kids, the police had cause to shoot him. Bad stuff.

Again, though, maybe it's the other stuff dancing around me that makes this whole thing seem worse. I'd like to learn how he died, whether or not he had it coming, whether he had a choice. Regardless, I hope things are better for him now.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday: #3

I am not the Post Office

Cindy lay in bed and watched the blades of the ceiling fan wobble. She remembered when Chris had tried to install the fan, how he had mis-wired something and sparked himself off the ladder. Afterward, he hadn't been shy about saying he needed an electrician, though he did admit the failure made him feel a bit dainty. "This is dangerous stuff," he'd said. "A man has to know his limitations."

She wanted to sleep, but the roating bit of film noir above her head was also noisy. Most days so far had been good or at least okay, but this Saturday had been long and exhausting, first from cleaning each room of the house, second from finding a batch of invoices Chris had left behind--invoices from the marriage counselor they had seen for awhile. Against her better judgement she had picked up one of the invoices--one from a time shortly after they had begun seeing a marriage counselor together, something that Cindy had also thought was against her better judgement. In a marriage that had degenerated into habitual appeasements and accommodations, agreeing to see whatever-that-counselor's-name-was had been both an appeasement and an accommodation.

"It won't do any good," Cindy had argued when Chris first broached the idea.

"It might do some good," Chris had argued back.

The invoice was now with the others stuffed into a desk drawer, but Cindy felt that the jumble of numbers and dollar signs were living their own quantified version of "The Telltale Heart."

"He says we should try to talk things out," Chris had said after what might have been his second solo visit. "He says even if things are bad, we have to talk."

"I beg to differ," Cindy had replied.

"Why not just talk?"

"We have talked, Chris."

He ignored her. "And he gave me a list of exercises we could try."

"Exercises--you mean like Kegels?"

"Like what?"

"Forget it. I don't want to do any exercises."

"He says they're designed to help restore a connection between us."

"I think that connection is shorted out."

"That's not funny." He had remained somewhat sensitive about the ceiling fan.

"It's not supposed to be. It's a metaphor."

He'd turned away in frustration then and left her alone for a couple of weeks, though he asked each Tuesday night if she'd go with him to see this counselor. Now, on the bed, Cindy wanted to sleep. Instead, she retrieved the stack of invoices, stuffed them into a large envelope that she addressed to Chris at his new apartment. She put all the stamps she could find on the envelope's corner, and before she sealed the contents, she wrote this: "Take your garbage. I am not the Post Office."

She knew he would read the note and wonder just what it was supposed to mean, and Cindy also knew that she wasn't sure she could explain it. She just wanted them gone--the flimsy sheets of paper, the quantification. Everything.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday: #2

I never liked them.

The second time they exchanged rings, there were no witnesses. They sat at a picnic table in the small park where Chris had taught her how to play tennis. She had gotten quite good about the time he had lost interest.

Cindy ran the index finger of her right hand over the small diamond. "How much did we pay for these?"

"Not much."

"Well, it doesn't seem like much now, but it was a lot then."

Chris spun his gold band on the top of the table. "But doesn't this seem awkward? I mean, why don't we just keep our own rings and do what we want with them."

Cindy shook her head. "This seems better. More equal. I bought yours and you bought mine. Now we can sell them for what we can get."

"It doesn't seem equal to me. That's not the word I would use."

"You already used 'awkward', so I get your point." She looked down at the diamond again. "Would you be hurt if I told you something?"

Chris laughed. "That's one of those stupid things people say, isn't it? You put it in those terms, then I know I'll be hurt."

"You think I'm that bad of a person?"

"Say what you want to say. I'm probably beyond being hurt at this point."

"Okay. These rings? I never liked them."

"You helped pick them out!"

"Yes. I know. You liked them, you liked the traditional of gold. I wanted something silver."

"You never said anything. Why didn't you say something?"

"I don't know. I wasn't brave enough before, I guess. Or strong enough. You just seemed so happy when you saw them lying in the case like they were, the way the light hit them."

He took her ring from her, and he gave her his. She looked at his face, at how he reacted. She couldn't tell if he was hurt. When they were first married she could have seen how he felt, but he had either learned to mask his feelings, or she had stopped being interested enough to notice.

He stood up and started walking to his car, his hand in his pocket with the ring.

"I'm sorry," she called after him, but he didn't seem to hear. She slid his ring onto her thumb and watched Chris leave, and she wondered just what it was she had apologized for.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday: #1

They all thought it would be me

He tried come up with a word to describe a place that wasn't even spartan. The two-bedroom apartment seemed large: nothing more than a sofa in the living room, a bed and a dresser in the larger bedroom. Nothing in the second, smaller bedroom. Not even boxes. He looked around and thought, This is just like the office: some cubicles decorated, others bare. His cubicle was bare not because he had nothing to share or show, but because he thought adding photos and knick-knacks meant he'd have to stay there awhile. When it was time to leave he didn't want to worry about packing.

Being by himself after 10 years of marriage hadn't been bad so far, but he knew that being alone for a few days was the easy part. He wondered if Cindy was lonely, though that she had the house probably made things easier on her. "You keep your retirement money, Chris, and I keep the house," Cindy had said early on, when they'd first started negotiating who got what. "It's a fair deal."

The cellphone's ring was loud in the apartment. "Hello." It was Philip.

"Chris--you moved in?"

Chris looked around. "Looks like it. I need a TV, though."

Phil coughed. "Maybe you don't."

"No, I do."

"You angry today?"

"About what."

"Really? There's nothing you think you should be angry about?"

Chris thought about it, about how not getting angry about much had caused his ex-wife no small amount of frustration. "I'd feel a lot better if I only knew when you were mad," Cindy had said. He shifted the cellphone to the other ear and sat on the sofa, across from where he envisioned a TV. "No, Phil, I'm not angry."

"Bullshit."

"I'm really not. Not yet. In fact, I kind of feel vindicated."

"About what?"

"About how things turned out, that she was the one who started the divorce-ball rolling."

"How is that vindication?"

"Her family," Chris said. "They always thought that if things got bad between Cindy and me, that I'd be the one to blame. They all thought it would be me."

"You showed them," Phil said, laughing.

"I showed them something, I guess," Chris said.

Things We Find When We're Looking for Something #2

Something I've found about writing fiction: the characters that I've developed--or in some cases that have developed themselves--linger long after we've all said goodbye. Ruby, for example, who was one of the 2 protagonists in one novel, let me know that she's still alive and well in Reno where I put her several years ago. Actually while in Reno recently, I investigated some of her haunts and found that not much has changed. Jerry, the other protagonist in that book, seems to be less present, so perhaps the relationship he and Ruby developed didn't grow as I thought it would.

Likewise, from the latest blog-blockbuster "Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch," several of the characters still give a shout-out every now and then when I see a passenger train or even look down some train tracks. These characters might still be present because it wasn't too long ago that I was enjoying their company.

But, really, I'm here to bury characters, not to praise them. In fact, I'm currently formulating some new ones, though I sense that these will be mere offshoots of those in "Whiskey." I'm of the belief that many (or maybe most) writers simply work with the same themes and characters with each new work, though this might pertain only to me. Who knows.

So, the link to the previous post: in Green Apple Books, I was scanning bookshelves when not only a new title but a new premise came to mind. It was nice: I saw the title's words rather than thought of them, and this might have happened because my little brain saw a word or two on a book cover when my eyes did not. (This happens: quite often, if you are used to proofreading, your brain will see a typo before your eyes do and then you have to get to work finding the thing.) And, for once, I had my own pen and notebook with me and didn't have to steal from Kominski. Here's what I wrote for the title: "Things We Didn't Say Yesterday." Then I circled the word "Didn't" and substituted "Couldn't." So, one of those will be the title: "Things We Didn't Say Yesterday" or "Things We Couldn't Say Yesterday." A subtle, but important, difference in meaning. It reminds me of a line by the poet Jim Daniels': "For every poet who considers the rhythm of the word 'dark' and the word 'darkness.'"

