Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #11

It's like happiness

But there were good memories, too.

He was driving toward the park--a neutral location--where they'd decided to meet to exchange rings yet again: his to her, hers to him. A simple reversal. They could then do whatever they wished with the rings. Final dusk was just minutes away, and the western horizon was clear so that long lengths of sunlight could enter through the passenger-side window and illuminate the dashboard. The moon roof was open all the way, and the cool air washed across his face and forehead. As he passed the high school, the cadence of a marching band became loud, then faded. He wasn't sure of how to feel as the high school dropped behind him, but he didn't feel anger. It was more of that post-coital feeling of blended contentment and melancholy. It was an odd feeling that soon enough was gone.

Now, driving, he remembered their first meeting, how a mutual but now-dead friend had thought it would be a good idea if they met at a local artist's showing of nature photography. And it was a good idea. Roxie, the friend who also owned the studio, had left them alone for a few minutes not long after the introduction. "Talk about something," she said.

Chris didn't remember what they'd talked about, but he remembered the first time he saw her. She was almost as tall as he was, and blond in a good way. One corner of her mouth turned a bit upward when she smiled, and he'd always found that attractive. Roxie returned soon enough, and she told them both that she hoped they hadn't talked about sports or the weather.

He'd often wondered at how easily the good memories had become subservient to bad experiences. Or, maybe they were simply subsumed.

He saw her as soon as he turned into the park. For most of the day he'd hoped that this exchange would be more difficult than he now realized it would be. She was sitting on top of a picnic table. Across the park a group of young men played soccer. She watched him walk from his car to the table, and he knew her smile was false because the corners of her mouth stayed at the same level.

"Hi," she said. She opened her palm to reveal her silver wedding ring and its single diamond.

"Hi."

"You ready to do this?"

"Yeah, I am. It doesn't seem as bad as signing all the papers, does it?"

She shook her head. "No, it doesn't."

He removed his wedding band from his finger. He looked at it and the indentation that it left behind.

"You never took it off?" she asked.

"A few times. It just seemed easier to keep the thing on my finger, you know? So it didn't get lost."

"A good idea." She stretched her arm and her open palm to him. "Here."

When he pinched the ring between his fingers, he felt the familiar softness of her hand. He dropped his ring into the same palm, and she closed her fingers tightly and withdrew her hand.

"A piece of cake," she said.

"I want to tell you something, Cindy."

"Are you going to yell?"

"No."

"Okay. What?"

"Your smile. I always liked it. It's what attracted me to you."

"You never told me that, did you."

"I don't know. I think I did. If not, I should have. It's like happiness."

She seemed confused. "It's like happiness? A smile is happiness, isn't it?"

"Maybe I didn't think it through, but it's what I was thinking nonetheless."

"That's a strange note to end all of this on, isn't it?

"How can the ending of 'all this' be any stranger than it started?"

She looked across the park to the soccer game. "I've got to go." She got down from the table, looked at the ring in her hand, then pocketed it and strode off.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #10

Bop, Bop, Bop

He remembered when they were in North Beach. The next day would be the first day of winter, but the night was warm enough that neither of them needed much more than a light sweatshirt. After dinner they'd wandered into the Tosca Cafe, having a couple of the specials--Ghiradelli Chocolate, steamed milk, brandy--served in small glasses. After a couple of drinks he'd gone to the men's restroom where he'd stood in front of several colorful posters of Marilyn Monroe. It was the only time in his life that he didn't want to leave the smell of urinal cakes behind. From there they'd gone to Vesuvio where they tried to channel Jack Kerouac, but the noise and the crowd became too much after a single drink. Standing on the sidewalk outside, he'd pulled her arm and told her they next had to go to the Condor.

"That's sick," she'd said.

"How do you know?"

"It just is, Chris. Would you want your kids to know you went to a place like that?'

He shook his head. "I don't have kids. And if I did, I don't think I'd be obliged to tell them."

