A guy from New York told a story about responding to a call about “shots fired” in an affluent neighborhood. He arrived at the address and ran up to the front porch, when all of a sudden the front door flew open and he found himself eye to eye with the gunman: an eight-year-old boy who turned and bolted up a flight of stairs, firing a shot over his shoulder as he ran. “He looked at me like my own boy does, like when I’ve caught him playing on his computer after I’ve told him to go to bed,” the cop said as he stared into the can he was rolling between his palms. He made fun of himself, cackling that he had gotten so knock-kneed, he had to hide in the bushes for twenty minutes, trying to get his shit together so he could walk back to his patrol car to radio for help.
One of the guys from Colorado gave a single nod, and in a tone barely audible over the ice maker, said, “Ya, I know that feeling.” He didn’t need to say more; we knew he was one of the first people to enter Columbine High School after a couple of students had opened fire, killing thirteen people and injuring dozens more. This guy, now sitting on a deck chair beside me, had done his job and waddled into the school, wearing a blast suit: puffy padding, a twenty-pound helmet, and other protective gear appropriate for finding and defusing bombs. We all knew what he must have seen—the media broadcasts lingered for weeks after the event—but no amount of imagination (of hearing accounts and reading reports, or seeing the kind of special effects horror that finds its way to television and movies) could capture what he must have experienced walking into Columbine, or how the images of backpacks, upended tables, chairs, books, and blood splatter may have lodged themselves deep inside his understanding of the world. It took hours to clear the building of nearly a hundred bombs—hours that must have felt like years to everyone involved, especially, maybe, the bomb squad.
No one said anything for a minute, and I felt embarrassed, complete with burning cheeks and red ears, for asking the question in such a flippant way. Sitting there, I realized I was out of my depth with these guys. I was just a state worker with nothing to talk about except maybe the day the copy machine jammed and I panicked because I had a huge meeting that required a printed agenda. More than that, I recognized that I was small and soft; I wanted to believe in people—that they were kind and good, and given the chance, everything would turn out okay—but bad things do happen, and sometimes the best you can do is swim through them, focus, and years later say, “Ya, I know that feeling,” when some smart ass asks whether you’ve ever been so scared you wanted to pee your pants.
In my first year on the job, the worst thing I ever saw was a poisoned fishpond. It was a man-made pond, smaller than a 7-Eleven parking lot, and stocked with big goldfish and koi—ornamental, expendable fish that lured hungry herons, falcons, raccoons, and other varmints from the river nearby. A drum of paint thinner had been dumped into the pond through a storm-water drain, and I ended up standing on the pond bank, arguing with a man nearly a foot and a half taller than me—a massive mountain of a man with hair bulging out from around the shoulder straps of his T-shirt—arguing that he had broken the law. He yelled that it didn’t matter; it was his pond, his fish, his property, and the state could shove off. After a few minutes, he stormed off to call his lawyer, and I stood there watching as a thousand tiny fish bobbed up to the pond surface, seeming to paw at the air with their mouths gaping and their fins slowly circling, and then one by one they listed sideways and died with their eyes wide open, staring at me like I had failed them.
I nearly cried while standing by the pond, and pouted for hours afterward, chiding myself that I should have thrown absorbent pads into the water instead of arguing. Or maybe, instead of feeling so righteous and indignant, I could have grabbed a rake and pulled some of the living fish into a pail. I swore to myself that’s what I’d do if I ever came across a dying pond again.
Over time, I realized I wasn’t necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.
There didn’t seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and “What’s the right thing to do?” wasn’t an easy question, even though I assumed the answers would get easier once I came to understand how to best wield the skinny rulebook that I packed in my gear bag. My field notes became dotted with little sidebar observations that couldn’t be readily explained: “Man used severed horse leg as stopper in floor drain” at a rendering plant, and “Canada geese landed on corrosive settling pond. Did not melt; seems they should have.”
My job exposed me to the real world, and the more I saw (like the fact that nature was all up inside what I once believed was simply industrial, and how people are willing to crawl on their elbows for a paycheck), the more I realized how limited my field of vision was. I was protected and privileged, and to be honest, I didn’t really want to know what it took to make the copper cookware that I ogled at the store—cookware that I wanted to dangle from hooks near the stovetop, fleshing out my kitchen and making it appear that I was capable and clever, and ready to create a feast at a moment’s notice. I have never cooked like that and would probably just use one of those copper-bottomed pots to make popcorn.
Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn’t always liberate you. Instead, it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up—it makes you question all of your assumptions and conventions. Some nights when I got home from work, I’d find myself mowing the grass, cleaning the gutters, or retesting the bathroom’s electrical system (once again pulling out the short ladder and grabbing a screwdriver for support) while I rattled my head as if a bee had flown in my ear, trying to make sense out of what I’d just witnessed (a taxidermist boiling skulls in a common kitchen pot; a hatch of frogs living on the walls surrounding acid baths). On those days, I imagined that a better world would be less complicated, less involved, and with less need to mass- produce doorknobs and lock sets, electric outlets, power cords, frozen chicken wings, packages of steak, rubber bands, and a million little foam earbuds that slip over the broadcasting end of an iPod. I’d stand staring at Jenna’s room, the recycling porch, and imagine what my life would be like if I could squeeze all my worldly possessions into a space like that.
