It just started to rain. All day, the air has been thick. They say we will have a stretch of 90 degree weather, and already it feels heavy, humid. I went for a walk, a couple loops around the old park. I like the smell of rain in the air. The energy stirs with the coming storm. Back home, I have nothing to do since I woke up so crazy early that I got all the important things done by noon, and now I have no idea how to sit still. My attention span is shot, ruined by thirty minute sitcoms and texts and breaking news and fire trucks rushing off to someone’s calamity, very strong weed from the dispensary, a work week packed with mini disasters, the fast crash of the twenty-first century, the rain. I’m lucky if I can read a short story, or a chapter. I’ll try, anyway. The rest of the weekend is here. 

 

I had to go to the bank today. After the sale of mom’s house, we got a check that needs to be deposited into a special account. The check is embossed and engraved. Very intimidating. I’m afraid to touch it with my plebian hands. I keep it in a folder, along with documents, if they need them. The tellers these days are down in the basement, behind four inches of glass. Cameras from every angle, red lights blinking, I regret I didn’t brush my teeth and am conscious of my slouch. A woman is trying to withdraw a significant sum, which seems to require three employees. The guy ahead of me just needs a couple rolls of quarters, he keeps saying, for god’s sake already, and we both wait. The woman is on her cell phone yelling at someone in what sounds like Slovakian, a man on the other end is also yelling while everyone stands there and waits for the drama to wrap up. She finds a receipt at the bottom of her huge leather handbag. It doesn’t help. She yells on the phone some more. Eventually, she gets her money. The guy ahead of me gets his quarters. I stand before Christopher Lee, a young kid sharp eyed behind round tortoise shell frames. His blue suit looks like he left the hanger in it. He takes the check. Carefully examines it. Runs a kind of pen light over it, nods. Hmmm, says Mr. Lee. He turns it, carefully, peruses the back, the signature. Again the pen light scans over the blue paper. Hmm he says again. He has me my swipe my card. Do I have documentation? Just so happens, I do, Mr. Lee. I pass the death certificate and the letter from probate attesting that I am executor, I slip it through the slit in the transparent wall between us, watch him as he delicately touches the raised seal. He calls the other teller over. They both look at the papers. Hmm they say. The new one, the same suit and the same glasses, the same close crop haircut and the same smooth face, he turns the check over, to have a gander at the signature. He pulls a deposit slip from a stack. A black ink pen poises. Mr. Lee nods. New guy spells out my name, each letter inhabits a square cell on the form. I want to say how neat his handwriting is, but worry that will sound racist, and don’t want to blow it. We’ll just need to check it with the manager, they seem to say in unison. She comes over. Her eyebrows are painted in a severe slant that makes her look serious. She glances at me, then the check, then the back of the check. Hmm she says. She checks the death certificate, fingers the raised seal. She checks the letter from probate. She glances at me again. The three of them are now looking at me. I smile, even if they can’t see my face. Maybe my eyes are kind and sincere. Under my mask, I again think I should have brushed my teeth. The manager’s fingernails are long, shellacked, business beige like her skirt and tailored jacket. She turns the check over once more. She takes the deposit slip, checks it against the check. One last glance my way. One more eye smile from me. The line behind me is restless. Someone coughs. The manager grabs the pen, slashes her initials across the top of the slip, and “OK.” Mr. Lee seems relieved. He slides me back my documents through the glass.  A little machine at his left prints up a receipt. Another to his right prints up a piece of paper. And another piece of paper. He stamps one, then the other. The third apparently doesn’t need a stamp. This one is for your records, the manager says with the full weight of authority. They all are looking at me. Thank you, I say. It seems the least I could do. I almost drop a curtsey, genuflect, but instead I step out of line to let the next person enjoy Mr. Lee. My documents are back in their folder, along with the paper for my records, slipped in with great stealth. Take the money and run.

 

It's no wonder I’m exhausted when I get back from the bank. 

 

Saturday. Morning. Coffee. 

