by Evan Dara
And so many of these signs. Even more than can be taken down.
I have never seen him – Joseph, father, husband – before. Not once, nowhere in town. Now that he is not here, I see him everywhere. I even see him where, in the few places where, that sign is not to be seen.
—And at SureAid, the pharmacy – shit that place is enormous – right on the front counter by the Tums and the key chains, I saw – I mean, I think I saw – anti-flight pills. They’re selling ’em. Mm hm, right there where you’re paying, they have a display with little flat boxes about the size of a playing card, and the boxes hold like a tinfoil slip with little see-through blisters that encase each pill. The pills are yellow and the top part of the box said something like New! Fight the Flight. And the display box said stuff like Vegan Formula and like Clinically Tested and Ayurveda and you know – I mean, you know – you see that and shit, you think Hey: there ain’t no pills gonna keep me around here—
—And the second I say it, the very second, it—
—It is gone. The word, the meme, the speckle, the me, it’s—
—As soon as I make contact, it – they – every one of them dis—
—Every one of them—
—I am the destroyer. The universal destroyer, undercutting, undermining everything I touch except my belief that I am a destroyer—
—And Hennie and Dave, next door? What – what do they think they’re …? Adding a bedroom? Are they out of their—? What do they think is going to happen around here? Why aren’t they—?
—So I’m in there, I’m in the chair, and pudgy Dr. Anderson is sitting beside me, and my jaw is hurting from all the gaping and the skin around my mouth is burning even though Dr. A has applied Novocain, and more than that, I am altogether unsure that I need the onlay he’s giving me, I haven’t had any pain at all, but he says I need it, he says it’s necessary – or that it’ll eventually be necessary, there’s filament cracking in the existing filling so we might as well replace it now, get the procedure out of the way, before even bigger problems can arise with the tooth, maybe even requiring a bridge. So OK, I buy that, get the mercury out and put in a new modern enamel, there’s that too, Dr. Anderson’s a man of ideas but he’s also friendly, so I open up and he takes a look and touches around with the wire, then needles in the Novocain and asks if it’s OK then goes off while the Chemical suffuses through. So I’m in the chair waiting, a time of waiting and wondering and a certain loneliness, but then relaxing, and then I’m waiting some more, then lots more, I must be alone now seven, ten, who knows how many minutes, going all numb and not feeling anything of my left jaw though my jaw-hinge and jaw-skin are still hurting from the gaping. And the numbing has gone to a kind of feelable buzzering, which at times grows loud because I’m in the room alone, and Cornelia, Dr. Anderson’s assistant, she comes in the room all like sheepish and, nearly trembling, nearly crying, tells me, she tells me that Dr. Anderson—
—And I—
—Never. Never have I—
—To put up with this!
—Never! I have never felt that I—
—That I should be here. That this is my—
—Not possible—
—That it’s right for me.
—That it has, that it represents, anything I want, anything I—
—Care about, the littlest bit of what I think is val—
—Or import—
—That I’m part of—
—And that no one, not one single among what: Hundreds? Thousands—?
—Can—
—Can begin to—
—Is—
—Share any—
—Is—
Most days, post-lunch is given to strategy sessions, and on one late-July Wednesday, Carol and Rick decide to start their meet – i.e., to go sit on the couch – without Ian, never the best for keeping regular hours. Both get up, reconvene two steps away on the shared horizontal.
Today’s thought?, Carol says, fingertipping away the last bit of almond biscuit. I think we should approach City Hall. Try to see if we can get access to their website, and put something up there about what we’re doing.
Hm, Rick says.
I mean, it’s obvious, says Carol.
But last time, Rick says. I mean, you said we should stay away from those guys—
Yeah, well now I think it’s a good idea. Why give it up for pride?
Carol smiles. You see?, she says. Modifying mid-flight. The best definition of intelligence is the capacity for self-correction. Or maybe not.
She smiles again. Hey – you ain’t with me for nothin’.
