Passenger

I don't know if it's good or bad to know the Caltrain conductors so well that I get a hearty personal welcome in boarding, and something approaching a parting-is-such-sweet-sorrow goodbye.  But it's like that.  And today the experience leaves me a little confused, like the pond is too small or the fish is too big....  The path from the station to my apartment amounts to a sort of reverse railway, my tire tracks being so worn into the sidewalk that steering is no longer necessary.  But curb ramps are, leading from sidewalk to street and back again, as they inevitably do.  But not this one.  This one just across from the station is blocked by a van proclaiming the Geek Guys.  The guy, although I did not know it is a guy, is blocking the path of wheelchair progress.  It will not stand.

I fly into action, which consists of scanning the environment for authorities.  The latter are usually very much in evidence, this being the suburban epicenter of Menlo Park, the police station only 500 meters away.  In fact, I have half a mind to roll up to El Camino, the main thoroughfare, and actually a flag down a passing cop.  I have half a mind, full stop, being spacey and preoccupied from recent rabbinical discussions of death.  But the very mindlessness creates a sort of barrier-free metal state in which I do things instinctively.  And this is one of them.

Damned if I don't spot a uniformed woman striding past the railway station parking lot, just behind me.  Surely she is wearing the wrong sort of uniform.  It is an oddity of American life that law enforcement is scattered across a wide bureaucratic landscape.  This woman could, for example, actually be an Amtrak police person.  She could also work for Caltrain, most likely handing out parking tickets to absent commuters.  It is impossible to tell what she is, but although I can't quite catch up with her, I do yell out a plea through her passenger-side window.  I know this isn't your jurisdiction, I begin, explaining the brazen wheelchair-ramp infraction.  I notice she has the emblem of another party to the policing game, the sheriff's office of the County of San Mateo.  God only knows what laws these people enforce, why she is here, and what she can and will do about the miscreant at the corner.  She shrugs and says she will ring the Menlo Park Police.

The truth is that there is nothing blocking my progress.  There is another wheelchair ramp pointing at 90° in the same intersection, it's midday and there are virtually no cars about.  And this is one of those California suburbs where even the so-called rush hour is easy to miss, population density being low and few houses exceeding one level.  And yet I can't wait.  I can't wait to get this guy.  Whoever this guy is, this intersection blocker who, it appears, is inside the animal boarding facility.  Or maybe the realtor's.  Although the kennel makes more sense.  He's dropping off or picking up.  Which does not impress me in the least.  In fact, it seems to fan my law enforcement ardor.

By the time I have made it from the sheriff woman's car back to the scene of the wheelchair crime, she is already out and walking about.  I pause to see what will happen.  She gives me the fisheye.  I tell her I am just heading for the corner crosswalk at El Camino, as though she cares or this is even mildly relevant.  I do what I described, crossing at the traffic signal, but I can't help looking back at the sheriff.  She is still looking at me, so I look away and roll out of sight into the terrace of a big outdoor café.  No more looking back.  She will do what she will do.

But it's killing me not to be able to see the Geek Guy get his comeuppance.  And what comeuppance is the guy really due?  Haven't I parked where I shouldn't more than a time or two?  Have I really been harmed, or even mildly inconvenienced, more than a second or two?  I don't know.  These are strange times.  The Geek Guy is younger than I am, sufficient grounds for resentment.  His able-bodied enough to leap in and out of a service van.  Doubtless he is a PC repair person.  He understands Microsoft Windows, and I hate him for this alone.  

And there's the other thing, that in addition to having mobility and options, he has a pet.  Okay, he might be signing a lease at the realtor's.  But why double park?  No, I see signs of animal care here.  Which in my current mood is a trivial, self-indulgent pursuit.  But which I also envy.  No dogs in my apartment.  I haven't had a dog since childhood.  So why should he?  And then there's the other thing, the wheelchair access thing.  People routinely park their cars in ways that block wheelchair access.  A rear fender overhangs the sidewalk.  Big deal, people can walk around.  But generally, I can't.  I usually have to roll in and out of the street.  Which being a retired person is hardly a cause for great concern.  But it annoys me.  It's this cars-uber-alles thing.  Which is almost as bad as the rubbish bin sitting right in the middle of a sidewalk.  So it's somewhat ambiguous, my position.  Like most Americans, I am angry and I can't take it anymore.

I also can't take much more of 'woman, oh woman, have you got cheating on your mind?', a question on the mind of the 60s pop singer who made this song famous enough to permanently reside in background music of Trader Joe's.  I am out of milk, but really out of patience with this 'cheating on your mind' refrain.  For the woman in question has had no chance to respond to the singer for 40 years.  And she really wants to stand up and say no, cheating was not on my mind until you started belting out your lyric, but now that I think about it, I'm going to shtup the next six guys I meet at Trader Joe's....  And this is on my mind until I make it through the checkout, and then there's something else.

A friend was driving me up El Camino, I glanced at a hotel, and a certain question arose in my mind.  When did I speak there, addressing a small trade group on how to cut the costs of speechwriting?  It was fun to have a client pull me out of retirement to talk to his colleagues for an hour.  And it seemed that this was...well, mid-February?  No, that could not have been possible, for Marlou died 2 April...and I recall the night of my talk so vividly.  John, who has made many a speech with me in the background, had arranged the thing months before.  And after it was over and all these freelance consultants were fired up about writing their own speeches with a little editing help, and after I'd had too much hotel chicken and chocolate mousse and was wondering how Marlou was...John followed me out the door.  

The night was cool enough to wear a sports jacket, but nothing more.  And the hotel, being right at the edge of wheelchair range, meant a long roll home.  So, it was a pleasant surprise to find John continuing with me, moving up El Camino in the general direction of my place.  Halfway there, I pointed out that he would have quite a walk back to his car.  But no matter, he said, and the two of us kept on going...until we found ourselves outside the apartment.  It was maybe 9 PM, and Marlou might have gone to bed, but no, she was up.  So John came in and met my wife.  He had known me for the many years when I did not have one.  And Marlou had heard enough of his speeches, and heard enough of me struggling to write his speeches, to want to meet him.  And now, here they were, both sitting on Marlou's new designer sofa.  

And I couldn't help but feel a strange pride in having married this woman, and showing her off to John.  She was wearing a dress with a high collar, a style she favored for reasons that might have been clear to someone less oblivious to fashion.  But to me, it was just Marlou, the way she dressed, one of her characteristics.  And now there was a new characteristic, something sagging behind the cheerfulness.  John only stayed a short while.  He was barely out the door before Marlou said she was going to bed.  How much longer this would go on, this weakness and fatigue, and what lay before us...these matters were on my mind.  But I had no real idea of what lay in store.  Surely her horrifying disintegration of body and mind could not have rocketed Marlou from sofa to grave in seven weeks?

And yet, having put away the Trader Joe's bag and opened my calendar, there it was, speech, Park Hotel, 11 February.  My sense of time was badly off.  Which seems to accompany moments of heightened danger and trauma.  And reconstructing the present seems to require reconstructing my past.  You'd think I was a Bosnian refugee, the way my psyche is carrying on.  But it's carrying me on to somewhere, and like it or not, I'm just a passenger.