My groceries have just been delivered to my door by Instacart. Yesterday I got a delivery from the dispensary. In the afternoon I had a video session with my therapist while someone else cleaned my house and made my bed. Packages come from amazon with regularity. Are we living the Jetson’s life? Why am I still so tired? Some of these innovations are a response to COVID—why go to the doctor’s office to sit in a waiting room if you don’t have to—or at least COVID has accelerated these things from being part of daily life. Some people will be working from home for the foreseeable future. When we have staff meetings at work, usually an uncomfortable affair in the clinic with all of us crammed into chairs and no one wanting to be there, now we are all on screens, and 80% of the folks are at home with kids and dogs and cats and their whole lives in the background. My writing group now meets weekly on zoom. My writing classes are on zoom. I just started back taking yoga classes, and these are on zoom too, which is a blessing because I can shut my camera off so they don’t have to see my fat carcass huffing and puffing through poses. Is this the Big Brother world? It is chilling to me how very accurate that simple little science fiction novel has proven to be, 1984 may have taken a bit longer, but it is here—the truth is an elastic thing subject to “alternate facts”, whole populations are herded into testing and vaccinations, our lives are spent largely on camera (mostly voluntary) as we take selfies and have our phones track us with GPS. This is too much for 8am. I’m going to have coffee and maybe go for a walk. 

 

By 11 I am back from my three loops around the park. It is hot, but I am not complaining. The sun feels good. Lots of people in the park, drowsing under trees, chatting on benches, kids play soccer, an ice cream truck drives by, a perfect day. We seem to be in a transition phase for mask wearing. About 50/50. I decide on a compromise; I wear mine like a chin strap, and if the people approaching are wearing, I’ll slip mine over my face, if not, then not. It seems odd when I’m not covered. This will be another legacy of COVID, this sense of unease. 

 

Soon I’ll drag myself up to shower and shave and put on a clean shirt to meet David at the Abbey for lunch. But for a few blissful minutes, nothing. 

 

Lunch at the Abbey, the old neighborhood standby, where everyone knows us too well. Always good. The place was half dead. It’s too hot to eat, someone said, or people are maybe at the beach. It is hot, but beautiful, with a good breeze. Later on Mass Ave, we sit on a park bench while David eats an ice cream, his friend Candy walks by and we end up chatting. Candy, as you will find out within five minutes of talking to her, and every five minutes after that, wrote a book about ten years ago on how the Beatles impacted her generation (of mostly white, very middle class, liberal education, etc), but to her, their music cut deeper than surface level, it became, as she says, her epistemology, the very lens through which she views all things, again her words, and it all started a couple years before, in 1962, when she was 9, when she lost a baton down a sewer grate and took it as a sign that she was not meant for a life like her friend Michelle Kermit, who aspired to be what her mother wanted her to be, a good girl who could sing and do a little ballet and hopefully be attractive and get married to a good boy with a future and move out of Queens and settle in suburban New Jersey to raise a few kids and maybe a dog. No, Not for Candy. Candy knew at age 9, as she studied the sun glinting off her baton down in the muck of the sewer, that life would be bigger for her. Enter the Boys. High on the heady mix of estrogen and Clearasil, Candy’s world would be blown to smithereens one night when she watched the Ed Sullivan show… and well the rest is in her book…

 

She looks a little like Larraine Newman of the original SNL, the same kind of wavy, parted in the middle, longish hair, and very skinny, angular body, but she gives off more of a Diane Keaton vibe, if that makes sense. We talked about Diane Keaton, in the conversation we had about the documentary of Woody Allen, and whether or not his movies will stand the scrutiny of current sexual allegations, if in time he will be a genius or a footnote or both, and Mia Farrow, who was so good as Rosemary (Candy remembered her from the TV series Peyton Place, said she was good in that, too) but kind of insufferable in every thing else, and how could she have ever had sex with either Frank Sinatra or Woody Allen, André Previn gets a pass, and what would a 19 year old girl ever see in a 62 year old man? Candy talks fast, and a lot. It all comes out. She got her hips done last spring, never felt better. Her ex is a schmuck. She is working on a website about the Beatles, both to promote the book, and to be a forum for other like-minded people, and to, as she says, promote higher consciousness and overall sustain evolution of the race to its more refined essence. The flower children still have so much to give the world, a truer sense of self that is more authentic in its rejection of the big lie, the American Dream. Consumerism, which her generation defied, which corrupts, which gives people a false sense of self that will never be satisfied because there will always be another shade of lipstick, a new model car, the next best thing that you will be a loser if you don’t own, is the devil. Candy lives in a two bedroom condo worth easily 850K with a cat on a tree lined side street in Cambridge, sustained by alimony payments from the shmuck, and some good investments in her portfolio. 

 

Anyway we talked for some time, until David had to pee and my phone was about to die and Candy remembered that she forgot an eye appointment because she’s started to notice a floater in her left eye that is definitely not like the aura when she’s about to get a migraine, definitely more of like a shadow in her vision, and she really should not have forgotten this appointment but the day just got away from her, she really needs to go so she can call the office to reschedule. She tells me it was nice to meet me, though this is in fact the fourth time we’ve chatted. And so we part. 

