When my neighbor says to me, "Nice day for
it," what I should say is that she couldn't possibly know what it is, and, not knowing that, could not
possibly know whether or not the day is suitably nice for it. "Mary," I should
say, although I do not know for certain whether or not this is her name since her
husband refers to her as 'hon' and 'Mar' which could be short for any number of
other names, "although the weather is pleasantly warm for late September
and I seem to be reading the newspaper and sipping a liquid which one might
assume is coffee since it is eight a.m. on a Tuesday, you could not possibly
know what I am doing, or what anguish it might be causing me. Oh yes, I might
be frittering away my time on the Word Jumble, or I might be checking the movie
schedule. I could be scanning the classifieds for garage sales. But, equally
likely, Mary, I am reading a Wisconsin mother's plea for someone, anyone to
return her missing eleven-year old daughter whose bike was found in a ditch.
Equally likely, I am reading the obituary of a woman my age whose children,
amazingly, are the ages of my children. I might be thinking, Mary, for just one
second that I have indeed died and not realized it, and then I hear you, in a
bright singsong, tell me I have chosen to expire on a day that is particularly nice for it." What I do say is nothing. I nod. I do not waste words.
I pretend that words cost one dollar each. If I were to say, "Yes, Mar, it
certainly is a nice day for it," it would cost me ten dollars. Even,
"Sure is," would cost me two and I am not a waster. I am saving my
words, putting them away for the future, a reserve against age and illness and
disaster. After all, my husband might decide to leave when my daughter leaves
for college. It's a common story. I might have to explain why his car is no
longer in the garage. I might have to visit my mother's doctor when he decides
to change her medication to one that costs more than she can afford. I might
have to comfort my son if he falls off his bicycle. I might have to explain
why, even though I am dead according to the obituary in the morning paper, I
remain sitting on my front porch drinking a warm beverage that is, yes, coffee,
and refusing to leave since I have no idea where I would or should go. Words
could be necessary and one needs to conserve. Words may be our only true hedge
against inflation. I am not dead, of course. My
husband refers to me as often surly and an employer once called me churlish. My
children think of me as stubborn and my parents called me a recalcitrant child,
so it's not entirely beyond the pale that if I were to die and that meant that
I were to depart for somewhere on my own, I might conceivably refuse to leave
the porch. But i am certainly not post-modern enough to believe in any of that
nonsense. No, I am here, front and
center on my sunny side of the street reading an obituary in the newspaper of a
handsome grandfather who repaired watches, and I begin to mourn my father who
died sixteen years ago on a Tuesday very much like this one. I mourn my father randomly.
At stoplights, during soccer games, at Fourth of July parades, during the
singing of the national anthem at night baseball games. The feeling, the actual
pain of mourning is like a paper cut. A relentless stinging that refuses to
throb, to cripple, to allow me bed rest. It is pure pain. A sliver, a
slice, a nail through my tennis shoe. "Can you ever remember a more beautiful fall?" Mary-Mar-Hon is mulching her
rosebushes, bubbling over, spending words like there's no tomorrow. Eight
dollars and insipid to boot. But I do remember my junior high French teacher, a
woman who would likely have been a serial killer if she hadn't exhibited a
flair for languages, marching in to terrorize my fourth period class and
slipping on a piece of chalk, falling so heavily, so noisily, so
awkwardly that we were all struck dumb with delight. It was a brilliant fall
and I remember it, so I spend the dollar. "One." Then my eyes are back to the
paper, to the grandfatherly watch repairman and I wonder what secrets he knew,
which ones he kept. My father was a saloonkeeper and knew everyone's secrets,
heard everyone's confessions. Good and honorable, kind and true. The day he
died, he raised himself up in his hospital bed and said loudly, clearly,
"It takes one to get in and two to get out." He never regained consciousness. None of us did really. People brought potato salad
to the house and my brother and I ranked it with two, three and four star
ratings. Cheever wrote a story about
a man whose parents had died when he was fourteen and explained his character
by saying that no one would ever love him enough. That's a true story. Except
I was twenty-nine when my father died and no one had loved me enough then. "Oh," Mary says
quietly, and I am as startled by this muffled sound as I would be if she had
stripped to the waist and brayed like a mule. It is an "oh" filled
with terror and knowledge. When I look at her, she is
staring at the narrow bracelet of wrist exposed between her pink garden glove
and the long denim sleeve of her shirt. I stare, too, and see the bee, and
although I might be ten yards away, I am sure that I see the tiny curtsy bow as
the bee dips and stings. "Oh," Mary says
again, and although i could easily be twenty yards away, ! see her face
clearly, her eyes draw mine in and say read my lips because I have no voice,
and although I am too far away to truly know this, I believe her lips form the
words, "allergic." No one thinks that I am
fast. I am too often clumsy and too often slow for anyone to believe how
quickly I fly inside my own house, down the hall, to the guest bathroom and
take out the ball-point pen-like syringe I keep for my mother, allergic to bees
and deathly afraid, and I fly again out to my neighbor who has collapsed into
her roses, breathing shallowly, eyes rolled back. My feet have not touched the
ground, not once, and I give my neighbor, Mary-Mar-Hon, a shot of anti-bee, the
adrenaline that will save her life and her head relaxes cradled in my arm, and
1 allow myself to know that I have saved a life. This is a new experience. Birth was as euphoric and
leveling as it should and can be. Look what 1 did, you want to shout as you see
your baby squirt out and, in the next moment, you think, any moron with a womb
can do it, too. My post-partum depression was immediate, but temporary. This giving of life by swift
thinking and medical injection is a horse of a different color. No ordinary
moron could have done this. My neighbor is breathing
normally, looking up at me, adoring me. Is this what god feels, I think and remember
that I am much too post-modern to believe in god. I do not know where this
will lead, this cradling of my neighbor, her gratitude, my new fleetness
of foot, my new responsibility as a life-giver. I badly want to tell my father
what I did. Mary-Mar says, "You saved my life." There's no denying it, so I
nod. I badly want to say that it's a nice day for it, but it would be too
self-indulgent and it would cost six dollars. "Thank you," Mary
whispers. What I should say is, "You're welcome." What I do say is nothing. |