An Invitation (January 2024)

 

"No way! You know I can't stand those people."

 

"You really need to get over it. They're not so bad . . . . Well, actually they are, but this is just one of those times you have to suck it up."

 

"I don't think I can do it. You know I almost approached your brother-in-law—"

 

"I can't get into this right now. We just buried Mother Saturday, and . . . ." she says, tucking in her lower lip. "I really can't handle these petty grievances."

 

"Petty? This guy insulted your family for 40 years. He never joined the family for Christmas Eve or—"

 

"I said I don't want to talk about that right now."

 

"Your parents were good enough to be babysitters. And now, I mean these last several years, your mother's been on call to look after the dog whenever they went away. In the beginning, didn't your mother used to call him Pinkel Fritzchen—"

 

"YOU called him that. She called him Fritzchen.

 

"Yeah, but—"

 

"I'm going out. I don't want to talk about this anymore."

 

"Where you going?"

 

"I don't know yet. I'll be back when I'm back."

#

 

If she'd been MY mother, I'd have asked someone to tell the son of a bitch that the family would prefer he not be there. What a pretentious ass. A trust fund baby who'd be a nobody if his old man hadn't been a somebody. And her sister? She's smart and attractive. Why does she obey his every command? What hold does he have over her?

 

Don't be stupid! There's the cottage, the Florida condo, the house in the city, the company, the country club—

 

Stop it! Do you really think she is not aware of all of that? Of course she is. She just doesn't want to lose her sister.

 

You still rehashing this?

 

Like, don't you have better things to think about?

 

She said it was a goodwill gesture . . . or that it should be taken as one. She's not naive, you know. You seem to always forget: people aren't as simple as you think they are.

 

She says we've been invited to her sister's posh country club along with HIS family. She knows how I feel about country clubs and that it goes way back for me. But then, she doesn't go for that crowd either—never has. So unlike her sister in that way.

 

She'd never say it but she expects me to do the 'adult thing' here.

 

Something that she said again just the other day . . . "There won't be anyone at my funeral." Actually, that should be MY line, not hers. Anyway, she seems afraid that she's lost her friends for good. Sometimes that's put to my account, and that's fair . . . to a point. But really, she does put too much into her work . . . and that's kinda like someone we both know, hmmm? And now that she's closing in on retirement . . . and the other—

 

Damn!

 

Would it really mean that much to her?

 

It would be HELL for me!

 

#

 

"I'm back." The dog greets her at the front door as if she's been away for days.

 

"Settle. Now that's a good girl," she says as she puts her purse on the ottoman and hangs her coat in the hallway entrance.

 

"Wanna watch a Chinese scifi movie? Rozina mentioned it when we went for lunch the other day. She said it's not as good as the book but it's still worth watching."

 

"No thanks. I'm reading tonight."

 

"OK, but I'm gonna watch it . . . if you change your mind. Come on girl, let's go watch TV."

 

And again they fall into their after-dinner routine—going their separate ways.

 

Lying on the sofa in the living room, he can't focus on his book.

 

#

 

Tom had booked a special surgical procedure for chronic back pain. Another of his car accidents. That was '82. The procedure wasn't available in the U.S. yet. Mom and I went with him, and to save money, we drove all the way from Bainbridge across the U.S.-Canadian border to Toronto.

 

Mom was still teaching school back then, and I'd taken six months off from college to work and save some money and get my head straight about finishing school, but we were both able to get away. Tom had been laid up for months in his attic room and Mom and Dad were hoping this would work. He was going nuts and making life hell for everybody.

 

Before the Internet it WAS tough, because he loved to read, but there wasn't much around to read, so he whiled away the hours reading and re-reading the Reader's Digest Condensed Books that hadn't been unpacked since we came back from Japan.

 

We got to Toronto late in the evening. Our trip planning was lousy and we ended up driving mile after never-ending mile along Dundas Street in plodding stop-and-go traffic all the way from way out in Mississauga, which we'd taken to be Toronto. God, what a waste of time! I laugh now, but it wasn't funny at all then.

 

The Holiday Inn downtown was our first choice because it was an American hotel. We were convinced that we were in a foreign country. Not so different at all really, but we didn't know that then. The hotel was very tall compared to what we passed on the road. But in the downtown core it was dwarfed by the surrounding office towers and condos. And that CN Tower—brand new at the time they said—literally rose up into the clouds.

 

We parked in the underground—something we'd only seen a couple of times before in the highfalutin part of downtown Atlanta—and took the elevator up to the hotel lobby. After a twelve-hundred mile drive we were spent. It's unbelievably mind-numbing to drive on auto pilot for hundreds and hundreds of miles across unchanging countryside. Then there were the cities and that was white-knuckle driving. And such a long string of them—through Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo and, then we got lost in Detroit in neighborhoods not on our itinerary. Mom and I did all the driving so we were really worn down and mentally burned out. Tom was pretty miserable the whole way—unable to get comfortable lying in the backseat—and he, like always, he let us know about it.