My normal commute into work was about fifteen or twenty minutes—as long as it took to snake through the never-ending construction in my “up-and-coming” neighborhood, past the condos being built near the railroad tracks, the hardware store, corner grocery store, music shop, pub, and appliance repair place; past the place that used to make bowling trophies but is now a swank restaurant, and the old Ford factory, where back in the day they’d assemble cars on the third floor, then use an elevator to lower them down to the first floor so they could be rolled onto train cars for distribution. I drove less than five miles through my neighborhood, where everything seemed to be turning into the “perfect place”—a perfect coffee shop, vintage clothing boutique, restaurant, or pub, which sold the same beer as the old place but with higher prices; and then I’d hop on the interstate.
Every morning, there was a moment of decision making, a nanosecond where I’d imagine heading south into the sunshine, toward San Francisco, then Los Angeles, and then Mexico; or maybe I’d detour out of L.A. into Joshua Tree National Park, to climb the slabs and sit in the open air for a while. Instead, I’d go north to my office, ten minutes away, just over the Columbia River, except that, for the past few months, on Mondays, I had to continue north another hundred miles to Olympia. There, I’d sit through meetings, stare into a computer screen, and otherwise spend a few days trapped in a gargantuan building that had to pump “white noise” into the workspaces (a constant statticky sound) to keep workers from going mad with the overwhelming clitter-clatter of a hundred computer keyboards, telephone conversations, watercooler gaffes, and slowly ticking wall clocks. It was a temporary situation, “a moment of transition,” my boss had said, where for six months I would be the acting unit supervisor and all of m
y coworkers would do the best they could to put up with the fact that I had no idea how to supervise.
There was too much paperwork and not enough fieldwork, and I hated being the person that people would call when they were sick. I didn’t like having to hear about their personal problems—the baby puking; kids with measles, flu, lice, or diarrhea; there was colitis, impacted molars, and the need to stay home and wait for a new hot water heater to be delivered. There seemed to be a steady stream of very specific problems, and I was a lousy supervisor because even while I was saying something like “Oh my, that’s rough,” I didn’t really want to hear about how the toilet had overflowed and then the car wouldn’t start. I didn’t want to know about so-and-so’s aunt dying and how everyone was getting together at her house.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was just so fatiguing to hear how horrible everyone’s life was, because that’s all you hear when people call in sick. No one calls in sick because they’re in love or because they can’t fathom spending another minute away from their toddler. I was no different; every Sunday night, rain or shine, in love or not, I packed a small bag, loaded my dog and me into the car, and drove north to Olympia.
Fortunately, there was an end to the madness and a new supervisor was in the works. I just needed to hang in there for another month, and enjoy the fact that the drive up to Olympia brought me closer to my friends a few days a week.
I had lived in Olympia for six years before moving down to Portland, so it was nice to hang out with Candyce and Paula, whose living room floor ended up being my crash pad for a couple nights each week. We had kept in touch after I moved, but there’s something that shifts when you have time to stumble into one another on the way to the coffeepot early in the morning.
Along the same line, it was good to see Hugh and Annie more often, and see how big their kids were getting. Over the years while I lived in Olympia, and then even after I moved to Portland, they’d invite me for holiday dinners at Aunt Rita’s house, which was next door and connected to their house by way of a back patio and covered walkway. It seemed like a sweet setup, giving Keeva and Kellen daily access to a surrogate seventy-eight-year-old “grandma” (Rita was Hugh’s aunt—his late mother’s sister).
Even though she was paralyzed on her left side, as a result of a stroke that she’d had years earlier, Rita still lived independently. She drove herself to the store and puttered around her house with the use of a little tripod cane. There were obvious signs that she’d had a stroke, like the big metal brace that was strapped just below her knee and fit into her clunky industrial-looking left shoe, and then there was “lefty,” her lifeless hand that would sometimes get hung up in her sleeve as she was dressing. But from her attitude, you’d never know she was mobility-challenged; she was vital, read the paper every day, and would pitch Wiffle balls at Kellen for hours as he stood in her living room.
We’d all pack into Rita’s house for dinner and later pull out the playing cards for a rousing game of Boonswaggler, a homemade poker game that involved wearing funny hats and speaking in fake British accents. I never understood the game. I still don’t, but it was hilarious, and made me wish my own family was willing to follow up Thanksgiving dinner with a round of stuffy English card-playing, where we’d stick a playing card to our forehead, just below a funny-looking hunting cap, and say, “Tut-tut there, old chap, I don’t want to be a bother, but I believe you are bluffing.”
Over the past few months, I’d gotten to know Hugh and Annie even better as I traveled up to Olympia for work. We had dinner more often, and they also gently enlisted me to help their friend Mark, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was a challenging time for him, his wife Shelly, and their two young sons, Brett and Kai.