 

I think that Sleeper is still one of the funniest movies I ever saw. One of the first I remember making me laugh. 

 

Sunday. I get up early to get stuff done before it gets too hot. Coffee. Then an hour groaning and sweating on my yoga mat. Now a quick walk before I hunker in with my pile of reading. I’ll sign off here, always leave them wanting more, as they say--

 

 

JOHN

 

In the beginning, it seemed so easy. She was not a beauty. She was no longer young. Low hanging fruit ready to drop from the bough, and all I had to do was hold out my hand. Her note read simply: “Tomorrow. Please Come.” No signature. None needed. Next day, I was knocking on her father’s front door on Second Street, no invitation, no luggage, not even a toothbrush. 

 

“Come in,” the old skinflint said, almost smiling. He liked me. Perhaps I reminded him of Sarah, and happier days. When he was married to my sister, he was young, just starting out, but now he was used up, shriveled, his frail body gave off a sour piss stink unmasked by the mothballs in his watch pocket. He hadn’t an idea of what I had planned with his daughter. 

“May I spend the night?” I asked. I told him I had come to town for a visit. And that was that. My brother-in-law and his second wife welcomed me, shared their meager dinner, we sat together around the table in the stifling dining room, sweltering in our stiff collars as we chatted amiably about nothing. I did not see her, the spinster, the daughter. When I asked, her step mother said crisply that she did not deign to join the family for meals, that she ate separately, the old lady’s mouth then shut tight like purse strings. Her bosom rose and fell, a battleship prow over the crockery, while out of the corner of her eye she fixed me in the way that women have been looking at me since I was first a lad in long pants. Oh you silly old fool, I thought to myself, you don’t know what I know about you. Maybe she sensed my gaze, her hand fluttered up to her neck in a nervous, bird like display that was ludicrously dainty in a woman of her size. 

The girl was avoiding me, and I began to wonder. Where was she?

That evening, the couple and I sat in the threadbare sitting room, listening to the mantle clock tick tock impatiently, incessantly. The Mrs darned his old wool sock by dim lamp light. 

“When are you going to have the electricity installed?” I asked Andrew, not for the first time.

He just chuffed, the closest he ever got to a laugh. “Unnecessary luxury,” he said, and went back to his Providence Journal. In the darkness I watched the paleness of his face, the shadows cast by the kerosine wick glow that showed the delicacy of his skull under paper white skin.

I heard her come in through the front door, a little after 9. She did not come into the room where we sat to say goodnight, she trod heavily up the stairs to her own room. Had she changed course? Would she not stick to our purpose?  Perhaps fear had entered into her, made her pause before the fatal step. I did not know. 

 

That night, while the house was asleep, while the whole town seemed to sleep, bare feet slapped along the floor boards, a candle flickered under the door, the hinges groaned, ever so quietly, as if I dreamt the scene. She stood there. An apparition. Her breath made the flame sputter, in its feeble glow her loose hair glinted copper against the fine whiteness of a wrap she wore, clutched closed in her trembling hand.  All was still, and silent. Through the open windows, I heard the faint whinny of a restless horse, the gentle thump of overripe pears that fell to the ground down in the orchard. Not a breath of air stirred. Moonlight streaming in through the lace curtains played patterns across her face as she remained at the threshold, looking at me. 

 

 And then the robe whispered open.

 

Afterwards, her heavy breasts pressed up against my chest as we lay there sweating, listening to the quiet. She traced my lips with her finger, touched my beard. “How will you do it?” she asked suddenly, cutting the silence with a rush of words.  

I told her, again, that the less she knew, the better, that she needed to remain perfectly innocent. 

“Innocent?” she repeated, laughing, a brief flash of something almost like happiness lightened her countenance from within, and then it was gone.

Innocent, I said. 

“You will take care of it? You’ll do it?” as though she had forsaken all trust in me. 

I assured her, again. I kissed her, though her lips were fleshy and she tasted of turned milk. 

Then her eyes flickered—people would say about her, during the trial and acquittal and in the long years after, that the intensity of her gaze made them uncomfortable, they would say that she seemed distant, haughty, aloof, sly--that night, I saw in those eyes an animal, with an animal’s fear and primitive passion, I felt the heat of her, banked up from within, she had been repressed, thwarted, corseted into twisted shapes, broken like a colt, made to take the bit. Still, she wanted. She burned with want. She suffered with it, a compelling need to be free, free from the old people, free of this house with its closeness and decay. 

