The BOOKPRESS | September 2000 |
Tired by a
long country drive, we stopped at a roadside tavern for a drink and something
to eat. The tavern filled the first floor of a two-story brick building,
and in the parking lot stood an illuminated reader board which read: APARTMENT
AVAILABLE LIVE ROCK NIGHTLY.
While eating
we engaged the bartender in conversation, and discovered that he was the
owner of the establishment. Emboldened by the food and drink, we brought
up the reader board, suggesting that he might rent his apartment more quickly
were he to remove the reference to live rock music.
The owner
nodded sadly, and confessed to us that his teenage daughter had lived in
the apartment, but some years ago had died in a drunk driving accident,
the result of an evening spent in another bar a few miles down the road.
The owner, his eyes brimming with tears, said that he blamed himself for
the accident, as he had refused to serve his daughter in his own bar, where
she had been employed illegally as a cocktail waitress. With her gone,
he had had to hire a legitimate waitress, and as a result the tavern was
no longer profitable and had begun to lose money. Renting the apartment
would make his business solvent, but he still hadn’t gotten around to cleaning
it out, and in fact did not want to face the task. At the same time, actively
not renting the apartment was financially unjustifiable. The sign, he explained,
was a compromise between his business and emotional needs. It had stood
unchanged for two years, even though the band had broken up and live music
was no longer played here. The owner admitted that the place was about
to go up for sale.
Of course
we were sorry to have asked. We left the owner a large tip, though once
we were out on the road, driving with extreme care, the tip struck us as
a tacky, even insulting, gesture, and made us feel even worse about our
rude question.
Leaves
We live in
a profusely and variously foliated area, and our trees are large and old,
cultivated here by an excellent public works department, so it is not surprising
that our town draws tourists from far away come fall, when the leaves change
color. They drive through our residential streets with their out-of-state
license plates, pointing out to one another the extraordinary colors, from
the stunning reds of the red maple and black oak to the orange of the birches
and radiant yellow of the gingko, a streetside specialty here. Occasionally
a visitor will pull over and talk to one of us, and compliment us on our
leaves, as if we had anything to do with them, but they never thank us.
And then,
when they go back to their own towns, our leaves grow drab, they fall off
our trees and into our yards and gutters, and if we don’t get rid of them
they sit there and turn black and wet under the snow. Nobody comes to look
at them then. We walk through them in our boots on the way to our cars
and try to forget what’s happened, and we endure the winter, and eventually
the city comes and takes the leaves away. We don’t think much about them
and do our best to enjoy the bleak view of the valley between the bare
branches of the trees.
The one saving
grace of all this is the spring, when new leaves come in. They’ve never
yet failed to do so. They start out tiny and green, like mint candies,
and for a short time they are ours alone, and nobody else’s. And then in
summer, even when it thunderstorms and the wind tears through them at a
furious clip, even then they stay right on the trees and make a sound like
applause, all summer long. As if they are thanking us for spending this
time with them before the tourists come and take them away.
Intact
Our elderly
aunt, long ago widowed, has spent the past ten years touring the world
as part of an old ladies’ travel club, despite a chronic social paralysis
that prevents her from so much as taking the bus to the grocery store without
a companion. When she returns from these distant places—which have included
Thailand, Egypt, China and Brazil and we ask her to describe her experiences,
she always tells us, after some consideration, that she had a wonderful
time and enjoyed the other ladies’ company. She offers no other details.
At a recent
family gathering, conversation lingered on a grisly subject: the crash
of a commercial airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, which resulted in complete
destruction of the plane and all its passengers. One of us commented that
such a crash constitutes a double tragedy, as the passengers lose not only
their lives but their identity, because they are blown to bits and scattered
in the deep ocean.
All of us
were surprised when our aunt spoke up. She said that this would never happen
to her. Whenever she flies, she told us, she paints her fingernails and
toenails the same unusual shade of purple, to aid salvage workers in the
identification of her remains. In addition, she ties a length of heavy
twine to one of her toes, then runs the other end up through her slacks
and blouse to her hand, where she ties it to one of her fingers. This way,
if she is blown apart, the top half of her body will be tethered to the
lower half, and she can enjoy a decent Christian burial more or less intact.
The silence
following this revelation went on for some seconds, as we all imagined
the sight of our elderly aunt’s shattered corpse, held together with twine.
This silence deepened when it occurred to us that she had herself imagined
this very image, perhaps many times. Since then we have reinterpreted her
reticence not as a symptom of some pitiable neurosis but as bold composure
in the face of a morbid imagination.
Indirect Path
For many years
a large table stood in the center of our dining room, blocking the most
direct path from the living room to the kitchen and necessitating the development
of an angled walking route that, over time, came to be visible as an area
of wear in the dining room rug.
Recently we
discarded the old rug and, since our children have grown and moved away
and we now eat our meals in the kitchen, transferred our large table into
storage. The dining room has been turned into a study, with bookshelves
lining the walls and a narrow desk facing the front window.
Despite these
changes, we find it nearly impossible to take the newly created direct
path through the room, and continue to walk around the edge as if the table
were still there. When occasionally one of us must enter the forbidden
space, either to sweep the floor or pick up a dropped item, we find that
we wince in discomfort, as if anticipating a painful crash into the missing
table.
––
J. Robert Lennon is
the author of two novels, The
Light of Falling Stars and The Funnies.
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