nudle

It's a beginning, or something anyway.

The two children walk along the dusty, gravelly shoulder, she pulling the old once-red Radio Flyer, he, smaller, riding its rusty confines. There hangs about them, in her pace and determined, downcast gaze and his quiet stillness, an air of sadness and loss, and they seem too young to be walking alone. Most busy adults driving past have this fleeting thought, those children should not be walking on this busy road without an adult, their discomfort gone fast, poor souls, must be poor, mom probably working her second job, must get home to my sick husband, my own child with that unreliable babysitter, must get the dog out before he goes on the carpet, need a gin and tonic, eleven hours of meetings today, can't deal with someone else's unfortunate, sullen children. Not one person stops to see to these two children. They all have their own families, worries, troubles, burdens, responsibilities and places to be.

The children have a goal, the thing they are trudging toward (or one of them is trudging toward, anyway) and that goal has the dubious moniker of Battle Berry Yumberry Black Currant. Neither child, not the blond, blue-eyed, leggy seven-year-old girl and not the small Asian boy with the star-shaped birthmark over his right eye has ever seen or eaten a black currant. But they have drunk plenty of clear-plastic-encased-bubble-topped frozen Battle Berry Yumberry Black Currants and had the attendant brain freezes, and the joyful release and physical relief following the intense pain -- all part of the sugary, red-staining experience of their shared addiction, Slurpees. And they move forward, her red sneakers now gray-pink with roadside dust, his little heart quickening at the thought of his only daily reward.

Egg story.

Poor breakfast egg. He sits here still, uneaten. The end.

Ebullient.

Maybe it's the weather. There is not a cloud in the sky; it's crystal clear, and the water of the lake is calm. Perhaps that's why I'm feeling so optimistic.

Or maybe it's that I overslept and rushed pell-mell to school this morning thinking I dropped the ball, believing that I missed bringing my appointed foodstuffs (apples, pears, yogurt) on time for teacher appreciation day, only to find out I was a week early.

Maybe I'm a bit euphoric because I'm not mentally ill. I've been creeping through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I find (in the wake of his suicide a couple months ago) to be a primer on mental illness of a sort; a horrible sort. I've been struggling with why he (DFW) would kill himself, and he's explaining it to me through his masterwork, this thousand-page tome I'm not even sure I'm enjoying, but it's stretching my worldview. For example, here's an excerpt of fictional character Katherine Gompert talking to her doctor:

        'Listen,' she said. 'Have you ever felt sick? I mean nauseous, like you knew you were going to throw up?'
        The doctor made a gesture like Well sure.
        'But that's just in your stomach,' Kate Gompert said. 'It's a horrible feeling but it's just in your stomach. That's why the term is "sick to your stomach."' She was back to looking intently at her lower carpopedals. 'What I told Dr. Garton is OK but imagine if you felt that way all over, inside. All through you. Like every cell and every atom or brain-cell or whatever was so nauseous it wanted to throw up, but it couldn't, and you felt that way all the time, and you're sure, you're positive the feeling will never go away, you're going to spend the rest of your natural life feeling like this.'

I don't feel like this, and that makes me feel happy, and I appreciate my life more, now that I know what it feels like to feel like that. I have for brief periods felt a tiny, tiny bit like that when I had bad PMS or was depressed because I was lonely and had a colony of cockroaches living in my bathroom light fixture, or when all three happened at the same time and I called my ex-boyfriend with whom I'd just broken up and moved out on and told him maybe we should get back together and he said, because you have cockroaches? I don't think that's a good enough reason. Back then I felt bad. But I didn't feel that bad, like I think DFW must have felt. And, though some nights I like red wine a little too much so I have a headache the next morning, I've never been addicted like I think he might have been, though here I'm piecing together bits about his possible addiction from news and eulogies and his repetitive descriptions of being addicted to pot in the first 75 pages of his book, so I feel guilty speaking illish and maybe falsely of the dead, especially since I didn't know him.

