Gerald DiPego's Blog, page 2

Passage

Here’s the next Short Story For Shut-Ins - a What-If story for a Why-Not world. Anything goes. Enjoy.

PASSAGE

By Gerald DiPego

My name is Tommy Taft and I go to Stanley L. Perkins public school on the south side of Chicago, but nobody says the “L,” just “Stanleyperkins,” and it’s okay, but there’s lots of bullies there, lots of em, and I guess the guys I go around with are bullies, too. Well, they used to be, until Chick Hansen graduated. Now, not so much, but still, being with ’em keeps me from bein’ jumped and made fun of for my left eye that ‘roves’ sometimes and messes up my sight, so I wear this patch, and if It’s no better in about four years, when I turn 18, in 1959, I’ll get a glass eye.

This eye is why they call me Rover. “Hey, Rover, show us your eye.” Or “Here, Rover.” Like I’m a dog, but that mostly wore off by fifth grade. I’m in seventh now, even though I’m fourteen, ‘cause I lost so much time from school with eye operations that didn’t work and cost my parents lots more than they could afford, and my dad never says so, but that’s why we don’t laugh so much anymore. My mom was never much of a laugher anyway ‘cause she didn’t get a regular kid, is what I think.

So I don’t stay around the apartment much, and I don’t always hang out with those friends of mine, either, so I’m alone a lot and I don’t mind it. I like to walk around if it’s not too hot or cold or rainin’. Today I walked all the way to Mason Park which has the Mason museum on it, since this guy Mason died and left it all to the city. It’s just a big house, but they call it a museum ‘cause all the old furniture came with it and all the weird globes and statues, but what I like are the big yards all around the house, especially when they’re green, like now, and there’s different kinds of trees and all these walkin’ paths and a couple of ponds and bridges.

When it’s sunny like this I just walk the whole place and then stand at my favorite spot and look around and think about everything in the world. It’s one of the places where the walkin’ path moves up and widens out into a bridge, all made of old polished wood with fancy carved shapes, some of ’em broken, but so what? Under the bridges are tunnels, small and dark and cool. Lots of times I walk through the tunnels, feelin’ the chill from a place that’s never sunny, never warm, and it feels kinda creepy, but it’s fun anyway.

The bridge I’m on now has a lot better view than the two others, but this one you can’t walk under ‘cause the tunnel is boarded up. There’s all kinds ’a junk and broken wood and busted mowers and stuff under there. You can see through the boards and this junk to the other side, but it would be hard to walk through, and there’s a sign that says KEEP OUT and UNSAFE FOR PASSAGE, and the sign’s been there for all the years I’ve been comin’ here, so why don’t they just fix it?

As I look down from the bridge, I see some people starin’ at this tunnel, just starin’, and two of them walk away, but another two people, who are wide apart from each other, just keep lookin’ at it. It’s a man and woman, but I don’t think they’re together, and now here comes another guy, just stoppin’ and looking at the boarded-up tunnel, which makes me wonder, and I’m not much of a talker with people I don’t know, but I can’t figure this out, and the newer guy is close enough to hear me from the bridge, and he looks…mild, you know? Not mean. He’s not smiling though. Looks sad, I guess. Just starin’ and starin’ at the tunnel.

“Mister?” I say it loud enough, but he doesn’t look up, so I say it a little louder, and this time he looks at me. “Why you lookin’ at the tunnel?” But he just keeps starin’ at me for a long time, like he’s studying me.

“You call it a ‘tunnel’,” he says.

“Well, yeah. What d’you call it?”

He stares a while before he answers. “Passage.” So I nod, and don’t know how to get him talking again, but then he says, “They’re boarding it up, completely. Tomorrow. It was in the paper. Closing it off, so…there isn’t much time.”

“But…it’s always been closed, right?”

“For years,” he says.

“So why board it up now?”

“People still try to go through. One got seriously hurt a couple of weeks ago. They hear about it somehow.”

I decide to come down from the bridge so I can see the tunnel, and so I don’t have to speak so loud. When I get to him, he’s still staring at it. Those other two people are still looking at it, too.

“Why do people wanna get through it – all these boards and the junk and the webs and…”

He looks at me then and takes his time. “I thought you knew.”

“You thought I knew what?” He keeps starin’ and then says, “Because of your eye. I thought you knew. Is it just…temporary? A scratch?”

“No.” I wonder why he’s talkin’ about my eye. “It’s called a dancin’ eye, but the real name is ‘nystagmus.’ Maybe it’ll go away by the time I’m…” He takes his eyes off me, like I’m not even there anymore, and he walks closer to the boards of the tunnel, starin’ through to the junk to other side. While he’s doin’ that, the two other watchers, the man and the woman come closer to us, and the man’s a big, older guy, and he looks tough, and even mad when he looks at the man I talked to.

“What did you tell this kid? What are you trying to do?”

The first man turns to stare at the older guy and shakes his head. “Told him nothing.” And the older man looks at me.

“He tell you to go through there?”

“No, he…”

“Don’t you go through there.”

I notice the woman has come closer, and she speaks to the old man.

“It’s not up to you if he tries to go through there or not. You can’t tell him what to do.”

“Too many people know now, damn it," says the crabby guy.

“What’s it to you,” the lady shoots back, and she’s small and a lot younger, maybe 30, but she’s not scared of him at all.

“He’ll hurt himself,” the crab says.

“It’s up to him!”

The older man walks away, angry. The first man watches him go, looks at the woman and me a long time.

“What?” She says, and he takes a while, and then he says, “As a kid, I stuttered so bad I could hardly speak.” Then he looks at me, and in a minute, he walks away, too. It’s just the woman and me, and she walks right up to the tunnel and looks deep inside where you can see just a little light through the boards and clutter and webs to the other end. We both stare at it, and I don’t know what to say. My chest is so tight and my throat, too. I don’t understand this. I don’t get it. She doesn’t look at me, but says the words straight out into the tunnel, like she’s staring at something or remembering something. “I had a birthmark that covered half my face. ‘port wine’ they called the color. ‘Port wine.’”

I didn’t think I could talk at all, but in awhile I hear myself asking her. “What…what did you do? You went IN there? And what happened?!”

She still doesn’t look at me. “I waited till night. I didn’t want anybody to see me. I was scared, but – also ashamed to believe it, to want it so much. I said a prayer, and I walked through. It wasn’t easy. I cut myself in two places, hurt my knee, but…when I walked out of there and made it to a bench and looked in my pocket mirror with my hand shaking like crazy…. The birthmark was fading, and then…it was gone. Imagine that. Gone.” She turns to me then, and I stare at her face, at her clear skin. She asks, “You believe me?”

I can hardly talk. I’m shakin’ inside. “I don’t know. I don’t KNOW! How…how did you know to come here? And do that? How?”

She gets that long look again, remembering. “For me it was a woman stopping me on the street. Looking at my birth mark. I don’t know how she knew about it, but she mentioned this place, and…what you have to do to…fix yourself, and she told me I must never tell anyone. “Keep the secret,” she kept saying. I thought she was just a crazy person. But…. I couldn’t NOT try it. I just couldn’t.”

“But HOW could it happen? What makes it happen?!” She’s lookin’ inside the tunnel when she answers me. “I think… it’s something in there, in the midst of all the…broken mess in there, some ‘thing,’ some power…. Maybe something that used to be in the old house. There’s broken stuff from the house in there. Nobody knows, and now…after tomorrow, nobody will ever know.”

She sighs real deep and looks at me. “Listen…it IS dangerous. People get hurt. Boards, nails, things falling…and there are rats. People get badly hurt, and…that’s all I’m going to say.” But after she takes a few steps, she turns and says one more thing. “Keep the secret.” And then she’s gone.

I just stand there, staring across the tunnel, the “Passage,” the man called it, and I think about what these people said. It’s crazy, but how could they all be making it up, and why would they? The more I stare, and the more I think about trying to move through there, the more afraid I am. I can hardly breathe and my stomach is so tight, my chest, too, where my heart is punching me, and my mind is sayin’ You can’t. You’ll get hurt. You’ll get stuck in there. And the rats…. But while I’m thinkin’ all this, I start to duck down so I can fit through the first boards, and I put my leg inside the opening and then try to bring my other leg around, real slow, bein’ careful, but I look ahead into the dark and all the boards and junk and I think I hear a rat skitterin’ in there, and I pull my leg out fast, movin’ back, losing my balance and fallin’, and I know I can’t do it.

I look around to see if there’s any more people around, and there’s another man standin’ way back, lookin’ at the tunnel, and I walk over to him. He’s got on a suit and a tie and everything is clean, and he’s watchin’ me as I come up to him. I have to just breathe a minute before I can say anything. “You went through there?” He just looks at me, at my eye patch, then, finally, he nods, and I say, “Why? Why did you…?” Then he looks at his hands, which are normal and also clean, and he says, “I was burned…in the war.”

I take a big breath and say: “Will you help me? Will you please take me through there? Now?”

It takes him a while before he says anything. “Sorry. YOU have to do it -- just the person who needs it. You have to need it.” He looks sad for me and says, “Be careful.” Then he turns away from me and just stares, stares at the place that changed him.

I look at the tunnel, too, and I know, I KNOW I can’t go in there alone, and the thought comes to me, what if two people needed it? What if somebody else needs it and we go in together, and I start thinkin’ hard ‘cause this place’ll be boarded up forever, and I’ll never get the chance, and I’ll never have a normal eye, and I’ll never get to watch my parents when they first see my eye is fixed, see the look on their faces, see ’em smile, so I keep thinkin’ who, who do I know?

I think of this neighbor in my apartment building ‘cause he’s blind, but nobody blind could get through there, and he’s so old, maybe he wouldn’t even try it. There’s a kid at school with a club foot, but I can’t even remember his name right now, and how could I find out where he lives? And then I think of the girl, the colored girl.

She’s a year ahead of me and she has a locked knee, can’t bend it, can’t walk right. She’s a thin girl, uses a cane, but she probably wouldn’t even talk to me because of what happened last year. I have to try, though, and the colored people who have been comin’ into the neighborhood in the last few years all are livin’ in those three blocks near 43rd and Ellis, and that’s only six blocks from this park, so I’m on my way and trying to think of what to say if I find her, but I can’t help goin’ over in my mind what happened that day last year.

This guy who was our leader – this Chick Hanson – he hated the coloreds and said they shouldn’t be comin’ into our neighborhoods, and a lotta kids agreed, but they only called ’em names when the teachers couldn’t hear, but Chick wanted to do something. So, we’re walkin’ together after school and we see this colored girl, and we all know about her and the way she walks with a cane ‘cause her right knee won’t bend, and we catch up to her before she gets to her neighborhood, and we walk behind and in front and next to her, and we can see she’s scared, but she doesn’t look at us and just keeps walkin’, her face kinda tight. She’s got her books in a shoulder bag and one hand on that cane, and we’re all wonderin’ what Chick is gonna do, and he steps right in front of her so she has to stop.

She stares right at Chick, doesn’t look down or away, and even though she’s scared, she’s mad, too, and lookin’ right into his face, and he says, “We wanna see that knee that can’t bend. We wanna see your knee, Dora.” He stretches out her name, making fun. She looks at ’im and says in a soft voice, “You leave me alone. I’m just goin’ home. That’s all. You leave me alone.”

He steps closer to her, smiling, but mean, his eyes real mean. “Show us,” he says, and she doesn’t move except for the trembling, which is worse now. So, real quick, he grabs the sides of her dress and pulls it up, not real far, not all the way, just…we could see her thighs, and she turns then, her face to the side, her eyes still mad, but she’s scared, and I see two tears moving down her brown face, and I’m sorry for her and I’m scared, too. Some of the guys are smilin’ but I’m just holdin’ my breath.

We all look at her knee and the two long scars, and then Chick lets go of the dress, and she’s covered again, still lookin’ away and shakin’, but still mad, too.

“Thanks, Doorrraaa,” Chick says, “and if you tell, we’ll get your little black brother. He’s in fifth grade, right?” and Chick walks away and we follow, but I remember turnin’ and lookin’ back at her, and feelin’ sorry, and the two of us looked right into each other’s faces, me sorry, and her all shakin’ up and mad, and here I am now, tryin’ to find her and ask her to come with me…. I would do it alone, if I could. I’m not doin’ this for her, not really. I mean I would just be going through that tunnel now if I wasn’t so scared, but I can’t say that to her. I have to say it right, like I’m givin’ her a gift, so that she comes with me.

When I get to the neighborhood, I don’t see her on the street. Next to one of the buildings is a big cement yard, and kids are there, all ages – playin’ games or just…. But I don’t see her, so that means I have to start askin,’ and that scares me, but…this is my only chance, so….

Now I see her. Some kids were blockin’ her from view, and there she is. I step into the yard, and the little kids are starin’ at me, and a few my age and older are walkin’ toward me now, but then they see that Dora is comin’, comin’ with her cane, comin’ right for me, and they stop, but keep watchin’. Some of them are asking her. I can’t make out the words yet, but when she’s closer, I hear her say, “He’s just from school,” and the kids drop back and she comes on, and she’s got this mean look aimed at me, stopping close in front of me now, her face asking what am I doin’ there.

“Hi, Dora. I’m Tommy Taft. You know me, right? I got somethin’ to tell ya, and you won’t believe me, but….” I stop then because I forgot how I was supposed to start, so I try again. “First, I’m really sorry for what happened last year, what Chick did….”

“You all did it,” she says.

“Well…we didn’t know what he was gonna do. We just…”

“So, what’ve you got to tell me?”

“You know my eye? Here, look.” I lift off the patch, so she can see my eyeball, see it move, and then I cover it again. “I got this…problem I wanna get rid of, and you got a problem too, with your knee, and I just found out, just today, I found out how we can fix our problems, and it really works, and I know it sounds stupid but it’s real and it’s about a tunnel over at Mason Park, that tunnel with boards and junk and signs on it, but you can still get through right now, but not tomorrow. They’re gonna board it up forever tomorrow, but now, just now we can still do it. We can walk through the tunnel, and when we get to the other side, we won’t have our problems anymore, and I know it sounds crazy, but if you come with me now, there’s somebody there who did it for himself, fixed his problems with this tunnel by movin’ through it, and he can tell you the way they all told me, so you’ll believe. They told me, Dora, a bunch of em’, and I was gonna do it. I was just about to do it, but then I thought of you. I thought, wait, I can make it up to Dora for what happened last year. This’ll make up for that, ‘cause I want YOU to be fixed, too. I DO, so I came over here to get you so we can share it – the goin’ through the tunnel, and the comin’ out okay.”