 

She would do as she was told. I was sure of it, that she was in my power.  In truth, she would just be trading one master for another.

 

It pleased me to muse on this, as we fell into sleep, that it was I who held the reins. It would not be very long when I would come to understand just which of us all was being brought to slaughter.

 

And she would remain innocent. 

Or at least, not guilty. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

that man’s father is my father’s son

 

 

My name is Norman Belanger. My father’s name is Norman Belanger. My grandfather’s name was also Norman Belanger. I guess that would make me “the third,” but no one has ever called me that. When I was growing up, I was always Little Norman. Dad was Big Norman. My grandfather was Pepe. Even though Pepe passed away some 20 years ago, I still feel like Little Norman sometimes.  

            

My grandfather’s funeral was during one of the worst blizzards I can remember. Absolute white out conditions. I took the train down from South Station in Boston to Providence, a 45 minute trip usually, but the snow was coming down so hard and the tracks were icing up, so we crept along, and the dark morning seemed to last all day. It gave me plenty of time to think. Mostly, I thought about how little we know about people, even people we love. I thought about memory, and how strange it can be, what you remember, what you forget. For many years, my grandparents lived in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, so most of my memories were from when I was just a kid, and these were the first I remembered, played out like a movie as I watched wind whip up snow through the window: 

 

I could even hear him. Pepe’s laugh. He laughed with his whole body. His eyes would squeeze shut, his head thrown back, hee hee hee. His laugh would make you laugh. He would laugh sometimes so hard he’d start coughing. As the train slunk along, I could almost see him, sitting at the kitchen table, his back to the pot bellied wood burning stove, a cigarette burning in one of the beanbag ashtrays that were everywhere. I remembered he had tattoos. On his left arm, a sort of lady whose ink had blurred and faded, who mesmerized me when she danced. Pepe was swarthy, and even though he was clean shaven when he kissed you hello or goodbye there was always the tickle of five o’clock shadow. He slicked his dark hair back with a comb and a dab of shiny goo. Pepe’s hands seemed large, with swollen looking knuckles and fingernails that were rough from scrubbing with Boraxo— the old fashioned can that sat on the bathroom sink, strong as a 40 mule team, it was gritty and smelled soapy, the only thing that removed grease. He’d always worked hard.

 

His joys were: playing the piano, banging out old songs (It Had to be You, Ain’t Misbehaving, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore),telling jokes, his backyard garden lush with the smell of overripe tomatoes, beer, cigarettes, and his dog. Princess, a dachshund so fat that her nipples dragged on the floor when she struggled to walk on tiny legs, she was black and brown and so, because everyone had nicknames, she was called Cucaracha (cockroach), which was shortened to Kook. We’d take trips to Dairy Queen on summer days, Princess on his lap as he drove with her head out the open window. He’d order her favorite, a vanilla chocolate swirl in a cone. She did seem to enjoy it. She also ate basically anything. Spaghetti and meatballs. Hamburgers. Meat loaf. She was not too particular. 

 

Meme, my grandmother, hardly ever sat down. She was always at the stove or percolating coffee or getting a beer for Pepe or talking to her parakeet that hung in its cage by the window. She loved the Enquirer magazine and Star, she indulged in soap operas, “bedroom stories,” she called them, and I Love Lucy. Whenever the phone rang she’d scream into it, as though to compensate for long distance. When she toasted English muffins, my favorite Thomases, I could have peanut butter and margarine, as much as I wanted, so I slathered it on thick. Pepe called her Anna: “Anna get the kid something to drink for Christ’s sake before he chokes on his food. He eats like some gypsy’s gonna steal it out his mouth” he’d laugh. She’d chilled small copper cups in the fridge, milk tasted extra good in them. There was also ice water, a former orange juice glass bottle always filled. And Naragansett in cans, for Pepe. 

 

On the occasional night when I slept there, at the house on Starr Street where my dad grew up, I’d bunk upstairs in his old room. I would find out from him later, on his first night in that room, how quiet my dad found it to live in the country. It was still quiet back when I was a little boy, still country, still dirt roads. Besides Aunt Shirley’s house which was built next door a few years before, nothing but woods and fields out there. I had a small transistor radio that I tucked under my pillow so I could listen to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, hosted by E.G. Marshall, a series of creepy Twilight Zone-like plays that guaranteed I’d be too scared to sleep. After the show there was nothing but the sound of the house sleeping, and whatever moved around at night in the woods. 

