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A Pleading Green

Okay, you Greener Grass hounders, here's another installment. (You know I secretly like that you hound me, right?) 

If you've never read, but want to, the first part of the story is in my right sidebar under I Like To Write. Just be warned that it's getting long. Entirely too long.

*****

Nurses changed shifts. Dave went home to shower and came back still looking haggard, but clean. Tamara stayed, dozed on a hard plastic chair for a while and once with her upper body draped across Joshua's feet. She drank coffee from a vending machine and ate candy bars and bags of peanuts. She studied herself in the bathroom mirror and thought she looked profoundly wasted--eyes small and glassy, hair all over the place, clothes wrinkled and starting to stink.

Yet she couldn't go change into her own shorts and shirt, clean up or grab a proper meal. She was in a purgatory that, she couldn't help believing, was of her own making. She just had to endure it. Endure Dave's anger and her guilt and Joshua's comatose state. By enduring, she was, in a way, repenting. Which was the only thing she could do for Josh right then.

"Why don't you run home, see the kids," Dave suggested, pulling out a fresh copy of the Sentinel and rubbing his cleanly shaven jaw.

"Who's with them?"

"Megan."

Tamara must've slid him a questioning look, because he said, "Theresa's daughter."

"All this time?"

"She's good with them," Dave said.

Just then they heard a small rustle coming from the bed. Tamara scraped her chair up to Joshua as his head rocked, just slightly, back and forth. His eyelids peeled back and he looked straight ahead with unfocused pupils.

Dave rushed to the bed and grabbed Joshua's limp hand. "Josh, it's dad. We're here. Mom's here," he looked pointedly at Tamara as he said this. "You hit your head, but you're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay."

He had no way of knowing that, of course. But Tamara kept her mouth shut.

Joshua's eyes drifted from one side of the room to the other, then closed again.

"Shit," Tamara muttered. "Shit. Joshua?"

Nothing.

She ran out into the hallway and grabbed a nurse. The nurse listened to their recount of what had happened and nodded. "Let's hope for more and more of that," she said, but didn't offer further encouragement. She jotted something in Joshua's chart and left them again.

The room was silent. Or as silent as a pediatric ICU can be, with machines humming and people talking quietly in the hall and the far off trill of a phone.

Dave was looking at Tamara with watery eyes, his lids opened so far that the whites were visible around the entire perimeter of his irises. Like small, floating rafts, she thought.

"How could you have left for so long?"

The harsh honesty of the question made her jump. She didn't expect to be asked outright. At least not yet. It was more Dave's style to criticize around the edges of the main issue, to make it clear in small and biting ways how hurt he was.

She came back with, "How could you have forgotten about me? About you and me?" She would've done anything, in that moment, for a drink. Anything except walk out of the hospital while Joshua was in the big, white bed, his body so small and vulnerable surrounded by metal boxes and rubber tubing. "Everything became more important to you than me and us," she added. "Golf. Work. Mail. Everything."

"You do not know that," he said, pointing at her with his first two fingers stuck together. A small oddity of his.

"I felt that," she said, and her voice was hoarse with emotion. She sensed the tendons in her neck straining, the vein along her right temple bulging.

And in that short exchange they had cut the complexities and small disappointments of their relationship down to what it was. Tamara saw it as something palpable, like a small, lumpy sculpture she could hold in her hands. She had no idea, though, if it was malleable, or too set in its shape to morph into anything else.

"Do you feel this?" he asked, his gaze cutting to their son, their oldest child.

She thought of all the times she'd spent with just Joshua, while Dave worked and before Caitlyn and Eli had come along. Just the two of them trying to fill the days. Going to Gymboree and napping together on the futon in his room. 

She remembered the excitement of feeding him his first bites of liquified sweet potatoes and the hair-ripping frustration of potty training him. They'd been a team. And she'd often thought, as tedious and isolating as a lot of it was, that she should have stopped with him. Should not have gone on to have more children.

"Of course I do," she said.

He said, "Good. Because I thought maybe you were done feeling."

She had to chew her lip and clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from fighting anymore. It wasn't right. Going at it there in Joshua's room. For all they knew, he could hear.

She sat back down, laid her head on Joshua's mattress and rested that way for a long time. Finally, she sighed, stood and said, "I think I will run home and check on the kids. The car out in the lot?"

He threw the keys hard and they skittered across the white, tile floor.

She scrambled for them and, kissing Joshua's forehead, she left, thinking, please, please, please, please.

Thanksgiving 1969

This is my extended family 40 years ago. I was almost one, so probably sat off to the side in a high chair smearing mashed potatoes all over myself.

Carving the turkey is my Grandpa, John. I blogged about him once, about how he lost a finger in a lawn mower and about his stoicism and infuriating reserve. He was in the Navy during World War II, though I could never convince him to tell me stories from those days. His reticence frustrated me back then. Now I wonder if he was too traumatized to speak of it. I don't know.

