Implosion

by Elizabeth W. Garber

  “Oh yes, I’ve just begun to learn about wine.”

  “Okay, then. Wood, get out a bottle of the 1961 Château Cantenac-Brown Merlot.” He explained it was a Bordeaux in the Margaux family, which we drank for the best occasions, but he wanted something more affordable for a good luncheon wine. Chuck nodded with interest as our dad took him on a tour of the house. I carved slices of lamb, leaving a crackle of garlic and rosemary on the thin edge of fat. I set the table and added a dish of our mother’s homemade mayonnaise and slices of whole wheat bread she’d baked that morning before class.

  Over lunch Chuck turned to the boys. “What are you interested in?” Dad listened quietly as Hubbard and Woodie, at age ten and thirteen, told him about their car collection they arranged in an old glass case.

  “Are they Matchbox cars?

  “No,” Hubbard explained, “No, they are Corgi cars, which are bigger, three or four inches long instead of two.” He explained how they saved up money every year for when we went to Canada on a day trip from our Grandmother’s farm outside of Buffalo.

  Wood explained, “We buy one Corgi each. Sometimes our dad gets some bigger scale cars. I’ll show you.”

  Chuck stood in Wood’s room next to the case as the boys pointed out the Duisenberg, the Model T, and the Woody Ford.

  Hubbard pointed proudly. “Our dad used to race these cars, an XK 140 Jag and Bugatti.” Amazingly, our father didn’t take over the story. There was something in Chuck’s quiet intelligence and attention that allowed us all to shine.

  I showed him my scrapbook of our trip to Mexico the previous summer. I pointed out a photograph of our family and our friends, nine of us, standing in front of a motor home with an orange stripe. I unfolded a map of Mexico and traced our route from Texas to Mexico City east to the Yucatan, and then west to Oaxaca on the Pacific Coast, and then back to Ohio. Six weeks on the road.

  Chuck turned the pages. “You’ve done a great job combining your journal pages with photographs and postcards.”

  I blushed. “I just have a Brownie box camera.”

  He looked carefully at my black and white photographs of the new modern Museum of Anthropology and Pre-Columbian ruins. “You did well.” I beamed.

  He asked, “What ruins did you go to?”

  I pointed to them on the map: Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, Uxmal. “And these were our favorites, Palenque and Monte Alban.”

  Chuck commented, “Isn’t it interesting how early and late Mayan architecture varies so much. The intimate little palaces at Palenque are so different from the vast complexes further out on the Yucatan.”

  Dad nodded, “They’ve both inspired me.” They walked away talking.

  My brothers and I stared after him, amazed. Was there anything he didn’t know about? Years later, when I was exasperated, I asked him point blank, “How do you know everything?” He smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “I read The Whole Earth Catalogue, every page, every edition.” In no way did his answer diminish my awe of his ability to converse at depth on any topic.

  By the time he left, Jo still wasn’t home from class, but my brothers and I clustered around him like he was a rock star. Wood asked, “Why do you have poles on the roof?

  “I bought a fifteen foot-diameter canvas teepee in Eden Park at the Arts Fair. Two brothers harvested lodge pole pines in Colorado. Now they’re going to Stephen Gaskin’s Farm in Tennessee.”

  Wood and I looked at each other. “Wow.” We read about how hippies from The Farm helped people on bad acid trips at Woodstock.

  Dad clapped him on the back. “We’ll have to have you out for dinner soon. We’ll break open a true Chateau Margaux for you next time.” We all wanted him to come back. We wanted to bask in his thoughtful attention.

  We had no idea that this lunch we’d thrown together with leftovers had been the finest meal he’d ever had. That night he’d eat his usual dinner: an egg, tomato, and lettuce sandwich for $1.75 at the Tick Tock Shop Diner on McMillian Street, next to the university. He was as captivated by us as we were with him.

