Laurel
You have to grasp the setting, which is the very thing one becomes oblivious to after living in Menlo Park for...my God...27 years. The terrace café by the bookstore, the one where I just had my bowl of lunchtime soup, showing signs of the spring molt, outdoor dining cranking up, long sleeves giving way to short ones, conversation at the table next to mine focusing on how things were in the old days, before we were in our late 20s instead of our earlies, back then when the cell phones didn't flip open, remember? Something about this overheard conversation is depressing me, hustling me on to finish my latte, shove the wheelchair joystick into hyperdrive and hit it.
As I say, one becomes oblivious to the setting. Just across from the café is an array of investment firms, the regional offices of Fortune magazine, a brokerage or two and the sort of realtor who will help you flip your $10 million home. It is right here, bouncing down the sidewalk, that I see a truck blocking my path. The sucker is sitting in the driveway, half backed out into traffic while I, and an eight year old kid, cool our heels. Nothing is happening, at least not much. My irritation is already at a high pitch. My irritation was a high pitch within five minutes of waking up this morning, but that's me. Maybe me and the effects of Marlou and her chemotherapy, my failures as a writer, the disappearance of my dog Frosty when I was 10 years old, the menacing proximity of the San Andreas fault. Who knows? Who cares? I am instantly pissed, and want this truck out of my way. Wheelchairs have rights, not to mention right of ways, and I am asserting mine.
I assume the truck is going to pull forward so the boy and I can carry on our sidewalk journeys, but no. The truck, big but not on the grand scale, eases backwards into traffic. The driver, shorthaired and glaring, turns out to be a woman. She speaks to the boy. What's happening? The boy peeks around the back of the truck, tells her it's all clear and okay. Then, wrong, cars are coming. Too late, because she's already stuck her rig into traffic, virtually blocking all lanes. Still, she seems ambivalent, probably because she cannot see. The boy takes a furtive step or two into the street, eyes the traffic and seems uncertain himself. He tells her that...well, maybe. Come on, she says. Hurry. The boy now runs to the front of the truck, and the door opens. There's someone on the passenger side, another kid, a little girl. The door is still open and the boy is trying to close it as the truck backs into traffic. I get a look at the cab, the front seat a family tableau. This is a mother, a working mother, and these kids...maybe it's spring vacation. And she's with them and she is driving a truck because this is a working single mother. And this is a working American family, and they are trying to get the hell out of this office complex and find the road, the fast road, out of Menlo Park.
Welcome to hard times. Welcome to reality. Welcome to the outside world intruding on the inside world of Peninsula suburbia. The woman's face, more than momentary stress, but that sense of chronic, long haul, eyes-on-the-bleak-horizon resignation...that's what I saw. Nice kids, I saw that too. Not used to the road, not used to guiding mama's truck into traffic, not used too much. Still some reserves of sensitivity and optimism. But out of place and being tested. My childhood.
Which, of course, it isn't. Motherhood is a strain. This is not an original idea. But when the mother finds existence a strain, the presence of kids doesn't help. And if the kids need mothering, curing or at least lessening the mother's strain can become an early career choice. That's why in the dusty desert town where I grew up Joe's family was a welcome change from my own. We must have met each other about first grade, Joe and I. Could we have sensed the bond that comes of having narcissistic Jewish fathers? Or was it something else? In any case, Joe's home was something else. Up a steep driveway and into their Spanishy desert house...and it was all different.
Joe's mother was on the job, motherwise. But not in the cookies-and-milk domesticity fantasy of the 1950s. Dorothy gave every indication of hating housework, but she enjoyed other things, remarkable things. I can recall one afternoon, or several afternoons...that part is blurred...when her sofa and coffee table and cushions and carpet were spread full of jewelry making items. Feathers and beads and glue. While Dorothy talked. She looked pretty, even stylish, for she was a professional woman. Not a nurse, like my mother had been. But a woman who sold advertising for her husband's newspaper. She had the air of someone who was out in the world, cursed occasionally, laughed frequently...and relaxed me utterly. Dorothy's earrings were flamboyant and frivolous and fun. And so was she. My mother had the charm of a barely controlled cauldron. But Dorothy gradually convinced me that she was not going to explode or stab or otherwise threaten the sensitive little doctor's son. In fact, she had me laughing.
