My Private I

Goodbye Bob- You are missed.

 Back in September, I answered an ad on Craigslist of a book club seeking new members.  I met Bob, not through his art but through the lens of books we'd read each month- Geek Love, Like Water for Elephants, The Year of Magical Thinking, The Tin Drum.  Over the months, we'd peel away the onion skins- layers we'd shed of ourselves- our hopes, fears and secrets. He had a quiet, intense gravity and I always felt everything would be right in the world if you had a few more Bob's around. But, that's where he drew his power and artistic vision- his brilliant oneness made his truly unique.

Our book club met for dinner last Thursday night- jerk seasoned pork chops over rice, sugar cane, grilled peaches a la mode. In retrospective, it was a bittersweet menu for the last time we'd be in Bob's company before passed away in his sleep on Sunday.  The book we read that month, "The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao" and a painting I discovered of his called "Set Back" was a perhaps a portent of a life stolen when he had so many years left to give. To us. To the art community. To the world.  May his soul R.I.P.

 

Little Boxes

As a kid, I attended Leif Erickson Elementary School. I have no idea how a bland assembly of cement buildings and portable bungalows in the middle of 1980's suburbia was named after a Viking who discovered North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus.  Our school librarian assistant, Mrs. Kassabaum doubled as a folk singer. She was pear-shaped like her guitar. I recall her big butt, but not her face. Weekly class excursions to the library included twenty mandatory minutes  of sing-a-long.  I was too shy to say the actual words out loud, so I read the lyrics instead.  They were printed on newsprint in black marker.  I listened to Mrs. Kassabaum every week for five years and up until last week, I only remembered one song- "The Cat Came Back".  It's about a man who unsuccessfully tried to get rid of a cat. 

Sometimes, you have to wait twenty-five years to have your childhood feel like yesterday. Last week, Emmanuel and I picked up at our local video rental store season one of WEEDS, an addictive Showtime channel dark American comedy series about a Southern California suburban housewife who becomes the suburban planned community pot dealer to financially support her family in the aftermath her husband's sudden death.  WEEDS opening theme song, Little Boxes, was Mrs. Kassabaum's favorite. She sang with conviction. And occasional, spit (which is why no one rushed to sit in the front row).

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses All go to the university, And they all get put in boxes, Little boxes, all the same. And there's doctors and there's lawyers And business executives, And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

10pm, a Saturday night in 1998

I don’t know why I woke up this morning remembering a Saturday night in 1998, when my boss telephoned me at 10pm and asked if I was sitting down. My co-worker was murdered. I didn’t know her very well; we had marketing territories in neighboring states. Every summer, we’d both visit the head office in Arizona for training, where people pronounced our names the same. Only hers was spelled Karen. I remember when my name was called and we’d both turn around to respond, only to realize my or her mistake and laugh.

The story goes she and her fiancée were sound asleep in bed. In the middle of the night, two suspects broke in, held them at gunpoint. Stole their engagement rings, a laptop, a few hundred in cash. They were found with their hands duct-taped behind their backs. Garbage bags over their heads, plastic handles tightened and tied-off around their necks. Faces blown off. Afterwards, the suspects took Karen’s company car for a joy-ride. The police found the vehicle abandoned in the Sonoran desert.

After hearing the news, I remember not wanting to sleep alone, so I invited Billy, the driver I had dated a few times, to spend the night. He came over after his last airport pickup. Billy had a few false teeth on account of a bar fight which you couldn't tell by looking at him but he felt obligated to inform you of anyway. He used my bedroom to change out of his black suit with the matching pilot cap and into a loud Hawaiian tourist shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops. He surfed during the day, drove limos by night. When I told him everything that happened, he licked his lips and looked in my eyes like I was a fifty-foot wave and said Far Out. I wasn’t looking for comfort or conversation. I just wanted to wake up beside a body, warm to the touch.

I flew out to Arizona one month later. It was summer. 112 in the shade. Took a taxi to the hotel, where I was staying for the next two months for work. I inquired about a rent-a-car for getting to and fro but my boss mentioned that the police were discharging Karen’s company car as evidence. Apparently, the detectives had extracted all the clues they could gather. They had a few suspects but no one in custody. No random act of violence, it was a contract killing. Her fiancée ran with the wrong crowd; owed some thugs in the Midwest, money.

My boss didn’t come right out and say we can save the company some expense when she handed me the keys to the gold four-door Buick on a Friday afternoon and indicated the numbered space it occupied in the office parking lot. It stuck me as unprofessional to disagree and so I spent the summer of 1998 driving a dead-woman’s car.

I remember my hands shaking as I drove the car home, taking the shortest route from the office to the hotel. Too paralyzed to move it from its parking space all weekend, I ordered in room-service three meals a day. Entertaining viable transportation alternatives, I studied public bus schedules. I even tried to take my mind off her murder by reading books poolside. But, the pool had a view of the parking lot and I'd occasionally spot her car like a mirage among a sea of cars- sun-baked and shimmering.

Early Monday morning, I gathered up courage. Stuck my hand inside the glove compartment, under the shadowy space under the seats unearthing tiny things that my co-worked once owned- now oblivion. A Janis Ian tape. Penciled notes from a sales speech among a stack of 3 x 5 index cards. A pack of pink post-it notes still inside cellophane. Half pack of Juicy Fruit. Before, I unwrapped a stick and put it in my mouth, I apologized to Karen (wherever she was) for the way I reacted to her death- guilty for feeling fearful in lieu of grief. I chewed that piece of gum for hours, punishing myself with the loss of every taste imaginable. Later that afternoon, staying true to everything I felt, I wrote a sympathy letter to Karen’s family. Words as compact and dense as the gum hardening to a small stone at the back of my mouth.

While death waits in secret for each of us; life doesn’t stop. I don't know if coming to terms with Karen's murder, was a single point of transformation, but a braver, bolder me emerged sometime during the summer of 1998.  I began driving the getaway car to a mall two miles away. A cocktail birthday party twenty miles away. A road trip to Sedona one hundred and twenty miles away, where I pulled onto a dirt road with my old college crush and we sat without words on the front hood while the engine ticked slowly and I strained to listen for the sound of stars dying out, coyotes- a sign of something human. Later, we checked into a motel, where our bodies collided like wrecking balls and we ripped the headboard right off of the wall.