Her eyes are deep into me, and she’s still mad, and her voice is sorta choked when she talks. “You’re gonna get me into a tunnel, and your friends’ll be there, and your goin’ to shame me.”

“No, No! Just come with me. Please. You’ll see. There’s somebody there to explain, a grown-up, one of the ones who were fixed. It’s not a trick.”

“You want to hurt me again.”

“No, Dora, please, this is crazy but it’s REAL! I swear to god!”

“You swear on your mother’s life?”

“YES! I do. I’m doin’ this for her, too, for her and my dad, so they don’t have to spend any more money on this eye, so that her and my dad’ll be…happier, and listen Dora. Please.” I can’t help that I’m chokin’ and almost cryin’ now. “Think of YOUR parents, and how they’ll feel. It’s for them, too….” Now a man is walking toward us, eyes on me, stopping in front of me, and Dora says to him, “It’s about school. It’s all right. He’s just leavin’.” I stare at her, at him. He keeps his eyes on me, hard, and she says, “He’s leavin’ now.” So I do. What else can I do? I just start walkin’ back to the park, thinkin’ maybe somebody else’ll be there, somebody who might….

It’s about two blocks later when I hear somebody yellin,’ and I don’t pay attention until I hear it again, louder, and it’s my name. It’s Dora callin’ my name, so I stop, and I wait for her, and she comes on pretty fast, cane and limp and all, and she walks right past me, not lookin’ at me, sayin’ “Okay. Okay, you better not be lyin.’ You better not, and I’ll come and look, just look, and I’ll see.”

I catch up with her and she’s got tears again, movin’ down her face, just like she did last year, and she’s still not lookin’ at me, and she doesn’t say any more, so neither do I. When we get to the tunnel, I’m so glad to see the man is still there, and he watches Dora walk right up to him, swallowin’ her tears, with her chest shakin,’ but she looks right at him and asks, “Is it true? Is it true about your hands?” And the man stares at her and nods his head, and I hear her choke a little in her throat. “And you were changed? You were fixed?”

He shows her his hands and nods again, and then he looks her all over and his eyes come back to her, and his words are soft. “But you can’t make it, honey. You can’t make it through…the way you are.”

My words come in a shout ‘cause I’m scared he’ll stop her from tryin’, and I need her in there. “I’ll help her!”

Neither one of ’em even look at me, still, watchin’ each other, and then he says to her, “Sorry, you won’t make it,” and she says, after a few seconds, she says, “People been sayin’ that to me my whole life,” and she turns away and walks to the entrance of the tunnel.

I join her there and look into the dark space and I think I can do this now. I know I can do it cause somebody’s with me. I’m afraid to mention the rats, afraid she’ll back out. I put my leg through like last time and start to bring the other leg around some of the rotten, broken boards and I feel her touch me. I feel her hand on my leg, helpin’ me, and I’m in, and I’m already feelin’ cold, and I’m shiverin’ but maybe it’s fear, ‘cause the webs are on me and I swing my arm to break ’em and cut my hand on a board, and I see that the boards have rusty nails in ’em, but I’m already lookin’ for that next step I can take, when I hear her, her soft voice. “Tommy.”

I look through the gloom and see she’s waitin’ for me to help her inside, so I reach, and she pushes her cane toward me, and I take the end of it and start to pull while she moves her good leg over the first boards. Then she finds a place on the floor to plant her cane so she can swing the bad leg in, and I hold her shoulder while she does it, and now she’s inside, too.

We have to stand real close ‘cause there’s no room, and I point to where I think our next step should be, but it’s tricky with all the broken lawn tools and mowers and boards, and everything so thick with webs…. I step on a pile that looks like it can hold me, but when I put my weight on it, it collapses and I fall on the floor that’s covered with more junk and some of it sharp, and I put my hands into the mess so I can push myself up, and that’s when a rat, a big one, runs over my hand and I yell and try to get my knees under me. Dora grabs me from behind, grabs my jacket and lifts, and I’m up and shakin’ so bad and I look at the pile of stuff ahead and it seems impossible to get through, but she’s pointin’ and sayin’ “There!” and I see just a bit of bare floor, cracked cement floor, and put my foot there, still shakin,’ and then see I might be able to climb over two broken mowers, and I point and look at her and she nods, and I make it to the mowers and feel something poke my back and turn, and it’s her cane. She’s moving her cane so I can grab it and pull her toward me, and I do, and she almost falls and she yells when some rusty metal scratches her leg so it bleeds, but we get up and over the mowers and we go on.

We never see bare floor again but only heaps of broken statues and lawn benches and wrecked signs and those rotten boards, and the rats are all around and we’re both shakin’ and yellin’, climbin’ and fallin’ and trying to keep it in sight -- that light from the other side, the side where we’ll come out, but it seems so far away, and it’s blocked by so much. She helps me and I help her, and once she crashes down, and I lift her, but her cane is trapped in some chains, and we can’t pull it out, and I say “Leave it! Leave it!” and she says, “I can’t!” and I say “You can! You can, Dora, ‘cause you won’t need it anymore once you’re out!” And she stares at me, all messy and cut and she realizes I’m right, and she keeps movin’ toward those bits of light from the other side, crawlin’ even. We’re both crawlin and screamin’ when the rats come close and come over us, and I reach some broken statues in our way, and I push ’em, and she pushes and they fall out of our way, but the crash starts more stuff fallin’, fallin’ on us and around us, and the dust chokes us, and we can hardly see, and I feel like my hand is broken, and she’s bleedin’ from her nose, and we try to rise up and make one more step, and one more, and I see the light from the other side, see it close, but more stuff is fallin’, and she goes down, and I yell, “Get up! It’s not far! It’s right here, Dora! Get up quick! And she tries, and I’m knocked down when a broken bench falls, but it falls so that I can see that the exit is only two steps away, only two, and I yell, “Come on!” and make for the light while the place is crashin’ around us, and I hear her scream “Wait! Tommy!” And I look back and she’s stuck, and I look back at the light, and it’s right there, and it’s drawin’ me, pullin’ me like a hand, while stuff crashes all around, and I stop, and I make up my mind and reach my way back to her and grab her and lift, and we’re both movin’ toward that opening, that light, but it’s gettin’ smaller ‘cause of all the things fallin’, and the light’s fadin’ away just when we’re almost there, and there’s so little room to get through, and I feel Dora fallin’, and I lift her and push her, without even thinkin’. I lift her and push her right at that light and I see her take one limpin’ step out into daylight and then everything’s falling on me and….

When I wake up, I’m laying on a stretcher and the stretcher’s on the grass, and I see the park around me and an ambulance close by, and the attendant is kneelin’ by me and puttin’ a bandage on my head, and when he finishes and moves, I lift my hand to my bad eye, and real slow, I move the patch, and it’s… just the same, my rovin’ eye, just the same, and so I cover it, and two attendants are there, liftin’ the stretcher, and I see Dora standin’ over me now and movin’ with me while they take me to the ambulance, and she’s cryin’ and sayin’ “Thank you, Tommy, thank you for pushing me through! They had to dig you out. I’m sorry, Tommy, Sorry you couldn’t….”

“WAIT!” I say “DORA! You’re WALKIN’!” Dora is walkin’ along with the stretcher, walkin’ without a cane, without a locked knee, and I say to her “I’m so glad, Dora! Look at you!” And she nods, still cryin’, and I say “I wanted it to change me, too,” and now I’m cryin’ like she is. “I wanted it so bad, Dora, I even lied to you ‘cause I was scared to try it alone, but I’m glad you came, and at least it changed you! And I’m glad!” And they’re putting me into the ambulance and she’s still there at the door and she says, “It changed you, too, Tommy! It changed you, too!” and I see her face and her tears, and she’s raisin’ a hand and I raise mine, too, so she sees it before they close the door.

#

Be A Movie

Welcome back to our monthly Short Stories for Shut-Ins. The election’s over and we’re at it again. I think it’s time for a comedy. Enjoy.

Be A Movie

By Gerald DiPego

The marriage of Nita and Jax had a three-week window before the pandemic shut the door. They’re both 31. It’s now six months after the wedding -- two stay at homes, deeply in love. They met in acting class. They performed a play together in a small LA theater, and both have credits on series episodes. If you read the cast lists, they’re usually the seventh or eighth name down, but they were both rising, slowly – before Covid. Both have altered names. Nita used to be Juanita, and Jax was Jackson, but they left those lives behind like worn-out shoes.

Their acting class is now Zoomed. They keep in touch with their agents just in case, and they hope and dream and practice, watch many shows and movies, cook together and take turns vacuuming and doing the laundry in their bungalow that used to be his before Nita left her apartment to move in. She had the best bed, and he had the best TV, so they had a garage sale, though they don’t have a garage. They have long talks, they laugh together, they spat now and then, and they make love. They’re sitting on the sofa now, wondering what to do next.

NITA

I took out the garbage.

JAX

(Surprised) Why? You know that’s my job.

NITA

I’m sorry.

JAX

Now what do I do?

NITA

I could make some more garbage.

JAX

Thank you. (He keeps staring, then) Well?

NITA

Well, it takes time. Do you want another back rub?

JAX

My back is like jelly you’ve rubbed it so many times.

NITA

Mine, too. We were going to read the Albee play.

JAX

Too depressing. Is there any garbage yet?

NITA

No, not yet. Want to wash our cars?

JAX

Again?

NITA

How about a Rummy Cubes game?

JAX

(He stares) Are you insane? If we do that, what’ll we do after supper?

NITA

I’m stumped.

(He chuckles, and she joins in.)

NITA

What?

JAX

Such a funny word: “Stumped.” Where did that come from? From a tree stump? Let’s make up new words! (He thinks, then…). Bathom…many, “BathOmany!” Now…what does it mean?

NITA

Uhhh…when there’s more than one person in the tub?

JAX

Good! Yes. You do one.

NITA

Diss….cum…berd. Discumberd! It’s…when you’ve… discovered a cucumber! It’s been Discumbered!

JAX

That’s terrible.

(They laugh, then laugh all over again, then keep their smiles and stare. He puts a hand on her knee. She’s wearing shorts. He slides his hand upward.)

NITA

Jax…we said we’d take a longer break. We said we were losing the fire, and we needed to…

JAX

I know, I know, I know, but…. It’s been… (He looks at his phone) Almost nine hours.

NITA

Like days, we said days…

JAX

We could make it different. On the floor?

NITA

We did the floor three nights ago. It hurt. That’s what started all the back rubs.

(He removes his hand from her leg and sighs, and they sit in silence.)

JAX

Who can we Zoom with?

NITA

We’ve Zoomed with everybody in the world, and it’s too soon to Zoom again. We would all just sit there saying “what’s new with you, what’s new with you,” and nothing is new with anybody, so…

JAX

What about the Hatners?

NITA

We don’t like them. They’re awful.

JAX

You’re right. Sorry. I was lowering my standards.

NITA

I’ve now emailed everyone I’ve ever met in my whole life.

JAX

Yeah, me too. Oh, I found that teacher I loved in eighth grade and was finally able to tell her how much she meant to me.

NITA

That’s great! What did she say?

JAX

She didn’t remember me. (They sit and stare) Hey, let’s watch your nude scene from “Crashout.”

NITA

Partially nude -- and the lighting sucks.

JAX

We could watch MY nude scene from that “Ozark” episode.

NITA

It’s just you taking a shower, and I’ve seen you taking a shower, and you have no lines in that scene.

JAX

Yeah, but I had to BE that person taking a shower. I think I really came out of myself and found the character in that moment. Hey, why don’t WE take a shower, and I’ll show you how I BECAME that guy.

NITA

Will you stop about sex? We both agreed. We both said we weren’t able to hit that Gong the last few times, that holy Gong, that…

JAX

I know, I know. The Holy Gong. God, Nita, what if we never hit it again?

NITA

We will. We will! We just need some time off. We need to be patient. We just need to…

JAX

To sit here and wait. And then sit here and wait. This is like that French play “No Exit.” What if nothing ever happens again? Ever.

NITA

I don’t know. I’m stumped.

(That gets them laughing, and he brightens.)

JAX

Let’s MAKE something happen. Let’s do a movie.

NITA

“Do” a movie. You mean…

JAX

“Be” a movie. We’ll BE a movie. We’ll do a scene. I mean we’ll act it out. In wardrobe and everything. Right here. That movie we watched last week.

NITA

Planet of the Apes?

JAX

No! No, it was before that, Wednesday or…

NITA

LA Confidential.

JAX

Yes! LA Confidential, 1997, Curtis Hanson…

NITA

With Kim Basinger, who I definitely want to play!

JAX

Of course, yes! And I’ll be Russell Crowe.

NITA

Not a sex scene, Jax. This isn’t just a way to…

JAX

No! No! That early scene where he knocks on her door, she lets him in, they have that talk. It’s so…

NITA

Quiet but powerful, so much going on…. Layers.

JAX

We’ll learn it, we’ll rehearse it. I’ll wear my suit, the grey…

NITA

What can I wear to be a beautiful Kim Basinger who’s impersonating a beautiful Veronica Lake?

JAX

You’ll think of something – and you’re just as beautiful as they are.

(One week has passed, and they’ve learned their lines, chosen the wardrobe, and now Jax is returning, masked, from a friend’s home where he has borrowed the last item they need – a real LAPD police badge. He enters, showing it proudly, along with some toy handcuffs, but Nita is on the phone, having a quiet argument, and he walks through to the bathroom, tossing out his mask and washing his hands and face.

When he comes into the living room, she’s off the phone and looking mildly angry and mildly sad. He notices that the lamp by the sofa has a nearly sheer pink scarf thrown over it.)

JAX

That’s a good effect. The lamp. See what I have. (He holds up the badge and cuffs.)

NITA

Great. Perfect.

JAX

What’s wrong?

NITA

Oh, my mom. She said it again, just before hanging up – like a zinger. It’s something they say. I’ve heard it all my life. “Balance the till, Juanita.” Like the cash register, you know…

JAX

What do they want you to do now?

NITA

They want US to volunteer at the Christmas food bank where they volunteer.

JAX

They want us to drive all the way to Silver Lake? That’s not fair. And we do our part. Does she know that we send money to the food bank -- not as much as we used to, but we have to conserve now, so…

NITA

It’s the same old thing, and it hurts me. I mean…I know they love me. Us. But… they think what I do, what we both…. They think acting is trivial. I swear. She wouldn’t say it, but I swear she thinks I’M trivial.