"Pick someplace else."

"Larry Flynt's? The Hungri i?"

"Chris."

"Let's go back to Tosca, then. We can listen to opera."

So they'd gone back and found a booth away from the bar. This was supposed to be an attempt to get some spark back, but Cindy didn't seem eager to be anywhere, and she hadn't even seen that he wasn't serious about the Condor. Dinner at the Cafe' Zoetrope had been good, if quiet. He'd had the Linguine alle Vongole, while she had picked at the Penne all’ Arrabbiata. They'd shared a bottle of Coppola's Pinot Noir.

Chris knew that neither of them really could find that spark, just as he knew they seemed to have lost any sense of humor with each other, that everything had become literal. That's why she couldn't see that his suggestion of the Condor was a joke.

"Stop that," she finally said.

"Stop what?"

"That--that tapping on the table. It's opera--you don't tap your fingers to the beat."

"I didn't know I was doing it."

"I'm tired. I need to get to sleep."

"It's not even ten."

She looked at him, watched an elderly couple get up from their barstools and walk out the door, then looked back to him. "I'm sorry. I'm irritated, that's all."

"I know. We're both irritated. At everything."

"This isn't doing what we'd hoped for, is it."

"It's early. Maybe if we stay out awhile, something will come to us." He looked beyond her to the door to the men's restroom, and he thought maybe he should go see Marilyn Monroe for awhile. He wondered what Cindy would think if he told her about that.

"Chris! You're doing it again. Stop!"

"They're just fingers."

"It's not just fingers, Chris. It's you. It's this bop bop bop and it's driving me crazy. Every day it's like this, one thing after another. Bop bop bop. And if it's not you, it's me. We do these things to drive the other person crazy."

"Do you every wonder why?" he asked. "Why is it? I've been tapping my fingers to music since I was a kid. You used to find it endearing. Why does it bother you now?"

"I never did. I just let it go."

"You shouldn't have."

"Oh, I know. I know. Look, let's just go back to the hotel, okay? I'm tired. I don't want to end the night like this."

But they had let it end that way, he remembered. They ended the night when she returned alone to the hotel, and he stayed and listened to opera--music he neither enjoyed nor understood. Looking back, he should've told her that. But the next morning, as they were driving home, he kept the radio tuned to any music he could find, griping the steering wheel with both hands and not once letting his fingers keep time.

Practice

Writing poetry and being alone not only require practice, they also require that certain willing suspension of disbelief: Fictions have to be accepted for what they are. Writers of all ilks struggle with both--writing poetry requires such precision that it is easily abandoned, while solitude requires confrontations with demons and angels alike.

Being alone is the easier of the two when one gets beyond the initial realization that nobody's around to help. Writing poetry? One of the hardest things to do well. I have known many very good poets, and I continue to admire how they can be so precise, how their works can be multi-level structures built in just the right way.

And I am always looking for new poets, though this task is not easy. Visiting City Lights and Green Apple Books in San Francisco can be of great use, but I think I am now a greater fan of Powell's Books in Portland, where stacks and stacks of new and old collections of poetry are waiting for good homes. On my recent trip to the bookstore I selected two books: Ted Kooser's collected poems Flying at Night, and W.S Merwin's The Shadow of Sirius. Both have remained in the darkness of my knapsack for a few days. Merwin is less direct and often challenging; Kooser uses language accessible to anyone. Reading from Merwin's book, I am reminded of reading Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and Morrison's Beloved--books that require a suspension of disbelief and a particular relaxation of the mind to be enjoyed.

Here's one from Merwin:

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

And one from Kooser:

Advice

We go out of our way to get home,
getting lost in a rack of old clothing,
fainting in stairwells,
our pulses fluttering like moths.
We will always be
leaving our loves like old stoves
in abandoned apartments. Early in life
there are signals of how it will be--
we throw up the window one spring
and the window weights break from their ropes
and fall deep in the wall.