It was nice coming up with not just a title, but also what the story will be about. Thanks, Green Apple Books. Thanks, Kominski.

Things We Find When We're Looking for Something

Getting out of ruts is a good thing. With both days and nights filled with not necessarily fulfilling activities, my Subaru and I headed west. Not quite lighting out for the territories, but the Subaru and I both have lost a certain amount of the ruggedness required for a true quest.

San Francisco is always a good destination: more polite than Chicago, less expansive than London. The weather was too warm for January, but I'm not the type of jockey who looks a gift horse in the mouth. First, Green Apple Books: new and used everything, with an annex of everything else. Time was pretty much measured legally by the number of quarters we--but mostly Kominski--dug up to stuff into the parking meeter. You learn to look through merchandise quickly when you're under that kind of pressure. A compact publication of Heart of Darkness fits the bill here, something that'll also fit in my back pocket the next time TSA inspects me. (Cue the Rolling Stones' song "Connection": "My bags they get a very close inspection. I wonder why it is they suspect them.")

After Heart of Darkness is a different part of town on the way to City Lights--different bookstore with different character--and another parking meter that needs an about an hour's worth of coinage to carry it to the 6:00 pm free zone. Even verb tenses change in a different part of town.... Kominski, he's brave enough to walk into a wine bar and ask for change, though he promises them we'll be in shortly to buy something, to contribute to the bottom line. Good choice. Pinot Noir served from a cask, a plate of cheese, polite, yuppy dining. We even get an education about the differences between growing wine in Oregon and wine in California.

I'm wearing a black sweatshirt I'd picked up a year ago--a Green Apple sweatshirt. We're drinking politely when a young woman approaches me from behind an comments on my sweatshirt, on the Green Apple logo. I must've looked confused. "You know what's on the sweatshirt you're wearing?" she asks. I tell her I do, and she says she just loves Green Apple books and used to live in the same neighborhood. Kominski tells her we're writers, which is probably more true for him than for me. I mean, he actually writes stuff. The good thing? She doesn't bat an eye when she hears we're writers (real or pretend). That's nice. You tell most people something like that, and they want to know more. It was like having my parking validated, or maybe my ego. She slides back a door to show a stack of lockers because she just has to show me her canvas bag: from Green Apple Books. Nice. She's also the third person in about a month recommend the Latest Showtime Hit Californication. She lingers and talks for awhile, then returns to younger people.

There aren't many people in the place, and when we head out for a proper meal we wonder how long the joint will be in business. We go to Coppola's for dinner. Good stuff. More wine. We are seated in Mr. Coppola's private booth, which actually is roped off. Ha! Photographs and drawings of naked people decorate a couple of the walls. Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now all in one night. (Yes, there is a connection, but not to the Rolling Stones.)

Used to be we'd hang out in North Beach until midnight. Older and wiser now, we leave much earlier than that and drive across the Golden Gate Bridge just as the a-couple-of-days-beyond-full moon rises above the City side of the Bay. At home alone the next night after watching the Chicago Bears lose, I bring up the first season of Californication on Netflix and watch 4 streaming episodes. Not bad, with ideas about writing and writers mixed in with the debauchery. But to all you sensitive types, it is an adult show. If you're easily offended, stay away. There. You're warned. Kominski puts it well, though: You have to study what people expect you to be.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #25

I was afraid when the train slowed. We had endured so many false starts, so much false hope, to be dramatic, that I was sure we were preparing for another delay. When the conductor announced that Helper was just 30 minutes away, I heard many people shout even though most of us had many hours left before we reached our respective destinations.

"I'm going back to my seat," I said as Steven, Margie, and my father remained in their seats in the observation car.

My father wrapped his long fingers around my forearm and looked into me. "Don't get lost, okay?"

"It's not that far, Dad," I said.

I opened the Rhodia again and flipped through the pages to where I'd written my entry. I underlined the names of the brothers. I even wondered where they were, if they even remembered that night when they had me pinned down in that pup-tent. I considered tearing the page out of the notebook but instead found another blank page on the backside of what looked like Ophelia's last entry. I wrote this.

History

When I was ten years old I jumped from a low tree branch and felt something sharp go deep into my foot. I'd landed on a board hidden by some leaves, and a long nail went up through the sole of my PF Flyer. I lifted my foot up and the board came with it. I was in the woods not far from our house, and there was nobody to help so I put foot down, stepped on the board with my other shoe, and lifted up with my leg until the nail was pulled clear. I sat down, pulled off my shoe and sock, and saw that there was no blood. I limped home but never told anyone about it, but I was scared for weeks that I would get the lockjaw we'd heard so much about and come to fear. This wasn't long after Luke and John, and for some reason afterward--after not getting lockjaw or going to hell because of what those brothers did--I began believing in a lot less than I once had.

There is something about the desert I've come to need. Maybe it's simply the open space. Once Peggy and I drove every paved road in Nevada, and even hundreds of miles away from anyone or anything we'd find cinder-block homes and double-wide travels where people lived. Peggy didn't understand such voluntary isolation, and I tried to explain it wasn't any more voluntary than living in a city or a suburb. People need things, I said, and those things are always abnormal to those looking in from the outside. Besides, "normal" has a way of changing over time, doesn't it?

I hope Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriett are buried well. They've had to endure this trip too, I suppose. And I wish that Cousin Mark could bury his grief when he buries his parents. Grief, though, doesn't really start until someone's in the ground.

"Helper," the conductor announced as the train jerked and got slower, then jerked again. I got out of my seat, looked at the Rhodia, bent the corner of my two pages as a kind of marker, and stuffed the notebook into my sister's small duffel. When we'd boarded the train, Margie had insisted that we keep our luggage together so that we'd all be able to find it. I don't know why I left the Rhodia--maybe I hoped they would read it. I grabbed my own bag, walked down the steps to the car's lower deck, and waited for the doors to open. Waiting for that final stop, I thought of all the things I should've told someone, and I even wished my mother had been there. When the doors opened, I stepped outside into the cold desert air and stepped back away from the train. Only two other people got off. When the doors shut again and the train started forward, I looked through the observation car's windows and saw my family sitting there. They looked happy. My father seemed to press his forehead to the glass like he was looking for something, and maybe he saw me there. When the train was gone I crossed the tracks and walked to the bowling alley. The doors were locked. Wind worked its way through town, and I crouched in the doorway out of the wind. Sunrise wasn't far away, and I sat on the cold concrete and watched part of the sky turn pink. I knew again that something was about to happen.

- finis -

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #24

Steven lurched forward with the train. He'd slept through the conductor's announcement that we would be moving. When we shared a room as kids, my brother would often spring up in his bed and yell. He'd even once whistled so loudly that our dog whistled back. My anxieties have always followed me when I've been awake, but as relaxed as he seems during the day, Steven at night he has always been restless. Now he just relaxed into his seat, into the rhythm of the train.

"It's hot," Steven said.

"I know," I told him.

"We're finally moving."

"We've 'finally been moving' a dozen times since Grand Junction, Steven. I'm not feeling hopeful."

"You're never hopeful."

That wasn't true--I had just come to hope for different things. "The people in the next car seem to be celebrating."

"We all should be celebrating. I'm going to go find Dad and Margie."

I told myself that the relief I felt when he was gone was because I was glad the train was moving, but I knew that was only half true. If Peggy had been sitting beside me instead of Steven, she would have touched my shoulder with her small hand and said she was going to leave me alone for awhile.

