Mystical tree silhouette in fog
A shovel rolls in my trunk with the sound of a death rattle. Next to me are a towel and flashlight. My driving companion is an egg salad sandwich. I turn on the air conditioner.
With one hand on the wheel, I try to remember happy.
My current home disappears behind me; my childhood home waits where I left it fifty years ago. Cedarhurst, Long Island. What’s left of seven-years-old is buried in a shoebox in my backyard: magic birthday candles, an olive pit, a secret decoder ring that failed to decode my mother, things I can’t remember, things that made me happy as easily as switching on a light.
Before I left, my boss had asked, Where are you going?
Where could someone like me possibly be going: that’s what he was really asking. The only place a 56-year-old copywriter was headed was the unemployment line.
You write the best meat loaf copy in the business. Who is going to write the meat loaf copy when you’re gone? He asked. It’s only one day, I said. It’s only one day too long, he shot back.
I felt good about the compliment. And then I felt small that it made me feel good.
I’m an old building. I’m a hole in a sock.
I pull over at a gas station. Fill it to the brim, I say to the gas attendant. He has more grease in his hair than on his hands. He nods, then his glance skids off.
Where is the bathroom? I ask.
What are you running away from? He says.
What? I ask.
I said, Do you want me to clean the windows?
Sure, I say, whatever helps me see.
You seen all that needs seeing, you just haven’t seen it, he says.
I cock my head like a question.
Tires, he says, losing patience with me, check them tires?
He looks away. We are communicating through misunderstanding.
I leave with a tank full of gas and a head full of questions. The traffic light turns red. I take it personally. I wish I had a lifeguard to watch over me, someone who would blow a whistle when I’m drowning.
My wife made me an egg sandwich to take on the road. Olives, onions, mayo, salt and pepper on rye bread with so many seeds they had to fight each other for space. She looked over the pot, waiting for three eggs to boil. And then she looked at me, waiting for me to smile.
What happens when all your fears come true? I asked her. Before she could answer, I told her I’ve been thinking about the end. Not just my end, the end of everything. The last light from a burnt out bulb, the last time you say hello to someone you’ll never see again, the last time I thought I had a future. The end lasts longer than the beginning, I said, but the beginning fools you into believing there’s no end.
When was the last-time you were funny? She asked. She looked at my expression and said, I’m kidding. Then she asked, When are you coming home? I don’t know, I don’t know, I said. Tomorrow’s your birthday, she said. I bought your favorite cake. Will you be home for that? I don’t know, I said.
I think about my father. Dead at 57. Prostate cancer killed whatever my mother left behind. I think about me. Tomorrow, alive at 57. I don’t know what I was expecting. Just more, I guess, more of what I don’t have and maybe less of what I do.
As I cross the Tappan Zee Bridge, sunlight fighting its way through my unwashed windshield, I think back to a week ago Tuesday when my shrink said, You have a great family, you’re in good health, you have a job.
You just said that in descending order, I said.
My shrink shook her head to eight years of not getting through. She put a used tissue in the sleeve of her shirt. She is a crumpled 4’ 11”. Her hair looks like it lost interest in growing. Her office smells like nasal spray and Civil War Muskets.
I don’t want to write meatloaf copy anymore, I said, or Tuna casserole ones. I just want to hide till it’s all over.
Our time is up, she said.
I’m on the Southern Parkway, where my father taught me how to drive. I pass the Howard Johnson’s where I used to go every Friday after school with my best friend, Scott. The draw: all-you-could-eat fried clams that taste like fried rubber bands.
I’m ten minutes away.
Now five.
And then, Cedarhurst. It feels like it’s been rained on since I left. Everything is overgrown and uncombed. This town and I, we aged apart.
I spot Bea’s Tea Room. They made the best black and white malted, would go great with my egg salad. I have time. What’s buried will stay buried, until I say otherwise.
Same booths, fewer people. I look for Bea behind the counter. I look for her through the window in the kitchen. I find her hanging on the wall. The picture reads: Bea Taylor. 1927 to 2010. She’s wearing her signature hair net and cat glasses. She has a malted in her hand and she’s pretending to drink.
Before I have the chance to feel, I hear someone say, “Hey.” I look and see him in the last booth. He says, is that? And then he stops. He can’t remember my name. I don’t remember his face. We shake hands. Not firmly neither of us want to commit because we can’t remember if he we liked or hated each other in school.