Of course, I'm no literary critic, and I don't know enough about poetry to discuss either of these intelligently (Shawn at These Rivers is one to follow, however). It's just nice to once again find poetry that I think is "good."

Navigation

For a full week now I've been residing in the Pacific Northwest, not too far from Portland. It's a wonderful place, Oregon--greener than most of California this time of year. I'm really doing little more than working my regular job in a different place for just over 2 weeks, with my commute lasting all of 10 seconds, a full minute if I go downstairs to brew tea before sitting at the computer. I have a dog and a cat to keep me company. The dog is friendly enough but misses its owners and knows that I am a mere interloper. When I leave the house, the dog greets me and then stares through the window to see if its owners are there. I take the dog for a walk each morning before work, before sunrise, and it seems happy enough. I allow it to spend much of the day on the bed I occupy at night, but we have agreed that it will sleep elsewhere at night. Dogs belong on the floor.

It is quite odd, this living alone even temporarily. Unlike travels or backpacking, I have no destination, no itinerary, no agenda. Not knowing my way around too well keeps me fairly close to "home," though I did figure out the mass transit system well enough to get me into downtown Portland and back again, and each day I pedal or walk ever-widening circles, and on a bike after work this afternoon I discovered great bushes of wonderfully ripe and sweet blackberries. I have also learned both the compass points and the sounds of local traffic patterns. Just knowing east and west allowed me to ride to places on a bike that I would feel lost in if I were driving a car. We often miss so much while driving--the sounds of things, how to tell east from west by the feel and sight of the sun.

Even walking around downtown Portland left me disoriented since I had no familiar reference points to work with. I knew a river was somewhere, and I knew that some streets divided the region into quadrants, but just as I was in Brussels a couple years ago, I was more lost with my map than I was this afternoon on a bike with only a sense of direction to guide me. And when I stopped for lunch at a brewpub in Portland, I considered such things: the feeling of being lost amid commotion, the lack of a true sense of direction. (It's not supposed to be a metaphor, though it perhaps could be.) I stared out the window of that brewpub and admired the locals' ability to turn down just the right street that would lead them where they wanted to go. Me? I needed a good hour to figure out how to find where I should catch the bus for my return trip.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #9

Everything's almost over, isn't it?

Light from the half-moon was bright enough to fill the yard. Movement through the leaves in the trees alongside the house must have been birds because whatever breeze there had been earlier was now gone. The chair she'd dragged from the shed to the patio was less comfortable than she'd remembered, but she had neither reason nor inclination to go back into the house.

She hated insomnia, how after so many nights of fitful sleep every small problem became large, how what seemed to be months' worth of events and conversations replayed and repeated in whichever part of the brain was processing things. Chris had left hours earlier after retrieving a few more boxes, but she still felt something of him nearby. For the most part she had let him work alone. Sequestered in the small room that had once been their shared office, she had watched through the partially opened louvers of the door as he and Phil did what they'd come to do. When the rented truck was finally loaded, Phil had driven away in his own car, leaving Chris to get a few small items. Cindy had watched for a minute as Chris looked around the room, his hands on his hips, and then she'd opened the door and made her way to the sofa that Chris was leaving behind.

"You done?" She had asked.

"I think so. I'm meeting Phil at the apartment. We've got to return the truck by five."

"The house seems so empty now."

"What'd you expect?"

"Don't be snide."

"Kind of late for that, isn't it?"

"And don't be an ass."

"What, exactly, should I be?"

"You could be civil. I wasn't trying to start anything."

"No, I'm sure you weren't."

She hadn't liked the tone in his voice. "Just stop, okay? Just let it go. At least for now."

"Let it go? What the hell does that mean?"

"Don't."