The train picked up some speed, and for the first time in many hours I believed we were done waiting. I had once read that passenger trains are limited to 79 miles an hour, though I could not remember why. The train rocked as though it were moving at least that fast. I found the Rhodia and Margie's pen, and opened the notebook to a full blank page. I knew that something would be happening soon, so I wrote.

For Ophelia

I am tired of this notebook. I wish I knew who you are, Ophelia--or were. You seem lonely, and I want to tell you that there are good reasons to feel lonely, but that you will be fine. We have been stuck on this train and in this desert for much too long. I can see how a man could spend 40 days in a desert and go crazy. Or, 40 days on a mountain and come down believing he'd talked with God. Maybe the time in Winnemucca with Susan was enough to put me over the edge.

I feel that I should thank Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet for getting the family together for this trip. I haven't spoken with Margie, Steven, and Dad this much for a long time, and I realized how much I have missed them. They are good, patient people. If Mom had come along, I would've asked her and Dad about Dr. Fay, about what she might have told them after all those visits. I don't think it was fair of them to make Steven talk to Dr. Fay. I'm sorry he had to do that.

My first wife, Peggy, was a good woman. No, she is a good woman. She's the one person I think about every day even though we've been apart for so long. But everyone has that one person--and not always the person they end up with. The boy or girl in high school, the first person we think we love, maybe. Steven once confessed that the girl he dated just one time in high school was probably the person he had always loved the most--more than his wife, in some ways. "Maybe it's false love," Steven had said. "Something that never quite gets completed, you know?"

I wonder what Peggy would write now if she had this notebook. I wonder what Susan and Ellen would write, too. When Dr. Fay had me write my thoughts down between our visits, she always seemed disappointed when I wrote nearly nothing. I'd scribble something like "it snowed today." Maybe I should give a page to everyone in my family and have them describe lifetimes together just to see how the plot unfolds.

One thing I never told Dr. Fay about was what happened between me and the neighbor kids one night. Luke and John--the names seem ironic now--were a couple of brothers a years older than me. They'd been raised in Missouri or some place where rules are different, and one humid night when we were camping out in a small pup-tent in their back yard, I woke up with one of their hands over my mouth and another hand somewhere else. If I'd written that down for Dr. Fay, she might have been ecstatic. But that was a long time ago, and sometimes I am not sure that I remember everything right. The next morning Luke and John acted as though nothing happened, and so did I because I couldn't be sure.

The train must be up to 79 miles an hour now. My father is waving me up to the front of the car where he stands with Steven, Margie, and cousin Mark. My father mimes that he's eating, and I realize that I'm quite hungry.

We ate some snacks in the observation car, and everyone seemed happy. We were all happy to be moving. We would soon be stopping in Helper, the conductor announced, and I was happy about that, too.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #23

One winter afternoon Dr. Fay asked me what I imagined myself being as an adult. "Do you ever think about it?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. And, frankly, I hadn't imagined much for myself. The previous few weeks had been gray and snowy, and since we'd had so many days off of school I had spent most of my time outside. During some light snow flurries one afternoon I hid my .BB gun beneath my heavy coat and walked Sam, our half-blind mutt, into the middle of the nearby cornfield where the short stalks were mostly hidden by drifts. In one bare patch Sam flushed a pheasant, and I shouldered my .BB gun, shot, and I watched as the .BB itself curved to the right many yards behind the bird's tail feathers. Before then I had not fired a gun at anything in motion, and I had not yet learned the art of leading the target. Even sitting on the train today I can smell the cold air of that day and see Sam silhouetted against the snow as he bounced through the snow in pursuit of the pheasant, as I cocked the gun and hoped for another shot.

"What would you like to do when you grow up?" Dr. Fay continued.

"I really don't know," I said. My sister had known early that she wanted to be a doctor, and my brother was sure that he would be a professional baseball player. I had always been impressed with how sales clerks worked cash registers, though I didn't think that Dr. Fay would've accepted that I wanted to be a sales clerk.

"Well, that's okay," she said. "How is school going?"

This was easy. "It's nice having so many snow-days," I said.

"What have you been doing every day that you're home?"

"Going outside, mostly. I like to be outside when things are quiet and covered up like they are during the winter."

"A lot of people spend their entire lives outside," Dr. Fay said.

"That sounds good to me," I said. "But why do you keep talking about what I want to be when I grow up, or what I can do?"

She smiled. "I'm just trying to find out what interests you."

"Being outside, then," I told her. "I'd like to be outside most of the time." This was true enough, but I also hoped it would put the doctor off the scent. I could look through the window beyond Dr. Fay's right shoulder and see that the snow was falling again--full, thick flakes. This meant that Steven and I would have to shovel the driveway and sidewalks clear that afternoon, but we had developed a system that got us done quickly and would give us time for something else afterward.

"I want to ask you something else," Dr. Fay said in a tone that made me realize she wanted me back from the distractions on the other side of the glass.

"Okay," I said. And I knew she was serious because of how she lisped each "s" in the statement.

"Do you think it's worthwhile, coming here and talking to me?"

This seemed like a trap, and once again I was caught wondering what she wanted me to say. "I don't mind it," I said, which was true enough. But she wasn't giving up as easily as she usually did.

"I want you to not just 'mind it'; I want you to think it's helpful for you." She was firm.

As much as I wanted to look at the falling snow, I refused the urge and instead looked directly at her. Years later, Peggy would speak to me in much the same way when I sounded unsure or even fearful. "I think it's helpful," I said. "I like talking with you. I'm just never sure of what I'm supposed to say."

She softened. "You aren't supposed to say anything. I just don't want you to be afraid of our conversations. I'm not trying to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable."

"You don't hurt me," I said, but I could not commit to feeling comfortable.

As my father and I drove home later, I looked through the window of his Ford Falcon and felt the vibration of snow tires on the packed snow. The snow was still falling, and as we passed the field where Sam and I had encountered, the pheasant, I noticed that the cornstalks were now completely covered. The snow was still falling, and as we turned down the street we lived on, Steven was already outside shoveling.

"Your brother's crazy for not waiting for you to get home," my father said as the rear wheels momentarily lost traction on the slight slope of our driveway. Steven opened the garage door for so my father could park the Falcon, and when I got out of the car my brother handed me a shovel.

"Let me get my boots on," I said. We cleared the sidewalk and driveway quickly, and we rested for a minute to catch our breath and admire our work. When I looked to the house, I could see my parents and sister staring at us through the living room window, gesturing for us to come inside.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #22

Along with the train and its captive souls, Steven and I continued to sit. I leaned my forehead into the window glass and wished I had my brother's patience, his ability to accept circumstances. He seldom seemed flustered, something he said had helped him in a corporate world where so little of the workday made sense.

But I could not be like him, and only at fishing was I superior. Our father taught us early how to slide worms and grubs onto barbed hooks, how to bobber-fish ponds and small lakes. We also learned how to remove those hooks from the palms of our own hands or our thumbs though Steven never did quite understand how to push down on the hook just enough to get the barbed tip to slide out of the skin without tearing the small wound.

One summer our father and Uncle Frank to me, Steven, and Cousin Mark to Ontario, Canada, to "fish for something other than blue gill and sunfish." Mark, who never quite accepted my brother and me, refused to sit in the back seat with us and instead settled himself between my father and uncle in the front. Steven and I were less offended than we were sad that Mark was the only one among us who did not have a brother.