I look at him. He looks like he needs a new coat of paint. I can’t possibly look that old. He has more hair than me, but also more stomach.
What are you doing back in the old hood, he asks.
Old hood? I must have hated him. Oh, I’ve come back to dig up a shoebox. But I can’t say that. I need a good lie. The old copywriter kicks in.
I’m doing some research, I say, I’m writing a book about the symbiotic relationship between childhood and happiness.
Hmmm, he says, sufficiently unimpressed. He tells me he just got back from a conference in Italy.
I think about responding. Goodbye comes out instead.
I drive around until 6pm becomes 7, then 8. I pass my friend Sam’s house. I park under a street lamp across the street from 1301 Cedarwood Drive. I lean against the car and eat. She’s a good egg, my wife. I whisper a laugh.
I open the trunk. The shovel. The flashlight. The towel. Slam.
The house where I grew up comes to me like a dream. I look for the footprint in the driveway. It takes a while but I find it. Faded like memory. I was five, maybe six, when I stepped on the wet tar. My mother wanted to ring my neck. My father shrugged.
I tiptoe to the backyard, trying not to rustle the grass or the people inside the house. I look. Swing set gone. Baby pool gone. A trim of roses against the white house, now blue. Garden hose is different. My parents gone. Seven-year-old boy gone. This was the battlefield where my friends and I played war. Our fortress, a shrub, gone.
I ring the doorbell. I hear a man’s voice muffled through the door. Who is it? It takes some explaining. I used to live here, I say. I went to the number six school down the road. The door opens and a man in an undershirt looks at me through the screen like he’s looking at a prisoner through square bars. I see his wife and son behind him. The man has a double chin and thick hair that will outlive him. The wife: she’s pretty if you look at her right. The boy looks like a boy.
I work in advertising, I say. Nothing is his answer. Have you ever seen the meatloaf commercial? I ask. His face lights up. His shoulders relax. I use the opportunity and tell him about the shoebox. I promise I’ll cover the hole like new. His wife burns through me. He says yes to meatloaf and gravy and me.
In the backyard, I stand in front of the Sycamore tree. It was a baby when I was. Sycamore reaches for the stars; I reach for my shovel. Dirt at my feet, I wonder how deep I have to go.
I feel the ghost of my seven-year-old self-looking down at me. I point the flashlight up at my old room. Top floor, second window to the left. Dark then, dark now. I imagine my younger self-looking down at my older self. Would the boy be disappointed in the man? A gust of not good enough picks up.
Father and son show up with big and small shovels. Need some help? The father asks. Need some help? The son repeats.
That’s okay, I say, but they help anyway.
Are you sure we’re in the right spot? The father asks. It’s been a long time since you were my son’s age, no offense.
Tomorrow’s my birthday, I say.
Happy birthday, he says. Sure hope this isn’t how you’re celebrating.
I’ll be the same age my father was when he died, I say, offering him an answer to a question he didn’t ask.
What other commercials have you done? He asks.
Tuna casserole and lasagna, I say.
Hmmm, he says.
Ten minutes, I hear the wife say from the porch. I feel her arms cross. Apparently, we’re being timed.
As we dig, I hear the father and the son say in unison, In, out, dirt-to-the-side.
What’s that all about? I ask.
He puts his hand on his son’s shoulder. It’s a little game we play to make yard work fun. Then he whispers, you got to keep tossing crap to the side if you want to move forward. If you know what I mean?
We hit dirt and rock, roots and worms, but no memories.
In, out, dirt-to-the-side, they say.
I stop to look at them. They lean into each other.
I feel my father move close to me.
I never said goodbye to him, I say.
They stop shoveling.
He was a good man, I say, like you’re a good man, like fathers are good men.
I can tell the father doesn’t know whether to say thank you or call the police.
I dig my shovel into a pile of dirt and start to fill the hole, one year at a time.
What are you doing? The father asks.
Burying my father, I say.
What? The father says.
It’s getting late, I say.
A light turns on behind me.
Time, the wife says.
I wipe the dirt from my hands.
Goodbye, I say. I put the shovel in the trunk.
It doesn’t make a sound on the way home.
–Art by Joanna Jankowska