Just then, Ian knocks, lets himself in. Carol tells him about the still-hot water – for coffee – then notices that Ian is even less of a piece than usual. His blue shirt is half untucked and his sneaker-laces seceding; covered face-to-footwear in grime patches, he stands all skewed, under hair tentacling like a solar flare. And his ruddy complexion has further red-shifted, pushed along by a streaky abrasion above his right cheek.
Ian!, she says, and goes to him.
Ian stops, looks down, stays looking down. Carol lets go of Ian’s shoulders, goes back to the couch. Ian takes a breath, shifts in place and, still looking down, starts to talk.
Yeah, whew, you know, kinda rough coupla hours there, he says. I mean, you know, where I been staying? – up on but maybe we still keep that discreet, OK? – but it’s a nice place, you know, rooms and clean-wall space, and like this morning, outta nowhere, not even toothbrushed, cops everywhere, coming on like Star Wars attackers. Boom through the doors, through the windows, thunder up from the basement – and making big noise, pounding on doors tables anything that would sound, and using them boots throm! flam! – and clubs up, and not at all shy about showing us their real persuaders … So just like that, you know, we’re out, just like that, usually six to maybe fifteen of us visit that nice house any given evening, and now, boom, scattered. Some running. But big hearts, you know, they let us go, that big-hearted commando-suit gentry said they had other, more important things to do But if we ever find any of you ever again … Shooz …
Ian looks up, down, smiles, shakes his head. Shifts weight.
But, you know, we did our part, he says. We did. Kept the place super-clean. So many guys, unfortunates, coming through A-burg, everyone thinking they hit the jackpot. So we thought, you know, in the house where we was, we thought maybe there’d be some sort of triage-like situation working – they can’t go after everyone – so we kept that place truly clean – shoes off, surfaces respected, garbage in bags and removed daily to the dumpsters back of the park. Most everything in the house had been left – TV, the furniture, electricity on, a working fridge, framed shelf pix of smiling Uncle Sid – and we did OK by it, that’s for sure, we thought maybe they’d see it and this would help our chances, give us a leg up … Right, until the hinges flew off—
The cops called by the owners?, Ian says. I don’t know. The owners still the owners? Don’t know that either. But now there are well, a few more of us’re improvising again. And I’m perfectly content to go back where I had been …
He peers up, then looks down again. Carol, on the couch, exhales, tucks her legs under herself.
Where you’d been, she says. Where is that?
Precisely, Ian says. You got it. Colleague, you got that straight.
Ian looks up, and finally goes for hot water. He spoons instant coffee into his preferred white cup, returns to Carol and Rick, and pulls a wad of varicolored paper slips from his pants pocket.
Got nine more people, he says. Looking for – for potential work. Whole bunch of new folks interested in up-style mobility.
Carol slides on the couch towards him. Says, Ian—
And five more stores right in town – including Global Pathways Jewelry, over on Church and College. A good one, that.
He pauses, dips his eyes, waits further. Twists his neck to look out the summer window. Then turns back to Carol and Rick.
So,
we good here?, he says. ’Cause, you know, I know I’m good. I’ll be – I’ll be holding my ground. You sure can be sure about that. I got a home right here.
He looks down, takes a sip of coffee, swallows it quick. But wait, now – ho, he says. Don’t you … Shit: I ain’t moving in.