JAX

Bullshit. That’s ridiculous and wrong. It’s wrong, Nita.

NITA

Is it? Is it, Jax? Today I dyed a dress so it looked more like Kim Basinger’s dress, and you went out and got a toy badge -- while people are lining up for food. It’s just…

JAX

Listen…listen, there’s that old saying: give the people bread and circuses. It’s a kind of put-down, but…if you think of bread as the…staff of life, y’know, bread keeps us alive, but the circus feeds us, too. People need circuses in their lives, and that’s us. We’re the circus -- plays, movies, that’s what WE give, so it’s not trivial. It’s filling a need. Deep down.

NITA

(She stares at him a moment.) That’s brilliant. It is! I should call her back. YOU should call her back, tell her your thoughts.

JAX

Well…it was a podcast…by an acting teacher, couple of years ago.

NITA

But…you remembered it. So…good for you, Jax.

JAX

You…really want me to call her back?

NITA

No. Forget that. Forget it. Let’s DO this movie. I’ll show you how the dress turned out. I changed the bodice. (She rises, and Jax pulls out the badge and cuffs again.)

JAX

Wait. Look. The cuffs are toys, but this badge…it’s REAL. (Pause.) So are we, Nita. (She smiles a big one.)

(It’s twilight of the same day. We see Jax step out of the bungalow and stand on the narrow porch. He’s wearing a suit and carries the badge in his hand. He’s doing some deep breathing, getting into character. He knocks on the door. No answer. He knocks harder, raises the badge. He barks this.)

JAX

Open up -- it’s LAPD!

(Just as Nita is opening the door in her provocative dress and studying him with a bemused smile, a woman named LAURIE rushes out of the dark toward Jax, coming across from the yard of the neighboring bungalow, scared as hell. She’s about 35 and wild-eyed.)

LAURIE

LAPD! Thank God! We need you! Please! Over here! He’s crazy!

(Jax turns to the woman, and Nita steps out on the porch.)

JAX

Wait, I’m not…. Hey!

(But Laurie has turned and is running back to her yard where we see, in the glow of a porch light, one BIG MAN is standing over a SMALLER MAN, and now kicking him, which makes the smaller man cry out in pain, makes Laurie SCREAM and makes Jax and Nita….)

JAX

Holy shit!

NITA

Be careful!

(Both rush across the yards to the fight. CHAOS.)

LAURIE

This is the police! He’s the police!

(The big man turns on Jax. Jax thrusts out his badge. The smaller man rises up and kicks the bigger man in the ass. The big man turns on him. Laurie tries to get in between them. She’s shoved aside by the big man. And that pisses off Nita, who…)

NITA

Leave her alone, asshole!

JAX

You’re going down for assault! Get on your knees, dipshit!

(The big man is angry and drunk, and he stares at JAX for a second and then turns to rush the smaller man. Jax takes a step after the big man and kicks him in the back of the knee, which knocks the big man down in the grass. Jax gets on top of him and pulls one of the man’s wrists to the small of his back. He pulls out his fake handcuffs and tries to put them on the man during…)

LAURIE

He’s drunk! He’s terrible! He’s my ex!

BIG MAN

I’m gonna beat the shit out of him!

(The big man is struggling, and Jax is having trouble with the fake cuffs coming apart. Nita rushes in and kneels down near the head of the big man, shouting.)

NITA

Look at me! Look at me!

(She grabs his hair. He looks at her. She lets go of his hair and puts her face close to his.)

NITA

Listen! Are you listening? You’re right on the edge of ruining everything. This second, right now, is when you decide. Is it prison? Or do you go on living the life you’re living? You have one second. Decide!

(The big man starts to cry. Soon his body is heaving with weeping. The others all look at each other. Jax gets off the man’s back and stands. Nita stands. They all watch the crying man, who is moaning now.)

BIG MAN

I’m sorry… I’m sorry…

LAURIE

I don’t love you anymore! Get it?!

(The big man nods his head in the grass. The small man comes beside Laurie, and they hold each other, looking at the Big Man, and then at Jax and Nita.)

LAURIE

Thank you. Thank you so much.

(Jax and Nita nod and start to walk back to their home. Jax stops, turns.)

JAX

Listen…if he comes back or…anything else happens, call 911. Right? Don’t come next door.

(Laurie and the small man nod. Jax and Nita walk to their bungalow and enter and sit heavily on the couch, staring into space as they speak.)

NITA

That was great how you put him down like that.

JAX

That was from my bit in “Law and Order.” Stunt man taught me. And you! That speech. Great.

NITA

From “Orange Is the New Black.” When I played the social worker….

(They turn to each other, holding hands now.)

JAX

I guess we didn’t get to bring the circus, did we.

NITA

Not exactly, but... You know what we did?

JAX

What? What did we do?

NITA

I think maybe we balanced the till, Jax. I think we did.

(They stare, and slowly, they smile, him in his detective suit, her in her Basinger dress. They’re in the low light of that one lamp. There is a kind of glow in the room that I could try to describe, but I’m not going there.)

#

Dark Road

Welcome to another of my Short Stories For Shut-Ins.  This is a spooky month so…here you go.

Dark Road

By Gerald DiPego

Just now I took a deep breath, and I realize this is something I do every time I turn onto this road. I was at my job at the lab until seven tonight, late for me, but I don’t mind. I took the highway, as usual, for 32 minutes and then turned onto a well-lit street, Ball Street, for ten blocks, and left that street for this smaller, darker road, badly paved and heavily weeded along its ditches, and I sighed my automatic sigh because there are no lights here, no signs, nothing but black, cracked road and my headlights whipping through trees, weeds and brambles, and in just 14 minutes down this old familiar road I’ll be home.
 
Home is my favorite place. I admit that. Oh, sometimes I’ll meet friends for dinner and even go out on a date now and then, only three since Meg moved out, which was… about six months ago. Meg said I had turned into just another piece of furniture in the house. When I’m there, I seldom want to leave, feeling relaxed and…safe, I guess. Not that I’m a worrier, just safe from…commitments, from obligations. It’s not a great house, but I love it, not just because it’s quiet. There are plenty of trees and birds around the place, and I have my books there and the TV, all my collections, games, too. Meg and I loved games and…. Well, all the joy wore off for her. She wanted us to go to counseling. I didn’t want more talk, more…obligation. The parting was sad but it didn’t crush me. She calls now and then. She refers to our marriage as three years in a safe-house. She says she’s happier now. I hope so. I guess I thought she was more like me. We married in our early thirties, and she was quiet, too. She says it was me who changed, dug into that home like a fox hole. She’s good at imagery. ‘Fox Hole.’
 
As I drive, I can feel the house waiting for me, a good feeling. I can – HEY! GOD! I just hit the brakes and almost spun out! There was something in my lights for a second, in the ditch, on my right. It looked like…god, it looked like a person, a body. I’m backing up now but…very…slowly…. I don’t want any surprises. Maybe it’s…. It IS a person. I can see blond hair and a…a torn shirt, a torn blue shirt. A boy? No, a man, a young man, I think, but his face is in the weeds. Is he drunk? Is he dead? I’m looking all around, but there’s nobody, unless someone’s hiding, hiding in the darkness. I lower the side window. He’s just…lying there. I see what could be…could be some blood in his hair. Not sure. What do I…. “HEY!” I’m shouting, hoping he’ll move, hoping he’s lying there drunk, sleeping. “HEY!”
 
He doesn’t move. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. How can this be happening to me?! I don’t want…. I don’t want this! “HEY!” He still doesn’t move. I look all around me and I listen and there’s nothing moving and no sound but crickets, some wind in the… “HEY, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!”
 
What am I doing? Shouting on this road. What if somebody hears me? What am I supposed to…? I don’t want any of this. It’s not my trouble. It’s not my business. I don’t want to have to touch him and…I don’t want to call the police and wait for the police and talk to the police. I don’t want to be mixed up in this at all. It’s not fair. It doesn’t involve me. No matter what this is, it’s not any part of me. I’m just passing by. Someone else will come along in a few minutes. Someone else. THEY’LL stop, THEY’LL take care of it. I’m just… I’m not involved at all. I’m just on my way home.
 
The idea of home grips and pulls me, like hands, like strong hands. I can just go home. I never saw this. I just drove along, and I never saw this. I just… I find that I’m moving. I am, slow movements, look at me, putting the car in gear, slowly, quietly, then driving away. I don’t hurry. I just didn’t see anything. That’s what I can say if anybody…. I just didn’t see it. Didn’t see him. I was just driving home and I saw nothing, and that’s just what I’m doing now. I’m driving home. My chest is so tight. I have to swallow, have to breathe. I’ll be home soon. In just a few minutes I’ll walk in the door and be home.
 
I’ve made it all the way to my driveway seeing no other cars, not ahead, not behind me. I pull in and park, and I’m out of the car and trying not to hurry, not to run to the door. I have the key ready. I’m inside now, but I don’t turn on a light. Why not? I should turn on the lights. I’m not hiding. I just drove home from work. I didn’t see anything. I’m home now. I turn on the lights and stand there. What am I expecting?  There’s no one here, of course. It’s just my home. I take some breaths, put down my jacket and briefcase. I feel like someone is watching me, but that’s just nerves. It’ll wear off – because here I am, in my house, alone in my house. I drop into my chair, my best chair, and put my feet up on the hassock, use my feet to push off my shoes, and they thud on the carpet. I close my eyes and breathe. I’m home. I think those words and even say them out loud, quietly. “I’m home.”
 
Closing my eyes is a mistake. I see the ditch, the body. So I look around the house and find comfort in the books, in the cases with my collections, in the old polished wood of the furniture, in the warm light on the walls, and I feel myself easing. I’m not relaxed, but I’m breathing normally and…. I have to push away the questions: what’s happening now in the ditch? Is he moving? Is there someone else there, on the road, staring at him? Are they getting out of their car? Are they pulling out their cell phone?
 
There’s a remote in reach and I turn on the TV. My favorite music channel comes on, light classical. Rossini, I think. I don’t know, but it enters me and I do start to ease. I do. Because it’s fading, what I saw. It’s in the past. I’m home now and my life has gone on.
 
I take some deep breaths and try to let Rossini in and keep everything else out, but it’s difficult. My mind is being pulled back to that damn ditch. I walk to the small table I use as a bar, and I pour some Scotch. I take the first sip and feel it warming me, loosening me, but I see my hand is trembling, just a little, but…trembling.
 
I have a med that relaxes me when I feel uptight, and I step into the bathroom and pull the plastic bottle from the cabinet, take the pill and wash it down with more than a sip of my drink, but not too much, not too fast. I need to slow down.
 
I move back to my chair and sit, let my eyes close again, ease my breathing, give way to…. It’s Tchaikovsky now, Capriccio Italien. I like this one. I surrender to it, move inside of it.
 
I wake up suddenly, my breath a clenched fist in my chest. I actually slept. I think I remember a Copland piece and then…. I look at the clock. Just over forty-five minutes went by, and I’m glad, so glad I could drift away like that, but what woke me? And why is my chest so tight again, and then the sound comes, and I realize I heard this while asleep. It crashed into my sleep. Someone’s knocking on the front door.
 
The whole scene rushes at me, captures me, the ditch, the body, the driving away. I stand up quickly, but don’t move to the door, not yet. What if it IS all about that man, that ditch. I didn’t see anything from the road. I have to act calm. I didn’t see anything at all.
 
I walk to the door, trying to appear normal, a man relaxing in his home. I speak through the door, making my voice pleasant. “Who is it?”
 
There’s no answer. I wait. No voice. No knocking. I say it again, louder: “Who is it?” Nothing. Then I hear the knocking again, this time at the side door in the kitchen, and I move there, straining to keep calm. Why would it be about the man and the ditch? I passed that ditch…when…more than an hour ago. But who would knock on my door? A neighbor with a problem? I don’t really know them – my neighbors. I can’t even see their homes from.… “I’m coming,” I shout, and now look through the door’s glass, but see only darkness. “Who is it?”
 
I open the door, and there’s no one, no one on the side porch. “Who’s there?” I’m shouting now. “Hello?” I wait. Nothing. I’m about to close the door when I see movement, out in my yard, near one of the oaks. There’s just enough moonlight…. A man? I think someone just moved out there. I walk out on the porch. “Who is it?!”
 
There! Someone just stepped out of the moonlight near the trunk of the oak, stepped into the deeper darkness. I SAW this…didn’t I? “I see you! What do you want?!” I come down the steps of the porch, staring at the darkness near the tree, twenty feet away. Yes! Movement again, some slight….
 
“Why are you on my property?! What do you want?!” Why doesn’t he answer? “I’ll call the police!” I take out my cell phone. “I have my phone ready!” I find that I’m more angry than scared--someone coming here, destroying my peace, hiding in the dark. I take four or five steps toward that tree, my stockinged feet wet now from the grass, hurting a bit from stones and ….
 
The dark figure moves, a man! About my size! I see the outline! My size, my shape…. He’s throwing something! I’m hit in the chest, and it hurts, something metal, hitting my chest and then falling to the ground. I can’t see him anymore. I look down to where it fell, the metal object that hit me. It’s dark, but I’m feeling around with a palm, and I find it, pick it up. It’s car keys. I look closely and see…. MY car keys! No! Weren’t they in the house? Did I still have them in my pocket? How did he…? I hurry now to the oak, hurting my feet, looking through the shadows, moving around the tree. Nothing. No one. I have my phone in one hand and I’m gripping the keys in the other, gripping so tightly they hurt my hand. I feel the pain but I don’t release my grip.
 
I look around. There’s no one. No movement anywhere, and in my looking, I see my car. I parked it haphazardly in my drive. I was in a hurry to leave it and get into my house. Yes. I kept my keys in my hand, moved to the door of my house and opened it and went in and…. I think I shoved them into my pocket then. I think I did. So…. What’s happening? What could be…? Is that somebody?! By my car now?!
 
I run there, not caring about the pain in my feet. “HEY!” I reach the car, but there’s no one there, no one even near…. “Where are you?! WHO are you?!” But it’s silent, not even any wind now, just me standing at my car, my feet wet and sore, my car keys hurting my hand – so I open my hand and I stare at my keys and then at my car. I know what I have to do. I don’t want to, but I have to. There’s no choice at all. I have to settle this.
 
I get in the car and back out of my driveway, but too fast. I ease up on the gas. Go slow, go…. I move out to the old road and turn the car, heading back, heading toward that place, that part of the ditch, that body.
 