Our fathers were up early--too early for us--and ready to go each morning. From our rented aluminum boat, we would drop minnows deep into the lake as we fished for walleye before lunchtime, then stop on an island where my father uncle cooked whatever fish we caught. In the afternoon we got back onto the water and switched to lures. Casting was often problematic with five people in the boat, but when we returned to our cabin each evening we had stringers full of northern pike and, on one day, a couple of muskie. I was proud that as we cast with our open-face reels, Steven was always more prone to getting snags in his fishing line, usually whenever a fish hit is lure--the fish would be gone as soon as the line went slack. I got to where I could cast the lure in a perfect arc and then drop my thumb onto the line at just the right moment so that the lure stopped within feet of floating logs or a stand of reeds. After two days, the boat was less crowded because Cousin Mark decided to stay in the cabin so he could read one of the many books he had packed. Later when we asked our father about this, he said that Mark was the type of person who would rather read about life than live it.

"How did you like the fishing trip?" Dr. Fay asked me one snowy afternoon not long after I started seeing her.

"It was fun," I told her. "I'd like to do it again."

"What did you enjoy about it?"

I shrugged. "Everything. Being away with my dad and my brother. Being outside."

"I talked to your dad about the trip. He wasn't sure if you liked it."

"Why would he say that?"

"He said that you never talk about it."

"I talk about it with Steven."

Again, I didn't know what she--or my father--expected of me. I stared out the window behind Dr. Fay's desk and watched the snow grow heavier. The sledding would be good, I thought.

Snow was falling outside the train window, too, though I could barely see the flakes. Steven shifted in his seat, and the way he sighed I could tell that he, too, was finally starting to get edgy. The train had not moved for hours by that point. "Give me the notebook," he said.

"You going to read, or write?"

"Read," he said as he turned a couple of pages. "There's not much room left in here."

"Nope."

"You decide what you're going to right?"

"Who said I was going to write anything."

"Margie told you to. She gave you a pen."

"She should write something," I said. "Or Mark. He's the writer. Give the notebook to him."

"Not a chance," Steven said. "Mark's not getting his paws on this thing." He then slammed the notebook shut so loudly and suddenly that the people in the seats in front of us jumped. "I think we should mutiny," he said as he dropped the notebook on my lap and stood up.

"Where are you going?"

He looked one way up the aisle, then the other. "I need some answers. I'll be back when I find out what's going on."

Both of my knees were vibrating up and down, and I tried to calm them. I watched my brother walk away.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #21

A problem I had with Dr. Fay was that I could not tell her all the things I wanted to be heard. At some level she must have sensed this--an inability to confide such things as, yes, I was quite fearful of many things. I would often lead her to just far enough in one direction to make her forget about something else, recognizing early that adults search for specifics and are easily distracted by tangents. "How is school?" and "how are things at home?" were her two most common lead-ins, and I would give her a few pieces more than "fine" even when things were not fine.

Sitting alone on the motionless prison of a train, I wondered about Dr. Fay. Not long after I told my parents I would not see her again, Dr. Fay apparently got married and started a family of her own. I often felt pity for her children, for how good could childhood be if your mother is trained to always seek out problems even when there might be none? Still, I thought I might enjoy having her see me as an adult. I would ask her if I had turned out as she had expected, or if I had somehow surprised her. I squinted into the shaded window glass and put my teeth against my tongue in a week attempt to mimic her lisp.

"You sound like a god damned snake," Steven said as he plopped into the seat beside me. He thought it was funny when he startled me enough for my head to bounce off the thick glass.

"Asshole," I said. "Where have you been?"

"Talking to Cousin Mark. He's going as batty as you are right now. Says if the train doesn't move soon, he's going to, and I loosely quote, "sue the fucking wheels off of Amtrak for the mental distress of my not being able to give my parents a proper burial."

"He's a college professor," I said.

"Exactly. Not much of a legal menace, is he."

"Where are Dad and Margie?"

"Playing cards again. They won three bags of corn nuts off of Mark before he quit."

"I was thinking of Dr. Fay," I said. I put my tongue against the back of my teeth again but did not hiss.

"Did you know that I saw her a couple of times?"

"You?"

"Yep. Mom and Dad thought it'd be a good idea if someone who knew you really well talked to her."

"Shit."

"That's pretty much what I said. I tried to beg off by saying that I hardly knew you."

"Was I really that much of a head-case?"

"No more than the rest of us were, I don't think. Or are, I guess. You want to know what I told her?"

"Think it'll damage my sensitive psyche?"

"I'll risk it. I told her that I thought you just liked being alone. That you didn't hate anyone, and that you only wanted to do things in a different way. Mom and Dad were worried, so you can't blame them."

"I don't. Dad said it was mostly Mom's idea."

My brother shrugged. "Maybe. I always thought it was the other way around. Mom's always been the type to let problems solve themselves."

"I was a problem?"

"Not to me. We were all glad when Peggy came along, though. She could handle you pretty well, we thought."

He was right about that. "What about Margie--she have to see Dr. Fay, too?"

"I don't know. Divide-and-conquer sometimes works best when nobody knows what's going on."

"We need to get this train moving," I said. "I mean it." My leg was shaking and I could not stop it.

"A couple hundred people are thinking the same thing. Mark said he saw a little scuffle in the dining car. Nerves are frayed."

I wanted to say something about how I'd come to understand why an animal would chew its mouth bloody when it's trapped in a cage even when there's isn't a chance of escape, even when it knows there's no chance of escape.

"You know," Steven said as he set his hand on my vibrating knee and pushed downward, "we weren't afraid that you were crazy, but that you were determined to make yourself so. You just need to calm down, now. This will all be good."

Part of me knew he was right.

"Let me see the notebook," he said as he reclined his seat.

I handed him the Rhodia.

"You read the entire thing?"

"Not even close," I said.

"It's story time. Listen to this. Some guy named Kominski wrote it. It's part of something longer."

While he lit the candles, she took two painted masks from the wall, placing one on each of their faces. She pulled back the drapes, opened the window, and looked out at the night framing a full moon.

Together, they lifted up the television and gently pushed it out of the third floor window onto the street below.

It took a long while to hit bottom.

The crash and the following silence would stay with them like an unemployed relative--for a long time.

Without a word, they took off the masks, then each other's clothes piece by piece, letting them drop to the floor. Bathed in the moonlight, they danced together slowly, their mouths drinking the elixir of love, their hands gripping and kneading whatever was available.

He closed the Rhodia and handed it back. "I wonder what that's about."

"It's about love," I said.

"Yeah," Steven said, "but isn't everything?"

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #20

I had treated the Rhodia like it was a a sacred text, some type of New American Standard published by Amtrak and left for the taking much like the Gideons leave their bibles in every Motel 6 I've ever slept in. But the longer the train remained motionless and the more I saw the same people, even my own family, the more I felt that the notebook was dead weight. It was part of a general sense of frustration that filled not just the random, overheard pieces of conversations but the blank spaces between them. Everyone seemed edgy.

Dead weight or not, however, I refused to part with the Rhodia. I had even touched my pen to one page when I thought I would write, but I couldn't get any more than a dot of black ink on the paper. As much as anything, I needed to find a space to sit alone--not to write, but to separate myself from the other passengers. I even envied my aunt and uncle for their dark, quiet beds. I no longer knew where my father, sister, and brother were. We had gone in different directions after our poker game, something that isn't easy to do when most of the available space is linear. Margie had fended off my half-hearted attempt to give her the notebook, though she said she would like to read it after I'd written something just to try to figure out which words were mine. Now, with pieces of tissue stuffed into my ears in an equally half-hearted attempted to keep outside noises out of my head, I opened the notebook and searched for and found one of Ophelia's writings.

Pomegranates

My parents were happy with Phil, and I probably should have kept him around. But we had been together since high school, and we had wearied of each other. Not in a bad way, I guess, but just in a regular way: we both had come to expect the other be new and surprising, and we both ended up disappointed when neither could live up to that expectation. Phil was a good man, and sometimes I miss him. I have especially missed him these last couple of months, though I am not sure he would be patient with my being sick. He was never patient, and as he continued to fail with his art, he reached a point where I knew he was also not living up to the expectations he had of himself. "I hate it," he said one afternoon. "I get the paints ready, and I end up producing garbage. And that's if I'm lucky. Sometimes I end up not painting anything."