Sometimes we’d do important things such as help organize Mark’s pills, a chore that left us sitting around a low coffee table like drug lords, counting and sorting various foul-smelling capsules into tiny Ziploc bags. Other times we did simple tasks: heat the casserole, juice the carrots, wash the dishes, chop wood, stoke the stove, watch Kai practice somersaults on the couch while showing Brett how to make a round paper airplane.
Once, Annie talked me into driving out to Mark and Shelly’s house at midnight to secretly placard their yard with signs that said “We Love You” and “Happy Birthday Mark!” I felt like a thirteen-year-old as we sprinted down the long gravel driveway, snickering with our arms full of signs. I had nearly ruptured my spleen holding back a belly laugh when a motion-sensitive light blinked on, surprising us and causing Annie to leap like a fox, pouncing straight up in the air and then dropping down behind one of the smallest shrubs on the planet. God, that was funny.
Another time, Mark asked if we’d help him out to a bonfire pit that was set in a field, four or five hundred feet from the house. Mark wasn’t doing well, and couldn’t walk on his own, so getting him out to this spot was a bit of a challenge. Someone—probably Hugh—came up with the idea of loading him into a lounge chair, then hefting him in the chair into the back of a truck so we could drive over to the bonfire pit.
It worked! And a half hour later we had a makeshift picnic in the field. Mark leaned back in the lounger, and Brett and Kai saddled up on the armrests to roll into the stick man that was their dad. Shelly sat nearby, while Hugh, Annie, and a few other friends and I sat around on blankets, eating food and watching the clouds float by, forming themselves into castles, chopsticks (not very inventive clouds), and breaking ocean waves. I remember offering, “Oh look, that one looks like a giant baby doll arm. The rest of it should be around here somewhere,” which caused us all to furtively search the sky for baby doll legs, hunting for about a nanosecond, until we caught ourselves and started laughing at the weirdness of looking for baby doll body parts in the sky. It was a sweet moment, seeing Mark and Shelly laughing together, doing what normal, cancer-free couples do—what people do when they view the sky like a miracle and there’s nothing more fantastic than lounging around under a canopy of clouds with your sweetie.
Late at night, as I was driving home to Portland, I’d sometimes think about what I was leaving in Olympia. I’d wonder if I could talk Candyce and Paula into meeting me at the gym the following week, and if they minded (really, sincerely) that I was sleeping in their living room so often. I wondered who was sorting pills at Mark and Shelly’s house, which would then send me into how I’d said good-bye—sticking my head into Mark’s room and seeing the hospital bed and Hugh beside it, both of them looking at me with a nod and a smile.
I felt connected to Olympia in a new way, and that somehow made the constant highway travel worthwhile; it at least made the monotony worthwhile. Every time I left Olympia to go home, I felt that it had been a good trip.
Things were good, even with the big commute. I felt lucky in the simplest ways, like when I’d search for a parking spot, driving up and down one street and then another, leaning forward into the steering wheel and rubbernecking every ten seconds. Then out of nowhere someone would pull away from the curb, leaving a perfect parking spot.
That’s the kind of sheer luck I’d been having lately, but in odd circumstances.
I’d been feeling overly tired, like I was fighting the flu or simply sick of being on the road all the time, and feeling like I needed to sit, lean, rest, relax—and amazingly, perfect resting spots had been showing up out of the blue. In the middle of a walk with my dog, I’d find a set of stairs to sit and catch my breath. At work, as I was standing on a grated platform surrounded by acid baths, I’d find a nearby handrail where I could lean my hip into the metal and rest for a minute while I examined the fire extinguisher mounted on the baluster. I’d relax in my car for a minute, tipping my head back into the headrest after loading groceries into the trunk, sucking in a big breath before cranking the engine to life and carrying on like always.
A few days ago, I went to a bookstore and started to feel weird—so light-headed and sweaty that I went to th
e bathroom to splash water on my face, only to wake up a few minutes later with my head on the tiles, a store employee was holding my hand and asking if she should call 911. I offered her a sheepish smile and patted her hand, calming her down and explaining that I felt great, even though my heart seemed to be vibrating, purring like I had a cat curled up on the engine block of my chest, a sensation that wasn’t painful or uncomfortable, but rather fascinating in the way your front (your tummy and boobs, kneecaps and nose) can be so easily connected to your back (your butt cheeks, shoulder blades, skull, and heels resting on the floor); my whole body vibrated. I didn’t think much of it—just figured I needed to take more vitamins, cut back on the coffee, and muscle through it like always, like I’d done a thousand times before . . . but I was wrong.
Torsades
(PORTLAND, OREGON, DECEMBER 2003)
When I was a little girl taking a bath, I would lie back in the tub with my ears underwater. I could hear the air pouring in and out of my lungs, my sister making wa-wa-wa talking sounds from the other side of the tub, and the gentle lapping sound of bathwater slushing around my body. Thirty years later, pinched into an exam table in the emergency room, it was much the same. I could hear the nurses making wa-wa shouting sounds, hear the space unfold between me and them, and the silence between each blip on the heart monitor. I could feel my heart expanding and contracting, pushing blood up into my ears, polarizing and depolarizing, animating my lungs, firing my brain, bringing me to life just like it should.
The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir Page 4