May We Be Forgiven Part 17

"I don't drive, remember? I'm selling the parking s.p.a.ce to the people upstairs."

"The ones with the screaming kids who run up and down on our heads all day and all night."

"Yes," she says. "They have a minivan, and they offered twenty-six thousand dollars."

"Twenty-six thousand?"

"It went into a bidding war, since there are so few spots."

"Wow."

"They're paying in cash."

"Great, so we'll split it fifty-fifty."

"Actually, I'm the one who paid for the parking place," she reminds me.

"Then why are you telling me?"

"Just wanted you to know," she says, and then is gone.

I dream of Nixon. Nixon, the Night Stories. The idea being that he had a confidant; that every night, when Nixon couldn't sleep, he'd call this friend and they'd talk and sometimes the friend would read to him from books like Moby-d.i.c.k and Notes from the Underground and Paul Johnson's Journey into Chaos or Enemies of Society, and sometimes they would watch television together. Nixon liked the idea that his confidant was up when he was and that he was never really alone. Being alone frightened him.

Friday evening, as she's finishing up, having put the mop and bucket away and gone into the powder room to change back into her street clothes, Maria the cleaning lady says, "Mister, I can no work here no more. I miss Mrs. Jane too much. It makes me unhappy to come here. I am here working and you are sitting here all day. I don't know you. I know your brother killed Mrs. Jane. And what about those beautiful children, who no more have a mother? Please you tell them Maria said h.e.l.lo to them, but to you I say goodbye."

I reach for my wallet. I give her five hundred bucks. She takes three and gives me back two. "I have no debt," she says. And I don't know what she means.

"I'll tell the children," I say.

"Good," she says. "Also, you need Mr. Clean and Windex."

"Thank you, Maria."

Monday morning, a truck pulls up outside the house, a white truck with a giant insect mounted on the roof. Two guys in white suits get out, unload large stainless-steel spray canisters, put masks over their nose and mouth, and walk towards the front door. Before they come to the door, one breaks right, the other breaks left, and they circle the house, spraying. Tessie's bark and the sickening scent both prompt me to open the front door and call, "Can I help you?"

With the first breath I draw, I feel my lungs shrink back; my eyes start to burn. The guys pull their masks off.

"It smells horrible," I say.

"Who are you?" the second guy asks.

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

"We're under contract. Twice a year we come; the date was set months ago."

"Things have changed," I say.

"Too late now, we already started. Not the kind of thing you want to stop once you start. Breeds resistant bugs, bigger bugs-very bad things can happen." Tessie barks.

"Jesus, is the dog home too? Where's the lady of the house? She always got the dog and the cat packed in the car. They take off for the day. This stuff is noxious; it'll kill you if you sit in there with it."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know-you're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to take your dogs and your cats and be gone for eight hours, longer if you have asthma."

"Well, can you at least pause? Can you give me a few minutes to get it together?"

"f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k," one of the guys says. "It's not even nine-thirty and now we're screwed for the day. Late. Late. Late." He turns to me. "Well, don't just stand there, get it together!"

I put Tessie on her leash and some biscuits in my pocket. I catch the cat. I can't find a carrier for her, and so somehow wrestle her into a canvas bag and run out to the car with her howling. I bring her litter box out and set it up on the pa.s.senger seat, let the cat out of the bag, set up water, food, crack the windows, and go back for Tessie. I figure we'll walk around for a while, and if need be I'll come back and drive both the cat and the dog somewhere later. It's not like a lot of planning went into it.

Tessie and I set off down the street; it's a bright, clear morning, unseasonably warm for a winter day, a day full of promise, of hope, of possibility.

The park is empty. It's a place that exists simply to contain the trees, to oxygenate the village, a green expanse to drive past while gesturing to visitors: Don't we have a lovely park, a beautiful village green? At the far edge there is a parking lot, tennis and basketball courts, a set of swings, a climber. I run Tessie across the park; on the other side, I tether her leash to the swings and then, to prove I still have the possibility of play left in me, I jump on the swing, the thick rubber seat matching my childhood memories. I rock back and forth, back and forth, climbing higher and higher, and then, at the peak of both height and motion, I throw my head back, the sky opens up, filling my vision, blue, rich bright super-blue with thick white clouds, clouds of perfection, and for a moment all is beyond perfect, it is divine. And then, as I sail forward, the velocity is overwhelming, my stomach rises to my throat. I am whirling. I close my eyes-worse. I open my eyes-worse again. I throw myself forward, tumbling off the swing, landing in the dirt on hands and knees. The swing slams me in the back-as if to say, "Take that, you idiot." A vestibular impossibility? I go for the slide, climb the ladder; the smooth curl of the handrails feels the same now as it did forty years ago. At the top I push off and glide down to the bottom. As I get up, the b.u.t.ton on my pocket catches, tugs, rips. Despite the allure, the echoing memory of swinging from bar to bar, of hanging from my knees, I don't attempt the climber or the monkey bars. I firmly believe I still could do anything and everything and want to keep it that way.