Phil introduced me to pomegranates not long after we met. We had met near the river, and he had brought a pomegranate and a knife. "Try it," he said as he held one of the dark-red seeds to me. We sat by that river and cut our way through three pomegranates. When I washed my fingers in the bathroom sink later that night, I admired the stained fingertips I held under the water.

He was prolific when we first met. He could paint anything. Even pomegranates, and somewhere boxed in my parents' spare bedroom is a still life sketch of two pomegranates in a wooden bowl. The longer we were together, though, the less he painted. He kept an easel in his bedroom, and one night as we lay in bed, he told me he hated the thing. "When we're having sex," he said, "all I can think about is what I should be painting. And whenever I try to paint, I end up thinking about sex." I told him that he was probably not atypical for a man, but he did not see the humor.

We stopped seeing each other quite simply: we just stopped. "Have you seen Phil?" my parents would ask. No, I had not.

That was it. There seemed to be several more words on the page, but Ophelia had crossed them out with strokes of heavy ink. I closed the notebook and reclined my seat. I found myself thinking about Ellen--Miss Orange County--and how she could draw anything. I wondered if she was happy. I hoped she was. I hoped Phil was, too.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #19

At some point my father, sister, brother and I found ourselves together at a table in the lower level of the observation car. My father had purchased a deck of cards, and we were playing poker using Dorritos and corn nuts as money. Keeping track of who was winning was somewhat problematic because we would now and then eat portions of our bets. My father and I had also managed to nearly empty his flask, so Steven and Maggie were playing a bit smarter.

"We're gonna die on this train," Steven said at one point.

"It's a death-train," Maggie said.

"I talked to the conductor," my father said. "He said it'll be awhile."

Maggie groaned. "What does 'awhile' mean?"

"It means," my father said as he played a flush and pulled the Dorritos and corn nuts to his corner of the table, "don't get your hopes up."

"We'll never even make it to Helper," my brother said, and it dawned on me then that my family did not know of my time in Helper.

"Did your conductor-friend tell you exactly why we wouldn't be moving?" Maggie asked.

"Something to do with computers," my father said.

"You'd think that Amtrak would've had these glitches worked out by now," Steven said. "I mean, how long have these passenger trains been running across this country?"

Glitches. That was always one of Dr. Fay's favorite words, usually along the lines similar to "you've got to learn that glitches will pop up," or, "sometimes there's a glitch in every relationship." Sometimes her lisp would get in the way of the word and she sounded as though her mouth were full of Kleenex.

"Where's the rest of the family, anyway?" Maggie said. I wondered if she was starting to get tired of being around us.

"I was wondering about that," my father said. "How could we spend so much time on this damned train without running into everyone else?"

"Why don't we write in the notebook," my sister said.

"Feel free," Steven said. "Write something profoundly medical."

I handed the Rhodia to Maggie, and she turned a few of the pages in the middle. "It's pretty full," she said, and she looked at me. "You still didn't write anything, did you."

I shook my head.

"It's your notebook," Maggie said.

"Why is it his?" Steven said as he lifted the Rhodia from Maggie's hands.

"He found it," my father added.

"It's not mine," I said. "Any one of you can keep it." I felt this, too--the thing had become a burden, a responsibility.

Steven gave it back to Maggie, who opened to a random page. "So, this Ophelia is the one who started things." She read something. "She's got a lot to say. How about if I read you boys a little story."

"What about the poker," my father said. He sipped from the flask and handed it to me. When I was done, gave it to Steven, who shook it as though measuring its contents, then poured some into the plastic cup that had once held Pepsi.

"You win," I said. "Read something, Maggie."

Maggie cleared her throat. "Here's something. Ophelia's. It's called 'Thinking.' Not an original title." And then she read.

Thinking

I want to say something to the effect that I do not know if I will be the hero of my own story, but Charles Dickens used words close to those. Maybe I should just say that I don't know my own story even though I know how it will end. For now, though, I will simply think out loud.

I woke up this morning with a pain in my side that lasted for a couple of hours. I did not know what to think of that, though I did have suspicions. I dreamed last night that my mother and I were traveling from Maine to Rhode Island in the Chevy Vega she loved so much and that had taken us up and down the Eastern Seaboard in search for a new home that was more stable the one we'd just left. By the time I was twelve I had been to six schools in three different states, and I had slept many nights in that Vega as my mother held me to the soft throat of her loneliness. I am glad that we are friends now, but there were times when I would have traded her for a sack of groceries.

I suppose that I carry as many of her stories as I do of my own--a girl learns a lot about her mother's life when the two of them are shivering at a rest stop somewhere outside of Providence. I was glad that she finally found my father, though I was not glad to learn that I had two brothers that my mother had never told me about. "Kind of slipped my mind somewhere in South Carolina," she said and, really, I found that enough. I should call my parents, and I wonder how many times they have re-read the note I left for them. Will they believe the part that I am okay?

Maggie sighed. "That's it. A peculiar ending. This girl needs help."

"She sounds fine," Steven said. "She's working things out on her own."

"Young people never work things out on their own," Maggie said.

We were getting uncomfortably close to my experience with the good Dr. Fay, something my father seemed to recognize. He took the notebook and glanced through a few pages. "Someone has to write something," he said. "Maggie's right--it's pretty full." He gave the notebook to me. "The hell with it. Let's eat the money."

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #18

Dr. Fay, the therapist my parents sent me to see when they were prematurely concerned about my mental well being, would occasionally catch her tongue in her teeth and speak a word or two with a prolonged lisp. It wasn't until I'd seen her half a dozen times did I find the courage to look her in the eye, but I got to where I would almost hope to hear that lisp as one of my parents drove me across town to Dr. Fay's office. Something about it was alluring. Considering our family's often-precarious finances, in retrospect I should have appreciated my therapy more if only because I know now that my parents were going without something or another just so I could get the "help" they believed I needed.

"We'd like you to see someone," my mother said to me one autumn evening.

"Someone?" I said.

"Someone you might like to talk to," she said.

"Oh," I said. I thought of my friend Brian whose parents had taken him to "see someone" about the oval knob of bone on his forehead. That knob had turned out to be something bad, though in the decorum of small towns nobody ever gave me or my siblings the details. Brian left school a week later, and he and his family pretty much disappeared. "Sometimes people just grieve," my father told me, but I was too young to understand what that meant.

"It's a counselor," my mother said. "Your father and I spoke to her a few weeks ago, and she sounds very nice. "We'd like you to talk to her, too."

"Why?" I asked.

My mother bit her lower lip and squinted her left eye the way she did when she searched for answers. "She's very nice. Maybe you can tell her things that you don't want to tell anyone else."

"Like what?" This was the first time in my life when I considered that keeping things to myself was considered bad form.

Now my mother shrugged. "Things that might bother you."

"I talk to people all the time," I said. "Steven and I talk every night before we go to sleep."

She smiled. "I know. We hear the two of you. It's nice."

"Will she ask me questions?"

"Probably." Then she seemed to recognize something. "But it's not because you've done something wrong. This isn't a punishment."

Our first hour together, Dr. Fay did ask a lot of questions--about my brother and sister, mostly, but also other things that didn't seem to matter. "You like sports?" she asked.

"Not watching, but playing," I said.

"Which sports?"

"Baseball, mostly. Football's good. I'm not very good at basketball."

"Do you and Steven play together?"

I nodded. "When we can. He's smaller and younger, but he's faster and seems to know more than I do."

"He knows more about what?"

"How things work. How teams work together, too. He seems to know what's going to happen in a game before it even does."

"He sounds like a good brother." That was the first time I heard the lisp: thhhounds.

