Over and over Chad watched the same routine unfolding. The freshman’s first entrance through Pitt’s front gate in the painfully assembled clothing that best summated his or her desired image. The ageing father’s insistence upon carrying the heaviest loads. The mother’s hand fluttering proudly upon her décolletage, resting only to stroke the stone or locket of her finest necklace. Then later the return from the freshman’s room, their child’s new home having been located and inspected and the luggage all unloaded. And finally the farewell. The freshman awaiting the moment when the final thin twine of umbilical cord would at last and forever be cut.
The arriving families would pause here and there as they made their first turns around the perfect lawn. Shoulders were squeezed. Fingers pointed out the Gothic glories of the college buildings, the gargoyles and the diamonds of lead that latticed the windows, the uneven staircases spiralling up from the squat arched doorways. Dark stone passageways that promised more of Pitt’s pleasures beyond front quad. The gardens and their ancient tree with tired limbs held up on crutches. Back quad with its wilder lawn, its meadow airs. The thunk of mallets striking croquet balls. The shadow of the sandstone wall washing over the grass toward students sprawled around their books and drinks.
Pitt College had been founded in 1620, the very same year that the Mayflower had dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor. Chad would spend eight months in the city and the marvel of it all would never rub smooth.
But what was he to do? He couldn’t approach an entire family. One human being at a time he found difficult enough.
And then just as Chad had accepted the abject failure of his plan, his ideal target had arrived. Alone. Male. Heavy bags. Yes yes yes.
Chad forced his legs to start moving before his mind could round on the plan.
Part one was simple, a greeting. And then Chad would ready himself for part two of the plan, to listen out for a name, to actually retain it – a vital stage of meeting people and a hurdle he usually failed to clear, his nerves like so much white noise. And then, part three, Chad would offer to help with the bags.
‘Hi, I’m Chad,’ said Chad.
The ideal target put down his bags. And then he looked up at Chad, his lips tight against his teeth, and said, ‘Who on earth names their son after a Third World fucking country?’
III
III(i) Why did the presence of six water glasses prevent your narrator from enjoying a gentle stroll outside? Yes, I should explain. Rewind.
III(ii) When I turn away from the window, I see six glasses staring back at me from the floor of my apartment. As part of my routine, every night I place six water glasses very carefully in the middle of my living-room floor.
They make for an arresting image, six glasses arranged in two ranks of three. And this of course is the point of these glasses. To arrest me, to stop me on the spot. So I stand and I think and then I look up at the clock. Lunchtime. Seven hours have passed since the phone call. Which means I have lingered at the window all morning, the words of the phone call playing, rewinding and replaying in my head. And six glasses means I must not have not drunk any water today. Not one single drop.
It would seem that the phone call has already caused some considerable disruption to my routine.
Allow me to explain. Those six glasses are, to use a common phrase, an aide-memoire – although I prefer my own term, physical mnemonic. The physical imposition of the glasses helps me remember to drink six glasses of water a day. Because there was once an occasion, over a year ago now, when I forgot to drink any water at all. This liquid lapse continued for a dangerous length of time. The effects of dehydration, I soon discovered, can prove somewhat debilitating.
So now that the glasses have jolted my memory, I pick one up and head to the kitchen. Upon my arrival I see three plates lined up on the chequered linoleum floor. Which means I haven’t yet eaten any breakfast. (Nor lunch nor dinner of course.)
Next I find that in the kitchen sink and hindering access to the faucet there sits an inverted salad bowl. With a Pavlovian twitch I glance down, whereupon I spy my genitals. Yes, I would appear to be entirely unclothed.
What ludicrous notion first caused me to make the mnemonic link between salad and genitals? Every morning I find the connection vaguely disturbing. I would like very much to change this memory prompt, I should replace the salad bowl with a heavy rolling pin or magnum of champagne. But alas, meddling with routines is a dangerous game.
I stand in the kitchen drinking my water, considering my limp lettuce nakedness for a short time, and then head to my bedroom. I leave the salad bowl and empty water glass on the bed. I find shorts and a T-shirt beneath my pillow.
Now clothed, I return to the kitchen. In the sink, and previously hidden by the inverted salad bowl, sits an old marmalade pot. So now I know what comes next. I go to the refrigerator for bread to make toast for my breakfast. But in the refrigerator there hangs a single red Christmas-tree bauble. Which means I haven’t yet taken my morning pills. So I swallow my pills, put the bauble in the marmalade pot and slide the bread into the toaster. I open the cutlery drawer for a knife so I can spread peanut butter on my toast . . . And staring up at me is a Halloween mask of the Wookiee Chewbacca from the Star Wars movies.
So I put on the Halloween mask with the elastic under my chin but the Wookiee’s face atop my head, eye-holes pointing to the ceiling. (It might prove somewhat tricky for me to breakfast through Chewbacca’s mouth-hole, so I wear him thusly.)
Hungrily I eat my toast and peanut butter. And then, when I finish, I turn on the shower. Which means I can now take off the Halloween mask, its purpose having been to remain uncomfortably on my head until I remember to turn on the shower. (Although what a hairy Wookiee has to do with cleanliness, I could not possibly say. Sometimes my mnemonics make sense, sometimes they do not. Often this is the result of what lay at hand when the need to place another element in my routine arose.)
So I shower, stumble across more mnemonics, drink another glass of water and read the newspaper (whose presence, outside my door, a pair of sunglasses dangling in the shower closet alerted me to). This all takes about two hours of my time. And then upon the completion of morning tasks, I sit down at my dining table on whose uncluttered surface there rest only three objects. My diary, whose last entry was written some fourteen years ago, my laptop and an old yellow tooth. The diary has been patiently awaiting this moment for some time, the moment at which I would begin telling my story, and I will open it soon. But first the tooth, an old molar that rests on top of my laptop. The tooth has become my lucky charm, a reminder that I cannot be beaten. So I pick up the tooth, hold it clenched in my fist and close my eyes. And feeling warmed by this mnemonic of strength, I open the computer to record the morning’s events. But then I can’t remember the order in which I just performed my morning tasks. (You might at this point be forgiven for making the following observation – it may require more than one gentle stroll to propel me back into the world of normality.)
I sigh an enormous sigh, leave my computer again and head to the bedroom once more where I stand, hands on hips, staring at my bed. Every night when I try to climb into bed, I find I cannot get under the covers because an assortment of glasses, plates, bowls and various other gimcracks and gewgaws block my way. And so every day ends with the same laborious task. Each night before sleep I move around the apartment carefully replacing all of my physical mnemonics in their correct positions to establish the next day’s successful routine.