by Chris Kenry
Message skipped. End of messages. To listen to your messages press one. . . .
A cold, sick feeling settled in my stomach and I sat there stupidly holding the phone. Numb.
To change your personal options, press four. To disconnect, press the star key.
I leaned back on the couch and stared up at the billowing clouds as they rolled past the skylight. The loud squawking of the phone startled me and pulled me back down to earth. I hung up the receiver absently and sat very still on the couch, too embarrassed to move. I knew I was alone but I felt I was being watched, and if I didn’t move maybe I’d become invisible. Maybe I could just squeeze myself down into the cushions of the couch and hide with all the lint and small change.
I’m not sure how much time passed. I remember sitting up and pounding the cushions with my fists, then getting up and pacing the room, alternately fuming and crying. In retrospect I think I was having a kind of breakdown, because I remember finding myself seated on the floor, staring at the wall and just groaning. I lit a cigarette and looked out the window at the trains coming and going from the station across the street.
To change your personal options, press four.
If only it was that easy, I thought, and wished I was a passenger on one of those trains, heading off into the mountains. Off to start my new life in a place where no one knew any of my dirty secrets, my failings, my flaws. A place where I could start over with a clean slate. Get my life in order. Get a career going. Get a decent place to live. Not be such a mess.
Of course I had no idea where this friendly Nirvana of high-paying, fulfilling work and beautiful apartments lay. Nor did I have any money to pay for the ticket to get there. And who’d want to take trashy Amtrak anyway? No, if I went, I’d be romantic about it and stow away. Boxcar Jack, ridin’ the rails. Boxcar Jack, the spoiled hobo, the lazy bum. Bum. I considered the word. The politically incorrect name for the homeless alcoholic. It had a quaint, almost folksy sound to it. It was a word my grandparents used when talking about politicians and deadbeat dads, and I realized, with horror, that it now applied to me. My parents weren’t talking to me because I was such a bum. My friends were talking about me for the same reason, and I was wooing a fat, middle-aged alcoholic who was more of a bum than me but who was, nevertheless, not interested in me. I lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, and exhaled with a despairing sigh worthy of the best tragedian actress. I got up and headed for the refrigerator, where I’d seen an open bottle of wine. I was starting to cry and could feel myself sliding down the slippery tube of self-pity. I gave in to it and took the bottle over to the couch, not bothering with a glass, in accordance with my bum status. I turned on the TV, figuring I felt pathetic already, so why not make it worse?
Jeannie was locked in her bottle by Major Nelson. Click. Samantha was serving martinis to Larry and Louise, while Darrin argued with Dr. Bombay in the kitchen. Click. Aunt Bea was fixing lunch for Opie. Click. A soap opera. Click. Pine-scented cleaner. Click. Truck-driving school. Click. The Home Shopping Network (where the tables have been turned and the commercial has become the entertainment). Click. A talk show. I paused in order to discern the topic of discussion or the identity of the celebrity guest, but before I could do that there were more commercials. Laundry detergent with special whiteners, low-cal frozen entrees, tampons, soft drinks, an advertisement for the programs on TV that evening, and finally back to the talk show.
This particular hostess, a former news anchor deemed too old for prime time, presided over one of the milder talk shows, which meant there were no flying chairs or bleeped-out cuss words. Of course it had its share of white trash and white-trash topics, but generally she tried to take the high road, usually at the expense of entertainment and, consequently, ratings. This was the dry toast of TV talk-show entertainment, for people who couldn’t stomach the naughty antics on the other shows, and was very popular among retirees.
“We’re back,” purred the blond, tight-eyed hostess to a din of applause, giving a smile that was about as genuine as a bowl of wax fruit. The applause subsided. “We’re back, and my guest today is nothing if not controversial. She’s a teeny, tiny little woman, but one who is, despite her stature, having an enormous impact on the moral direction of our country. She has been a nun, a teacher, a civil rights worker, an author, and most recently a syndicated radio talk-show host. This woman has dedicated her life to helping others help themselves, and I’m personally thrilled to have her here today. She has a new book out, called Sister Melanie’s Guide for the Single Mother. Love her or loathe her, please welcome Sister Melanie!"
“Oh, Christ!” I moaned. “This bitch is the last one I want to hear from now.”
I picked up the remote and pointed it like a gun at the screen. I made a shooting noise but didn’t change the channel. Something, my self-pity probably, made me hesitate. I’d never actually seen Sister Melanie, and my curiosity overrode my desire to see if Jeannie had escaped from her bottle. I took a swig of wine and sat up on the edge of the couch, staring intently at the screen. She emerged slowly, a small black woman in dark glasses and a modern version of a nun’s habit: black scarf on her head, black cardigan sweater over a white shirt buttoned to the top, gray below-the-knee skirt, black stockings, and small black flats on her feet. A large silver crucifix swung pendulously from her neck. She looked like Ray Charles in drag. The hostess approached and hugged her, and then took her by the arm and guided her down to the conversation pit. She was old, that was certain; her face was like wet leather and her hair, wisps of which were visible at the sides of her habit, was white. The applause subsided as the two sat down.
