On Saturday morning, I stop for cinnamon rolls at the small farmers’ market held in front of the courthouse by bespectacled Amish matrons in bonnets and farm women outfitted in shirts with flowered yokes. This indulgence is needed by neither of us at 701 Sherwood. I envision my future as that of a person who will have to be cut out of a couch.
Already, it is steamy, well into the nineties. Today is the All Town Yard Sale and tables in garages across town are loaded with old clothes, housewares, figurines of Jesus and cartoon characters, scenic landscapes framed without glass, lamps without shades, children’s watches and battered toys, pill organizers I am tempted to lick for crumbs. Vans with baby shoes dangling from the rearview mirrors circle yards. On the back gate of a pickup, a hand-lettered sign is taped below a tractor decal: IN MEMORY OF BOBBY T. I keep my eyes peeled for an elderly gentleman whose favored mode of conveyance is a rusty aqua-colored golf cart festooned with American flags. Skinny little black girls in colored barrettes dance around their large, determined-looking mothers in their pastel stretch shorts who search for school outfits and near-fit shoes.
. . .
“Thank you for taking care of me.” That is what Betty said last night, apropos of nothing, really. I was looking at places in the kitchen where the linoleum is coming up and wondering if I could glue it down without permanently adhering myself. Admitting she had, in her mind, run up a debt clearly troubled her, even though it was just to me. She was grateful, though she never seems to really take in what staying here is costing me—my life, really. Probably because she cannot bear to consider it.
“What kind of man would do that, come home and live with his mother?” There are a lot of things I couldn’t care less about people saying, but I don’t want to be thought tragic, because I’m not. I may not have a life partner or a bunch of kids. But I have had loves you can’t quite put a label on, though now I am reconciled to being on my own. Discussions of gay marriage make me feel spinsterish. Yes, my brothers and sisters should be allowed to wed. In my experience, it is gay dating that should be outlawed.
A long time ago, in New York, a man I wanted to maybe settle down with, an architect not much for sharing confidences—my kind of person—told me that I didn’t meet well. “I met you, didn’t I?” I asked. He just stared back. I could not make him understand that I cannot summon myself when I most want to, when there is someone I need to please. When I care for someone I find it a difficult thing to admit. I even find it difficult to say that I find it difficult. I have been called emotionally unavailable. I prefer to think of myself as temporarily out of stock.
The architect didn’t pan out. “You’re high maintenance,” he said. He was right. I take a village.
He is currently in Brooklyn somewhere, married to an artist with a multicolored Mohawk. I imagine they are living happily now in a beautifully refurbished loft space or perhaps a teepee. Maybe they have adopted a child from that little country in Africa where Madonna goes.
. . .
In our house we keep to a regular schedule. Betty’s in the family room by nine, eagerly awaiting her breakfast. Frying up bacon, I assess her mood and condition, pour out her pills—Aricept, Namenda, estradiol, Celexa, and Enablex—and check to see if any need to be refilled. This morning, waiting for her, I hear a few yelps and a dog’s low growl, a funny kind of barking that suggests a halfhearted attempt to sound ferocious. Someone has dumped a stray, as they do here in the country. You see them, often past their prime, padding along the shoulders of the highway, looking hot and bedraggled. Outside, I see a reddish-brown creature, medium-sized but barely more than a puppy, bounding out of our garage with a bit of what looks like potting soil sticking to his nose. I am tentative at first, having no interest in emotional entanglement. He looks needy. I am wary. I am needy too, and all I can handle. But before too much time has passed, I reconsider, tentatively.
“Hey you,” I say, hunching down. The little dog—a bit of many breeds, it seems—circles me, sneezing. He has yellow half circles above his eyes, like eyebrows. When I ease myself toward him, he lurches, then pulls back. He growls a bit but plops down in front of me, looking curious. I feel slightly offended. He is unsure, which is fine. I am not accustomed to creatures won over easily.