 

When I was in second grade during the February vacation, I went with my grandparents by Amtrak all the way to visit Uncle Herman and Aunt Arlene down in Florida. An adventure. The trip would take a total of 24 hours, which meant we got to sleep on the train! Once the novelty of watching the scenery of people’s backyards wore off, I explored the huge train. Car after car careened forward--each one full of people dozing, quietly chatting, smoking--between each car, doors slid open to a connecting corridor that rattled and shook, you could feel the sway of the track as we sped south, and another door slid open—and there was the Game Room and Lounge. Here, people played card games, sipped beverages, and there was a lady who ran Bingo who quickly became my new best friend, especially when I discovered that prizes were to be had, like a whole bag bursting with Florida oranges! Imagine! At the end of the train, the sedate dining car with its white tablecloths and real silverware, and glasses filled, the water danced with the motion of the ride. For lunch, they had pretty much anything you could want—hamburgers, chicken fingers, even ice cream. Waiters wore white jackets and called you Sir, or Ma’am, or in my case, the young gentleman, as in “Would the young gentleman like ketchup for his French fries?” Yes, the young gentleman would. After lunch, I made a bee line back to the Game Room. I had my eye on those oranges. My grandparents said they’d go ahead to our seats so they could have a nap, and I could join them after. “You think he’ll be Ok?” Meme had asked, but Pepe laughed and said “Oh leave the kid alone. Let him make friends.” In no time I was the lady’s assistant, handing out Bingo cards and the coveted mesh bags of navel fruit to the lucky winners. So engrossed was I in the high stakes game, I didn’t notice that afternoon had turned to evening, I didn’t even register when Meme and Pepe walked by on their way back to the dining car for dinner, and even when they told me to wrap it up and meet them at the table, I was in my own little world. Eventually, games were over. The lady, probably to get me out of her hair, but at the time I naturally assumed was in payment for my day’s efforts, gave me TWO bags of oranges which I carried like trophies back to where I assumed Meme and Pepe were seated in the front of the train. I remembered our car was the third one up after the Lounge. The swaying connector was freezing cold, and the movement of the accordian walls scared me, so I went through as quickly as I could through the sliding doors even though it was a challenge pushing the button while hoisting my loot. I made it through the now darkened cars, to the third, past people who read or snoozed under little overhead lights, to our seats—no Meme. No Pepe. Maybe they were in the bathroom. The men’s room, with its row of sinks and mirrors, was pretty empty except for a guy shaving, a cigarette dangling from his lip. “Pepe?” I called out. Nothing. Quick to tears, I asked a nice older lady to go into the women’s room and ask for Meme. She ended up getting a porter, a huge black gentleman in a blue uniform who asked in a soft Southern accent, “Now what seems to be the trouble, young sir?” I bawled and told him my grandparents must have jumped off the train. “Jumped off the train, you say? Well now, that’s pretty serious.” I agreed. “Maybe we can just have a look around, see if they’re not somewhere on board.” He gently took the oranges from my arms, put them on my seat, and even agreed when I insisted he hold my hand while we made our way through the train—I wasn’t about to let anyone else get away from me. Of course, there they were in the dining car, sitting at the table having dinner, wondering why the heck I was crying and why was I clinging onto the porter. “You the folks who jumped off the train?” the man asked. Oh how Pepe laughed. 

 

The next morning, when I woke up with my head nestled on my prize of oranges, out the window the scene had magically transformed. Instead of winter, green foliage--and palm trees! The sun was shining. By noon we were gliding into the station at Fort Lauderdale. Uncle Herman, with his two mutt dogs Bud and Busch (named after his favorite beers) greeted us. Uncle Herman was famous in my eyes for two reasons: one year during a summer visit back to Rhode Island, he had made a chain out of all the beer tabs from all the cans he had drunk, big enough that it completely encircled my Aunt Shirley’s ranch house; and during that same visit I discovered his teeth on the bathroom sink, which scared me to death because I had no idea people’s teeth came out except in cartoons. His wife, Aunt Arlene, was a funny lady who worked at the post office, who smoked constantly (they all did, except Meme). Arlene enjoyed her beer, nearly  as well as Herman did. Her steel gray hair was tightly permmed and she wore those cat’s eye glasses with tiny rhinestones in them. The two of them fought and laughed and swore and smoked the whole time. 