  That fall, after I turned sixteen and got my license, I drove our VW bus into the city with my brother Wood to visit Chuck. He told us to meet him at The Falafel Shop on Calhoun Street, the cool hippie area overlooking the University. We had stared out the window of Dad’s car when he took us into town a few times to show us Sander Hall under construction, but he never let us out of the car up here. Now we were on our own. After careful parallel parking, my brother and I got out of the car and stared. Up and down the street were people with long hair and bellbottoms, just like the Woodstock movie. We felt awkward, so lame, two suburban kids surrounded by hippies wearing leather fringed vests, moccasins, even ripped fur coats and leather hats. Posters to concerts plastered brick walls and telephone poles. “Kill Pigs” was spray-painted on some walls. We passed head shops with bongs and posters and strobe lights flashing, and creepy bars with open doors into dark rooms smelling of smoke and beer. We were relieved to see Chuck waiting for us at a table with chairs on the sidewalk. He looked cool here, like he fit in, but welcoming, familiar and waiting for us, like we were special.

  “I ordered us three falafel specials in pita bread, with terrific garlicky cucumber tzatziki and Greek salad with extra feta and olives.”

  We stared at him. We hadn’t heard of any of those things before. We sat and watched, nervously tucking our long bangs behind our ears. Hippies were everywhere, sitting on steps and leaning against doorways, laughing and talking loudly in a language we didn’t know. “Man, that’s so groovy!” “Bummer!” Groups of crew-cut college kids walked by, hooting at girls in very short dresses with lace-up leather boots or ankle-length granny dresses. I watched the girls carefully to see if they wore a bra or not. I’d tried going without a bra under a heavy sweater. I was so skinny and flat-chested that no one would notice except me. I felt naked and daring. I always wore a bra when I went to gym because we had to put on thin white blouses and red shorts. I didn’t want to get sent home from school for “indecent exposure,” like the wild-looking hippie girl who transferred to our school. We’d heard she didn’t even wear underpants under her short dresses!

  As I ate my pita sandwich, we watched Sander Hall under construction down the hill, a block behind a red brick church with two spires. There was a huge crane on the dorm roof. It was about fifteen stories so far, towering over everything around us where nothing was over four stories. I explained to Chuck how the forms were bolted into position and concrete was poured around a steel structure one floor at a time. The three of us stabbed at the bowl of salad, grabbing bites of feta and black olives. A friend of Chuck’s with greasy long hair pulled up a chair. He lived down the hall from Chuck’s room.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “My dad is the architect of that dorm.”

  “You’re kidding! That’s terrible, man. People hate it!” I was shocked. “Why is it terrible?”

  “Can’t you see? It’s like a big prison. The University is going to force all the students to live in those concrete cells.”

  I glanced at Chuck for help.

  He explained in his level, calm voice. “Students want to live off campus and hang out with their friends on the street.” He gestured around him. “They don’t want to be required to live in a dorm, let alone in a skyscraper.”

  His friend was getting amped up; his eyes looked glazed and out of focus.

  “That dorm is The Machine! It’s Big Brother hanging over us, a prison sentence waiting for us.”

  Chuck explained that it was going to have a dining hall where three thousand students would have to eat together, three meals a day.

  Wood nodded. “That’s how many people live in our town. Breakfast with everybody in Glendale. Shit, that’s a lot of people.”

  I glanced at Wood, startled by his swearing.

  Chuck’s strange friend continued, his voice eerie and bizarre, “And there are going to be fires, man. People are going to die up there!”

 
; Chuck shook his head. “People are so afraid of fire because of that fire up at Ohio State when those girls died. It’s in the papers all the time.”

  I looked horrified. “It’s a concrete building. How will it catch fire?” I spoke with authority, “My dad is making it really, really safe.” I felt protective about Woodie and his design.

  His friend stood up abruptly. “Catch you later!” He nodded to us. “Sorry about your old man. Gotta go.”

  As he wandered off, Chuck explained he was a pharmacy student and cooking up drugs in his room. Wood nodded like he understood, like this was cool.

  But I was shocked and whispered, “He’s making drugs? They’re illegal!”

  Chuck smiled and nodded, taking a pretend toke on a joint, sucking in air, and he spoke holding his breath, “Yup, they’re all illegal.” Wood laughed but I couldn’t. All this started to scare me. Distracted by some guys walking by with ripped jeans showing their butts, I looked away immediately, embarrassed.