He'd turned to face her directly then, his hands still on his hips but his face full of the type of anger she hadn't seen in a long time. Even when she'd asked for the divorce he hadn't looked like this. "You play these goddamned games as though you know what's going on, that you always know how to win. You started all of this. You handed out the rules you wanted me to follow, and for the most part I've done just what you asked. We're almost at the end of things, aren't we? Everything's almost over. You think the house seems empty now, right? But you know what, it has been empty for a long time. I'm only now starting to realize it. And maybe I'm starting to see how empty you felt before this started. I keep thinking if I'd known, I might've been able to fix things. But I'm angry, too. So when you tell me you're not trying to start something, or when you tell me 'don't,' how do you think I'll react--just shut up and walk away?"

She'd stared at him, but she'd not been able to say anything for several moments. She thought about an earlier argument when she'd suggested the feelings they had for each other had been gone for a long time. This seemed like the same argument all over again. "Are you through?" she'd finally managed.

He'd looked around the house, finally dropped his hands from his hips, and nodded. "I'm through. You can have whatever's left. All of this emptiness is yours." She saw his face relax then, as though all of his anger was gone.

Now, on the patio, she listened again to the leaves moving. The moonlight seemed brighter. She leaned back in the chair, shut her eyes, and for some reason thought of the differences between "empty" and "emptiness."

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #8

Who said anything about touchy-feely?

He awoke one morning to the realization that she hadn't touched him in a long time. She'd always been the one to touch a shoulder or brush the stray bit of hair that wanted to linger out of place over his forehead. Before breakfast that realization transformed into a thought, one that he carried for several days before bringing it up during the familiar tension that seemed to have become their evening routine.

"I realized something the other day," he said. He knew that this might go a couple of ways: She'd poo-poo the idea and they'd continue on, or the announcement would lead to something more than just tense. Recently, or at least as recently as he could remember, they were each ensconced in their respective singularities, and even the most trite of comments was dangerous. She had once remarked that she thought he needed new shoes, and he'd shouted himself nearly hoarse saying that he certainly did not need her to select his wardrobe. He'd sheepishly told Phil about that one. "Really, Chris?" Phil had said. "She said something about your shoes, and you started toward the deep end?"

To her credit, Chris thought now--and he always gave her credit for many things--she set aside her book of poetry and turned the face of her attention to him. "What did you realize?" She sounded neither uninterested nor perturbed.

"Well, I woke up one morning, and I realized you hadn't touched me in a long time."

"Touched you?"

"Yeah. Simple touches. I always counted on you for them. Just little taps to let me know you were around, maybe even thinking of me."

He thought he saw her hand twitch toward her book, but he could not be sure. She said, "I did that?"

He nodded at her false question, but he also let it fade. "Yes. It was always nice."

"Oh." She seemed to think about it, and he wondered if she was decided whether to stay reasonable or become defensive. "I didn't know I had stopped."

So, he saw, she had known that she "did that." He listened to the traffic passing by in front of the house but refused to let the noise come between them. "I just wanted to let you know that I thought it was nice. I liked it."

She didn't hesitate this time. "But you have to know that you're not exactly touchy-feely, right? There were times I wanted to be touched, but you never seemed to understand that. Maybe I got tired of things being so one-sided."

"Who said anything about touchy-feely? That's not where I was going. I simply wanted to share that realization with you. We can still talk, right? I'm not trying to fight." He didn't like how they were sitting there and simply looking at each other. There was something between them now--not the sound of traffic, but something he couldn't yet identify. He wondered what had happened, how so many good things could vanish so quickly, so quietly. "What are you reading" he asked. She seemed relieved to have his permission to return to the book, which she grasped and opened.

"Emily Dickinson," she said.

"Short poems, right?"

"Mostly, yes."

"Read me one."

"Why?"

"I just want to hear a poem."

"You don't like poetry."

"Maybe I could learn to like it."

She turned her face toward the window, and then to the book. She bit her lower lip. She leafed through some of the pages before stopping. "Here's one," she said.

He watched her read--not listened, watched. For the life of him, he couldn't hear a thing she was saying.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #7

Maybe it was gone before it was there.