 

Florida was amazing. You could have grapefruit growing in your own backyard year round. Little lizards called chameleons skittered everywhere. They changed colors, I was told, though I never really saw one do it. Palm trees lined the streets. It was always hot enough, even in mid-February, to wear shorts all the time. We were shown the sites. At the Parrott Jungle, they would take your picture with huge taloned birds sitting on your outstretched arms (this was terrifying), and at Busch Gardens we saw gargantuan lazy snakes and sleeping alligators in a swamp. Herman and Arlene’s kids had nicknames, of course. Boobette, Poopsie, Pumpkin. Pumpkin’s real name was Patty, she was a big woman who was very nice, she drove us around the whole time we were in Florida, in Aunt Arlene’s huge white Cadillac. (Patty’s daughter Dawn, a few years younger than I am, is still my friend on Facebook today, though the only time we ever met was during that week long vacation. Poopsie, then a long haired kid who rode a noisy motorcycle, had an unfortunate facial twitch whenever he spoke; he would later become a rabid Trump supporter and homophobe, so our connection on social media would be short lived.) But back then, we all had a fun time. I remember sitting out on the sunny patio where I wrote out postcards to people back home, like Ruth the secretary at school, telling them how warm it was and how you could smell the lemons on the trees. We made a special trip to Aunt Arlene’s post office to mail them. 

 

Pepe loved Florida. Meme less so. But when she talked about going down there for good, when she said “Miami,” I thought she was saying “My Ami,” and assumed she, like everyone else it seemed, just wanted to live in sunshine. Florida had glamor, besides the alligators and snakes, Uncle Herman still talked of the time he had worked maintenance at the super swanky Fountain Blue hotel, and heard Peggy Lee rehearsing. Or Pinky Lee. He didn’t really enunciate very well. The allurements were hard to resist, and New England winters can be brutal. Eventually, they would move down there. I would see them on their annual summer visits, but not as often after I had moved to Boston for school. I was at the age when I was too busy to sit around talking to the old people, too old to be Little Norman. 

 

One of the last times I saw Pepe for a full conversation- just the two of us- was during one of these summers. He was still the same, cracking jokes about some dumb son of a bitch, still laughing, still filling the ashtrays with cigarette after cigarette. I was in my 20’s then, worldly enough to see that his dark hair was touched up with something more than Brillcream, haughty enough at my jaded age to be embarrassed by his liberal use of choice words not then politically correct. Some guy at work was a bastard and a Spic. Another was a nigger, a goddamned cocksucker.  Those words hung in the smoke haze. I didn’t say a thing, even while something turned inside my stomach. I would come to understand he was a product of another time, but then—I just sat there, silently mortified, maybe even a little angry at the old man. He lit another Lucky, reached into his pocket and said, “I feel bad, I never gave you nothing. I want you to have this.” He handed me a ring. It was easily the ugliest piece of jewelry I have ever seen. A golf ball sized bit of glass, a hunk of gold metal. It would never have fit me, but I promised I would have it sized. I never did. The look on his face beaming with pride, the gesture, was enough to shame me out of my embarrassment, and I felt like the heel I was. When I kissed him good bye, his cheek was rough like I remembered it. 

 

The day of his funeral, on the train ride to Providence, I thought about all of that, the mixed feelings, and the weight of guilt. I thought about how you never really know everything about anybody. Like Citizen Kane, you only know the little bit that you know, or that you think you know. We pulled into the station. It was nothing like Fort Lauderdale had been all those years ago. It was cold, and snowing, and very much winter. I made my way through the nearly deserted depot, feeling heavy and sad. Outside, the storm was still full force. The wind blew the snow sideways into huge drifts. There was one cab. Inside, it smelled like Mac Donald’s, but it was warm. The driver, a chubby guy with a wispy beard had the radio blasting 70’s rock, so I had to almost yell when I gave him the directions to the funeral parlor. “Who died?” he asked. When I told him it was my grandfather, he lowered the sound, said “Sorry, man.” Driving conditions were terrible. We inched along, nothing visible through the windshield. The cab swerved, then righted again. All you could hear were the wipers’ futile swooshing against icy glass, freezing rain pelting the roof, and probably my heartbeat pounding every time the tires lost traction. We made it somehow. The driver wouldn’t take the few bucks I offered for a tip. “My condolences,” he said. “Sorry for your loss.”