I drive for ten, eleven minutes, and then start looking, driving more slowly and looking at the ditch, watching my headlights moving along, lighting the ditch. The moon is brighter now, but I don’t see anything but the weeds and…brambles and…. Did I pass the spot?! Is he gone?! Wait… I see something. I stop the car and then ease it into reverse, moving back slowly. There. There’s a cone, no there are two of those…plastic road cones, in the ditch, in the weeds. Are they…marking the spot?  So…someone took him away and…put the cones there? I know it’s the spot. I know it.
 
I drive a bit further up the road until there’s a wide spot that’s large enough for me to park. I start to leave the car but I stop. I reach into the door pocket and find my flashlight and turn it on. Then I turn off my engine and my lights and exit the car and stand there beside it, throwing the flashlight beam on the ditch where I saw…. I don’t see the cones from where I am. I walk back along my side of the road, watching. There! I see a cone – two of them, and I cross the road and shine my beam into the weeds where the cones are.
 
There’s nothing there, just…tramped down weeds and…. I get closer and settle on my knees to study something. It looks like…yes, it’s blood, a spatter of blood, and then, close by, more blood that has colored the weeds and soaked into the ground. I have to think. What do I do if someone comes by? I’ll say…I’ll say that somebody stopped at my house and said that…they saw a body along the road, and they were afraid…. So.… So I thought I’d take a look. And…. That’s what I’ll say.
 
So, I guess, after I left here, someone DID come, and see the man and stop and…. Did they call the police or take him in their own car? I look at the side of the road where it meets the ditch and there are the marks of many tires moving over the dirt, the weeds. So…. They got to him. They helped him. Or…was he dead?
 
I take out my cell phone. There’s a hospital on the highway, not far. They would take him there. What do I say?  How can I find out? I think it through, and then I look up the number and take a long breath--going through the words again until someone answers.
 
“Emergency Room, please. Hi, I’m calling about someone that was picked up on Shannon Road tonight. Someone that was hurt, no, listen, I don’t know the name. Somebody told me that a man was found in a ditch on Shannon Road and they were too scared to…check it out, so they asked if I…. Well, I don’t know. Within the last hour, or…  Okay, yes, alright, yes, yes, I WILL speak to the police, but they would’ve taken him to you, so can you just tell me…. Okay. Okay, I’ll hang on. Hi, Doctor, yes, I heard about a man…. No, no I don’t know the man. I just heard…. He’s a what?  A John Doe, so you don’t…. No Identification. Is he unconscious?”
 
The doctor on the phone says “He didn’t make it. He had lost a lot of blood. Head injury. He laid out there so long.” Those words grab at my throat. The doctor asks, “Who was it that came and told you?” I answer that it was someone I don’t know. Someone driving by my house who…saw me in my yard. I live on this road, on Shannon Road, and they told me and then they drove away, so…. Yes, I say to the doctor, I promise to call Sergeant Tate at the police station and give him a description of this person. And then the doctor is called away, and I end the call.
 
I’m sitting here in the weeds, where HE was lying, the man, the John Doe, where he was bleeding, while I was driving, driving by and stopping and calling out to him and then…then I was driving away, and he was dying, and I left him there. The man was dying, and I left him there. In my mind, I change everything. In my mind I see myself getting out of my car and sitting beside the man and calling for an ambulance and waiting with the man and then hearing the sirens and watching them come and talking to the police while the ambulance takes him away to the emergency room where maybe they save him. Maybe they save him.
 
I don’t call Sargent Tate at the police station. I just sit here in the weeds. I should get up and go to my car and go home, but, somehow, I don’t have the strength, so I keep sitting here, and I realize how tired I am, I feel an impossible weight on me, so that I can’t keep sitting. I have to lie down, here, in the weeds, and I do, I lie here. My flashlight beam hurts my eyes so I turn it off and I let go of my cell phone, too, and just…keep…lying here. Why can’t I rise?  Maybe if I wait a while. Maybe if I sleep, but I don’t sleep. I lay there until I hear…it’s a car, coming down Shannon Road, coming from Bell Street to Shannon Road, just as I did, coming toward this place in the road. Maybe they can help me, just help me rise up and just…. If they can get me to my car, I’ll be all right. I’ll drive home. Home.
 
I get ready, and as the car approaches, I turn on the flashlight and leave it where it lies, there on the ground, so they can see me. I rise up on one elbow. The flashlight is pointed at me and the moon is bright now, so I know they’ll see me. They come abreast of me and slow down and stop. I can see them now, a couple, about my age, a little younger, the woman driving, the man beside her, they’re staring at me, and they…they look so afraid, so afraid. No, wait! Wait! But they speed away, rushing away, down the road, down the dark road.

# 

Queenie

Here we go again with the monthly Short Story For Shut-Ins, a small-town tale this time. Hope you enjoy.

QUEENIE

By Gerald DiPego

Let’s see…I’m Dr. Ben Vogel, general practitioner, retired, 74 years old. It’s 1983…May, and I’m sitting on a log here in ‘The World.’ It’s what I call the acre behind our home. I thought someday I’d build a larger house here, but as I explored this place, I found that I didn’t want to touch it, just be in it, visit each season that came to it, and here in Illinois we get our seasons in bold face type: hot as hell, cold as hell, a spring that causes you to keep smiling on and on like a fool, and a fall that makes you pull in a breath in wonder.

The acre is full of greenery today and wild flowers, a whole orchestra of birds, and even a small stream that sounds like a traveling conversation, and the trees: fine, tall elms and some willows by the water, a dozen handsome birches, and four massive oaks, which may be the oldest living things in Indian Lake. I’m not in ‘The World’ alone today. My wife Queenie is walking about here somewhere. She loves it as much as I do, but has her own name for it: Eden.

Thinking about her, I search around, and I see movement near one of the silvery birches and wonder and study and then begin to laugh. She is sort-of peeking out at me, but not with her face. She has raised her skirt and is showing me a bare leg, moving it slowly as I laugh, the kind of hard laugh that hurts your chest but you don’t care. She’s almost as old as I am, but it’s a fine leg, and now she gives me her face beside the trunk, gives me a wink and the stunning gift of her smile.

But the story I want to write down today took place long before the Queenie era of my life, starting, I suppose when I left my pre-med studies and signed up for the Korean War. I can’t give you a solid answer why. It was more than wanting to be tested or have an adventure. I really did want to help and to learn. So, I trained as a medic and shipped out, with my family worried and even angry at my decision. We were not a close-to-the-breast kind of family, and it caused a tear that never truly healed, made worse by my decision later not to open a practice in the Chicago suburbs where we lived, but to go north to the lake towns, the small towns.

Oh, what did I learn in Korea? Well yes, how to function under a massive weight of pressure and work quickly and exactly, but the moments that stuck, and are still so vivid, are the ones where I saw death occur, where I saw that piece of a second when life leaves and a living entity disappears and becomes what’s left behind, like empty clothing. Life, with all its pain and joy and mighty noise, simply winks out, like the last ember in the fireplace.

Well, later, there I was, the new doctor in Indian Lake, the ONLY doctor, people having to go to Libertyville or Grayslake before my coming. There was a town druggist, Renzo Padilla, and he and I became friends. He brought me into his poker group, so I soon had a structure to my life outside of medicine, and I also had a procession of people coming to my office, many in distress, fear, pain, and some who mostly wanted conversation. And several of these knew of some woman I should definitely meet. I wanted to go slowly down that road. A loner can manage that.

There were a few pleasant double dates with Renzo and his wife and a few awkward ones, but nothing lit me up until the Bower family needed me at the McHenry hospital, and there they were, the youngest, Ellie, 23, broken badly in an auto wreck, the mother, who could only weep and smelled of drink, and the older daughter, Ann, 31, who was in control and used to it, and who gave me a stare that had a whole book inside of it with chapters such as ‘I’m in charge here,’ ‘You will not take advantage of my family,’ ‘You will tell us the full truth,’ ‘We’re poor and have no insurance so figure it out,’ ‘Stop looking at me like that.’

I found her striking, and it was hard to turn away. She was a couple of inches taller than me, and I found myself correcting my posture. She had long dark hair, and eyes that made her beautiful. There was so much inside there, so much depth, and no bottom to it. I did my job, and the news was not good. Ellie had been speeding, driving drunk, there was rain on the road, she would never walk again without a couple of canes, there was no spleen and the possibility of blood clots heading for the brain…. I did my best, and in a month and a half Ellie went home. Ellie never said thanks. She was angry to the bone, and when I mentioned that to Ann, she said Ellie had always been angry, taking after the violent father who had left long ago. So, Ann, at age ten, had taken over the family, the mother captured by alcohol, the father never to be seen again. But Ann Bowen did not seem bitter, and, on the rare occasion when she smiled, she was to me fully and perfectly complete. I loved her from the starting gun.

I spoke of her to Renzo, and he gave me little hope. She was on and off an item with a tough guy in town, a man of petty crimes and fist fights. Why are they drawn to the bad guys? I had pondered that in high school. I didn’t think I was bland. Was I? Renzo agreed that I wasn’t, but can you trust your best friend to judge you honestly?

I did some quiet studying of her sometime boyfriend, Chet Landi, a Korean vet like me, even with a couple of medals and maybe what we were calling battle fatigue. With some it was anger, with some, like me, waves of depression. He was out of town I learned, and so I felt emboldened, and I arranged to be walking out of the building where my office was at just the same moment Ann was heading home from the food store where she worked. Oh, Hi. Mind if I walk along with you? How is Ellie doing? I had that ready and it began a conversation.

She was not talkative, but pleasant enough. Ellie was Ellie and not improving or cooperating. I made the transition smoothly, I thought.

“Wonder if you’d like to stop and have a cup of coffee at Sandy’s?”

She looked at me, studying, then staring ahead again as we walked and asking “Why?”

“Why? To get to know each other.”

“To know what?” She was thoughtful, quiet about this as continued on.

I shrugged. “A chance to see inside of you, Ann.”

“Hm,” she said, moving along. “You want to operate?”

I blurted out a laugh, enjoying this surprise, but the best part was the smile she was carrying now, still staring ahead. Then she said, “I’m flattered that you like me, Doctor. I’m not really available.”

“Who says I like you?”

Ah, I saw my first big-time laugh from this lovely woman, like a cold drink on a steamy day. “You’re okay in a pinch,” I said, and her smile stayed, eyes alight. “And my name is Ben.”

“You’re okay, too, Ben, but like I said, I’m… not exactly available.”

“Hmm. Okay. Just friends then, having coffee?”

“No thanks. But thanks.”

And that was that, a small exchange that I replayed for days, probably weeks, and always smiled at the memory.

Ellie died about a month after that. I could have put down what I suspected: overdose and suicide, but just left it to her damaged body and a very real weakened heart. I went to the funeral. The mother was destroyed. Ann was dark and quiet and handling everything. We nodded to each other, didn’t speak. Chet Landi was there. When they left the cemetery, he was holding her hand. I didn’t like it, but I DID want her to be happy, even with him.

Then I got the call one afternoon from one of my poker friends, a cop. I was needed. Chet Landi, armed with a pistol, had robbed a local bar and gone on the run. Then he was seen leaving town with Ann Bowen. She was driving. But there was more. The cop was calling me because the couple had stopped at the house of Landi’s friend, and a shot had been fired. The police were now surrounding the place. Maybe I could help whoever had been shot. I got there before the ambulance, and I offered to go to the front door. The chief didn’t want to be responsible. I was heading for that door anyway, when it opened. Ann came out. No gun in sight. She looked at me like death, like an ending of everything. “I had to shoot him,” she said. “See if he’s dead.” And she walked toward the police chief while I hurried inside. Two men on the floor. One had taken a beating. The other was Chet Landi. I rushed to him, acting like a medic one more time, and he looked at me, and I saw it again, I saw the life in his look. I saw it go away.

She got three years for aiding and abetting because when he came to her after the robbery, she agreed to drive him to his friend’s home where he could get a car and the cash his friend owed him. He had gotten so little money from the bar.

The friend, Danny Poe, said he had sold the car and had no money to give him, so Landry had begun to beat him. Danny testified that Ann tried to stop Chet, but the man was a maniac. Ann grabbed the gun from Chet’s belt and turned it on him to stop him, and he only laughed and went on with the beating, and so she shot him. Ann Bowen saved his life, said Danny Poe.

No one ever visited her in prison except me, once every few months. Her mother could not take care of herself and was taken to Elgin State Hospital, a warehouse of the poor and mentally troubled from where, I was sure, she would never leave. I always asked Ann if she needed anything and she would always say no for the first year, and after that asked for cigarettes that she could trade with the guards and other prisoners for things she needed. During the second year she began to help in the prison infirmary and had many questions for me and this led to a correspondence that lasted the rest of her term, and gave me an idea that you’re probably already guessing.

She had already written to the people at the food store, wondering about her old job, but they had told her it wouldn’t be possible because she wasn’t wanted back in the town. They said it just like that, with no apology. I had a job for her, I said. I could use the help in my office, a kind of nursing aide that could take temperatures and blood pressure so that my time could be spent doctoring. I said, “It could be a life for you, Ann.” But she said, “No. They’ll hate me, and they’ll turn on you…I won’t let that happen. I’ll go away.”

But she had nowhere to go, and she finally said she would try it. Of course, she was nervous, even scared, and I had never seen her scared before. She did not show her fear to the people who came into the office and stared or gave her angry looks on the street. She looked right at them and went on with her life. But I could see the pain inside, and she had had so damn much pain. There were people who were friendly enough, and there were people who told her outright to get out of town. There were patients who told me they wouldn’t come to my office as long as she was there, and others who were glad I had given her a chance. All the while we were quietly moving along, often having a meal at the end of the day, and then I’d drive her to her room in a motel outside of town and pick her up in the morning.

There were two men and a woman waiting outside my office one morning when we arrived to open up. They said they wanted to talk to me. I asked Ann to go upstairs and get the office ready. When she was gone, they told me all the reasons why Ann Bowen should be made to leave town. She was bad like all the Bowens, and if I kept employing her, they would force me out, and they were already getting the signatures to do it. I told them that she was a good person and I would stand by her. That’s when one of the men, Frank Pulaski, the chairman of the Indian Lake Mens Club and a sometime member of my poker group, said to me, his jaw quivering with anger, “Ben, she may be a good screw for you, but this town will NOT have her kind live here.”

I was carrying my doctor bag. I put it down and then punched Frank Pulaski in the face. My fist hit his mouth and he went down. He sat up, but couldn’t stand. The others were statues with open mouths. “Help me,” I said to them, and I stood the injured man, and they helped me get him to my office where I put two stitches in his torn lip.