—And now it’s the state’s turn, OK?, not even the State … I mean, I work in Frida Tilling’s office in City Hall, I see what’s … And Montpelier, on Friday, the State, they flat-out turned us down for emergency status, for funding, even for an abatement of our quarterly remittances – even a temporary one … They won’t even give us a statement, some kind of something to explain to people, or console. They said they’re also under stress – what, handling the traffic, the overflow of our, of A-burg people? So OK, if that’s …then you tell the State that the State has just lost one additional taxpayer—
—And the Crandalls, up on Deforest Heights …? The people who live right next to – yeah, next to – Palmer Tarrington and his brood? I couldn’t sleep Monday morning – oh, I fell out all right, but then I woke up and couldn’t get back to – I was being all circled and circled by Should I put new flooring in the waiting room? – so I got up and decided to get myself some fresh air and took a quick little jog up around the country club. And it was like 6 a.m., morning-quiet, and I’m huffing up the hill, and I turned a corner and just hanging there in the sky, there was this helicopter lowering boxes into the Crandalls’ compound. Lots of them, one big cardboard box after another, each of them being handled by at least three men. I can’t imagine how I hadn’t heard something, incredible how I was still just gone in my thoughts, but this long rope was hanging down to behind the Crandall wall, the five-foot protection thing they have around their property, and when I ran to the other side of the Street I could see, over the top of the wall, a doorway into the house, the Crandall house, and it was open, wide open, opening into darkness, into—
—Wo. And now – rounding second, and gaining speed. And tearing at it, look his fists, his arms, look those legs pumping, head tucked in to slice the wind, running like a full-tilt madman, a pistonned machine, and look!, ha!, still working his chew. Shit, he – and the bail is – and now rounding third and go! Go!! A-Rod, go—!
—What. Is this a rumor? Do you expect me to believe this? The Government isn’t putting up barricades. Tearing up roads. What, they’re trying to keep us in here? It’s crazy. Now that’s nuts. Yes, I saw they’ve closed the Winooski River Bridge for repairs. So what. And OK, for weeks now, there’s construction on 189. The whole right side of the highways filled with work-trucks and cones. But that doesn’t – come on, that doesn’t mean—
—Sam. It was always Sam. When Ellen marbled herself with hormones it was for (the dream of) Sam. When she junkied out on zinc, same. Then he came, and Efraim took on guitar students at night, and they stopped talking about six months in Mexico, and they got rid of Roomie, the neurotic long-haired Persian, and they cranked up the Mozart, and Ellen put off lower-back surgery until He was old enough.
To sleep though the night.
To tolerate two days of mama’s absence.
And I can tell you, that back hurt.
They had come to love, she said, ordinariness. The ordinariness of opting for Shaw’s runny chèvre to help make that week’s prep-school layaway. The ordinariness of yawning. Of the ruination of Ellen’s beloved breasts. Me, too: it was gratifying to learn to enjoy paying for two boxes of popcorn at the movies. After paying – insisting, then paying – for two tickets.
Prep school had to be put off, but Edmunds Elementary had Mr. Braigan – a good string-instrument teacher – and was only a twelve-minute walk from their apartment on North Union Street. And thanks to that advantage, they had a great cover story for not having a second car. Why am I going on like this? Maybe because I don’t want to tell about the phone call. Could that be it? That I’d rather not tell about last Friday, 2:15 p.m., when a voice that took me forty seconds to recognize as Ellen’s said that Sam, now ten – amazing: Sam’s ten – and with luscious thick black hair, and freckles, and quietness, had left a short, coherent, handwritten note on the kitchen counter saying that he was—
No. That’s not it. What I’m really going on about is Please let him come back. Let him see that he need not internalize the sadness, that he is—
—Sure, no one’s buying a house. Of course they’re going to say that. It’s concrete, it’s clear, it’s cause-and-effecty, a good viral dynamo. It’s simple and Visual and memorable and tracks with other experiences, and it plays on fears and passions. And it’s true, to a point.
But it isn’t the point. The point is: no one’s buying into the myth of A-burg any more.