 

I had so overcompensated for the storm, leaving Boston just after dawn, that even with all the delays I was the first one to arrive. The funeral director greeted me.  He took my heavy coat and invited me into the wake room to warm up. A sign outside read: Funeral Services for Norman Belanger. Unsettling to see your own name like that, like reading your own grave, and so the chill stayed in my bones despite the heat that clanged through the old radiators. And there I was, just me, alone in a room full of empty folding chairs, and my grandfather in a box. He was wearing a very loud, very plaid sports coat, a fat knotted tie and a little hanky peeking out of his breast pocket. His hair, as black as ever, was slicked. It was him. Even through the makeup his skin looked tanned. But most significantly, he seemed to be smiling. He looked like he just dozed off after telling the one about the Pollock idiot hockey player who drowned during spring training. I kneeled on the little upholstered kneeler, made the perfunctory sign of the cross and muttered one of the two prayers I still remembered by rote, though the words felt meaningless. When I kissed his cold forehead I asked him to forgive me. Then I sat in one of the awful chairs, looked at the wet heavy boots on my feet, and waited. It seemed like forever. A clock chimed somewhere. Outside it was still coming down, muffling out everything else, burying the whole world under snow.

 

The front door banged open, letting in a screaming blast of frigid air that made me shiver. I heard the stamping of boots, the shaking of snow off coats, I heard the low voices people use in funeral homes, of sympathies being offered and accepted. I heard the director say to one of the assistants, “This is the daughter, would you please show her into the wake room?” I stood up, straightened my tie, got ready to greet my Aunt Shirley, though I had heard she was not planning to come, she was to stay with Meme who had recently suffered from another stroke. Maybe she changed her mind, I thought. But the woman who came into the room was someone I had never seen before. It was not my aunt. At least, she was not Shirley. “Thank you for coming,” she said, “My name is Norma.”  She took my hand, and when I told her who I was she smiled and said “Little Norman’s son?” Her eyes were dark, her hair too. She introduced me to two young men I didn’t know, my cousins. People started to arrive then, so there was no time to say anything more. 

 

No receiving line, or any formality like that. Folks came in, they stopped to say hello, they commented on the blizzard, the driving conditions, they said sorry for your loss, they kneeled a while before the coffin, said whatever prayers they knew, and sat down. My sister, after being introduced to Norma and our cousins, sat next to me, her raised eyebrow registered her surprise at finally meeting the secret aunt. Somehow, Michelle knew more of the story than I did, she has a knack for this kind of thing. “Good thing Meme and Shirley didn’t have to see this,” she said quietly, noting that Norma had assumed the role of bereaved child, which she had every right to do—her father had died, too. My dad came in, with Niki, and Becka, the poor kid was wailing as much out of fear as grief, she took the extra tissues I had brought so she could dry her tears and wipe her nose but still kept sobbing during the brief prayer led by the priest, and all the way to the chapel where we said our last goodbyes. I don’t think Norma ever came over to us the rest of the day, she kept a distance, and I certainly wasn’t going to point her out to my dad who had his own grief. 

 

At Aunt Shirley’s, where we went after for coffee, Meme sat in a recliner chair under a crocheted afghan. Her speech was slurred, and her mouth was twisted, and she seemed glazed over as people came up to offer their comfort. But she smiled (at least, I think she smiled) when I sat next to her on the foot stool, one thin arm motioned for me to move the stack of Enquirers so I could be more comfortable. What questions I might have asked her. What things she might have been able to tell me. But we both sat there, looking at the weather. Every time someone came in the front door, letting in the cold and the snow, she made a high-pitched groan and her good hand clutched mine. Through the picture window, the yard was white, with waist high drifts. She trembled. “I never… liked living…in Florida,” she said slowly, “but.. this.. is… for the birds.” 

 

On the way home back to Boston, after my grandfather’s burial, I thought about my place in the story. Little Norman. That day, I was 35 years old, not half as world wise as I had been in my 20’s, having since made my own life, full of messes and mistakes, and successes too. I more fully understood, at least I thought I did then, how little we know about anything. 

 

Twenty years later, I am now at the age of 55, and I know one thing for sure. 

I don’t know a god damned thing. 

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 Reflections in the Covid Age

 

“Get out of the house,” my nurse practitioner/psychopharm/therapist suggests. “Get some exercise, fresh air. Take nice deep beaths, heal those lungs.” We’ve been talking about how low I still feel, weeks into my recovery, still physically weak and emotionally depressed, but even these words are inadequate in describing how I feel: it’s more like a deep cold fear I can’t shake, and I’m too exhausted to try. I know his advice is good advice. I know I should get off the couch, maybe take a shower, brush my teeth. But I don’t have the energy. 