I spent six hours in a cell and was fined four hundred dollars. When I was free it was already twilight, and I went to the office and found it dark and locked. I drove to the motel and found Ann outside the office with a suitcase, waiting for the bus. I went to her and we stared a while.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I left you a note in the office. Please leave me alone now, Ben. Please.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone, Ann. I want to be with you. I want to marry you. I want a life with you. I’d say that I worship you, but that would probably scare you. Please stay with me.”

She stared a long time, and while she stared, the bus pulled up. She started to walk toward it. She was taking my heart with her. I could feel the empty place in my body. She stopped and turned her head, still leaning toward the door of that bus, and she said, “Worship?”

“Yes,” I said. “Worship… like a goddess, like a queen.” She smiled then. I’ve called her Queenie ever since.

#

Brazil

Here is this month’s Story-For-Shut-Ins.  Hope you enjoy.  I like writing in different genres. Let’s try a thriller!

BRAZIL

By Gerald DiPego

Here’s how it happened. I’m driving, night time, pretty late, coming from a meeting with my attorney, moving along on the highway, two lanes each way, maybe speeding, not much. I’m hugging the roadside, driving home, thinking hard about this problem, this… more than a problem. Like a bomb going off in my life, but I’m riding it out, and I notice this SUV coming up in the outside lane, coming up fast, about to pass me.

The moon is big and bright, and I see everything clearly. There’s this other car, a smaller car about five lengths behind me, but this SUV is pushing it now, right beside me, weaving on the road, weaving way too close, and I hit the horn and stay on it, but he doesn’t move away, and BAM! God! The SUV hits me, hits the side of my car! I’m heading into the ditch and I see all this like I’m on a merry-go-round, as I’m spinning toward that ditch, frozen, but thinking, he’s drunk! Crazy! Then POW, the car that was behind me is ramming into the SUV, and we’re all spinning out of control.

I roll into the ditch, attacked by an air bag, banging around like a doll. When it all stops, I have to sit a minute. I have to make sure I’m alive and…  I’m shaken and hurting and I think my neck might be broken or my shoulder or both, but I find I’m able to deal with the belt, click it open, moving like someone dreaming, and then staring at the door for a while, for an actual fifteen seconds or so, like I’m trying to fix it into my mind, and then I’m trying to open it. I watch myself, and it opens, and out I go. I’m in weeds. I’m on my knees, and I go on my hands and knees up to the road where all the chaos is. The tires are no longer screaming on the asphalt. It’s people now, screaming people.

Mostly it’s the little girl. She’s about eight or nine, out of her car on her knees, bloody nose, her eyes so wide and mouth open with screaming as she stares at the woman, her mother I guess, who’s halfway out of the car, lying on her side, her head down near the asphalt, holding one twisted hand away from her like it’s broken, and she’s screaming, too, her daughter’s name, I guess. “Kelly! Kelly!” The little girl crawls closer to her, but the woman’s eyes are closed, and she keeps screaming for her daughter. “Kellyyy!”

I move toward their car, my neck and shoulder not broken, after all, but aching so that I nearly go down. I see the SUV on its side, the man in there not screaming but roaring. He’s trying to push and pull himself free from the battered car, roaring in pain with every inch he gets.
 
I do a limping rush to the woman and the kid, and the girl turns her terrified eyes on me. “Help my Mom!!”  The girl is shaking, screaming the words. “Help my Mom!” And I rush toward the woman and reach for her as she moves in her slow, slow fall from the car’s seat sliding through the banged-open door, but as I’m reaching, I realize my phone is in my hand, with no memory of pulling it out of my pocket, and I kneel close to the woman while I’m thumbing in the three numbers and then hearing the voice and getting out the words:  “Bad accident, people hurt, on the highway just north of… No! Just south of the Banner Road exit! What? Just now! Me too, I’m hurt too! Ben Proffer, but… I can’t talk. Have to help. Are you coming?! Are you sending the… ? I have to help!” and I cram the phone back into my pocket as I’m reaching for the woman who is on her side, inching out of the car, and I hold her and help ease her down on the asphalt as her daughter keeps screaming:  “Mom! Mom!”

I don’t see any blood on the mother, just a kind of reddening dent on her forehead and that hand, that broken hand she’s holding away from herself like a claw. Without opening her eyes, she screams “Kelly!”

And I’m shouting:  “Listen, Kelly! LISTEN!” I get the girl to stop yelling and stare at me. “What’s your mom’s name? What’s her name?!”

The girl screams the name, “ELLEN!” and I come close to the woman’s face. “Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, can you open your eyes? Ellen! You’re daughter’s okay! Kelly is okay!”

I hear the other driver, the man, roaring again, and I want to go see what I can do for him, but I can’t leave… “Ellen, do you hear me? ELLEN!”

The woman opens her eyes about half way. My face is an inch from hers. “Your daughter is fine! Kelly, come closer, show your…”

Kelly puts her face next to mine. I should have wiped the blood from the kid’s face, from her bloody nose. It seems like her mother sees her and it seems like there could be a faint, shaky smile coming to Ellen’s face, and Kelly hugs her mom, and her mother, with her good hand, touches her child’s hair. I hear the man shout again, and I break away, saying, “I’ll be back to you!” and I hurry toward the man who is free of the banged up SUV now, lying on his back, and I notice, in the moonlight, that he’s all wet, and I think it’s oil or…. But when I get closer it’s blood, so much blood.

“I’ve got you!” I say to him, but his eyes are wild, face contorted. “Anybody else in there? In your car?!” I’m glad to see a quick shake of his head, so I know he hears me, but he’s trembling all over, and I’m trying to see where he’s bleeding. He roars again, the shakes grabbing him and making him shudder violently. “Where? Where are you hurt?” He moves a trembling hand toward his upper side, and I see the gash, big and deep. “Okay! Okay, I see…,” and I’m thinking Christ, how can I close that, how can I stop that? Then I’m pulling at my belt, pulling it out, fast as I can, and then what, what can I use…? I grab at my shirt, popping the buttons, tearing it off and putting the bunched shirt over the wound that’s chest high on his left side, and I’m using the belt to tighten the fabric over the wound, and when I look back at him, he’s staring at me, and his shaking is easing. His look is deep, deep on my face, and there’s anger there, a kind of sneer, and he says, his words like gravel, “Stupid… bastard.”

“Me!? Me!? You got into my lane! You swiped me, Christ!”

He’s saying more, but I have to get closer to his face to hear the words. “Stupid shit,” he says.
 
“You side-swiped ME, you drunken asshole…”

And now he’s actually smiling, his face still quivering, breath choppy. It’s a mean smile. I’m sure he’s crazy. He must…. Maybe it’s road rage, maybe he’s a weirdo racist, because I’m a Black man, and so he sideswipes me? Maybe just for that or….

“You know nothin’,” he says. "Friggin' Benjamin Proffer. You know shit.”  He starts to gag then and cough, and I’m stunned. My name? Could he have heard me give my name on the police line. No. I was too far away. That ugly smile is still shaking on his face. “You’re the one…. You’re the one supposed to be dyin', not me. Not me. Damn! It’s a… friggin’ fiasco, Benjamin. Look at me, look at me. It’s supposed to be you.” He laughs a broken laugh that brings back the pain, his face contorting. When he relaxes, he just stares. I’m kneeling over him, lost. I think I must be insane because I can’t take this in. He’s smiling again, a sarcastic smile, as he shakes there on the asphalt. “Supposed to be you.”  There’s a screaming in my head, and I realize it’s the kid, it’s Kelly screaming for me, saying “Help her! Help her!”

I pull my eyes off the man and rush back to the other car and Kelly and Ellen. “Her eyes went up,” Kelly screams at me, and I kneel and bend over Ellen, who seems unconscious now, god! Maybe she’s gone! The bruise on her forehead is darkening, spreading, but I press hard over her heart and feel it beating, slightly, but beating.

“Ellen. Ellen! Talk to her Kelly -- just talk, keep talking.” I once watched a demo on CPR, no mouth to mouth they said, just press and let up, press and…. So I’m pressing on her heart, trying for a rhythm, and the kid is talking through her tears. “Mom… Mom… open your eyes, please, please, please.” I keep pressing, but I admit that a part of my mind is working over what the man said, that I’M supposed to be dead, that…. He wanted to…. He actually wanted to kill me? Why? And then I know. It’s because of that ‘bomb’ that went off in my life, because I discovered something at work and found evidence, and the head of my company went to prison. Where he belonged. Jesus. Death? For that?

Ellen coughs. It’s one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard. Her heart is a little stronger, and I put my face very close to her, smelling her perfume or her lipstick or something. “Ellen, open your eyes. Open your eyes. Please….”  And Kelly comes closer, our heads touching side by side. “Open your eyes Mom, please!”  And Ellen’s eyes open, just like that. Kelly lays her head on her mother’s chest, hugging her, and Ellen slowly moves her good hand, puts it on her daughter’s back and holds tight.

“I’ll be back,” I say. “I’ll come back here!” And I hurry to the man and kneel over him. I can’t tell if the blood on him is old blood or if the wound is still…. “So you wanted to kill me?! For that?! For him?!” I’m tightening the belt one more notch and moving his arm to help hold it there while I shout at him. “He was friggin’ guilty! He was using company money for his gambling, for his friggin’ "life style," the bastard, and when we saw the money was missing, he pinned it on three other people, fired them, created phony evidence. He was ruining their lives! What?! You’re smiling at me?! What?!” And he stares with that smile, and even though he’s trembling, manages to shake his head, looking at me like I’m pathetic.

“Listen… Benjamin… he’ll just send somebody else.”
 
“No! Hell no! I’ll tell the police, about him, about you….”

He shakes his head a while before he says it. “Can’t prove it. I don’t even know the guy. Never met him. Just… got a phone call. He’ll get someone else. You’re dead, Benny. Like me. It’ll just take you a little longer.”

“I’m NOT dead! And what kind of a shit are you?! Taking money to kill somebody?”

“I’m a terrible person, Benny. Admitting it here. Terrible. Wanted the money, all that money. Brazil. Ever been? S’great there.”

“You’re going to live! You’re going to tell the cops the truth! You’re…” I can see that the color is draining from his face. He’s looking so weak, looking grey now. I move his arm from his side and see that the blood is still coming, through the shirt, through the belt. He’s dying right in front of me, still watching me. I hear Kelly shouting again, tears in her voice.

“She closed her eyes! My mom closed her eyes!” “I’m coming,” I shout, and I look at this man on the ground, my would-be killer. “Somebody dying over there?” he asks. “Why,” I say. “You care?”  He just stares, no smile now. I should hate him. Maybe I do, but this is IT. Actual death. I’m watching it happen, and I find that I’m reaching for my phone. “Listen, asshole,” I say to him. “Listen, is there anybody you want to talk to, want to… say goodbye?”  He just stares now. Surprised. “Benjamin,” he says. “Good… ol’ Ben…”  “Think!” I say. “I have to go back to them, so… A wife? Kid? Girlfriend? Boyfriend…?”  He says something I can’t hear so I lean close. “Sister,” he says. “The number,” I ask, “Quick, the number.”  He rattles it and I thumb it in and wait and it rings, once, twice, and now I’m hearing it. I’m sure. I’m hearing the far and faint sound of sirens. The best song I ever heard.

A woman’s voice says, "Hello,” and I put the phone to his ear and move his hand to support it there, and I rush to Ellen and Kelly. I press on Ellen’s chest, and there is still a beat there. I feel her hands, and they’re so cold. “Is there a coat, Kelly? In the car? We’ll put it over her,” and while the girl is gone, I say Ellen’s name over and over and touch her face, and her eyes flutter, then open slightly, then close. Kelly brings a jacket and we both spread it on Ellen’s chest. She’s blinking, at least she’s blinking. “Hear the sirens?” I ask Kelly, and she looks at me, wondering, and then her eyes widen and she smiles and shouts through her smile. “Yes!”

I stay with them, rubbing Ellen’s good hand, warming it. I glance over at the man. Can’t hear him. Don’t see him moving. The arrival of the ambulances and the police cars is one of the greatest blessings of my lifetime. The sight and sounds of all those people in their uniforms surrounding us, doing their jobs, lifts a weight that I didn’t know was crushing me, leaves me almost floating, gives me such a gift of peace, no matter what’s coming, no matter….

I step back from Kelly and Ellen and let the men and women work. I talk to two of the cops, give them my name and address as I glance over at the man, and that’s when I see it, as if I picked that very moment to turn my head. He’s being lifted onto the stretcher, and they they’re covering him. I watch them cover him, all of him, face and all.
  
Another cop, who seems to be in charge, is now standing in front of me, and I figure, okay, now, I’m going to try this. I’m going to try to get this crazy story right, so right that he’ll believe me. But we’re interrupted by the EMTs checking me out. I seem okay. I actually seem okay. I ask the medics about Ellen. “Broken left hand and what looks like a serious concussion, but we won’t know till we get her to Emergency.”

The cop in charge is still waiting for me. I don’t have my words straight, but I feel like I better begin. I stare at him and I like his face, his eyes, so I start.

“I know… this is going to sound really strange, but the guy in the SUV, the guy who side-swiped me…. That was on purpose. He tried to kill me. I know. Crazy, right? But I can tell you…”  He interrupts me by handing me my phone.

“We know all about it, Mr. Proffer. We’ll need to talk to you at the station if the ER says you can walk out of there.

I’m a statue, standing with my mouth open. Then I ask him. “You… know all about it? About someone in prison sending this guy…?”

The cop is nodding so I shut up, and he says, “The man in the SUV, Edward Coston, he told his sister on the phone all about it, told her to record it, about who hired him, and told her to call the police and play the call, tell the story. She did. Your old boss is now in lockdown. They routed the information to us, said we were picking up a possible felon, but… Coston didn’t make it.”
  
I just stand there a while, taking it in, then I watch the ambulances leaving, and I say, surprising myself, “Maybe he did make it.” The cop kind of squints his eyes, trying to understand, and I just say, “Brazil.” And that’s that.

 #

It's Beige

Here is number four in my story-a-month send-out to you.  Time for a lighter one!  Hope you enjoy.  Be well and stay safe dear people.

IT’S BEIGE

By Gerald DiPego

Ann sits far back in the café where the large front window sends only a weak light, and even that paleness is mostly absorbed by the wooden wall panels, uneven and cracked like old faces. Ann is comfortable waiting there and trying not to think of anything to say. She doesn’t want to have expressions ready like cards to play. She wants this to be as natural as possible, just two people meeting who have never met before. She even tries to drive all the descriptors out of her mind about this “Don” that her friends have been, if not pushing, nudging her toward. “You’ll like him, and… you’re both seventy-two.” As if that were a special prize.