Back on the feeling good thing, I got a small job, and that makes me happy, since the more I read David Foster Wallace the more I understand I will never be a brilliant writer, because now I see what a brilliant writer is. Not that I've not been surrounded by and immersed in books by brilliant writers my whole life, but every now and then I come across a writer who body-slams me into seeing myself for who I actually am, a passably okay hobbyist writer who gets a lot out of toiling over short stories, but. There's that big but. That big but doesn't mean I'm going to stop; I'll keep toiling because I like it and who knows? I've watched really bad tennis players get really good just by playing. Maybe I can take a little pressure off my writing by doing some freelance work for a few weeks, and it will pay for the inevitable yard work we need to have done since I'm not out there weeding and cutting. And it will help with Iona's school's annual fund, and other charitable giving stuff. And some paint and lamps and blackout shades for the baby's room.

On that front, we're adopting what will probably be a baby boy (ten months old) from South Korea. We got an email from the coordinator Sunday saying she's getting more referrals than she thought and she would like to speed our paperwork along. I alternate between excitement and dread, but it's mostly excitement. The dread comes on when I'm tired and I think, just wait until this child (our child who might already be born!) comes into our lives and I cease sleeping and still get to do after-school activities and wake up and give baths and police playdates and make lunches and volunteer for field trips and vacuum. And maybe write, because I want to record it all, this un-nauseated, happily mediocre stuff, for posterity.

The Waking.

        The man sat in a windowless room at an endless table made of expensive wood. The walls were a green beige color, most often seen in sitting rooms belonging to elderly widows, and in hospital rooms. He entered a waking dream, a common pastime of his while in meetings. It was always the same story. He began by taking off his tie, which never got much attention in the fourth hour of going over his client’s dusty ledgers full of numbers like so many tiny, busy ants. No one looked at him when he unbuttoned his cuffs and his collar buttons.

Forever.

        Cora found Katy lying on her stomach on one of the twin beds that were lined up like so many nuns in snowy habits on the screened porch. Katy was reading a book. Her long blonde hair hung around her face and the book, hiding both. Cora stood in the doorway. Katy did not look up.
        “Hey, Katy,” said Cora.
        “What.”
        The cicadas grew so loud Cora had to raise her voice to hear herself speak, making it difficult to sound casual. “What’re you reading?”
        Katy turned the book over and looked at the creased, dog-eared cover, which bore a photograph of a single red rose on a white background. “It’s called Forever,” she said.
        Cora feigned interest. “What’s it about?”
        “It’s a love story,” Katy said. “Too old for you.”
        “Where’dja get it? Library?”
        “Polly loaned it to me,” Katy said airily.
        Cora was surprised. “I thought Mom and Dad said you weren’t supposed to hang around Polly any more, since she got caught shoplifting.”

My dream last night.