I'm thinking of days that never were, the perfect childhood that existed only in my imagination. When I was growing up, the playground wasn't so much a well-coiffed green as an empty lot. Our families had no desire for us to have a safe, clean place to play-as far as they were concerned, playing was a waste of time. Supplies were limited; one guy might have a mitt, another guy a bat, and the rest of us caught barehanded, sucking up the incredible sting, hands smarting not only with pain but with the thrill of success at having plucked the ball out of the sky, having interrupted the trajectory and likely spared someone the cost of replacing a window. The bottom line was, if you had time to play, you didn't tell anyone, because if your parents knew, they would find something for you to do.

So we played quietly and out of sight, making toys out of whatever happened to be nearby-my father's shoes made a most excellent navy, his size-nine wing tips gliding in formation across the carpet, the smell of leather and foot sweat. And what did I use as the aircraft carrier? A silver platter that I borrowed from the dining room. And when my mother discovered the platter surrounded by shoes, she accused me of having mental problems. Why wasn't it obvious to her that the carpet was the ocean, the battleground? She called me a nogoodnik, and I remember crying and George thinking it was all so funny.

Two women in spandex walk in circles around the outside perimeter of the park, waddling as fast as they can without breaking into a run. They stare at me. They actually point, as if asking each other to confirm that I am really there. I wave. They don't respond.

Near the tennis court I find an old ball and throw it for Tessie; she takes off running, and I have to chase her to get it back. She seems thrilled with the game, the enormous expanse of open s.p.a.ce, and runs in endless circles before digging a bed in the dirt and settling in to shred the yellow fuzz. It's out of season; half the trees are bare, the others are a dull evergreen, the gra.s.s is an uneven mix of zoysia and ryegra.s.s.

I sit. I sit in the park on a perfectly nice winter day-alone. The place is so G.o.dd.a.m.ned empty that I feel nervous, afraid to be in the middle of the open field alone. Something comes over me. It's not exactly an anxiety attack but more a cloud, a heavy, dark cloud, all the more threatening because the sky is perfectly clear. Everything is fine, or should be fine, except I've been kicked out of my brother's house by an execution squad. I'm sunk. Flat out in the gra.s.s, feeling the depth of it all, and maybe it's always been there. If pressed, I'd say I know that: I know I did all kinds of tricks and turns and fancy maneuvers to buffer myself, to puff myself up, to simply f.u.c.king survive. But now I'm feeling it, I'm feeling what it was like a thousand years ago in my parents' house-maybe my five minutes on the swing loosened something, but it's all coming back like a kind of psychic tidal wave, and there's a bad taste in my mouth, metallic and steely, and I'm feeling how much everyone in my family hated each other, how little we actually cared for or respected anyone but ourselves. I'm feeling how profoundly my family disappointed me and in the end how I retreated, how I became nothing, because that was much less risky than attempting to be something, to be anything in the face of such contempt.

Look at me. Look what has happened. Look what I have done. Take notice. At the moment I am not even talking to you, I am talking to myself. Look at me, homeless in a public park. I curl into a ball, a f.u.c.king human ball in the far corner of the park. I can't look at myself-there is nothing to see.

I am sobbing, wailing, crying so deep, so hard, it is the cry of a lifetime; I am bellowing. The dog comes to me, licks my face, my ears, tries to get me to stop, but I can't stop, I have just begun. It is as though I will cry like this for years-look what I have done. And, G.o.d-f.u.c.king-d.a.m.n it, I'm not even an alcoholic, I'm nothing, just a guy, a truly average Joe-which is probably the worst part of it all, knowing that I am not in any way exceptional or distinguished. Except for and until what happened with Jane, I was entirely regular, normal; since my wedding I hadn't slept with anyone except my wife....

Look at me-even though no one's come out and said it, you know it as well as I do, I'm as much a murderer as my brother, no more, no less.

I say it to myself-and I am undone.

A young cop shows up, "You okay?"

I nod.

"We got a call about a crying man?"

"Is that illegal?"

"No, but you don't see much of that around here, especially this time of year. Home from work?"

"Laid off, and the exterminator is in the house today, and they asked me to leave. Park seemed like the place to go."

"Most people go shopping," the cop says.

"Really?"

"Yeah, when people don't know what to do with themselves, they go to the mall, walk up and down, and spend money."

"I never thought of it," I say. "I'm not much of a shopper."

"It's what they do."

"Even with a dog?"

"Yep, you've got your outdoor malls and your indoor."

The cop stands there.

"I don't mean to be rude, but this is a public park and I'm minding my own business."

"No camping," the cop says. "No loitering."

"How can you tell if someone is loitering versus just enjoying the park? The sign says it's open from seven a.m. to dusk. I walked here with the dog so we could enjoy being outside. Apparently that's not okay, apparently in this town going into the park is considered weird. And you know what, you're right-it must be, because there's no one here; the whole park is empty except for you and me, so I apologize."