Don is still in his car, parked down the block, fussing with his CDs, but truly spending a few more minutes so that he won’t be early. Well, it’s already three minutes after two, but he thinks that five minutes is a better number for showing up. He doesn’t want to be the first one there or seem too anxious. He’s irritated at himself for agreeing to meet this woman, this stranger, and feels some mild anger at his friends for saying, so often over the past month, “You two should meet. I think you’ll like each other.” And “She’s fun and smart. I’m sure you’ll get along,” and on and on.

ANN

Hello, pleasure to meet you. I’m Ann.

DON

My pleasure. I’m Don.

ANN

Well, we’ve done it, haven’t we, Don. I’m proud of us.

DON

What have we done?

ANN

Our job. We’re here to make Marla and Rasheed happy.

DON

Well, yes, and we’ve done that just by meeting.

ANN

And so now I guess we’re free to go. Thanks, it’s been great.

DON

Oh, you’re right. Yes. Well? You first.

ANN

I still have half a cup of coffee. Wouldn’t you like some coffee before we…?

DON

Might as well.

ANN

Tell me, Don, just curious, did you wait in your car before you came in here?

DON

No…. No, I just…. Sorry, were you waiting long?

ANN

No, I just came in. I HAD been out in my car though, waiting. (He smiles — owns up.)

DON

I may have… waited a bit. (She sips her coffee. They stare.)

ANN

Tell me… am I as you imagined?

DON

Well… actually... I imagined Penelope Cruz.

ANN

Well, then you must be pleased since we look so much alike.

DON

Are YOU disappointed?

ANN

A bit. I was hoping for someone less handsome. Handsome makes me nervous.

DON

I could make a face.

ANN

Please do. (Don makes a face, and they both smile and chuckle.)

DON

When you smile, you know… you’re prettier than Penelope.

ANN

Oh, Don – my heart just skipped.

DON

I have meds for that. (They both laugh, unguarded now. The waiter approaches and Don orders a coffee. They stare at each other, still smiling a bit, interested.)

ANN

I don’t remember what it is you do? I know they told me, but I wasn’t paying attention. Is it juggling?

DON

I’m an engineer. Retired.

ANN

Amazing. It must be so difficult to drive those big locomotives….

DON

Electrical engineer. Not a choo-choo. Mostly computers.

ANN

Oh, Really? My desktop is a mess. Could you help clear it up?

DON

Mac or PC? (She leans forward with a look that says she’s sorry for him.)

ANN

I’m so sorry. Should I create a certain gesture when I’m making a joke, so you’ll know?

DON

Yes. Put your thumbs in your ears and wiggle your fingers.

ANN

It’s okay. Don’t be embarrassed. People who actually KNOW computers, have had less human experience, and time to interact….

DON

I’m NOT a nerd. I’m socially adept. I came here, didn’t I? Unafraid.

ANN

Hmm, I nearly stayed home, thinking I’d mention a sore toe or a stroke or something.

DON

Do you regret coming here?

ANN

Of course. (Ann slowly raises her hands to her ears, slips her thumbs in there, starts to wiggle her fingers, and he’s laughing, taking her hands and putting them on the table. The waiter arrives with Don’s coffee, then asks Ann if she’d like a refill. She says yes, thank you, and he pours and leaves. Don sips and makes a face.)

DON

He actually calls this coffee? You think he was raised by wolves or something? What’s he thinking? Does he ever taste the product? (She stares at him.) What?

ANN

He brought you your coffee. You didn’t say thanks, didn’t even look at him, and now you’re ridiculing him and insulting his family. Are you often like this?

DON

Like what?

ANN

Rude.

DON

(Chuckles.) I’m not rude. Do you actually LIKE this coffee?

ANN

It’s not about the coffee. It’s about you, Don. I’m trying to get the full picture.

DON

Are you serious?

ANN

Are you rude? This is a need-to-know.

DON

I’m not rude. I’m never rude. How can he serve…? (She interrupts by waving to the waiter. The waiter comes over.)

ANN

(To waiter.) I’m afraid he doesn’t like the coffee.

WAITER

Oh, I’m sorry….

DON

Well, it’s just….

WAITER

Why don’t I make a fresh pot? It’s been sitting….

DON

Oh, Thanks. I….

WAITER

No problem.

DON

I’m certainly not blaming you. You’re a fine waiter. (Ann smiles at this.)

WAITER

Thanks, but we prefer ‘waitperson’. (He leaves with the coffee, and Ann and Don laugh.)

ANN

That was lovely, Don. Truly.

DON

The bastard. (They laugh again, then stare again, smiling.)

ANN

What do you do with all your retired time?

DON

We should be talking about you now. You’re in music, right? Let me hear about that, please.

ANN

(She sings this.) What do you do with allll you’re retired time… Donnnnnn?

DON

Well, obviously, you don’t sing.

ANN

(She laughs a merry laugh). I teach music theory. I write about music. I have a book out now about music. “Classical to Jazz, a Musical Journey.” That’s all about me. We segue back to YOU now. Tell me something or I’ll sing again.

DON

First of all, I like your laugh. You seem a bit staid, but then you laugh and… your face… I don’t know… comes apart… in a good way. You should laugh in a mirror and see.

ANN

Thank you. I do make funny faces in the mirror. Only when home alone. Don’t you? Just to crack yourself up?

DON

No, I don’t. I’m too busy thinking up insults.

ANN

You mean – to have them ready, like ammo? Or are they all for a particular person.

DON

Yes, for me. The fool in the mirror. Don’t you think I’m a fool?

ANN

Let me think…. Yes. (She starts her hands toward her ears again for the gesture, but he smiles and stops her hands.)

ANN

Why do you think you’re a fool?

DON

I don’t do well with people. Maybe I am a kind of nerd. I can easily make friends with any computer.

ANN

WE seem to be making friends.

DON

Just wait. Anyway, why should it be so damn hard -- being nice to people. Like the waiter…. I often piss people off. It’s not that I enjoy it. Just…. With my son, my Ex…. Do you get on well with your Ex? You probably do.

ANN

He’s not my Ex. He’s my dead husband. Yes, we get on very well, always did, except for the occasional battle.

DON

Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so stupid. Rasheed and Marla, they probably mentioned….

ANN

Who listens? Tell me about your son.

DON

No, it’s okay. This is not fair table talk. I had no right to…. Obviously, I saw that you go… beyond small talk and I was taking advantage and making an ass of myself. Forget it. (She’s staring at him.) What?

ANN

Tell me about your son.

DON

(Heavy, edgy sigh.) Oh, come on, now you sound like my therapist. You going to take a shot at making me a better man in the next fifteen minutes? I said too much, like an idiot, and I want to get off this. Let’s talk about… your favorite sport. (The waiter returns with a fresh cup, puts it down in front of Don.)

WAITER

On the house. (The waiter leaves, Don kind of collapses with a rueful smile and a slow shake of the head. Ann stares, a slight smile and a deep look.)

ANN

You did piss me off just then. The ‘therapist’ business.

DON

I know. Sorry. See? Let’s do sports.

ANN

I won an archery award in college. Don’t shoot anymore.

DON

Thank god. (He sips his coffee.)

ANN

How’s the coffee?

DON

I don’t care.

ANN

(Smiles.) Favorite sport?

DON

Pool. I have a table, and… a kind of group….

ANN

A group is good. A group is friends, right? I’m very bad at pool.

DON

Maybe I’ll teach you… I mean someday… if you like.

ANN

Do you enjoy teaching?

DON

No.

ANN

Thought so.

DON

I… tried to teach my son how to play. I was bad at that, too.

ANN

Did you ever let him win?

DON

Well… I... doesn’t matter. He followed his mother into golf. He’s very good. They’re very close. Look, I want to get your book.

ANN

Not just to be polite, though. I mean that’s nice, but… not your cup of coffee.

DON

I read. I read a lot of things. Anyway, I’m getting it.

ANN

When?

DON

(Laughs.) I promise.

ANN

I mean you could get it now.

DON

You sell them out of your purse?

ANN

There’s a bookstore, four blocks away. I was going there anyway. So…? (He stands and she does, too. They walk out of the gloom, into a sunny afternoon.)

ANN

If only Rasheed and Marla could see us now.

DON

Practically engaged. (She laughs a very unguarded laugh. He smiles, walking on.)

DON

What’s YOUR son like? Like you?

ANN

More like his sister. They’re very serious. They describe their mother as giddy. I’m sorry about your boy. It’s tough with divorces, two enemy camps with the kids in between. My sister goes through that.

DON

I’m embarrassed that I mentioned that, and I don’t want to talk about it, so let’s just drop it, all right? I don’t usually… I don’t know why I said it. I hereby erase it. Okay? God.

ANN

(She walks on awhile, then…. ) if you have a list of all your topics that are allowed, I need a copy.

DON

Fine. It’s a list of everything except me. All right?

ANN

Now YOU sound pissed off.

DON

I’m not. Only at me. You see? I AM bad with relationships and an idiot, and not good with human beings which makes me, what…? Difficult. A neurotic. And an ass. That’s just who I am. Enough about that. Is that clear now? (They walk on in silence awhile, then Ann stops, and he stops, turning to her, wondering.)

ANN

(She speaks without anger.) Don… you’re not an idiot. You’re not "difficult," or neurotic. I’m afraid what you are is just one more crabby asshole. (His mouth is open, his throat not working. She proceeds matter-of-factly.) I could be wrong. I hope I am, but if you ARE a crabby asshole, that’s the last kind of person I want to let into my life. You be well. Really. I mean that. Bye. (She turns and begins walking back the way they came.)

DON

Well… wait! Will you wait?! I’m… ANN! Jesus! (She keeps walking. He takes a few steps after her, then stops, stands there, closes his eyes a moment, mouths the word "fuck." He watches her walking away, takes a deep breath, then turns and walks on, looking lost, very sorry and very angry at himself. In a moment, he stops and finds himself staring into a men’s clothing store. He looks through the window at each item there, hardly seeing them. He sighs, walks in.)

(Inside the store he’s wandering, with an empty stare. He sees a large mirror and stands in front of it, studying himself. A woman salesperson approaches.)

SALESPERSON

Can I help you?

DON

Doubt it.

WOMAN

If you tell me what you’re looking for.

DON

I’m… looking for a different person in the mirror. Not this one. Do you have something friendlier? (She only stares. He walks out of the store. In a few minutes of walking, he spots the bookstore and wanders in. Moves to the desk where there’s a clerk.)

CLERK

Hi, can I help you?

DON

Where’s the section on music – books about music?

CLERK

Aisle three, all the way down. You… wouldn’t be looking for the Ann Sampson book?

DON

Well, yes… it’s “Classical To…

CLERK

Jazz, yes. Only reason I asked it that she happens to be here.

DON

She is?!

CLERK

Just came in a few minutes ago. What a coincidence. You’ll find her back there. (Don begins to hurry to the aisle, but then stops short, realizing something, turns to the Clerk and says, “Thank you.” He hurries down the aisle and sees Ann sitting in a leather chair, where patrons can rest and read. She looks up at him, no smile. He walks to her. There is another chair beside her and he tentatively sits there, staring, while she leafs through her book)

DON

Did you… go back and get your car?

ANN

(Ann nods as she continues turning pages.) Came to sign the books. Then I’m going home.

DON

I’m so glad you’re here. Is there… ANYTHING I can do, or say…? (She keeps leafing through her book and doesn’t look up as she speaks.)

ANN

Change. Be a better, kinder man.

DON

Oh, god… well, you say that as if it’s something…

ANN

Change. Be a better, kinder man. That’s it.

DON

Ann, I’m 72 years old….

ANN

(Still turning pages.) Change, old man.

DON

How am I supposed…?

ANN

(Still turning pages.) Get a hammer. Carry it around. Every time you crab at someone, you hit yourself on the head. In a month you’ll either be dead or a better man.

DON

(After a long pause.) Is there, maybe… another way?

ANN

(Still turning pages.) You could start by saying something very nice about me.

DON

(He takes a moment, then) I… really… Iike how you look.

ANN

For instance?

DON

I… find you attractive. Your pretty face, your body….

ANN

(Still leafing.) I’m skinny as a pencil.

DON

…your pretty face, your skinny body, and I like how smart and funny you are, and kind… you’re kind.

ANN

(Turning pages) And?

DON

I… like how you dress. You put yourself together very well. That scarf is beautiful on you… the tiny bees against the… background, against the brown. (She closes the book, hands it to him.)

ANN

It’s beige… you idiot.

#

Emma Land

This is my third “Story For Shut-Ins,” and I hope you enjoy.  We’re all in this strange and separate world now, but somehow still together, zooming and calling and emailing and sharing what we can.  Be well and safe.

EMMA LAND

A short story by Gerald DiPego

My name is Sharon Best. People tell me I’m attractive and that I look to be about 25 years old. I don’t argue with them. After three hours on a plane, I’m tired and feeling like my clothes are tied in knots. I try to blow my hair out of my face, but it’s too limp. The year is 2002 on a Saturday in May at…four o’clockish, and I’m making my way through a large airport terminal in Chicago, heading for the doors and the cabs, bag strapped on my shoulder and a suitcase rolling behind, traveling light, that’s me. I don’t know if I actually hear the voice or if I just sense that someone is calling to me. This makes me nervous, and I walk, and roll, faster toward those doors.

The voice rises and follows me, and I have to glance behind, can’t help it, a very quick glance. Okay, I see him. Yes, I think I recognize him, about 60 or so, also with luggage, nearly dropping it as he rushes toward me. He’s gained weight. I don’t stop, and he doesn’t give up.

“Wait! Young lady…. Young woman! Wait!”

He’s almost on me, which makes my heart shrink to a stone. I can’t start running, not here, so I stop as he rushes toward me, very intense. He’s still shouting, even as he comes close, putting down his luggage, mostly letting it fall, and people are watching this.

“Please, I….” He’s no more than an arm’s length away, out of shape, breathing so hard, staring so deep. “You look…. You must be…. Do you know Emma? Emma Land? What’s your name?” He reaches out and touches my upper arm, and I take a step back, afraid now, noticing more people watching, some stopped and staring.