“Welcome,” said the hostess. “I’m honored to have you here today.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, her voice as smooth and authoritative as it was on the radio. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”
“Before we talk about your new book, let’s give the people some background on you. Tell us where you came from.”
She then went on to relate the familiar tale of her being raised as an orphan in a convent, her blindness occurring at an early age after an outbreak of scarlet fever. She talked about her work in the civil rights movement in the sixties, and her work in the inner-city schools of Atlanta, which led to her subsequent disillusionment with liberal politics, and led her to condemn the welfare state as the true opiate of the masses.
“Your new book,” the hostess said, holding up a copy, “Sister Melanie’s Guide for the Single Mother. I have to ask you about it.”
“I hoped you would,” Sister Melanie said slowly, patiently.
“First of all, I have to ask how can you, a nun, possibly write a guide for single mothers? I mean, obviously you’ve never been a mother yourself.”
The audience laughed nervously.
“No”—she smiled—“that’s true, I’ve not, and the book is not a parenting guide. I’m no Dr. Spock—one of him was more than enough—but I have dealt with many children in my time, and what I do know, and what I’ve noticed firsthand, is the effect of poor parenting on children. How the lack of attention or the wrong kind of attention can make life much harder for them. In this book I try to help people avoid the mistakes so many parents make.”
“But why direct it at single mothers?” the hostess asked, a look of intense interest on her face.
“Statistics,” she replied. “Statistics, confirmed by my own experience and observations, clearly show that there is an alarming number of single mothers, who need help the most. I figured I’d direct it at them as a sort of wake-up call. I wanted to help women who are obviously on the wrong track already, having children out of wedlock, usually when they’re not much more than children themselves, get back on track and fix their own lives. Only then can they make a stable environment for their own children.”
Loud applause. The hostess joined in.
“That brings up my next point. You’ve been accused of being overly harsh and rigid in your philosophy, of expecting too much, of sett
ing impossibly high standards for those who are the least likely to be able to reach them. I mean, let’s face it, single mothers have a tough time already, what with finding a job and finding an apartment and finding day care. They can use all the breaks they can get, and yet in your book you chastise them for accepting many forms of help. How do you respond to that?”
Sister Melanie smiled and gave a condescending little laugh.
“You ever do the high jump?” she asked. The hostess giggled.
“Not recently, no.”
“Well, if you do the high jump and they only set the bar, say, six inches off the ground, how do you feel when you clear it?”
“Not very excited, I guess.”
“Exactly!” She nodded. “When the bar is too low there is no sense of accomplishment when you clear it. I very much believe that people will rise to the level of the bar—will rise to the level of expectations. To the level of the challenge placed before them. Especially children. None of us is as weak as we seem. And honestly, are there any goals in this book that are impossible to achieve? I don’t think so.”
Applause.
“Okay,” the hostess continued, “you deal at length with the issue of welfare in your book in a chapter entitled ‘The Dole Is for Bananas,’ and somehow I think your views here manage to offend liberals, conservatives, just about everybody. Are you coming out in favor of the system or against it?”
“Both!” she said and smiled a broad, tight-lipped, enigmatic grin. “I am glad the system is in place, but I think the way it’s used is a problem. It’s used as a drug when it should be used as a Band-Aid. I have no problem with people using welfare to get them through a tough spot in life, but, like I say in my book, ‘Use it, then lose it, but never, never abuse it.’”
Applause and several cheers of “You go, girl!” came from the audience in response to one of her trademark slogans. As the applause quieted down she continued.
“The only problem I have with welfare is that it takes responsibility away from able-bodied people, and to me that’s just like giving them a handful of drugs. It makes them lazy. It makes them dependent instead of independent. It stunts their growth.”
“Interesting.”
“Let me tell you a story. May I?”
“Please, by all means.”
“It’s something that happened in the sixties, during the civil rights movement. I was doing some educational work in Watts and there had been some trouble the night before, some fights between whites and blacks, and it turned into a nasty riot, with tear gas, police, burning buildings. It was truly a nightmare. One of my worst memories. Well, the next day some of us nuns organized a peace march, a call to end the violence. We got community leaders and police and people from the neighborhood and together we marched up and down the streets singing. Now what I remember most was not the smell of burning tires or the eerie silence as we walked and sang, but some graffiti that was described to me by one of the children we were marching with. It had been spray-painted on a bridge that was in the process of being torn down. On one side, someone had spray-painted the word ‘decay,’ and under that was a picture of a skeleton. On the other side was a picture of a bird flying up to the sky, and underneath that was written the word ‘evolve.’ That image kept running through my head all the rest of the day, and I realized that was what it was all about—we individuals make the choice every day: evolve or decay. We could fight amongst ourselves and riot and loot and destroy our world, or we could work together to make it a better place. Decay or evolve.