He knew she had a penchant for blurting off-the-cuff insults. It was a talent, he had often thought, as long as he wasn't on the receiving end. She could cut deeply if she wanted to, though during their arguments she needed awhile to get there.

They'd fought about money only once--not long before they'd both realized how things were pretty much over--and he'd come out shell-shocked and wounded when the battle diverged from simple economics to his own worth. He'd set her up, and he'd known it: "You can't balance on one foot, so how can I expect you to balance a checkbook?" he'd said. Part of him was trying to be funny, but that part didn't often succeed; he'd known that, too. He could tell from the way she dipped her shoulder that she was ready to swing at him. But like any good fighter, she'd considered her position and decided to strike differently.

"You're a shit, Chris," she'd said softly.

"That the best you can do?" he'd asked. "You think I don't know that already? How many times have you said that, anyway?"

"I never thought I'd say I hate you," she'd continued. "I've never said that to anyone."

"Then say it," he'd said, still keeping an eye on the shift in her shoulder.

"No. I won't."

"I'm disappointed," he'd said, but he was wondering how their argument about money had degenerated so quickly. "This is silly. Let's stop."

"Stop what, Chris? Maybe we should just have separate checking accounts, split the expenses, maybe. Then we don't have to worry about balancing anything but ourselves. Would that make you happy, Chris?"

"Maybe we should, I don't know. Everything else about us seems to be separate now, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

He had tried to be funny again. "I get the impression that you've lost that loving feeling."

Her shoulders had straightened, evened out a bit so that she was facing him head-on as though daring him to do something. He knew she hadn't seen his humor. "No, I haven't lost anything. Maybe it was gone before it was even there."

Then she'd walked out of the house and left him standing alone in the living room, the checkbook to their joint account opened wide on the antique table beside the sofa. He'd sat down, looked at the jumble of numbers in the checkbook register, and remembered to his high school boxing class, how he'd felt the time Ricky Parker nailed him in the jaw with a punch that had come out of nowhere.

A Walk in the Park

I see him before the dogs do, and I almost succeed at getting their leashes hooked to their collars before they do see him. He's walking across the park I often visit with my dogs when I need a lunchtime bite of fresh air, and he's carrying the day's newspaper. He doesn't flinch as the dogs and I reach him at the same time. "I could tell they were friendly by their body language," he says. I don't tell him that the older dog once bit a neighbor and, perhaps, killed another neighbor's dog that happened to get into our backyard. He doesn't need to hear these things.

"That dog [the old one] reminds me of a dog I used to have. It died when it was 18 years old. I've always felt bad because I made my mom put it down."

Then he introduces himself and asks my name. I tell him the truth. He then asks what I do for a living, and I tell him only half the truth, that I teach part-time at a local community college. We've never met, and he doesn't need to know the other details just as he doesn't need to hear the sordid details about the dog. He tells me he went to the same school, got his A.A. degree in criminal administration. Some day, he says, he wants to continue to get his B.A.

I ask him what he does, and he says he's on disability because of his depression. There was a time, he says without my asking, that he didn't take his medication and things weren't so good. Now, though, he's hopeful that his new medication will work better, and he assures me that he takes it as he should. He tells me about his drinking, too, how he paid the price for a DUI about 7 years ago. Now, he says, he limits himself to one beer a night, which, he learned from a class he had to take when he got the DUI, "most people can do." I ask him if that beer goes well with his medication, but he answers that he's just fine.

He then tells me other stories about his neighbor's pitbull that used to wander up and down the sidewalk and once chased his cat into his garage. He loves his cats, he says. The neighbor is better about the pit bull now, letting the dog out only as far as the driveway. He worries about his mom, though, because she's elderly. I tell him I once had a Rottweiler attack my knee as I was running around the track at the local high school.