“Do you know me?” he asks, still shouting, and he reaches again, and I step back again, shaking my head no. He seems tortured, in actual pain. “You look like a woman…”

“I don’t know you,” I say, and it comes out loud and with fear in it, because there IS fear, tightening my throat. “My name is Sharon, Sharon Best. I don’t know…”

He tries the grab again, and he’s faster, desperate, holding my arm, and people are stepping closer as he shouts again, “You must know Emma…Emma Land.” I’m shaking my head which makes him grow even more intense, uncovering his teeth, shaking. Are those tears in his voice? Yes, his eyes are full. “Emma Land! You MUST be part of her family?! You look…”

I try to pull my arm out of his grip, but he holds on, and a tall man steps close to us, staring at the intense man…. “Hey, buddy – let her go.” A woman comes close, asking me… “Should I call the police?!” She has her phone in her hand. “Let her go,” the tall man says again, taking the man’s shoulder, and the man does let go, just standing there now, vibrating, staring. I speak while I’m backing away.

“I don’t know you! I don’t know this…Emma! Please! Leave me alone!” I turn and start for the doors again, and I don’t look back. I never look back. Sure, I know Emma Land. I know a lot of people.

I don’t begin to relax until I’m in my hotel room, taking a long hot shower, then putting on the fluffy robe, ordering soup, trying not to see his face over and over again, his wild eyes. I take long breaths and pull my thoughts to Amor, my daughter. I’m here in Chicago to see her. It’s been a long time. She’s not well, in a facility north of the city. I’ll rent a car in the morning. I’ll be with her. I’ll actually be with her. I see a tumbling mix of her now as a baby, at two, four, twelve. I feel all the hugs, ten thousand hugs. I sink into that.

It’s the next morning and I rented a car. I’m parking at the facility, but I don’t enter the building. They have me down for 1 pm, and its only noon. I walk through the grounds. The grass is exactly the green it’s supposed to be. The benches are newly painted. There are even flowers. I choose a bench that’s off alone and sit. I’m not breathing well, short breaths, shaky breaths. I ………

We named her Amor because my husband was Mexican-American. It means love, of course, and how we loved her. We had just finished business school, well…a small, inexpensive school teaching accounting at night. We got our diplomas, we got married, we got jobs. We were good at it, and the jobs got better. We had our child, we had our own accounting business, we even hired more accountants. Everything? You could say that. We loved each other and our daughter, didn’t worry about money, had good friends, had very few arguments…that’s everything, right?

When Amor was about twelve, I started noticing the edge. That’s what I call it. At first my husband went along with all the jokes about how young I looked. He was only two years older, just adding a little weight, losing a little hair, and I was still looking…the same. “Robbing the cradle,” all that silly stuff, and he went with it at first, proud of my looking so young, but as time went along, I saw him change. I would catch a look now and then, a serious look, an edge. The worst of it was when Amor began to show the edge, too — a 13 year-old-girl who had a mother who looked like an older sister. Funny at first. At first. It bothered them, and it showed in their eyes, a darkness. I could feel them begin to withdraw from me. Not that they blamed me. They just…couldn’t handle it. It was too…weird, and distancing began. My husband moved out. Amor spent more time with him than me, by choice. What was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life? Yes. I left. I left the people I loved the most, my little tribe. It was a tearing. It hurt like that – a physical tearing away.

I went to a different city. I started a different life. Accounting job? Easy. Taking care of myself? No problem. Friends? What the hell do you do? They thought I was 25. I was 38. I didn’t tell them the truth. The lies began. There were men interested. I was lonely, so I began to date a man, a good man named Lenny. There were friends from work, too…. I began to have fun in spite of the pain and the loss. Because of it. Lenny wanted to marry me after a year. I kept checking myself in the goddamn mirror until I couldn’t stand to look at me anymore. I said no to marriage, afraid that damn edge that might appear all over again, but we kept seeing each other, being lovers. So, I was being held and loved and had someone to laugh and cry with and friends, too. They all thought I was 27 now, or 28, still looking like 25. They were good to me. They were fun, and I needed that because the pain of leaving Amor and my husband – that was still in me like claws. Still is.

Three years later, I began to see it, traces of that damn edge, that slight darkness in the look, almost a fear. He left me, saying that it was because I wouldn’t marry him, but I knew that my looks were starting to feel strange to him, and to my friends. So, did I have to leave again, leave a life behind again, be alone again?

I remember walking out on a bridge, stopping, looking at the rocks and water below. Do I start all over again, or just drop the curtain? I couldn’t do it. Amor was in the world. Maybe someday I could see her, and all the while, my face didn’t change, neither did my body. I FELT like I could be 25. I didn’t want to break my body on those rocks, didn’t want to leave the world.

I went to a distant town. This time I changed my name. I picked Laura Mozer off a grave stone so I could get a copy of a birth certificate. And research? Over the years I’ve read all I could find on aging: ‘cell energy’ ‘skin formation’ Nothing is there, nothing that helps. The skin is 80 percent genetic, but there’s no one like me in my family or I would’ve heard about it. What was the answer? A curse? A gift?

Most any town can use another accountant, and I had kept up, kept learning. I was good. I am good. When I had left my husband, he gave me half of our savings. I’ve built on that. I’m okay.

I decided, in this new town, that I would be a loner, and maybe that would help. I even bought products that would help me look older. What a switch, right? I also bought a dog. A dog would NOT show me that edge, and of course, it didn’t, but after three years I was too lonely and had to get close to someone. There was a girlfriend, a best friend, so much fun and so much giving between us, giving and taking. We were very close in every way, every way. I was happy. We took some trips together. I felt more free than…than ever.

Of course, she noticed that I stayed young, and she busted me on the ‘aging’ face products. We kind of laughed it off. Kind of. On one of her birthdays, we celebrated in our home, living together now. We both got a bit drunk. She was chiding me again for looking so damn young. I felt so close to her. Yes. That’s right. I did it. I told her, not all of it, but told her I just wasn’t aging, at all, for years, a lot of years, that I had to move away from people, keep moving on. She just stared at me. She said nothing. She drank more, and then she left. I was shouting at her to come back, screaming that she shouldn’t drive. She drove away. She did come back, late next morning, sober then. She stared hard at me and made me promise I would never screw with her mind again, never invent something like that again. I swore and said I was sorry. I didn’t want to lose her. But after another six months the edge was in her eyes, full force. So, I left. I still had the dog.

Next was another large city – get lost in a crowd, right? I kept my Laura Moser name, rose up in an accounting firm, and became very good at investing my money. I was able to work less. What did I do? I learned. I play the guitar now, good enough for open mike. I’m even on a few recordings – with friends. I can’t do life without friends. I speak Spanish and French. I lecture sometimes – not on aging – on accounting. I’ve published a book on the subject. I volunteer at the museum and study art. I dance very well:  ballroom, swing and funk. And I still weep over my daughter. Once, while weeping, I phoned my husband and wondered how he, how Amor, would feel about a brief meeting. He said, in a shaking voice, that he was glad I was all right, but please, no meeting. “Amor is teaching now. She has…a full life. It would be devastating to see you. For her…for me, too.” Please. I asked, what about a phone call? “Don’t bring it all back,” he said, “and please don’t try to reach Amor. She couldn’t take it.” A door slammed that day. He couldn’t even stand to hear my voice. My still-youthful voice. I don’t blame him.

Well, there were more cities and towns, more name changes, more dogs, too. And a few lovers. There was a man around forty, and we fell in love. Yes, I know, but try it. Try being alone forever. I couldn’t. It wasn’t torrid and didn’t shake the timbers, but it was love. I kept a door open, saying someday I would need to go take care of my parents who were aging and needing me (they had long passed by then) and they lived in Spain, I said, and I would have to go there to live someday. I faked the calls. Even some letters. By year three he said he would give up his job and live in Spain. He loved me entirely – those were his words and I believe him. I believe him still. He was the man in the airport last night when I came to Chicago. I had been Emma Land with him – so many years ago.

The time is almost here – my visit with Amor. I’m so nervous. I don’t think she’ll know me. She’s losing her memory. I don’t want to make her afraid, don’t want to shock her. She’s 92 and very frail. I better take some long breaths before I go in there, many long breaths. I wonder if I’ll see my child within the aging woman. I wonder if she’ll have a glimmer, even a thought, of her mother, her endless mother.

#

Lost and Found

Hope you’re well. This is STORIES FOR SHUT-INS #2! I enjoy writing them and sending them out there for your reading and reflection. Hope you enjoy.

LOST AND FOUND

by Gerald DiPego

The man was old but rather natty, short cloth jacket, new fedora, corduroys, looking down as he walked with a healthy stride for his age of eighty-four. When he stepped into the open-air mall from the street entrance, he raised his eyes and stopped abruptly, changing very suddenly. His chest felt empty, emptied out, except that his heart was beating hard in there, nearly hurting him with its sudden force. He swallowed and looked about and clenched his hands, his jaw, eager to get his bearings, to see where he was, but nothing was familiar, and the knowledge of being lost spread the panic from his chest to his tight arms and his jaw that was shaking now, and he was suddenly sweating, and trying to take hold of his mind and grab on to something, to a thought, any thought, but it was like putting his hands into water and trying to catch a fish. You can see them, you can touch them, but you can’t hold on. All right, all right, all right! Where am I? I’m in a mall. Where is this place? I was walking from… where? I am... I am...

He needed to catch something, some thought sliding by, some memory, some.... There was nothing there, nothing filled him but the panic. I am.... Who was he? His name, what was his name?! Christ, his name was not there. It had to be there. He looked around again for any possible.... He saw that some of the people stared at him as they walked by. He moved then, thinking that movement would bring him something, anything. He approached a store window. He saw himself in the glass, and yes. All right. That’s me. He nearly wept at the knowledge that he knew this man in the glass, this lost man. That’s me, yes. Now... who am I? What’s my life? What’s my name? Where do I live? It has to be there! Everything was just out of his reach, swimming out there. If only he could grab one piece of it, something...

He turned and took four random steps. Should he stop someone and ask? What would he say? I’m lost! They would ask, where do you want to go? Where do you live? I don’t know! He moved toward the soft splashing of a fountain. People sat there on the low wall that surrounded the water. Maybe if he sat, sat very still, it would all come back, if he just let it, if he could be calm, but there was no calm, only the fierce worry and the fear and the giant, staggering loss of everything.

He was only one step from the low fountain wall when he saw her. She was staring at him, and so he looked away. He tried to pretend he was fine. Why?! Why pretend?! He sat not far from her, and felt himself vibrating. He could feel his clenched teeth shaking, clicking, and his breath choppy and his heart still pounding him, like some machine, some mechanics in there about to give way. He was so afraid, afraid of this awful... emptiness. He looked at the woman again. She was staring, and she smiled slightly, or at least her eyes softened. There was gentleness there, maybe concern, maybe help. He looked away and looked at her again, nearly his age, pretty with her silver hair to her shoulders, a scarf that was...

“Hello,” she said softly. He didn’t speak, could not speak, and she asked, “What’s your name?”

He felt he would shatter from his shaking and from his hollowness, he would implode. He made himself speak and was amazed at the loudness of his voice, almost a shriek.

“I don’t know!”

Here she leaned toward him and put a hand on his shaking, knuckled fist, and in her eyes, very soft now and deep, she gave him one small brushstroke of hope as she said, “You will.”

He forced himself to talk to her and found he was not shrieking this time. “I will?” She nodded, so positive. Something began to loosen inside of him, slightly, very.... “When?” he asked her, and he felt some weeping in the word and made an effort to take hold, to hold on to something. Her eyes. He chose her eyes.

“It won’t take long. You think it will. You think it won’t come at all, the memory, but it will.”

“How? How do you KNOW?”

“It’s happened before,” and now she was smiling, not just in her eyes, a slight curving of her mouth.

“Before?! To me! You’ve... seen me before?!

She nodded, her eyes even more tender now.

“Here? I come here?”

“Sometimes.”

“You know me?! Tell me!”

“Let it come to you.”

“Why don’t you tell me?!

“Let it come. It IS coming, you know.”

“I don’t know! I don’t.”

“You have to let it in, the remembering. Let it come. It’s going to be all right.” And he stared deeply, wondering what, what will be all right, what will ever be...

“You need to breathe,” she said, and slid a few inches closer to him.

He tried. He breathed. “I was walking. I got lost. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know WHO I am. I’m...  away from where I should be...

“Yes. So that means there are people...,” she said.

“What?”

“There are people worried about you. They’re frightened. Am I right?”

He stared a moment before it struck him, coming through his fear and confusion to shake him. “Yes... Yes! I... Who are they? I feel that. I do, but... who? I...”

He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breath, but he needed to see her, her eyes, the slight smile. He needed her certainty. He opened his eyes and saw she was gently nodding.

“It’s coming,” she said, “Faster than usual. You’re only on eight.” His face twisted with wondering, and she went on. “I’m keeping a slow count. You already realize that people know you and are worried about you, and now you’re only on... nine.”

“And... when,” he said, “When will I...”

“Always by twenty, and it’s only... ten now. Who’s worried about you? A name. Who’s worried?”

He bent his head into his hands. At first it was shaking, shaking no, but it stopped. “I... I think... it’s... I don’t... Bobby!” The name was torn from him, like a bandage removed from a wound. When he lifted his head she was shining a smile at him, deep and rich.

His voice broke as he said it, “He’s my son! Bobby. I have a son!”

“Me, too,” she said, chuckling. “I also have a son.”

“My son’s name is Bobby.” He said this with great pride, said it like the waving of a flag. “I have a son named Robert Allen Praymer!”

“So do I,” she said. And they were suddenly still and staring, and she had tears too, like his own, tears of happiness, and he looked at her with such wonder and a blooming realization and then a love that was deep and old and forever.

“Oh, god...” He was fully weeping now. “Oh, god... Ellie. Oh, Ellie!. I’m so sorry. How could I... ?

“Not your fault,” she said. “You should call him now... Bobby. He drives all the streets while I wait for you here. Call him.” He stared a moment, going over her words, then nodded and began touching his pockets.

“Do I have my phone?

“Inside jacket — left.” He found his phone and stared at it, squinting.

“The... number?”

“Look — where it says Bob. Just press there.”

He pressed, then slowly brought the phone to his ear, as if it was some new invention. He was not fully inside himself yet. Then he took in a sharp breath and said, “Yes... yes it’s me and I’m fine. I... I’m so sorry. I’m okay now. I’m with Mom at the mall, by the fountain. She found me. So sorry. I just... What? Oh, okay. Okay.” He replaced the phone and told her, “He’s coming. He’s coming here. Bobby.” He stared at her smile. She touched his face and he suddenly trapped her hand there, on his cheek, pressed it, kept it there on his skin that was wet from his tears. He drew in a deep and shaking breath, bringing himself up, straighter, fuller now, the emptiness gone. “God, I love you Ellie. And look what do I do to you? I just.... How can it all go away? Everything? How can I... empty out?”