  Chuck changed the subject. “Want to see where I live?”

  “Yes.” We both stood up, a little nervous about seeing how a real hippie lived. It seemed impossible that Chuck was only four years older than I was. We followed him down an alley to climb rickety wooden back steps up to the fourth floor where we faced a line of windows.

  Chuck paused, out of breath. “It’s so weird. People are afraid of fire in Sander, when we all live in real firetraps!’ He laughed. “If this went up in flames, we wouldn’t have a chance!”

  He yanked open a window and blocked it open with a ruler. “Climb in! Welcome to my palace!” He dived in headfirst, stood up and held back the curtains for us. I put in one foot first gingerly, trying not to get peeling paint from the window frame all over my favorite pants and white sweater.

  The little room was dominated by a mattress on the floor, an Indian print bedspread, and books lined up in wooden packing crates. I looked at a detailed poster on the wall of buildings in a desert. Chuck explained, “It’s Arcosanti. A visionary new city in Arizona. I have to ask your dad what he thinks of Paolo Solari’s work.”

  We looked around to figure out where to sit, and Chuck gestured us all to sit on his bed. He explained, “It’s a sleeping room. A deal for $25 a month. All these buildings are full of them. They divided up apartments. We share a bathroom down the hall.” He showed us his hot plate for making tea and heating up soup. He had a plate, bowl, mug and a spoon.

  I wondered what would we talk about. “So what do you and our mom do?”

  He switched his voice to a professional tone, “Every Tuesday she meets with a group of rabbis and bishops about the volunteer organization she started. You know, The Citizens Committee on Justice and Corrections. Right?”

  We shrugged. She told us this stuff she was doing, but we really didn’t get it.

  “Jo started stopping at my desk. She told me how she was attempting to address some of the worst conditions of incarceration in the country. Her intention is to close the Cincinnati Workhouse. Is that righteous, or what?” We nodded. Chuck could slip from hippie talk to official language so easily.

  He continued, “I’ve met lots of counterculture activists at protest rallies against the war, but she’s the first ‘mainstream’ activist I’ve met. Do you have any idea how awesome your mom is?” We looked at each other and shook our heads. She was our mom. I had to give her advice on what to wear and not to wear. She was really insecure.

  He spoke with respect. “She’s educated, articulate, attractive, obviously connected, and trying to effect real change. A far cry from the hippies I normally hang with. And she has a plan.”

  He launched into a story. “One day Jo asked if I could do some typing for her. She had a letter she needed to send, asking the Mayor of Cincinnati for his intervention in some matter. She handed me her hand-written draft, and I was introduced to... dyslexia.” He smiled and shook his head.

  Wood nodded. “She can’t spell.”

  I added, “Her handwriting is awful.”

  Chuck laughed, “I tried to make sense of her letter, but finally I asked her to come and sit with me: ‘Maybe we can do this better together. Jo, I’m not really clear what it is you’re trying to say to Mr. Gradison.’ I put a fresh sheet of letterhead into the typewriter, and said, ‘So what is it that you are trying to say?’ She told me, and I listened and typed. Her thought structure was clear. Her request was simple and direct. The letter was half its previous length. I whipped out the letter and she read it. Her eyebrows went up slightly, a little smile passed across her face, and she said, ‘Where’s a pen?’”

  He grinned. “We’ve been doing this together ever since!

  “So, you guys, I’m your mom’s secretary.”

  I stared at him, amazed. I thought just dads had secretaries, women in high heels with red lipstick, like Woodie’s.

  Listening to Chuck’s story, I thought of my mother growing up thinking she was dumb because she struggled to read, barely passing her college classes when she first tried, yet here she was, fearless and taking action. In school I was one of the smart kids, and sometimes I felt embarrassed when my mother stumbled, mispronouncing words. But I didn’t speak up like her. I was too shy and scared to ask questions. She was so much braver than I was.