        The young woman dropped to her knees. "Mother, please! Listen to me! Dad!"
        They looked at each other.
        "I am not crazy! They're monsters, and they are going to kill us if we stay here!"
        "Honey. Listen to yourself," Her mother was smiling.
        "I know it's unbelievable. Just come with me. If I am out of my mind you can always come back! I won't stop you! But I'm getting my daughter out of here now!"
        Her father looked at her. Time stood still in the kitchen, though the woman could hear the birds singing outside the window. Somewhere in the distance a lawn mower growled. The woman knew it was likely sitting by itself, idly burning gasoline. Sunlight streamed into the kitchen, casting hard, bright rectangles on the light maple floor.
        At last, her father turned to her mother. "We should at least find the Krugerrands, take them with us. And we need to pack some things if we're going to a hotel."
        "Hurry, just hurry," she begged. She was crying and shaking. "We have to go now. I don't want to leave you, but we have to get her away." She dropped her head into her hands and tried to push away the images burned into her mind.
        They were in the outbuilding. It was where her parents used to keep horses. Now the building housed the workers on the estate, only they weren't the workers somehow, not any more. She had gone out there just after lunch, looking for Michael. She had known right away that something wasn't right about the workers. They just weren't right.
        "Has anyone seen," she said. A few workers turned, and that's when she first heard the creaking. Icy water flowed through her veins, though she could not identify why. "I'm looking for Michael," her voice trailed off. It wasn't obvious at first, but then she saw the stitches. One of the workers had stitches along his forearm, and another along his scalp. Another had a line of dark stitches on his upper lip. Her mind refused the pattern at first. Her reaction was basic and primal: fight or flight. She must go to the main house and lock the doors. Numb and still not understanding, she turned.
        A figure stood in her way. She saw Michael, with his silver hair and the handsome, tanned face she had known all her life. As he raised his arm, that creaking sound. He held out his hand to her. As she took it she felt how cold he was. She let him lead her out into the sunshine.
        "These people...not good to you."
        He spoke in the voice of a stranger. She snatched her hand back. She forced herself to look into his face. Stitches oozed wet and dark all along his jawline. She stepped back, stumbled.
        His mouth was working furiously. His hands twitched, as if he could barely control them. There was that terrible creaking. His hands were creaking as they danced in the air between them.
        "Get...away...from me...get them away!" He choked. "Took. The skin. Put...it on. The workers...dead. Took their...skin. Get out. I...can't. Help it. I will kill."
       Then the woman was running toward the house, toward her daughter, her parents. Her breath came in great gasps. Her mind was sick. She knew one thing. They had to get out.

The Slumber Party.

Friday I packed for the slumber party, putting in the cute baby doll pajamas I hated because they itched. My mom told me six times in the five-minute car ride to Kessie’s house that it was okay if I needed to come home before morning, call any time. I sat, not talking.

Kessie’s mom answered the door when I rang. She had very blonde, long hair and dark circles under her eyes. “Hi honey,” she said. “They’re in the basement. It’s that-a-way.” She pointed her glass to a dark stairway. She didn’t tell me her name or ask me mine.

In the Woods.

        Rose invented for us a secret system. We would leave each other notes in the cigar boxes we kept in our desks for all the stuff we needed for fourth grade: number two pencils, scissors, compass, protractor and Elmer's School Glue. The other, weirder, part of our system was that she could send me mind messages. She would decide we needed to sneak off into the woods, or travel to one of our made-up planets, and she would look at me, and I would get the message loud and clear.
        The first time it happened we were sitting in our pod in Mrs. Engle's class doing our Reading Comprehension (Rose was in the highest group, Moons, and I was in Suns, which was not very high). I felt my the top of my head prickle and I reached up and scratched it, thinking as I pushed away the picture of trees that had suddenly appeared behind my eyes that I hoped I didn't have lice like Tonya Allen did that time. After a minute the top of my head tickled again and there was that picture of trees again (where did that come from?) and I thought maybe it would be fun to take a walk in the woods if only it wasn't so against the rules. My neck ached a little so I looked up and Rose was staring at me. It’s weird what you remember. I remember thinking, her eyes are glittering. 

Plink.

She stands staring at a product called Plink. The packages are hanging on a metal rack halfway down the cleaning supplies aisle in the QFC. Inside the packages are small plasticky spheres the color of halfway-through-the-head-cold snot. She reads the description on a package of Plink; the spheres are for tossing in your garbage disposal to make it smell fresh. She stands there for a while, considering putting a package of Plink into her cart. She finally moves on, not registering that she had been standing, staring at the Plink, for nearly eight minutes. Later she is at the kitchen sink scraping the remains of some vegetarian ground beef substitute off the bottom of a non-stick pan, and a foul odor wafts up from the garbage disposal. She finds her mind drawn back to the aisle in the grocery store and the Plink, and she wishes she had bought it. That night, after the dishes are washed and sit drying in the Rubbermaid dish rack, her husband initiates sex. She turns him down, pleading fatigue, but as she does so the thought forms in her mind: Maybe I'd let you fuck me, if I had bought the Plink.