At my home laughter was frequent but mirthless. There was always an edge to a joke, usually a sharp one, always directed at someone. But here in the afternoon among the glue and the feathers and Dorothy talking about rent controlled apartments in New York and the weirdness of our grade school music teacher or the last desert bumpkin who'd bought a display ad... well, it was chat. Idle talk while we hung together. In my high-strung family, rapport always on the knife edge of savagery, hanging out was a bad idea. Joe will tell you that his home life was no bed of roses. Still, it was a pleasant change from mine and an occasional refuge.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that Joe has always had vital caring women in his life. And one of them, Laurel, introduced me to my own. I remember the evening well. I drove to Joe and Laurel's Sacramento suburb, and drove and drove. Never mind the ever weakening torso muscles. Something in me cannot accept that freeways tend to be full of cars. It seems to me they should be more like the artist's conception of the Disneyland Autopia in the 1950s, vistas of pavement, occasional futuristic vehicles skimming along. Not red tail lights snaking through Vacaville. But there I was at last, lowering my wheelchair lift on my still new van. Pretty nifty, I thought. And inside, already there, the surprise guest. Oy. No introvert worth his salt can smile at such an announcement, not without some strain. But what the hell, for the dinner would be easier than the drive, and Marlou being so utterly warm and beautiful.... The rest is history. A history which made history of the rest of my life. Marlou transformed it, and Joe and Laurel got the transformation started.
Which in view of my despair in that era, my suspicion of women and pessimism regarding my prospects for love is something of a miracle. But for me, Laurel established a calming tone. She differed from Joe's mother in significant ways. But there were, in retrospect, some similarities. On that evening, despite the candles on the table and the sense of a big to do that I hadn't anticipated...I felt completely at home. Which simply isn't natural for me. But Laurel has a peace about her, something she shares with Marlou. And she's offbeat. I didn't have to impress her. All I had to do was sit down and eat and drink. I did all of these things, and Joe did most of them, the drinking never on his list. And we laughed and something in me felt free and abandoned.
That was because another thing was in the air, or not in the air. There were no, absolutely not any, even the faintest remote whiff of or the hint of a rumor about anything remotely approaching the even slight or partial or implied acceptability of cripples. In fact, disabled people have been so much a natural part of Joe and Laurel's Berkeley years, the era of cripple liberation, but the point was beyond moot. A point I kept getting along with the wine and Marlou's breasts across the table. Which, I will admit, my reticence and self-esteem and pessimism being what they are, required a Marlou-in-swimsuit display in their backyard pool the following summer. All you need is friends.
Which, because life turns everything full circle, makes it...well, our turn. So Marlou and I both turn to Roseville, which is east like Mecca. We know there's a hospital room there in which Laurel may or, more statistically likely not, have a serious form of cancer. And we wait and we admire and we see what she has brought to our lives...via Joe and his life and a route so circuitous that it would take, and maybe even deserves, a book to explain. And we wait. And we love.
As I say, one becomes oblivious to the setting. Just across from the café is an array of investment firms, the regional offices of Fortune magazine, a brokerage or two and the sort of realtor who will help you flip your $10 million home. It is right here, bouncing down the sidewalk, that I see a truck blocking my path. The sucker is sitting in the driveway, half backed out into traffic while I, and an eight year old kid, cool our heels. Nothing is happening, at least not much. My irritation is already at a high pitch. My irritation was a high pitch within five minutes of waking up this morning, but that's me. Maybe me and the effects of Marlou and her chemotherapy, my failures as a writer, the disappearance of my dog Frosty when I was 10 years old, the menacing proximity of the San Andreas fault. Who knows? Who cares? I am instantly pissed, and want this truck out of my way. Wheelchairs have rights, not to mention right of ways, and I am asserting mine.
I assume the truck is going to pull forward so the boy and I can carry on our sidewalk journeys, but no. The truck, big but not on the grand scale, eases backwards into traffic. The driver, shorthaired and glaring, turns out to be a woman. She speaks to the boy. What's happening? The boy peeks around the back of the truck, tells her it's all clear and okay. Then, wrong, cars are coming. Too late, because she's already stuck her rig into traffic, virtually blocking all lanes. Still, she seems ambivalent, probably because she cannot see. The boy takes a furtive step or two into the street, eyes the traffic and seems uncertain himself. He tells her that...well, maybe. Come on, she says. Hurry. The boy now runs to the front of the truck, and the door opens. There's someone on the passenger side, another kid, a little girl. The door is still open and the boy is trying to close it as the truck backs into traffic. I get a look at the cab, the front seat a family tableau. This is a mother, a working mother, and these kids...maybe it's spring vacation. And she's with them and she is driving a truck because this is a working single mother. And this is a working American family, and they are trying to get the hell out of this office complex and find the road, the fast road, out of Menlo Park.