 

I started to get sick just before Christmas. The runny nose and annoying congestion in my sinus and in my chest just kept getting worse, and that pesky cough wouldn’t go away. Christmas day started dark, gray, dreary with rain. As soon as I woke up, the pounding headache behind my eyes made me want to go back to bed. Not only was I exhausted, even after 12+ hours dead asleep, but I had such a leaden feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, like an icy finger poking around my insides, a nettling anxiety that told me something was very, very off. I had sweats and wracking chills. No appetite. Dull metallic taste at the back of my throat. All I could do was chug Gatorade, huddle up on the couch with reruns, and sleep away whole days. I lost touch, in those dead days between Christmas and the new year. Isolation took a toll. Family and friends kept in touch. Every day there were calls and texts and check-ins, people sent soup and flowers and cards and groceries. But I was alone in that existential way that we are all alone sometimes, detached, adrift, lonely. Social media and the news were too much. I didn’t want to know about the rising death toll. Someone called to let me know Dawn Wells, Maryanne from Gilligan’s Island, had died from complications of the virus, and I think I grieved for two days as if I knew her. You get a little silly, after a while. It fucks with your head. I cried watching Bob’s Burgers. Whenever I coughed and I couldn’t quite catch my breath, that chill fear grew in my root chakra. People told me to rest, hydrate. Check your temperature every hour, and your O2 saturation too. Make sure you eat nutritious food. Listen to music. Pray. 

 

Day by day, I got a little better. One day, I didn’t fall asleep on the couch after my tea and soft-boiled egg. I felt hungry again. Employee health called me, and despite never actually being examined by a medical professional, never being offered an aspirin or cough syrup, never having someone listen to my junked up lungs, I was cleared to return to work. “Ten days after symptom onset, given an unremarkable course, you’re considered non-infectious,” the doctor seemed to be reading from a decision tree. Just like that. I took this week off to use up vacation time, so I’d be able to recover a bit longer at home. 

 

My first walk, the first time I left the house-- in about two weeks, maybe, I lost count—I felt fragile, like a baby hatchling, awkwardly circling the park, blinking in the bright winter sunlight. I didn’t feel like putting on clean clothes. I wore the yoga pants I’d been wearing to bed all week (I haven’t done yoga in years) and an oversized t-shirt, a jacket zipped up to my chin, and a hat screwed onto my disheveled hair. The air did feel good when I took a few renegade breaths without my mask on, the cold wind on my bare skin. My chest still hurt if I breathed too deeply. I slipped my mask back on. Most people in the Commons wear face coverings, except for two notable exceptions—one young lady who’s all eyebrows and door knocker earrings talking very loudly on her phone, and a twenty-something jogger who likely believe he’s far too fit and far too young to have to worry about a virus that just kills boomers. I understand how they feel, I was young once too. I had my share of cavalier moments. And I understand that some of the feelings, the frustration and even anger I feel now are echoes of the last time I was given a life-changing diagnosis, during another pandemic when too many people died because of the government’s inability and/or unwillingness to respond effectually. I’ve felt this fear before, the fragility. But that’s all fodder for my next session in therapy. There’s plenty today to worry about without looking too deeply into the past. I finished my walk, feeling as tired as if I’d run three miles. 

 

People called to ask how I’m feeling. I don’t know what to say. Again, words aren’t able to contain the shapeless mix of bodily and psychological diminishment that seems to creep in every evening around dusk, like I’ve aged a decade since noon. Ironically, I’ve been talking for a while about being more mindful, and now I’m literally weighing every breath. 

 

Yesterday, I made it to the grocery store, to buy food I didn’t feel like eating, but there was something comforting about the normalcy of the activity. Even waiting in the long line was OK. I had shaved, and showered, and even washed my hair. My clothes were relatively laundered. I was part of the herd again, listlessly gliding my shopping cart, half looking at produced piled high and gleaming under too bright lights. Later, on my walk, I left my phone at home, still media fasting. I completed two loops around the park, a success I planned to celebrate with hot tea and maybe a cookie. I was able to see the sun in the bare tree limbs, the pale blue sky, fat squirrels running along brown grass. My therapist has suggested a gratitude list, and whenever I think of it, I make mental notes: sun, sky, squirrels, tea, cookie. I think about the people in my life, who all care about me. I think about Dawn Wells. And when I get home to put on the kettle for my tea, I’m feeling good as I reach for my phone. It’s blowing up. The rest of the day a blur of CNN and MSNBC and twitter and facebook. Heartsick. But for the first time in a while, my world expanded beyond my daily, hourly needs. 

 

All I could do was breathe, and let it go.