I ask him if he comes to the park often, and he says he does, it's like a sanctuary for him, a place where he can sit and read the paper. "It is nice," I say. The young dog has been whining to get moving; she knows that being on a leash is no good if she's not walking. Our 10-minute conversation ends easily enough. He starts toward a picnic table so he can sit and read, and I start the dogs toward home. "Good luck with teaching," he says. "Some day you'll make full professor. You're certainly smart enough."

"Sure," I say, thinking that I should tell him that he's wrong, that the semester ended yesterday and I have no idea if I'll ever teach at that school again.

The sun is trying to come out after a couple days of not trying at all, and the dogs start to pull me back to computers and deadlines that never seem to go away. The young dog isn't whining now, and I wonder if in some dog-sense she's looking forward to sticking her nose through a hole in a fence we'll pass, a fence that keeps one small pit bull confined where it's supposed to be. If the pit bull's there, the young dog will bark and snarl and pretend she's a match for everything bigger.

And, sadly, I think I'll have to find a different place to walk the dogs at lunchtime.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #6

It wasn't a metaphor. It was a bed.

He tried to remember when the bed became a battlefield complete with a demilitarized zone. They'd started the marriage with a hand-me-down double-size bed that sloped from both sides to the middle. It was convenient, though, especially in the first apartment where the heater often didn't heat. She had often remarked--at least back then--that she enjoyed waking in the middle of the night to find her backside pressed against his. It was as though they reinforced each other, and each of them kept watch on one side of the bed.

A warmer apartment and a bit more cash brought a larger, queen-sized bed--this one new, without slopes, expensive, complete with headboard that kept their heads off one or another wall at night. "It's still cozy," she had said, "and I can always find you. It's nice." But though he had wondered openly about the gap between them, he also appreciated the extra open space on warm nights. Or after an argument when they both needed to sleep but didn't want to sleep next to each other. On those nights, in fact, whenever their legs would touch as one of them shifted in bed, she would jerk away as though she'd been shot.

Then, when they had finally come the point of dividing furniture when things were over, they had to consider the king-size bed, something that she had found at a Macy's sale one Friday afternoon not long after they had moved to their suburban house. The next morning he watched with some sadness as the deliverymen removed the queen and set up the king. The bed was immense; it took up nearly half the bedroom. That first night in the bed he had listened to her breath from so far away. Their lives together hadn't been smooth for the past few months, and their legs hadn't touched in a long time.

"You can have the bed," she had said as they listed what they owned, a "his" list and a "hers" list on a legal-sized yellow pad.

"No, it means too much to you," he'd said. "I've always thought that you bought the bed to get away from me at night as much as you did during the day. The space between us in that bed was a metaphor for the space between us in our relationship."

She had looked at him. "You believe that? How do you come up with this stuff, anyway? It's a bed. That's all. It was never a metaphor for anything. Do you want the bed, or not?"

He shook his head. "No. It symbolizes something I don't like."

"Now it's a symbol? Fine." She wrote "bed" on the "hers" side of the legal pad. "God, Chris, you need to grow up."

Pack Up Your Troubles in an Old Kit Bag...

...and smile, smile smile.

For about 2 years I've done a pretty good job of staying close to home. Simple economics has played into this, certainly, for I find it more and more difficult to spend money I don't have. Lack of available time, too, carries weight as I try to add a cushion of vacation days to the corporate books. And, at least in part, I felt somewhat remiss in my familial role of... well, whatever that role has evolved into over the previous decades. I get the sense that I've made a lot of bad beds, some that I wasn't even aware of, and now I'm lying in them. But, as Vonnegut said, so it goes.

My last trip of any real duration was to, what, Yosemite Valley several months ago? That must be it--a couple of wonderful nights in Camp 4, cozy as a man can get in a 4-season tent with just enough beer and food to be comfortable. Before that, it must have been Yosemite 2 other times.