I said that he was a very good brother.

"Your parents are worried about you," Dr. Fay said.

"About what? I'm not a bad kid." I'd heard enough stories about "bad kids" to know that, mostly, I wasn't one.

"No, you're not a bad kid. And your mom and dad don't think you are. They just worry because you seem sad."

"I've told them I'm not sad." I thought about what my Uncle Frank had said once about my being quieter than a dead loon.

She changed the topic. "How's school?"

"It's fine," I said. "I've got nice teachers."

"I'm sure you do," Dr. Fay said. She let me stay silent before she said anything else, something I liked about her.

"Would you like to come back again?"

I had to wonder if this was a test of some sort. "Do I have to?" I was young enough to know that I probably did not have a choice.

"You never have to," she said. "Your mom and dad would like you to."

"What do you want?" I asked.

She seemed surprised by the question. "I'd like to talk to you some more."


On the quiet, motionless train, I wondered if the year's worth of discussions with Dr. Fay had done me any good. My parents and I had spoken very little about the visits, and they never told me why the visits stopped. For years I assumed that Dr. Fay--and probably my parents--had given up on me and pronounced me a lost cause. When I told Peggy about the therapy, she smiled.

"I think it's sweet," Peggy said. "Your parents cared enough about you to try something like that."

"I'm not convinced I needed 'something like that'," I said. I told her how I'd avoided Dr. Fay's eyes for a long time.

"You must have felt threatened," Peggy said. "Or scared."

"Maybe. But I got over it."

"What happened when you did?"

"I looked her in the eyes," I said, "and then things changed."

"How?"

"She had one blue eye and one brown eye."

"How did that change things?" Peggy asked. "So she had two different colored eyes."

I thought about it. "I just never knew which one of them to trust," I said.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #17

“You want anything to eat?” my father asked.

I was looking through a window on the other side of the train than I had been in the observation car, but nothing seemed any different.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Are you being polite, or are you really not hungry?

“I’m really not hungry.”

“You should go find your brother and sister,” my father said.

“I saw Margie a little while ago.”

“Hard to see how the five of us could spend so much time apart on this train,” he said.

“None of us particularly likes sitting still,” I said

He laughed. “That’s true! Used to drive your mother and me crazy when the three of you were little. Seems like we spent half our time looking for one or another of you.” He turned his head to look at me, and his voice dropped. “You were the worst, though. You know that. You never quite grew out of it.”

“Steven’s the only one of us who actually ran away from home,” I said. Which was true: he’d packed a small backpack with clothes and books, walked into the kitchen, and announced to the rest of us that he was leaving home. To their credit, my parents let him go. When he returned a couple days later, nobody said a thing.

“I guess we all run from things at some point,” my father said. “Steven just got it out of his system early.”

“Margie’s never left,” I said. “She’s pretty stable.”

“No, she never actually went anywhere. But during her freshman year of high school she threatened to leave nearly every week. She and your mother used to go at it like wildcats.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“I do. Your mother would end up crying in our bedroom, and Margie would end up crying in hers. I tried talking to them both a couple of times, but they made it clear I had nothing to offer. Now they’re great friends.”

“What was it like with you and Uncle Frank?” I asked.

“Best of friends and worst of enemies,” he said. “Different than you and Steven. You two seemed more stable together. Uncle Frank and I would beat the crap out of each other in the morning, and by bedtime we were buddies again.”

“That therapist you and Mom sent me to asked me what I thought about you and Uncle Frank,” I said.

This seemed to pique his interest. “What the hell did she ask that for?”

I shrugged. “I don’t remember the details. Something about the male role models I had. I told her that Steven was my real role model, and she found that odd—that I would see my little brother like that.”

“For the record, it wasn’t my idea to send you to a therapist.”

“You blaming Mom?”

He chuckled. “Nope. I just said it wasn’t my idea. I’m not saying that I didn’t end up agreeing with it.”

“I never trusted her,” I said.

“Your mother?”

“The therapist.”

“I’m not sure I did, either.”

“She was nice enough, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to tell her.”

My father processed that idea for a moment. “I think you were supposed to tell her whatever you wanted to tell her. Your mom and I were just worried about you. For a long time we thought that we’d done something wrong.”

“You didn’t,” I said.

“We didn’t know that,” he said. “At least, we didn’t know it for a long time.”

“I’ve never blamed anyone for anything,” I said. “I just get nervous sometimes. Especially when there are a lot of people around. And I’ve never gotten used to strangers.”

“You afraid you’ll not hit the mark with anyone?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Peggy always said I was just born afraid.”

“Peggy was a good woman,” he said.

I thought about Peggy then. A few days before she left, we were lying in bed and listening to a light rain. “Things are going to be so much different,” she said. “Things are always different,” I said. She turned onto her side and stared at me. “What does that mean?” “Nothing,” I said.

My father shifted in his seat. “You still have that notebook?”

I handed the Rhodia to him.

“You write anything?” He leafed through some pages.

“Not much of a writer,” I said. “That’s another thing I had to do with that therapist—write things. She thought it would help me express my thoughts.”

“Did it?”

“Nope. But I made up a lot of stuff just to keep her happy.”

“There’s a lot of stuff in here,” he said. “Ophelia seems to have found a way to get people talking about things.” He read something, then he cleared his throat. “Here—Ophelia wrote this, too.” He handed me the notebook. “Read this.” He touched his finger on a short paragraph.

From Thoreau’s On Walden Pond

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

“What do you think?” my father asked.

“Ophelia sounds lonely,” I said.

“That’s not Ophelia writing,” he said, “it’s Thoreau.”

“Still, Ophelia put it in here. It must have meant something to her.”

“Maybe,” my father said. “But if that’s what she believes, she’s not saying that she is lonely. She’s saying that it’s okay to be alone—that it is not the same as loneliness. And maybe a person can feel very lonely even when there’s a crowd of people around.”

“Maybe I should re-read it,” I said. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

My father stood up and stretched in the aisle. “I’ll be back. I’m going to go refill my flask.” He patted the pocket of his shirt.

“They don’t sell that on the train,” I said.

“I was a Boy Scout,” he said, “and I was prepared. I’ve got a half gallon of the stuff in your brother’s duffle bag. I just have to find your brother.”

When he was gone, I looked through the notebook and saw that though many of the passages were in different colors of ink and had been signed by different people, the penmanship was similar to Ophelia’s. The train lurched, and it seemed we had begun to move. Soon enough, though, we were motionless again, and I set off to find my father.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #16

Miss Orange County

I have always found it somewhat odd that when I think of my ex-wife, I think of Peggy. I never think of my marriage to Ellen. Perhaps this is because Ellen and I were together for barely a year, and only six months into our marriage we both realized neither of us would ever be sober or sane enough to survive much longer sharing the same life. Ellen was closer to the bottom of things than I was at that point, but somewhere in our respective doldrums we recognized how bad things were.

“You’ll find someone else,” Peggy said as she packed her final box. I watched her hesitate as she considered taking a picture of the two of us standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. When she finally decided to leave it behind, I was more sad than angry.

“I don’t think I will,” I said. But I did. I had been working as a waiter in a small restaurant in Winnemucca, Nevada, and Ellen was a regular who always came in with a group of people who always seemed to be having fun. When Mario, my boss, told me that Ellen was a prostitute, I wasn’t bothered. I had stopped judging people years earlier.

Ellen and I started slowly, casually. After a six months of mutual flirtation, we took advantage of Nevada’s casual requirements for marriage and were married by one of her former clients, a married man who said he was sad to see Ellen trade lying on her back for less-honest work. Ellen got a job at the Ace Hardware store that was owned by another of her former clients who said he’d gotten too old for sex but still appreciated all Ellen had done for him over the years. “It’s not just sex men are looking for when they come to see me,” Ellen told me once.