 

On arriving we were starving and desperately needing and wanting hot showers after more than 20 hours cooped up in the confined space of our '72 Oldsmobile Delta 88. All we'd eaten were chicken salad sandwiches, Chex party mix and some apples and oranges from home, and that got really old really fast, but we were doing this on the cheap. Tom's surgery was gonna be expensive enough.

 

Once in the elevator—we were alone at first—and we stretched our limbs, creaking, popping and groaning as we moved from one nerve centre to the next. We felt blessed (Mom didn't like the word 'lucky') for the privacy, not at all self-conscious—there was no one else there.

 

Two levels higher, things changed. A well-dressed couple, thirtyish, got into the elevator, eyes averted and noses tipped up.

 

That was my moment of trauma—the shocking contrast between us and them. We were like commoners who'd traveled on foot, and they were stylish and appeared well-to-do and had most likely just flown in on a modern jetliner. They looked exotic—our frame of reference being the ordinary black and white folk of a small southern town—and they spoke a language we'd never heard before. It certainly wasn't Japanese. That's when the 'foreignness' did become real. But we were the foreigners. They smelled nice, too—not overly perfumed but clean and fresh and scented with the lifestyle of the affluent urban middle class. We were foreign in more ways than one. I still cringe at the thought that we must have seemed like country yokels.

 

I remember wishing I could distance myself from Mom and Tom. Since college I'd developed this notion that I was becoming sophisticated and deserving of respect from those who not only enjoy but expect fine things to be served up . . . and don't dare mix with the pedestrian, the prolish, the homespun. As clearly as it were only yesterday, I remember feeling embarrassed at being with Mom and Tom. But that wasn't the end of it. I was equally ashamed of my mind's betrayal of my family. It was a wretched one-and-a-half minute elevator ride to the hotel lobby. Those 90 seconds get hashed and rehashed from time to time, calling up contrary feelings of low self-esteem and disloyalty, humiliation and self-contempt.

 

But life continued to pile up more experiences, and years later another came on like a tsunami. Five years ago, I'd nearly lost my mind due to a nervous breakdown. I'd been hospitalized and kept in what the residents called the 'Cuckoo's Nest.' I'd been prescribed 'Dopiramate' and was functionally inert for weeks. Couldn't dial a phone number. Couldn't write a complete sentence. Couldn't even copy a sentence without making mistakes. Couldn't keep my balance and couldn't even leave the house. That was the closest I've ever come to realizing how quickly you can lose it all. At the time, there seemed no way back. How do you learn to read again? Forget about work or driving— What kinda life would that be?

 

But I got a second chance—unshrinkwrapped. I'm still old and fat and forgetful—unable to function even as well as a forty-year-old version. But I can read again. I've even started writing a little. Hell, I'm even getting up on the roof to clean the gutters. It's like suddenly finding you're useful again. I was lucky to get away with a warning. Never know when you'll get more than just a warning.

 

And yet (or maybe because) . . . my wife and I have become estranged. During our first thirty years, it never occurred to me. But it did. And yet we've never completely given up. Funny thing, when I proposed at the Bayview Kmart—we were very young and poor—I had said that we'd have a better marriage if we started out together and worked through the tough years. What I couldn't see was that the tough years wouldn't end.

 

Damn!

#

 

The next morning, she had her coffee, he had his herbal tea and the dog had its chew toy. Out of the blue he blurted out, "What the hell. Let's go."

 

Not having been privy to his inner conversations, she didn't know what he was talking about. "Go where?" she asked

 

"To Donaldos, or whatever it's called."

 

"What?"

 

"Yeah. Let's go."

 

"What made you change your mind?"

 

"It's a long story. One day I'll try to write about it. Maybe it'll make more sense."

 

"Are you sure? Because I don't want to say 'Yes' and have you martyr yourself and then turn around and blame me."

"That's fair. But I won't. In fact what I was thinking is that after the dinner at Ronaldos, we can do something we used to do way back in the beginning."

 

"What would that be?"

 

"Let's keep it spontaneous."

 

"But would it be 'spontaneous' if you knew ahead of time and I didn't?"

 

"OK, you're right. So, here's what I was thinking. Remember Krispy Kreme?"

 

"Oh god, we're too old for that. And we don't burn calories like we did in college."

 

"I doubt if they have the 'all-you-can-eat' midnight special anyway. That's a college town thing. It'll be a Friday night and we can sleep in if L2 will go along.

 

"She's a dog."

 

"Alright, I'll take her out in the morning and when we come back we'll give her a special treat with her breakfast and then all of us can go back to sleep for awhile. We could use a weekend off."

 

"On one condition."

 

"What's that."

 

"That we go out and have a steak dinner in the evening. All those carbs will kill me if I don't have red meat."

 

"Done!"

 

"But can we put that aside . . . for now?" she says, looking away for a moment. "I still need some time to deal with . . . things."

 

"Of course. I'm sorry, I . . . I'm not being very sensitive, am I?"

 

"I have to leave for work now. Oh God! I've gotta hurry or I'll miss the 7:43. Can you drive me to the station?"

 

"Uhm, yeah. I mean, of course."