  Before Wood and I left, I tiptoed down the hall to the shared bathroom. Loud rock and roll from one door, loud classical from another. That must be the three ballet students. I wondered if that burnt smoky smell was marijuana. The bathroom was disgusting, everything greasy and stained, stinky pee in the toilet, and cockroaches slinking around the sink.

  After I raced back to Chuck’s room, I blurted out about the cockroaches.

  He said, “You should see the rats at night down on the street, now those are gross!” He added gently, “You two are really just babes in the woods.” His voice was kind, not like he was making fun of us, and strangely, I knew it was true.

  While I waited for Wood to return from the bathroom, I stood at the window, looking up at Sander Hall with the crane towering over it. It was huge, overpowering the brick storefronts and shops, overshadowing the church steeples. Like a big city tower plopped into a village, a grid of gaping rooms waiting for students, like a hungry ghost.

  Sander Hall, circa 1970s

  INTENSIVE CARE

  We are a landscape of all we have seen.

  —ISAMU NOGUCHI

  ONE EVENING OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK IN 1969, after the dinner I couldn’t eat, I cried out as I lay down on my bed. My father came in and lectured me. “You have no tolerance for pain. You are making a big thing out of nothing.” After he turned away impatiently, I lay on my side, eyes tearing. I tried to read Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, but I couldn’t slip into the sounds of the night on the Ngong Hills. I was caught in pain, trying to get through a long night.

  I had been determined to get over my fear of sled riding. I was sixteen, hadn’t pulled a sled over to Gunney Hill since I was a kid, but the rare powdery snow had enticed me. The Village policemen blocked off the road and set out a barrel with a fire for warming hands. I lay on my belly on the sled, my hands on the crossbows, my face just inches above the spray of snow, going fast. Sunlight glinted in the tracks worn smooth into the hill, making the track faster, slicker. I squinted. The sun and snow were dazzling. I steered around slower kids, when suddenly a train of boys holding ankles, four sleds in a row, started whipped back and forth across the hill like a snake as I slid towards them. To keep from crashing into them, I moved the bar quickly, steering sharply to my left, and plowed into a telephone pole. The sled shuddered, wood against wood, and my body was thrown forward, twisting sideways, my left hip and low back thudding against the tarred trunk. I lay there until I could breathe again, and slowly pushed myself up to stand.

  One of the boys came up. “You okay? I’m really sorry.”

  I nodded. “I’m okay. Just the breath knocked out of me.”

  I took slow steps up the hill, warmed my hands at the barre
l. I knew I couldn’t walk home. I called from a neighbor’s house, and my mother was irritated. “Are you sure you can’t walk home?” She was put out when she came to pick me up.

  I was in pain all night, and began peeing blood at dawn. A few hours later, I was hooked up to IVs in Intensive Care at Christ Hospital. My kidney was ruptured. We had to wait to see if it would stop bleeding internally. My mother drove in and out of the city to visit every day. She brought me pretty new pajamas. A cute guy, who called himself my vampire, took my blood every hour. Nurses took my bedpan and gave me shots. When I cried, they all went away so my mother could comfort me for a while, before she had to go home. I cried because I hurt, because I was scared, and because my father hadn’t come to see me.

  I cried. “Why won’t Daddy come see me?”

  She tried to soothe me. In her last years of trying to explain away his behavior, she murmured, “He can’t take it when people are sick. Some men are like that. He still loves you. He just doesn’t show it very well.”

  I held onto her hands, crying. “What would I do without you?”

  I lay awake on New Year’s Eve, the old woman in the bed beside me snoring, the nurses laughing down the hall. They’d turned off my movie halfway through and told me to go to sleep. I lay awake afraid. What if I didn’t get better? What if I needed a kidney transplant? But I was sure no one loved me enough to give me a kidney. Not my father, he was too busy and important. Maybe my mom, but I couldn’t take hers, too many people needed her. I went down the list, my brothers, my friends. No, no one. When would someone really love me? I stared at the curtains hanging around my bed. Is this how my life will be, lonely and isolated? I reread notes from my friends written with purple pens, filled with hearts and exclamation points: Love you!!! Get better soon!!!! But the notes didn’t touch the chilled emptiness I felt.