When this photo was taken, he and my grandma, Ruth, to his left, owned a 9-hole golf course (hence the lawn mower incident). They lived there, in the clubhouse, occupying a few designated rooms upstairs and off the back. We took big family meals in the common dining area. And this is where the photo was shot. Oh, how I remember that golf course. Even now, the fuely smell from a fleet of golf carts takes me right back.

The auburn-haired stunner to the right is my aunt, Betsy. She's an all around lovely person with an artistic eye and a sweet soul.

I hesitated to post this picture. It's just a holiday snapshot, after all. Probably boring to most of you. But I love how it captures a family moment, a moment when the world was about to enter 1970. And how that time makes me think of so many other happy times from my very groovy childhood.

Enormity

There was a summer evening several years ago, when I was pregnant with Fruit Bat--so newly pregnant that the awful seasickness hadn't yet begun--and J. and I were at an outdoor party on a rolling estate.

I was seated at a table of attorneys. About ten of them. They spoke legal. Telling lawyerly stories I could sort of (just barely) follow. Follow, that was, until J. spewed out a latin phrase. He made everyone at the table laugh uproariously. Except me.

I sat there dumbly, the only one who didn't get the joke. I'm not sure if I've felt so stupid and out of my element since. I was just a poorly-compensated graphic designer for a stuffy inflight magazine, after all.

And now I think, but I was something. People respected me for my layouts and gave me mostly positive feedback. They gave me paychecks, too.

Being a mom is not nothing, of course. It's an enormous responsibility. An enormous privilege. 

When you stay home with your kids, though, there is no one to tell you "Hey! Sweet save on the tantrum!" or "My, what a balanced and tasty breakfast you made for the children."

My therapist, who I haven't needed to see much lately, but who I went to last week for a tune-up, strongly believes I should get a part-time job. Not the kind of job where I blog at a coffee shop, essentially alone. Or where I write my fiction and pretend it's work. Also, essentially alone. But the kind of job where I check in somewhere and interact with other adults.

I agreed with her. I explained, though, that I am giving myself until Kitty Cat is in Kindergarten (Fall of '10) to find an agent or get significantly published or pull in new blogging jobs, to really launch the writing thing, before I succumb to the call of "the job". Not that I have anything against working. I don't. 

I've just been home so long it's hard to imagine answering to a boss who isn't 4-years-old and who I can't manipulate with promises of licorice or doughnuts.

This SAHM gig makes me too hungry.

Too hungry for validation in a way I never was before. And I need to do something about that. Soon.

Detritus

A storm that wasn't dramatic so much as persistent rose up from behind the Olympic Mountains a few days ago and buffeted Seattle with its winds and rain and knocked over the two shopping carts. Their contents now lay, sodden, across the sidewalk. No one seems to care.

*****

I am tired of hearing my bloggy voice and have been having a hard time hitting that green COMPOSE button lately. What more can I say about being a stay-at-home mom who simultaneously adores her children but would like them to move out? It's the same old see-saw. Marriage, too. Up and down and sometimes round and round. So, if I'm posting more photos and fiction than usual, please know I'm looking for my voice, trying to figure out where to take this site next.

*****

I have made the monumental and expensive decision to hire an independent editor for my manuscript. I believe I've found a good one, an honest one, a thoughtful one, and I'm excited to learn what she says about the flaws in my narrative. I hope I'm up to the task of fixing them.

On the writing front, I'm also polishing up a short story I've been working on for a few months now, have passed it to a friend to critique (anyone else want a shot?) and like it quite a bit. Soon I will send it out, releasing it to anonymous slush piles and waiting for bites.

*****

Re: Knitting. I gravitate toward the yarny looping and weaving the colder it gets. It's one of the most meditative things I do. And, though partaking makes me feel about 82, it's lovely. Fruit Bat, more than anyone, is interested, asking if he can help, watching intently as the needles slip and click, often proclaiming, "Mom, you're good! You're a GOOD knitter." In reality, I'm mediocre. But I like it. And I like that he likes it.

Shhh

People are peculiar. And narcissistic.

I know this because I am a person. And a watcher. 

Though I am not the listener I strive to be. 

I see myself in conversation and I am absorbing what you're saying. But then I'm jumping in with my own thing. With my own spin.

And I think, God, just hush. Let the other person talk. Let them emote.

Part of it is a desire to keep the conversation going, the fear of the lull. Part of it is a crushing need to relate with a shared experience. And yet another part is this itch to talk about me. To validate my existence by telling you about it.

And that? I don't want. I want to be someone who makes eye contact and listens and nods and lets you dribble words until they fail you.

I think I'll be working for it until the day I die.

Weary of you

She loved her old Scrabble set. The board was sturdy. The trays wooden, like small pews. Whenever she opened the game, she ran her hands through the smooth tiles as certain people might run their hands through money: over and under, around her fingers. Sometimes she scooped up the tiles and let them fall, clicking into a slippery heap.