Plaid.

    “Plaid,” Jared said.
    “Plaid?” Edna looked up from the book she was reading. Jared couldn’t see the full title because her hand was covering part of it, but the part he could see was Reviving Oph. Edna read a lot of books; she was a librarian. Most evenings, like this one, she would come over to Jared’s apartment and make dinner, and they would eat together, and then she would read in his living room while he sat and played Xbox games with the sound turned off.
    Jared hit the pause button on Guitar Hero III. “Your skirt is plaid,” he said to her.
    Edna lifted the book and looked at the wool pleats in her lap. “So it is,” she said. Then she went back to reading her book.
    Jared said, “Interesting choice.”
    Edna looked at the cover of her book. “Yes, it’s good, written by a therapist who has some ideas about why young girls get lost as adolescents.”
    “There are too many books like that.”
    Edna looked up. “What do you mean?”
    Jared looked around. “Self-help books, I mean. Why can’t people work things out by themselves? I mean, we’ve all got problems, but I think if you concentrate hard enough you can get past them. All these books, all these shrinks, I think they make people weak. Like glasses.”
    “Glasses?”
    “When I was a little kid my eyes weren’t that bad. My mom made me get glasses when I turned fourteen, and my eyes got steadily worse after that. I think the glasses made my eyes lazy, because they didn’t have to work to see.”
    Edna looked at Jared. “That’s an interesting theory,” she said finally. Then she looked back down at her book.
    “Anyway, I meant your skirt,” Jared said.
    Edna looked up. “What about my skirt?”
    “When I said, ‘interesting choice,’ I was talking about your plaid skirt.”
    “Why is my skirt an interesting choice?” Edna shifted and closed her book, putting her finger in to mark the place. She looked at Jared.
    “Aren’t plaid skirts usually schoolgirl uniforms? I mean, women your age don’t typically wear them, right?”
    Edna smoothed her skirt with the hand not holding the book. “Yes, I mean, I guess women my age typically don’t wear plaid skirts, Jared. Where are you going with this? Do you not like my skirt or something?”
    “I think your skirt is fine. I also think girls are just fine. I don’t think society is hurting girls. I wish everyone would stop writing books about it, and making television shows about girls. What about boys? No one ever talks about boys.”
    Edna sighed. “Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s kids we should be worried about, not girls and not boys. But girls and boys have different problems, and I agree with,” here she turned her book around and consulted its cover, “Pipher that girls are hurt when we shove them into our boxes of what it means to be female. Society, I mean. We teach girls to not be strong, not go after what they want, and make them insecure and anorexic and self-mutilators. Teachers do this, and the media and yes, Jared, men do this to girls.”
    “So it’s my fault that girls get anorexic?” Jared’s face was red.
    “Not your fault, but let’s face it, one in four women has been sexually abused before they’re twenty, and most of those abusers are men. Not you, Jared. Other men. And this skirt conversation is a good example of how society looks at females. It’s a perfectly ordinary, innocent skirt, but it’s been imbued with all these symbolic meanings because it’s pleated and plaid, so now it screams schoolgirl? I mean, that ties in, too. Why haven’t we, as society, decided that cargo pants scream schoolgirl? They’re a much more useful article of clothing, with their many pockets and durable fabric. Especially when paired with good, heavy boots for kicking men who want to mess with schoolgirls.”
    Jared had turned his game back on during Edna’s little speech and now he mumbled, “I guess I don’t like the skirt.”
    “Okay, noted,” Edna said. “And now it’s time for me to be going. Unless I’m invited to stay over?”
    “I have an early meeting tomorrow,” Jared said, not looking up from the action on the screen.
    “Fine. I’ll talk to you when I talk to you,” Edna said, and left. Jared heard the door slam, and then the apartment filled with silence.