Ellen was also a former Miss Orange County. “I thought I’d end up being Miss America,” she told me. It was her claim to fame, she said, since she’d won fair and square. “I’m not stupid, and it wasn’t easy. I worked hard for that title.” Ellen was the only person I had ever known who had even come that close to anything famous, even fame in a place as small as Orange County. "The closest thing to reality in that place is Disneyland. There were a lot of girls who wanted that title. Most of them were too blonde and too conservative in a year when the judges were looking for someone different, and being someone different isn't easy in Orange County. I was lucky—it was my year.” I felt special being with her knowing how hard she had worked to achieve something,

Then, though, during a quest for Miss California, she found out she was easier manipulated than she thought possible. “I slept with a couple of people involved with the pageant,” she said, “and I found that I liked sex and cocaine more than I liked winning beauty pageants. One thing led to another, and on a morning in September I found myself buying a house in Winnemucca. I gave up most of the cocaine but kind of enjoyed the sex.”

Our first couple of months together were great fun. Ellen stayed in touch with old friends and former clients, and we allowed each other to be more self-destructive than we might have been alone. Peggy and I had been down some bad roads, but we also found ways to say stop. But Ellen and I couldn’t do that, and it wasn’t long until we were both out of work when my restaurant closed and the Ace Hardware had enough of Ellen’s lack of dependability. If Ellen hadn’t had a bought-and-paid-for house, we would’ve been homeless. Somewhere in the middle of everything, though, we found the strength to divorce as easily as we’d gotten married. Ellen sold the house and moved to Colorado, and I went back to California. She left a message on my answering machine one night saying she was fine, that she had re-married and now had two step-children and had found God. She said she would pray for me, but that I was not to call her back.

The only person I did call after that was Peggy, who was working as a pre-school teacher in Port Angeles, Washington. She was single and going to college, and I told her I was proud of her. “I still miss you,” I said. I didn’t know if I should’ve have been proud of my two wives that they had worked their way back to their feet, or if I should be disappointed that I had not.

“It’s been a long time,” Peggy said.

“I never even told my family about Ellen,” I told her.

“Why are you telling me?” She sounded distracted.

“I thought you would be interested,” I said. “You were always interested in me, weren’t you?”

She was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “Have you changed?”

“I like to think I have.”

“Ellen doesn’t like someone you would be involved with if you had changed.”

“Ellen’s gone now.”

“But she was there,” Peggy said. “You were married to her.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Peggy.”

She was quiet again, and I did not know if she was even breathing. “I’m not sure, either. I don’t know if I should say anything. I’ve got a good life here now. Are you happy for me?”

“I have always been happy for you, Peggy.”

I wanted the train to move. More people had come into the observation car, and they all seemed anxious, perturbed. We all wanted to be moving, or at least to know why we were not. The air in the train seemed different—more stale and close. I didn’t like sitting still like this because without movement, I tended to dwell upon mistakes I had made or memories of people I had either (or both) loved or hurt. Part of me knew that I should be happy about being so close to my family, even my dead aunt and uncle.

When a group of small children pushed into the observation car and took seats around me, I left and returned to where my brother and I had been seated. My father, though, had taken my brother’s place. “Where’s Steven?” I asked as I sat beside my father.

“He went to talk to your cousin somewhere,” my father said. “I told him I’d keep his seat warm.”

“Any idea why we’re stuck here?” I asked.

“You didn’t have to come.”

“I mean, stuck wherever were stuck—why the train’s not moving.”

My father shook his head. “Nope.”

“We’ve got to get moving,” I said.

“We’ll probably stop again in Helper.” He had pulled out the route map. “That’s our next stop. Helper, Utah.”

“I know,” I said.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #15

I wanted to sleep. I was suddenly quite weary of being on the train. I should have returned to sit next to my brother in a more comfortable seat, but experience told me that my desire to sleep would be over-ruled by my inability to do just that. "It's insomnia," a doctor had once told me when I'd complained about so many nights of sleeplessness. "It won't hurt you."

The train had stopped for nearly half an hour, and now it was barely moving, as if it felt the same anxiety about getting to Helper as I did. Earlier, a group of teenagers had giggled their way through the observation car, and I envied their ability to be so openly foolish. They had lingered for awhile before passing through to the next car and leaving silence to claim the space they left behind. I still clutched the Rhodia and my sister's pen, but I had not yet written anything despite all good intentions. As the train stopped again, I opened the notebook again, leafed past more of Ophelia's writings, and found something long, something to occupy me.

Words Like Love

After six hours of what started out to be aimless driving, I ended up in Bridgeport in front of a combination café and bar called Little Clancey’s, though I was probably headed there the moment I left home. The “Little” on the hand-painted sign had faded, but “Clancey’s” in red letters was bright in a sunrise diffused by thin clouds. I’d traveled through California’s dry central valley, then turned east through Yosemite and finally north on Highway 395, just like we sometimes do when we visit our daughter Becky and her husband Ron in Carson City. By the time I reached Mono Lake, the eastern sky was crimson and I knew that Bridgeport was just north and would be the place to stop.

All four windows of the Impala were open when I rolled onto the gravel in front of Clancy’s, and a cool breeze brushed gently against my bare arms. I used to drink a lot, and when I did every window in the house or car would be shut tightly. The voices, the ceaseless wind, the smells—everything used to bother me. Now, though, working my way through sobriety, I welcome the fresh air and keep at least one window open wherever I happen to be.

“You’ll catch cold,” Nora, my wife of twenty-five years, will say when I keep both bedroom windows open all night even in winter.

“Viruses cause colds,” I tell her as she pulls the heavy quilt closer to her wide chin, “not open windows or even getting your feet wet.” But after awhile she’ll get up and shut the windows, caught up in one of my old habits.

I sat in the Impala and thought that Nora would be wondering where I had gone. She’d given up actually worrying years earlier, when I was drunk most of the time and hardly found my way home anyway.

“You could call me if you’re not coming home,” she would plead. “A little respect is all I ask. Just the smallest bit of consideration. Is that too much?”

It was too much, as far as I was concerned at that point in my life, in our marriage. “I’m an adult,” I’d tell her. “I don’t have to check in with you.”

We went on like that until one day Nora quit asking questions. But she would always wonder, even when I left the house last night with her yelling at me. We’d been watching television and a beer commercial came on. I told her that a beer would taste good, a nice cold beer in chilled mug, just like on television.

“A what?” Nora said very quietly. “God damn you, Brian. You go this long without a drink and after all that’s happened and you can still say it so easily, as if it meant nothing to either one of us?”

“I didn’t say I wanted one,” I said loudly. “I just said it would taste good.” I looked down at the worn carpeting in front of the couch, where our feet spend so much time.

And then she yelled about how my father had been drunk for so long that nearly his whole liver was eaten away by the time he died. About how close my drinking had come to killing both her and me, that if she hadn’t been in the car on my last birthday I surely would have died. She stopped yelling when she ran out of breath. Her chest was heaving beneath her lightweight pink blouse. Nora’s eyes were dark with disappointment like they were after Sam Tinker threw me the surprise birthday party, when she came to see me at the hospital. It was two days after I’d lost control of the Ford wagon we owned and Nora and I went bouncing into a large stand of aspens.

“Jesus Christ,” Nora had said after pulling me from the car and cradling my face in her hands. She got only a few scratches across her chin, but I caught the steering wheel with my sternum and then the dashboard with my forehead. For months afterward it hurt even to breathe.

Lying on the grass, I’d looked up at her, feeling her kiss my mouth time after time. Everything was confused, but I didn’t know if it was because of the accident or the pitcher of martinis I’d helped Sam drink earlier that night. It was raining, and drops of cool water were falling from Nora’s hair onto my face. Then everything turned a dark purple and I shut my eyes as Nora’s voice disappeared.