Now, though, all the tiles were laid out neatly, the board a vast diagram of words. She had only three letters left to play.

"Why do you make that sound?" her husband asked, looking up at her from where he sat on the couch.

"What sound?"

"That high sort of sigh. Like a whinny. Every time you think."

She laid her hand on her flannelly chest. She wore her nightgown even though it was just eight-thirty. She liked to change into it as soon as she got home from work. "Only when I play Scrabble, though, right? I don't do that when I'm thinking about other things." She imagined herself at Davis + Davis, whinnying, as Gordon put it, while she compiled quotes or made copies.

"Mostly during Scrabble. Sometimes when you sleep, too. Or balance the bank account." He thought for a moment, and then added, "When we're, you know...when I'm parking the Porsche in its garage."

She registered annoyance at another of Gordon's weird euphemisms for sex, but said, "Are you serious? Why is this the first I've heard of it?"

He shrugged, mumbled, "Seemed like a small thing. I'm really just curious if you're aware of it, is all," and reached for a handful of cashews from the side table bowl.

She said, "Small?"

"In the big scheme, yes."

She tried to concentrate on her three tiles, but could only hold her breath and try not to emit strange noises.

The faucet dripped. Her grandmother's antique mantel clock ticked. Gordon crunched his cashews.

Then there was the clatter of wooden Scrabble tiles, the soft thud of the board hitting the cushion next to Gordon, the rattle of the pews and heavy, wool-socked footfalls down the hallway. The slam of a door.

Gordon shook his head, wiped salty hands on his pants and stood, letting out a sigh of his own, though this one lower and less earnest than his wife's.

He knocked on the bathroom door. He called her name. He hated when she got like this. Things were humming along just fine. A nice Friday night with a Scrabble game, maybe a large pour of merlot later and the sports section before bed. But now. Now he'd spend his evening trying to appease her. Offering her wine. A foot massage. Specially smoothing out the Op-Ed and Cooking pages for her to peruse while they sat propped against their pillows, twin lamps throwing discs of light across their laps.

And she'd be reticent, reluctant. Making it clear she was doing him a favor by letting him wait on her.

Well, not this time.

He went to the hall closet and grabbed his heavy corduroy shirt, letting the hangers clang so she would know he meant business.

Gordon tramped three blocks to the Hot Spot, a grimy little outfit with a pool table, flashing trivia screens mounted to one end of the bar and rows of gleaming liquor bottles that, he suspected, never sat long enough to accumulate dust.

He drank two glasses of house red: a bitter, young blend of sub par grapes.

When he returned home sometime later, having lost badly at a trivia game to a couple who looked like they'd just ridden in on a truck bed filled with gasoline cans and snarly German Shepherds, he hung up his shirt and went right to the bedroom.

To his relief, she was asleep, whinnying. He turned to go into the bathroom when, in the light of the lamp she'd left on, something shiny caught his eye. He looked back at his wife. He stepped closer. He saw that her slumbering body was surrounded by right side up Scrabble tiles and that, above her head like a parenthesis, was the word, Sex. She'd taken a post-it, too, had drawn on it a long, black exclamation point and stuck it to the sheet to emphasize Sex!

He raked his hands through his hair, paced the creaky floor twice and came back to her. He plucked out the letters he needed and, across his own pillow, spelled, Weary and went to sleep on the couch.

Waxed

I make my call. Covert. Standing in the laundry room with the dryer doing its airy spin, muffling my voice.

Later that afternoon I glance over both shoulders, then hop quickly into the car. I drive south, find the building along old railroad tracks that don’t get used much anymore.

Head bowed, I stride inside and give my name.

A woman named Tara greets me. She tells me to remove my coat and lie down on a cot, face up.

I do.

She shines a hot light in my face and proceeds to slather wax over the edges of my eyebrows. She yanks hard. I grin. I love the whole process. The warm paraffin, the sting, the cool lotion they rub in afterward. 

But I feel guilty too. The shameful waste of money. The gross connotation of a richy woman with so much time on her hands she can engage in such things. What’s so wrong with tweezers, after all?

Except, with tweezers, there’s no warmed bed, no soothing music or efficient ripping out of all the little hairs I hate. There’s only me, hunched over the sink, plucking under an insufficient bulb.

So I suffer the guilt. Pay with cash. Skulk out, large sunglasses covering my reddened skin, hoping the next six weeks pass quickly so I can do it all again.

You can't tell me it isn't

Art in unexpected places. 

The wheel of a tractor. 

The way a girl's hair curls under her chin. 

How a boy looks when he, gap-toothed, laughs with abandon.

The reinvigoration of hope and how it surges through you like hot liquid. 

The sound of an acoustic guitar played well. 

The taste and waxy pull of honeycomb. 

Sun hitting the fire-y leaves of a Japanese Maple. 

Gleaming railroad tracks. 

Watching someone do what they're best at.

Art.

All of it.