Welcome to hard times. Welcome to reality. Welcome to the outside world intruding on the inside world of Peninsula suburbia. The woman's face, more than momentary stress, but that sense of chronic, long haul, eyes-on-the-bleak-horizon resignation...that's what I saw. Nice kids, I saw that too. Not used to the road, not used to guiding mama's truck into traffic, not used too much. Still some reserves of sensitivity and optimism. But out of place and being tested. My childhood.
Which, of course, it isn't. Motherhood is a strain. This is not an original idea. But when the mother finds existence a strain, the presence of kids doesn't help. And if the kids need mothering, curing or at least lessening the mother's strain can become an early career choice. That's why in the dusty desert town where I grew up Joe's family was a welcome change from my own. We must have met each other about first grade, Joe and I. Could we have sensed the bond that comes of having narcissistic Jewish fathers? Or was it something else? In any case, Joe's home was something else. Up a steep driveway and into their Spanishy desert house...and it was all different.
Joe's mother was on the job, motherwise. But not in the cookies-and-milk domesticity fantasy of the 1950s. Dorothy gave every indication of hating housework, but she enjoyed other things, remarkable things. I can recall one afternoon, or several afternoons...that part is blurred...when her sofa and coffee table and cushions and carpet were spread full of jewelry making items. Feathers and beads and glue. While Dorothy talked. She looked pretty, even stylish, for she was a professional woman. Not a nurse, like my mother had been. But a woman who sold advertising for her husband's newspaper. She had the air of someone who was out in the world, cursed occasionally, laughed frequently...and relaxed me utterly. Dorothy's earrings were flamboyant and frivolous and fun. And so was she. My mother had the charm of a barely controlled cauldron. But Dorothy gradually convinced me that she was not going to explode or stab or otherwise threaten the sensitive little doctor's son. In fact, she had me laughing.
At my home laughter was frequent but mirthless. There was always an edge to a joke, usually a sharp one, always directed at someone. But here in the afternoon among the glue and the feathers and Dorothy talking about rent controlled apartments in New York and the weirdness of our grade school music teacher or the last desert bumpkin who'd bought a display ad... well, it was chat. Idle talk while we hung together. In my high-strung family, rapport always on the knife edge of savagery, hanging out was a bad idea. Joe will tell you that his home life was no bed of roses. Still, it was a pleasant change from mine and an occasional refuge.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that Joe has always had vital caring women in his life. And one of them, Laurel, introduced me to my own. I remember the evening well. I drove to Joe and Laurel's Sacramento suburb, and drove and drove. Never mind the ever weakening torso muscles. Something in me cannot accept that freeways tend to be full of cars. It seems to me they should be more like the artist's conception of the Disneyland Autopia in the 1950s, vistas of pavement, occasional futuristic vehicles skimming along. Not red tail lights snaking through Vacaville. But there I was at last, lowering my wheelchair lift on my still new van. Pretty nifty, I thought. And inside, already there, the surprise guest. Oy. No introvert worth his salt can smile at such an announcement, not without some strain. But what the hell, for the dinner would be easier than the drive, and Marlou being so utterly warm and beautiful.... The rest is history. A history which made history of the rest of my life. Marlou transformed it, and Joe and Laurel got the transformation started.
Which in view of my despair in that era, my suspicion of women and pessimism regarding my prospects for love is something of a miracle. But for me, Laurel established a calming tone. She differed from Joe's mother in significant ways. But there were, in retrospect, some similarities. On that evening, despite the candles on the table and the sense of a big to do that I hadn't anticipated...I felt completely at home. Which simply isn't natural for me. But Laurel has a peace about her, something she shares with Marlou. And she's offbeat. I didn't have to impress her. All I had to do was sit down and eat and drink. I did all of these things, and Joe did most of them, the drinking never on his list. And we laughed and something in me felt free and abandoned.
That was because another thing was in the air, or not in the air. There were no, absolutely not any, even the faintest remote whiff of or the hint of a rumor about anything remotely approaching the even slight or partial or implied acceptability of cripples. In fact, disabled people have been so much a natural part of Joe and Laurel's Berkeley years, the era of cripple liberation, but the point was beyond moot. A point I kept getting along with the wine and Marlou's breasts across the table. Which, I will admit, my reticence and self-esteem and pessimism being what they are, required a Marlou-in-swimsuit display in their backyard pool the following summer. All you need is friends.
Which, because life turns everything full circle, makes it...well, our turn. So Marlou and I both turn to Roseville, which is east like Mecca. We know there's a hospital room there in which Laurel may or, more statistically likely not, have a serious form of cancer. And we wait and we admire and we see what she has brought to our lives...via Joe and his life and a route so circuitous that it would take, and maybe even deserves, a book to explain. And we wait. And we love.
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