I can generally tell when I'm unconsciously preparing for a trip to somewhere--that gut feeling of restlessness and impatience starts gnawing. Maui is, perhaps, on the near horizon, and that will be nice since I've never been there, and I will have someone nice to travel with. It should be a grand adventure. I learned in the navy, though, that the horizon is relative, that it changes with a person's elevation. That was always the wonder of climbing trees when I was a kid, I suppose: seeing how the horizon shifted with each progressively higher limb. So, I'm looking beyond Maui, looking to England yet again, creature of habit that I am. "You've been there twice already," I've been told, and I've been told correctly. Some people like to see many places and get to know the surface of things, but I've always leaned toward seeing below the surface. I know, for instance, that after the visit to Maui, I'll want to go back.

My empty Moleskine is a reminder that I need to get out and gather, to paraphrase the writer Jim Harrison, some life-experiences. My friend Tom gave me my first Moleskine in 2004, and the first entry was written on the fourth day of March that year when I was at the small coastal cabin Tom and his wife have let me stay in several times. The final entry? In Yosemite March 12, 2011--almost exactly 7 years later. Last year I bought a new Moleskine at Powell's Books in Portland (a city I'll visit again in a bit over a month), but so far the pages are fallow. And lately, as I ponder how to pack my respective kit bags for Maui and England, and how to find a way back to Yosemite this autumn and winter, I know the Moleskine needs to get on the road as much as I do.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #5

You know how you feel when you've never felt anything quite like what you're feeling?

"You need to relax, Chris," Phil said.

"I don't need to do anything of the sort."

"You're gonna kill yourself, you keep up like this.

Chris thought about it. "We all die at some point."

"What's that, an epiphany?" He put just enough English on the cue ball to make it brush the cushion and slide the eight-ball into the corner pocket.

"Fuck you."

"You saying that because I won?"

"Nope. Rack them up."

"I'm done. You can stay here and lose to someone else, or you can sit down and finish the beer."

"Fine." He took his final quarter off the side of the table and sat next to Phil. He was glad to see that the bartender had saved their spots at the bar.

"So what did she say this time?" Phil asked.

"Nothing that she hasn't said before." That was a lie.

"Right. You need to let her stop getting under your goat."

"Skin."

"Skin?"

"Yeah. She gets under my skin, but she gets my goat."

"Whichever way it goes, you can't let her get to you. Maybe you should start trying to get to her."

"I've tried," Chris said. "She's gotten a lot meaner since the divorce became final."

"Why do you two even stay in touch? Seems like you're both missing the entire meaning of 'divorce'."

Chris shrugged. "Usually one of us finds something that belongs to the other one. We start out with email, move on to phone messages, then finally meet in person. That's when she gets mean."

"Whatever happened to being amicably divorced?" Phil gestured for refills.

"I think that happens only in the movies. You know was Cindy says?"

"Not a clue." He paid for the beers.

"That I'm evil. Not just a shit, which is how she started. But evil."

"That's a bit over the top, isn't it? Even for a divorcee."

"She says I ruined a good portion of her life."

"Did you?"

Chris considered the idea. "I didn't think I did, but who am I to say? Maybe she's right. I wasn't always pleasant."

"Maybe she never gave you a chance."

"She gave me plenty of chances. Last week she said she couldn't even describe how I make her feel, how the thought of me makes her feel. She says she's never felt anything like it, that it's beyond hate for me and misery for herself."

"She has always been fairly dramatic."

"Yeah. She has. But now every time I try to get angry with her, I end up feeling depressed, or angry with myself. She's brainwashed me."

Phil ran his fingertips down the side of the beer bottle and picked at the label with his thumb. "Christ."

"Christ, exactly. I never thought I could have an effect like that on anyone. I once thought I made her feel something she'd never felt because she loved me."

Phil didn't say anything, just picked at the label. Finally, when the label was removed, he stood up. "You're depressing the hell out of me, Chris. Maybe you should get some help."

"I'd rather play pool. I tried 'getting help' once before."

"Your choice."

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.