After Nora finally got her breath back last night, she stood from the couch and started in on me again, using words like responsibility and trust and love. So I took my keys from their hook beneath the phone in the kitchen, and I walked out the front door, letting her yell from the front porch as I started the car and left. At the Shell station I filled the Impala and got a cup of coffee, then drove away.

When I stepped into Clancey’s, Maureen was doing the beer orders for the week; I was the only one in the place. I’d met her years earlier, one of the times I’d driven alone to see Becky. Nora travels on her job selling pharmaceuticals to hospitals, so sometimes when she is away I wander. This morning I asked Maureen if she remembered me, but when she said she wasn’t sure, I told her that it made no difference.

Maureen had dark, curly hair and the smooth facial features—thick cheekbones and a mouth burned down at the edges—that I’d found myself falling love with for as long as I could remember. She reminded me of a waitress, a good dancer, that I’d known when I was in the Navy. But then, it seems every woman I’ve either had or desired has reminded me of someone else or the lover before.

“Why’d you come back?” Maureen asked when she filled our mugs with coffee. One coffee pot had DECAFFEINATED stenciled on it in bright orange letters. Some of the letters were partially scratched away, as if the pot had been in use for a long time.

“Restlessness,” I said, wondering if I should say that maybe it was because of her that I’d stopped there.

“How does your wife feel about that?” She gestured with her mug toward my ring finger.

“She understands.” I looked at the ring and tried to think of the last time I’d taken it off.

“You mean, she puts up with it.” She looked at me as if she’d heard lies from men for a long time.

I left the bar after two mugs of coffee, after Maureen got busy with other customers. Wandering around town until lunchtime, I finally stopped at Cleo’s Drive-In, where I ate a chicken-breast sandwich at one of the redwood picnic tables. I watched Maureen come out of the bar across the street, walking toward Cleo’s. She smiled when she noticed me.

“Still restless?” She said after ordering at the walk-up window. Her hair was neat and her legs thin, and I knew that she was the type of woman who took care of herself.

“Yeah,” I said. The Sawtooth Ridge was visible over her shoulder.

“At least you’re eating,” Maureen said. “I haven’t had a customer so early on a Saturday for quite some time.”

“I like coffee after a long drive,” I told her.

She took a bag from the girl at the window just as I finished my sandwich. “You feel better, now that you’ve eaten?”

“I feel good,” I said. “I feel almost....” I paused and looked up at the gray, ragged Sawtooth, trying to think of the right word, the right feeling.

“Almost what?”

“Almost human,” is what I told her. It was the most fitting word I could think of.

She nodded slowly, then followed my gaze up to the Sawtooth. “It’s going to rain. Come over later and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Thanks,” I said, again thinking that a beer would taste good.

Maureen smiled as she turned and walked back to Clancey’s. I sat at the table and stared at the mountains. The ridge was high, nearly eleven-thousand feet, and I had spent a lot of time hiking in the area when I was younger. Below the ridge itself was Matterhorn Canyon, where a combination of ignorance and exhaustion almost killed me and Sam Tinker both. Just as after the car wreck, it was an experience that left me changed, though it changed me into someone who drank heavily. Though I never figured out why, it was after that when I started believing that nothing I did in life mattered. Most people would have reacted differently, but I just stopped caring about a lot of things.

After Maureen left, I decided to drive to Carson City after all. Becky always appreciates it when her mom and I visit, since she’s so far away from us. She and Ron have a small hardware store, and more than once I’ve helped them stock conduit or boxes and bins of nails.

“Oh, Daddy,” Becky said when I called her from a payphone at Cleo’s. “We’re just on our way out. We need some stuff from a warehouse in Reno, so we’re making a long weekend of it.”

“That’s fine, Becky,” I said, and it really was. “Enjoy the weekend. Maybe Mom and I will drive up next month.” If I had told her how far I had driven that morning, she might have changed her mind.

“Give her my love,” Becky said, and I told her I would.

I hung up the phone and looked at clouds covering the Sawtooth and thought back to when Sam and I got caught in the autumn snowstorm and nearly didn’t make it out. We were carrying neither a tent nor warm clothing, and for a full day we huddled around a small fire and waited for the storm to pass. We never told anyone about it, either, because we knew we’d been fools for being so unprepared. But several times in the years that followed, when Nora and I weren’t even talking to each other, I thought that the mountains might have been the place to die when I had the chance.

The wind had grown colder, and the clouds had dropped over Bridgeport. I smelled rain as I pulled my windbreaker from the Impala’s trunk. When I got back to Clancey’s for the last mug of coffee, Maureen wasn’t surprised when I said I was leaving.

“I had a feeling you would be,” she said. Her hands were wet from washing glasses in the small sink behind the bar. “I could still buy you a beer.”

“I have a long drive,” I told her. “But I might be back, if you want to save it for me.”

She smiled, showing teeth that were white and straight. “You’ll be back,” she said, though I wasn’t sure how she meant it. I stared at her, but she turned away before I could tell her that she probably was right.

I got home late that night after driving slowly through rain most of the way. The weather didn’t break until I stopped at a mini-mart to buy cherry Lifesavers. Outside the store I saw stars winking through small gaps between clouds sliding across the sky.

As I parked the Chevy in the driveway, I slipped a Lifesaver beneath my tongue. Candy had once been a way to hide the smell of what I’d been drinking, but now it just tasted good. When I stepped quietly into the house, I let the last sliver of a Lifesaver drop down my throat. Nora was watching television, and I smelled her lilac perfume, my favorite, as soon as I shut the door behind me.

“You came home.” She didn’t look up. Her feet were propped up on the large footstool we’d bought just a week earlier.

“Yeah. I had some things to work out.” I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes on the carpet.

“We were supposed to go to dinner,” she said, and I noticed then how she was dressed up, still expecting to go out. That was why she was wearing perfume. “We were supposed to eat at someplace nice, and that’s all I’ve been waiting for. I thought you’d be home, so I never cancelled the reservation.”

I didn’t remember anything about dinner, but I didn’t doubt her. “Tomorrow,” I told her. “I forgot. I’m sorry. We’ll do it tomorrow and make it special.”

“Have you been drinking? You’re eating candy.” It was the first time she looked at me since I’d come into the house, and her stare was cold.

“I’ve been driving,” I said, fingering the single remaining Lifesaver in my pocket, wondering how she had noticed the candy from twelve feet away. I thought that even after twenty-five years of marriage it would be nice to have at least one secret, to have something that Nora did not know.

“Nice way for you to show your love for me,” she said plainly. “Skipping dinner for getting drunk. You could have called and then at least I could have eaten here. I could have fixed something instead of sitting here and waiting.”

“I do love you,” I told her. “And I’m not drunk.” But she’d been drinking—a half-full bottle of gin and a glass with ice were on the floor beside the couch. I wondered about the Sawthooth, about whether the ridge was now covered with snow. And I wondered about Maureen and her beer orders, even about what she’d bought for lunch at Cleo’s.

Nora had tried to hide the gin, and I wanted to say that it didn’t matter to me what she did or whether she believed that I was sober. I didn’t care if she was drunk then or drunk for the rest of her life.

“You do love me?” she asked. “You do?” She wasn’t convinced. But she was drunk and nothing would matter by morning. Her perfume was strong, and I wanted it to be stronger yet, to envelope me and the house and all that I knew in its silky embrace.

“I do,” I said, “I really do. You’re a princess.” I thought then that one day soon I would tell her about nearly being frozen in the mountains, about what that experience had done to me.

“Yeah?” She came over to me and took my hand, holding it to the side of her face.

“Yeah,” I said, and I sat down beside her to watch television.