With both the cat and the dog in the car, I go off to teach. I drive to school, park in a shady spot-leave each animal a bowl of water on the floor, crack the windows, the air temperature is in the low fifties. I leave them knowing they're no better or worse off than parked outside the house.

"Today we are scheduled to discuss the Bay of Pigs...."

Several students raise their hands and announce that they feel uncomfortable with the subject matter.

"Why?"

"I'm vegetarian," one student says.

"It's unpatriotic," a foreign student suggests.

"While I appreciate your concerns, I'll carry on as planned. And, indeed, the action was patriotic, if flawed-inspired by love of our country from within the government. The Bay of Pigs is not a restaurant or a food group but refers to an unsuccessful attempt in 1961 by CIA-trained operatives to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. The plan was Nixon's idea and developed with Eisenhower's support but wasn't launched until after Kennedy took office. In retrospect, the idea of a new administration a.s.suming the responsibility for the execution of a covert action planned by another 'team' seems problematic. Nixon's responsibility for the training of the Cuban exiles by the CIA was significant and is discussed in Nixon's book Six Crises. And yet it is safe to a.s.sume that many activities of our government are pa.s.sed from administration to administration-one sees this retrospectively in the history of the Vietnam War and, more recently, in Iraq. The 1961 failure of Kennedy to overthrow Castro, and the mess made of the carefully laid and then abruptly changed plans, aggravated Nixon and his 'colleagues' to no end. It's interesting to note that several of the CIA players in this event make a return appearance with Watergate."

The students look at me empty-eyed. "Is any of this familiar?" I ask.

"Nope," the vegetarian says.

I let the rope out a little bit. I allow the conversation to wander. I talk about history's knack for repeating itself, the importance of knowing who you are, where you come from. We talk about history as a narrative, a true story writ both large and small. We talk about how one learns, researches-what it means to investigate, to explore. We talk about the value of historical doc.u.ments and how that's changing in the age of the Internet and the hard drive. I ask what materials they hold on to.

"Texts," they say. "Like, when I'm dating someone-or have a fight with someone-I save the texts."

"We don't print out," another says. "It's not environmental."

I ask what their first memories were, when they knew there was a larger world, and who they think the most powerful person in the country is. It's usually either a sports figure or a movie star-not the President.

I remind them they are supposed to be working on a paper in which they have been asked to define and describe their own political views and compare and contrast their positions to the views held by leading political figures.

"That's hard," one of the students says.

"For some," I say, bringing the cla.s.s to an abrupt close.

I go back to the car-the dog and cat are fine, though the stink is enormous. The cat, in a fit of anxiety, has shredded the pa.s.senger seat and used it as a bathroom. I drive home breathing only through my mouth.

Back at the house, there's a note on the floor. "Big surprise coming for you." The house still stinks of bug killer. I get cleaning supplies and go back to the car. I take the cat out of the car and put her back into the house-hoping she's not asthmatic-and clean the s.h.i.t and shredded interior as best I can.

From the bas.e.m.e.nt I drag an old webbed lounge chair and set it up in the backyard. I find an old arctic sleeping bag and make myself a bed of sorts and fall asleep, waking only when Tessie barks. Coming around the corner of the house, I spot a white van parked at the curb.

The pa.s.senger door opens, and an Asian man gets out carrying a small white square of paper-a note!

"Can I help you?" I ask.

"I very annoyed with the man who live here, you know him?"

"Which man?"

"His name is Silver."

"I'm Silver."

"Where have you been? I leave you one hundred notes like long-lost lover."

"What is this in reference to?"

"I have big delivery for you. For weeks I drive around with your stuff. I should charge you extra."

"What stuff?"

"Your life boxes are in my truck. Where you want it?"

"My life boxes?"

"The s.h.i.t from your apartment," the other guy says, opening the back of the truck.

The man and his partner carry box after box up to the house. They build a wall of boxes across the back of the living room, and then, as they bring more, it becomes an installation of sorts, a cave. What's amazing is that each box is exactly the same-they are all unmarked white cardboard, fourteen by fourteen by fourteen. Whatever I might have owned that didn't fit isn't coming back. I accept delivery and give them each twenty bucks as a tip.

"After so much, that all we get?"

"I lost my job," I say. "I have no life."

I cannot begin to unpack. It is all that I can do to simply go on. I go back into the yard. After dark, I go back into the house, make myself a sandwich, get a blanket and pillow, and head out again. Tessie doesn't want to go-she curls up on her bed and refuses to budge.

Alone, I sleep in the lounge chair out back. I've never slept outside at night before. It's something I always wanted to do, but honestly I was scared. At this point I think, what's the problem? I have nothing to fear-in fact, I have become the guy they're scared of.

In the early morning, as I'm walking Tessie, still wearing the same clothes as the day before, now dirty and damp with dew, the cop from the day before spots me. He pulls his squad car over and asks what I'm doing.

"Walking the dog," I say.

"Where do you live?"

"Over there," I say.