“But here we are. Here we are, Ellie and Ted.” She put her left hand on the other side of his face and held him still and he breathed in her smile, and it filled him. “The man I love. Always and forever. The only one.” They kissed then, and dropped their hands to their laps, still holding on.

He breathed back the last of his tears and stared at her as if he was reading her, the long book of her, of them. “Not... completely true, though, as I think about it. Once... you did love somebody else.”

“You know I didn’t. You Idiot. How can you say...”

They were chuckling now, and he was nodding. “Way back, he said.”

“Who?!”

“Brando. You couldn’t get enough of Brando.”

“Oh, for god’s sake. Maybe for a little while...”

“For years. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to BE Brando. I was so jealous. Years.”

“Not for that long. No. It was just BBO, remember?

He cackled then, his laughter rising into the high notes. “BBO, yes!”

“Brando Before Obesity. He WAS heavenly for a while.”

“I almost hated him.”

“Oh, bullcrap. You had your Audrey Hepburn.”

He was beaming now, so alive, so fully within himself. “That was different. That was a chaste love. You and Brando — that was lust.” He was awarded her unguarded face of laughter, and her continuing swordplay.

“And you? You were dazzled! Who could compete with her? That wasn’t fair. You have what, four books about her life, her films, all those photos… It isn’t fair that she never got fat.”

“Well, he said,” so happy now, happy to the bone, “we were never unfaithful outside the movie theater.” Their smiles shined like bright mirrors, and then he saw movement over her shoulder, someone approaching, and his grin widened even more. “It’s Bobby! Bobby’s here!” He rose and took three strides to meet his son, a man in his late forties, strong and rugged with a good, open face that was pinched with worry now. “Bobby, I’m so, so sorry, so sorry...” They held each other’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, Dad, but... Jesus...”

“I know... I hate to scare you like that, but it’s alright now. Mom was waiting right here for me. We...” He started to turn to her, but Bobby was holding him, staring, working his throat, very upset. “I’m really sorry, Bob. Let’s get her and go home.” He started to turn, but Bob held on and spoke in a choked voice.

“Dad... Dad! We lost her, Dad.”

“What? Lost her? She’s right...”

“Two years ago. The cancer came back. Sometimes... you forget. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Ted wrenched away from his son and turned to the fountain. Ellie was gone. He began looking about, whipping his vision everywhere, anywhere. “No, she was right...”

“Dad. Dad, look at me. Will ya?” Bob took his shoulders again, gently. “She’s gone. Sorry. We’re all so sorry. She’s gone. Okay... Dad? Remember? Now... let’s go home. Come on.”

Ted hesitated, staring at the fountain again, breathing it all in, breathing in the truth of everything, remembering what he didn’t want to know. With his son’s guidance, with Bob’s arm around his father’s shoulders, they began to walk to the street where the SUV was double parked.

As they reached the car, Bob clicked it open and turned to his father again, and they stared. The younger man troubled, the older man shaken, weak now. “You can’t walk alone, Dad. You just can’t.”

“Sorry.”

“Everybody was so scared. Lacey and the kids were upset. I called her, and Paula was freaking out. You can only walk with us or Paula, that’s what she’s there for.”

“I... I won’t. Okay I won’t. I promise.”

Bob opened the car door, but Ted hesitated, waiting. Bob stared. Ted put out his arms, and Bob came in for a hug, a tight one. While embraced, Ted kissed his son on the cheek. Bob squeezed them together once more and let go, then held the car door open for his father, but again Ted hesitated. “I know you don’t like it when I kiss you. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Dad. Really.”

“Not in public, I know, but... couldn’t help it.”

“Come on, get in and relax. We’ll be home in five minutes.”

Ted entered the car and fussed with the belt. Bob entered the driver’s seat and helped his father, then started the car and joined the traffic — in silence for a while. Ted found himself taking long breaths. His chest, which had been empty of all but fear, now felt like a great stone. He focused on the streets, the trees, the sunlight, and he asked, in a while, “Can we just... drive a while. Not long, but...”

“Sure,” Bob said. “Beautiful day.”

Ted’s stare went everywhere: the side windows, the rear-view mirror, his son’s face. “Listen, Bob, if you don’t mind, can I get in the back, so I can stretch out a little?”

“Sure. Sure. You must be really tired. I’ll get us home.”

“In a while, okay, Bob? Let’s take a little while.”

“Sure.” Bob pulled over and got out of the car, leaving it running. He opened Ted’s door and helped his father out, then he opened the back door for him, but Ted stood still and Bob stared at him.

“One more hug, okay?” he asked his son. They embraced again, Ted pressing the man to him tightly, and for a long while. In the midst of the embrace, Bob kissed his father on the cheek. They parted then, both of them smiling slightly. Ted got into the back seat and Bob closed the door, walked around to the driver’s side, got in and drove along as the sunlight blinked in and out of the trees.

Ted did not lie down, but slowly turned to the side, not to the window, but across the seat, and he saw just a bit of her coat and hair, and turned back again, excited. He had caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror, and there she was. He didn’t want to stare, worried that his stare would make her uncomfortable and she would leave, so he glanced again. She was relaxed, looking out her window, and then staring forward. He sat a while, smiling, and took one more glance, lingering a moment on her face, and she turned to him, no smile, just looking at him. She wasn’t the Audrey Hepburn of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” but older, warmer, deeper. This was the Audrey Hepburn of a later time, the time of “Robin and Marian,” and there she was, just riding in a car beside him, looking at him, and he thought to himself that this day was not all bad, not all of it. He had had spent some time with his late wife. He had had a kiss from his son, and now he was sitting with Audrey Hepburn in the car, and his thought was this: This could not possibly be a better day. And then she smiled.

We're Not Alone

Sending out the hope that you’re doing all right in the midst of this emergency and that you’re staying safe and connecting as well as you can with friends and loved ones. I’m doing a lot of walking and otherwise sheltering.  Shut-in, we have more time for reflection, for memories, time for reading, too, and at least I can offer you a story to occupy your thoughts, something to ponder that I hope you enjoy.

“TWO DREAMS AT ONCE”

By Gerald DiPego
 

I wonder if it’s possible to be inside two dreams at the same time. When we’re asleep and having a confusing dream, maybe we’re actually experiencing two intertwined dreams, both happening together – like this.

It’s Thanksgiving morning, and I awake slowly because of a rich and remarkable scent that I know immediately, even though it comes to me only once a year. I’m twelve and still deep in the womb of the bed, not sure where the bed ends and I begin. I don’t want to be fully born into this day, not yet, so I lay there and find I’m beginning to smile softly, my face still pulpy and creased from sleep, and I’m happy and growing happier, and this is because my mother makes the best turkey and gravy, and, more importantly, the best stuffing anywhere in this world, and this is the scent that has entered my knowing and given me this deep sense of pleasure even before I’m fully conscious.

I could stay in bed. There’s sure to be more cooking needed in the kitchen downstairs, but pleasure and even excitement make me rise, and I begin to dress. It’s chilly on this Illinois Thanksgiving morning so I dress quickly. We have already had several snows. There is frost on my window.

But, I’m also 78 and driving a car.  This is one dream, mixing with the other. I’m dressed in a thick coat, wearing gloves, driving along the skinny highway that links the lake towns of northern Illinois, and, now, slowing and turning off the paved road onto gravel mixed with dirty snow, and I know where I’m going. I still know how to get there, the house on Idyllwild Drive where I grew up from age six to 19, and I’m excited to be going there, but why?  I’m not sure. There is something there. I feel this strongly, something important.

I walk down the stairs and into the kitchen, and my mother, without looking up from the stove, tells me, “Have some toast, but no cereal. I don’t want you to spoil your appetite.”  As if, I think, as if I would even slightly dent this all-engulfing hunger for the planet’s finest stuffing. I keep looking out the frosty windows. Something is drawing me outside. Why?  It’s warm in the house. Icy out there. “Snowed again last night,” I tell my mother, but she‘s having her own conversation. “In fifteen minutes go wake up your brother. Look at the clock.”

I don’t look at the clock. I look out the window and see that there is a car parked by our mailbox, its exhaust smoking the air. I don’t recognize the car, and…there’s no mail on Thanksgiving.

I’m 78 and driving down the graveled hills I use to tear over on my bike, some of them steep. Even at this age I probably still carry some bits of stone in my knees from several spectacular falls. I see the house, and my breath cuts off, and I feel the silent machinery of tears forming. I pull over and park on the side of the house where the mail box stands. My breaths are shaky now. All those piled up years are tumbling out of order, tumbling in my mind with shouts and laughter, pain and bright joy, and my jaw is shaking, and I’m grinning a trembling grin, and now the door to the house is opening.

I’ve put on my jacket and I’m snapping my galoshes into place over my shoes. I don’t even reach for my hat, and I don’t know why I’m hurrying. The cold hits my face. Even my teeth are chilled. I close my mouth and ball my hands deep in my pockets and stare at the car. I have never seen a car like it. Its engine is still running, and I can see the driver, but not clearly. He seems old.

From the car, I stare out at the child I used to be. And he stares at me. I recognize him not from the old mirrors, but from the old photographs where he is captured so many times. There are tears on my face, but I don’t touch them. This is him. This is me. I was shy, and I see his shyness, understand his pause. In a moment, and with an effort, I make my arm rise and wave him toward the car. He comes closer, but slowly. There is a ditch before the road, and he trudges into deep snow and pulls hard to take the next steps, and I can feel exactly what he’s feeling, what I felt so often in so many winters here, in this same yard, the heavy pull of the snow. He’s closer now, and I make myself lean across to the passenger side and lower the window.

The man in the car waves me over, and I think maybe he’s lost and needs directions, but mostly, as I walk on, I’m staring at the car, so low to the ground and…sleek. I see him lean over to roll the passenger window down, but it doesn’t seem to roll. It just glides down, and I know my mouth is open because my teeth are chilled again, and I look at him, without the frosty glass between us, and even though there’s something familiar about him, I can’t find his face in my memory, and I wonder what he’s going to say. He’s smiling and seems to be…emotional, and I stay quiet, still wondering.

My young self stands three feet from the car window, stopped there. I swallow and then say these words to him, “Hello, Jer.” And these impossible words ring in my brain and grip my heart like fingers. He makes a small nod, full of wonder. I can see that he doesn’t quite find himself in me, but he’s troubled, so I try to relax him and I ask...“How old are you?”  He pauses a moment, then says, “Twelve. There’s no mail, right?”  I answer “No, I have no mail.” And he nods and says, “Thanksgiving.” And then I nod and wonder what to say. Why am I here?  I ask that question and know the answer immediately – to give him something. To give him something important. I’m not sure what. I don’t want him to be troubled and confused, so I stumble on and make my smile as comforting as I can. “I…just have something to tell you, that’s all.”

The man in the car says that he has something to tell me, and I’m nervous because I don’t know who he is, and I’m trying to figure it out. Some relative from Chicago?  Some old friend of my parents? And why not just knock on our door?  “Do you…want to come in?” I ask him, but he shakes his head, and, still smiling at me, seems to be working out what he wants to say.

I look at the boy’s face, my young face, and see the worry and want to take it away. I want to tell him…what?  That it’s going to be okay. Life. His life…is going to be okay, but that’s not saying anything he can truly understand. What is it he needs to hear?  I know he’s afraid of bullies at school and makes himself ready in case they try to shame him as they do others, and I could say…don’t be afraid. It’s not going to happen. But why would he believe it?  Something any old man might say to any boy. I know that at his age he’s beginning to feel just the first slivers of sexuality, certain girls, older girls, how they look, women in movies, in the books he reads. Some of the scenes stir him in a new way, and I could say, don’t be worried about girls. It’ll be okay with girls, and you’ll grow up and you’ll marry. But I don’t say that because I remember being him, being twelve, and hearing those words would have only embarrassed me. There must be something I can say. What else is happening in his life now?  What does he love?  He loves his books, Kipling’s stories and “Tarzan” and “Treasure Island,” and tales of the old European armies, the uniforms, the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” the pure adventure of it all. The adventure. The far-off places. He imagines this. He can taste it. It fills him. I remember. It filled me. “I better go in,” the boy says, then goes on, “It’s Thanksgiving, so…I better…” He starts to back away, but the idea comes, and I say, “Wait. Listen. Just…”

The man is excited now, and wants to tell me something, but it’s all so confusing. Who is he and why is he here? He’s staring so hard it scares me.

“Thanksgiving” I say to the boy, gripping the idea as if in a fist, sure now of what to say. “Yes. Yes, listen, listen, Jer, there will be another Thanksgiving, many years from now, another Thanksgiving morning, and you’ll wake up because of a sound, a strange sound, and you’ll get out of the bed where your wife is still sleeping and you’ll move to the door to listen, and you’ll be thrilled, you’ll be thrilled by the sound, the sound of the rhinos fighting in the tall grass, thrashing and fighting in the tall grass just fifty yards from your tent. It’s true, Jer. It’s all true.”

The man is almost crying and saying crazy things about…rhinos, and I can’t even think, and I’m backing up in the snow, but I can’t turn around yet because his eyes are holding me, and I’m trying to understand. He says it’s about me!  He says I’ll be there…with the rhinos!  I’ll be right there, and it’ll be Thanksgiving, and I don’t understand, and I turn then and hurry to the house.

I’ve frightened the boy. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I wanted to help him. I wanted to make him feel good about what’s coming, what’s out there for him. But…I wonder. Now It’ll be in his mind. Is that all right?  Maybe it shouldn’t be in his mind – that moment, it should be a surprise, and now I’ve spoiled it. Haven’t I?  I don’t know. I’m confused, and I pull away from the house and drive on and make a turn and then another, and I drive too fast over the gravel and the dirty snow and find, then, in this old warren of country streets and homes, that I’ve lost my way.

I hurry inside the house, and hear my mother shout, “Why did you go outside?  Come and help me.”  And I pull off my jacket and unbuckle the galoshes, and now I’m smelling that scent again, and it’s drawing me, taking me away, and I don’t know why I went outside. I don’t know. And what happened out there in the cold?  What happened?  Something happened, but the memory of it is melting, melting away like the snow on the galoshes, melting and gone. “Smells great, Mom. Great.”

Comedy, Story, Poetry

TWO SHOWS - 5 & 7 PM