“And so it goes when an individual is on welfare; that person makes a choice every day: either they use it to help themselves evolve into something better, or they abuse it and go nowhere—they decay.”
“More talk with Sister Melanie when we return.”
I muted the set and made the choice to go to the kitchen and get a wineglass. A sure sign of evolution, I thought.
Andre’s refrigerator door was covered in postcards, mostly from friends or boyfriends he’d met in exotic locales. I stood looking at them while imagining myself on some sandy beach somewhere or staying at a ritzy hotel, when my eyes fell on a card I’d sent Andre years ago. It was a postcard of a movie poster for the film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I took my cigarette from my mouth and examined it more closely: a young Paul Newman on crutches, whiskey bottle in hand, and behind him an equally juvenile Elizabeth Taylor with a pleading, exasperated expression on her face. It was a look I’d seen often on the faces of Paul and my father. I turned it over so that the picture faced the refrigerator. Then I took my wineglass and bottle and returned to the sofa. They were already talking again, so I hit the volume button.
“—feel hemmed-in or trapped by circumstances or situations, what I want to show single mothers, and anybody else, for that matter, is that it is possible to change your life. Evolve or decay, you make the choice every day.” Applause.
“One of the chapters I liked the most in your book,” said the hostess, “was the one entitled ‘Self-Delusion Is Self-Pollution.’ Can you tell us a little bit about that?”
“Well, yes, of course. This chapter really is the most important in the book because it deals with being truthful to oneself, and to my mind that’s the most important thing. No progress of any sort can be made until one is honest with oneself. In the book I make it vital that these girls start with honesty. They weren’t raped, they weren’t seduced—they made bad choices. First in sleeping with the boy before marriage, and second by not using condoms. I tell them ‘Don’t dirty yourself by claiming you’re a victim.’”
“Yes, but don’t you think that these girls are sometimes acting out of ignorance?”
“No, I honestly don’t.” Sister Melanie laughed derisively. Then her tone changed to one of impatience.
“Look here, I may be a teeny, tiny, blind nun, but I’ve seen more than most. I haven’t been teaching all these years at some Waspy East Coast finishing school. I’ve been in the ’hood. Down in the trenches. These girls aren’t stupid, they know about sex and condoms, they watch TV. They made the choice. They made the mistake. Often it’s the same mistake their mothers made: they got pregnant thinking it would give them a way out, a new life, when in fact it does give them a new life—a baby! And then their new life needs to be given over completely to motherhood, to raising and nurturing that child, and if they can’t do that, if they can’t give one hundred percent, then they need to give that baby up for adoption to a family who can. They need to stop with the self-delusion and admit the truth! The truth that maybe they can’t take care of the child. The book is for those women, too—the ones who do choose adoption, but mostly it’s for the ones who decide to keep the children. I give them lots of practical information, a guide to resources and really, a guide for living....”
They droned on, but I wasn’t paying attention. The wine had made me drowsy, and I stared vacantly up at the swirling clouds, a mantra running through my head. Self-delusion is self-pollution. Self-delusion is self-pollution. Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity. To change your personal options, press four. To change your personal options. Change your personal options. Change your personal options. Evolve. Decay. Evolve. Decay. Evolve ...
I got up and walked over to the window once more. I stood there drumming absently on the glass with my fingers like a bored animal in a cage. I then walked over to the desk and pulled a phone book and a pad of paper from one of the drawers and sat looking at them for a very long time. I flipped to the government pages and stared down at the list of numbers for social services. I picked up the phone and dialed one of the numbers.
I made a few inquiring calls and found out what I needed to do to qualify for public assistance, wrote down the information and the addresses I needed, and then folded up the paper and put it in my shirt pocket. On a fresh sheet I wrote the following:
Mr. Glory,
Our mutual friend Andre has spoken to me about how we may be of use to each other. If you are still interested please leave
a message on Andre’s phone, as I am taking all of my calls there until my own phone is connected.
Sincerely,
Jack Thompson
I folded the letter and sealed it in an envelope. I then dialed Burl’s number and left the following message:
“Burl, you big lug, or should I say big lush! It’s me, Jack. You missed a great brunch and I shouldn’t forgive you, but I’ll give you the chance to make it up to me tonight. Leave me a message at Andre’s and let me know when I can reach you. Ciao.”
I hung up the phone, turned off the TV, put my glass and ashtray in the dishwasher, and went out the door and down the elevator. When I got to the front door I looked at the directory next to the buzzers and saw that Mr. F. Glory was in unit 1C. I walked quietly back down the hallway and slid the note under his door. As I walked out of the building and back to the shuttle it was not Sister Melanie’s words that echoed in my head but Andre’s: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Desperate measures.