—Shoot, now, come on – can’t they easily find a million better things to spend that money on? Doesn’t the city see that they should deal locally – I mean, some company from New York, a consulting company, what the hell can they …? I mean, why are they giving our money to a bunch of experts in nothing – Parker Management, what do they know about …? When I heard that, when Sandra told me it, I was in The Hempest, downtown, with all the traffic on the Street and I just wanted to—
—I have run from my true self. I have betrayed my essence. I am my own pimp and whore—
—And it’s just so … I mean, like, what is my contribution? What am I doing here, what am I adding to anything, how am I contributing in any way beyond depleting resources—
—And Parthian Café? On Main, right at the juncture with University Terrace? Right by the first People’s United Bank? Parthian put chairs outside, on the sidewalk, tables and chairs, all turned towards the Street so their customers, y’know while they’re sitting there chomping their sesame bagels or stuccoing their lips with cupcake icing, so they can sit and watch all the cars flooding towards Exit 14—
—I have run from my – I have betrayed my – I am my own pimp and—
It was a difficult decision, no way to deny it. But it was a decision to which they had to rise. For their approach to Town Hall, Ian will stay away. Halting, faltering, nobly, Ian had been the one to open the subject, after unstatedness had clumsied the air. When Carol and Rick, sitting on their office’s couch, launched the necessary objections, Ian became a stone, insisting, gravely. Eyes lowered, right hand erratically tapping his leg, he noted that his presence might not work in the group’s favor. Not that he believed he would be remembered from the raid on his house – the raid hadn’t been against him, he said, but against the idea of him. But, maybe, before his eviction, someone in city administration had seen him in Waterfront Park, or elsewhere, or – and here he lowered his eyes again – maybe something in his comportment would trigger the functionaries to unfortunate reflexes. Carol replied that she would feel his presence standing with her, in front of every desk the city would fling at them.
They move on a Tuesday afternoon. Carol wears her modest gray skirt and her apricot shirt, the one with the two-bit epaulettes; Rick has put on a tie, dark and snubbed at the end. In a folder, he carries their company’s incorporation filings, notarized signatures, and proofs of their new bank account. He’s also tucked in a few flyers, who knows why.
On the streets, cars, bikes, and walkers whirl under a caressing sun. Carol thinks of cottonwoods, Rick of Brownian motion. They riffle through the drift. City Hall has a large, many- stepped, ceremonial entrance out front, a nondescript door in the back. Carol and Rick know which to choose.
Inside, they find themselves inside again. A small, gray-walled reception pen has been built just within the building’s rear door, a chapel for paying reverence to the walk-through metal detector. The space holds a table upon which bags – plastic, tote, shoulder, hand – are to be placed for opening and hand-plumbing; trays to receive coins, keys, phones, and such; a Scotched-up poster for Marketfest. And a guard, in a blue uniform.
Yes, he says.
Carol gathers herself behind a breath. Hey, she says. Well, we’re wondering if the city, or some depa
rtment here, if you have some, like, media or communications coordinator?, or something like that? We kind of think we may be doing something the township may be interested in, and—
Have to make an appointment, the guard says. He’s thirty or so, small-eyed, bulked. Main number’s 802-865-7—
OK, but, Carol says.
She takes a breath. Thank you, she then says. Will do. Thanks for your help.
She goes quiet, then looks up. Hey, do you know Francie Baumwell, in Parks and Recreation?, she says.
The guard swivels, flips through the plastic-covered pages of a notebook lying open on an adjacent table. He turns back to Carol.
She doesn’t work here any more, he says.
Carol nods. Ah, she says. Thanks again.
She starts to lead Rick outside, turns back to the guard. So do you have any idea how to contact her?, she says. Francie Baumwell? She still belong to the choir that meets Wednesdays in—?
Sorry, Ma’am, the guard says. I live in Waterbury.
Carol nods her thanks, turns for the door. Then pivots and speaks to the guard once more. Hey, how about Leslie Morton, she says. Maybe can I call up to her?
Name?, the guard says.
Morton. M, o, r—
The guard swivels to his notebook roster, drags his finger down its lined data.
She left, too, he says.
Thank you, Carol says.
Later, slugged into a booth in American Flatbread, mostly empty in prime afternoon, Carol has let her tea go cold, and Rick is tieless. Neither looks at the scurry outside. Ian picks up the slack.
And so, like, OK, he says. The conventional channels are now, like, unconventional – it’s a permanent improvisation, OK? – and, we, the best way to adapt is to admit that adaptation is no longer—
Yeah, Ian, thanks, Carol says.
You got it, Ian says. Just trying to—
Right, Carol says.
She lets go of her teacup, leans back. The thing is …, she says. You guys remember Leslie Morton?, the second person I asked for in there? The second person who the guard said had left …?