29
I HATE these bastards. You know? Can you hear this? Listen. Look at this. You see that space there? That’s the guy’s mouth. The guy in the painting, on the bridge, with the mouth. Do you know that one? I use that same mouth, the “o” mouth, on the ghosts I hang in the front tree for Sammy on Halloween.
~
First, Tutti tells me I should take the eggs out of the pot and put them in a bowl.
Then she tells me I should put the eggs in the fridge.
Then she starts telling me about some fat kid she knows who she says drinks too much pop.
I tell her to quit telling me how to make egg salad sandwiches.
I tell her, “Leave me alone. I can make egg salad sandwiches myself.”
“I don’t want mayonnaise,” Tutti says. “I want Miracle Whip.”
I get the Miracle Whip out of the fridge. I get a fork and stick it in the middle of the Miracle Whip.
~
I decided to go over and see this woman. I wanted to see how she lived. I wanted to see what she ate for breakfast.
I decided to go over right away. I walked.
On the way over I saw signs. I looked in the trees and in the bushes, in the clouds, in my shoelaces. I saw a sign in a section of sidewalk on Walnut Grove Boulevard.
~
In the morning, he comes down the stairs and he wants me to play with him. He says, “Can we play, Daddy?”
I tell him I have to go to work.
He tries to think of ways to make me stay and play with him. He says, “Just a tiny bit.”
I tell him I have to have my breakfast and then I have to go to work.
But I shouldn’t have my breakfast, should I? Why should I have my breakfast? On the day I die, when I look back on this, and I remember choosing breakfast over playing with Sammy, how is this going to make me feel?
~
God was sitting in a movie theater. It was the early show. The guy sitting next to God was eating popcorn.
~
My theory was it was the O-ring which had gone, so I took apart the cartridge. The O-ring looked fine. But you can never tell with an O-ring. Sometimes they will look fine, but then there is a tiny fissure in them which will render them useless. O-rings cost ninety-nine cents for a package of two.
That night I dreamed I was ninety-three years old and the woman at the desk next to mine at work was calling the paramedics.
30
PETRA, WHO works with me supervising the part-timers, likes to tell me stories about how she and her husband bought this old house in the country and fixed it up. I like to sit and listen to these stories, because Petra really knows how to tell them. Petra calls them decorating stories, because they are all about how she and her husband are decorating their house.
One day Petra has this idea where the part-timers will sign out their elevator keys in pencil. You have to have an elevator key to get on the elevator here. If the part-timers sign out their elevator keys in pencil, we can erase the slips of paper they sign them out on and then use them again. Petra wants to help the environment.
At the part-timers’ meeting we tell all the part-timers we want them using pencil to sign the little slips of paper they sign to get their keys out, and when they turn their keys back in, they should give the slips of paper back to us and we will erase them. We tell them we are doing this for the environment.
I think this is an idea you could only get from Petra. This is what I like about this idea. I have no desire to erase the little slips of paper.
But then one of the managers says she doesn’t like the idea. She says she wants the kids to sign their keys out in pen because she thinks pen will foster a sense of responsibility in the kids. At the next part-timers’ meeting, we tell the kids to go back to signing the little slips of paper in pen.
~
Tutti gives me a piece of paper which lists all the food groups on it. We are sitting up in bed. Tutti writes down all the food groups and then draws a bunch of little squares beside each of the food groups. She draws the squares fast, and then hands the piece of paper to me.
“Each time you eat something from one of the food groups,” she says, “you check off one of the squares.” She reaches over and puts her finger on some of the squares. “When you run out of squares,” she says, “you can’t eat anything from that food group anymore.”
I look at the piece of paper. I put it on the bedside table, on top of the clock radio.
~
The day my mom came to live with us was the same day they came to cut the grass. The guy with the gray hair rode around on the little tractor. The younger guy went around with the weed-eater. It was cool and windy, like autumn, only it was only the first day of August. They drove the tractor up the retractable ramp onto the pickup truck. The weed-eater went off. Everything was quiet. All you could hear was the wind in the trees. Mom was downstairs, unpacking boxes.
~
Don’t lay this trip on me. Like it’s all my doing. Okay? As if you have nothing to do with it.
What I’m talking about is anything like a vase, in the sense that a vase is the last thing you would want to see.
31
ONE DAY we drive out to the country to see Petra’s house. Tutti and Sammy and me. Petra lives in a town about an hour away from where we live. She has a boy the same age as Sammy, so we figure they can play together. We figure we can take them to the park. Petra says there’s a wading pool at the park, and a train ride.
We get to the town where Petra lives, and we get on the street it says to go on in the directions Petra gave me. We pass the gas station Petra said we would pass.
What I am picturing as we go along is this big house with big corners jutting out where the roof comes down, and a big front porch and a screen door that slams. This is the picture I get from all the stories Petra has told me about the house they live in. Instead, what it is is this small house with a hole in the ceiling in the kitchen and people next door who work on their car all day Sunday with the radio going.
~
I go in the bathroom and try to get Sammy to pee, but Sammy just cries and hangs there over the toilet with his little eyes still shut and his blanket clutched up around his nose.
~
We have this secret society at work, the Black Rod Club. We’re a bunch of guys working in a predominantly female workplace. I think this Black Rod thing involves subconscious desires.
The founder of the club sits at the desk next to mine. In this place where I work, some of the women have their own offices, but most of us sit at desks that are all pushed together in a couple of rooms. Jeff’s desk is perpendicular to mine and is always covered with stacks of books and papers. I don’t know what Jeff’s job actually is, but apparently it involves all the papers that are on his desk. Sometimes he puts all the papers and books into boxes and carries the boxes around for a day or two, as though he intends to do something with all that stuff.
When I ask Jeff about the history of the Black Rod Club, he rubs his beard. His glasses make his eyes look larger than they are. He says the Black Rod Club was founded by a bunch of guys with black rods. He laughs. He tells me that in the late 1600s a Scotsman named Roderick, nicknamed Black Rod, came to Canada and founded the Black Rod Club. He laughs again. He says he has work to do.
The room where our desks are has a window at the end, and we look out onto a courtyard with a picnic table sitting in the center of it, and benches under trees. We look at the people eating their lunches out there. We talk about these people. Some of them come every day, and we talk as if we know them. There is one blonde girl who has been coming a lot lately. She eats her lunch and we stare out the window at her. Sometimes a man in a suit comes to meet her. We believe they are having an affair. Sometimes they sit close to one another and look down at their laps. Sometimes the girl laughs and tosses her long, straight hair, and then leans close and brushes the man’s lips with her own. It drives us Black Rod members crazy to see this. We think the man should make his move. We want to see him really kiss her.