YOU DECIDE

Blog contribution by Adam S. Kibbe

So sue me.

Monday night is one of Diane’s nights to cook. Matt has Thursday and I know I have Tuesday but sometimes I forget. Maybe it’s a directions thing because yesterday I was at Shaw’s buying food for dinner.

Which is always a challenge. Sometimes Matthew and I wander the aisles like observers from another dimension. There are the choices, but we can’t seem to pluck them from the shelves. Yesterday, I thought, how about spaghetti and meatballs? We frequently have pasta and we frequently have meatballs, but rarely the two together. I tossed in jar of sauce, without mushrooms, and a can of whipped cream (for Diane’s coffee, not dinner) and headed to check out.

Diane arrived home early for a Monday, with two bags of groceries.

“I thought I’d cook tonight,’‘ offered in my most humble, self serving manner. She is so accustomed to this, it fazes her not at all. ‘So what did you buy?’‘ I asked.

“Meatballs from Idlywilde, to go with the pasta in the freezer, spaghetti sauce and a can of whipped cream.”

I do have that photo of John and Matthew mowing the grass. And I’ll post it as soon as I get it back from Diane who took it to her group to show Wendy Rosen.

Susan, I’m planning on picking you up at Logan. My afternoon is free.

Lake Sylvia, the summer of 1990.
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Dear Adam,

Do you remember the skylight we installed in Wayland? What road, I don’t remember, but the house was a modest ranch and not far north of where Sherman’s Bridge Rd. meets Rt. 126. You and I had just finished the framing, when Rick comes by, and as often happened, he pointed out what we had done incorrectly. He wanted supporting members from the rafters to the ceiling joists, which, structurally, you tried your best to argue against. But he persisted. Later, with more experience under my belt, I realized you were right and he was wrong. Much like your argument about how to cook omelets that I listened to from the bathroom off Rick’s kitchen. You said moderate heat, Rick said high. The cookbook I had in hand said, moderate.

But the point of the story is not the skylight, nor the omelet, but the electrical wire that was running through the skylight shaft opening in the ceiling. It needed to be rerouted, which meant it first had to be cut. I was standing on a ladder, head in the ceiling, when Rick, below me and holding those big wire cutters with green handles, asked if he first needed to turn the power off. I guess I was tired of him telling us to redo our work because I said, “No.” Bang/Flash/Sparks, wire cutters destroyed, Rick spooked, but alive.

Friday I was finishing the outside wall repair at the condo up the street. The owner worked on rockets at Hanscom and traveled to northern latitudes like Alaska for launches. His unit abuts Amelia’s, the creator of the wooden flowers.

I grabbed my sawzall to make one last blind cut to remove a piece of rotted band joist. With the end of the blade buried in the wall, I sawed away. Bang/Flash/Sparks/Flames! I cut right through a wire running from the panel to who knows where. Maybe the outdoor light above my head. “Jumping Jeshosophat,” I said, and praised my double insulated sawzall, plugged into -we both know- an extension cord with the ground prong broken off.

What to do? With the surrounding fiberglass insulation blackened, but no fire, and in a hurry to finish, I decided to splice the wire ends, add a junction box, mark where it is, and close-up. Learned that from Rick too, but without the metal box.

I climbed down from the second floor deck, walked through the slider and over to the fuse box. I scanned the breakers, saw one tripped, said to myself, “Great,”went back to the fried wire and pulled on the end dangling from above. Not the one from below – that surely, I reasoned- was the feed from the electrical panel. With my bare metal wire cutters in hand, I grabbed the hefty white wire and squeezed. Bang/Flash/Sparks, the beginning of my life in review, and another tool fried. This time I got down on the icy wet deck, filthy saw dust mixed with bird shit and god knows what else, and kissed it.

That’s when Bill Lynch, the condo owner and retired rocket scientist appeared at the door. After I explained why I had my lips glued to the frozen deck, he scurried off to find his volt meter. I moved back to the wire and began, with the super duper, SuperKnife you gave me, to strip the ends of the white, black and red leads. Expose the ends, connect the volt meter and we’ll know if they are still live. Confident the breaker had tripped, but not totally so because it hadn’t the first time, I hurried to finish before Bill returned. Maybe that is why I inadvertently crossed the hot and ground with the blade of my knife. Again, the same frightening explosion of sparks, but this time Bill is watching from the door. Thinking, no doubt, That guy is not a rocket scientist.

Susan, the second box arrived on Saturday.

From the vault – John Lewis & Matt on Matt’s birthday.
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Yes, it did snow, and no, it hasn’t stopped, and, you got that right, I want to move to North Carolina. I’m betting schools will be closed tomorrow.

Another comment on blogonyms.

Diane. “Who’s in good company?”
Me. “What did they write?”
Diane.” Nothing like a few unabashed kith & kin! I delight in your resilience of ego…”
Me. “Adam. Can’t you tell by the language”?
The tone might have conveyed a tiny bit of how stupid are you?
Diane. “Not always……………………..nor can you.”

She’s right, because I was convinced that stickler (but not a Stickler) was Susan. Using doofus in the email address, was, in a word, dastardly.

Here is my last story. A week’s worth of work, arguably not done and arguably worth more work, but it won’t get it. I’m moving on.

Tunnels
John married his high school sweetheart a month after he returned from Vietnam. They had one daughter, Melanie, and one cat Molokai, named after the Hawaiian island on which they honeymooned. His wife, Toni, exuded New York. Sharp, witty, but with no margins. You liked her or you didn’t and she didn’t care. She was shorter than John, her dark brown hair contrasting to his sandy brown, her slender figure, lost next to his bulk. John worked harder to please, and laughed more than Toni.

The sun was hot and the inside of the second floor walkup hotter when I helped John move downstairs. His neighbor, Frank, joined us, until he limped home after I lost my grip on the refrigerator we were carrying.

Almost done, we sat on the floor amidst the clutter in his new apartment, sipping ice cold Absolute Vodka.

“I love the Pat-a-cake.”

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man…?”

“That’s the one, John. You and Melanie, how old is she, three now? It’s great to watch you two… I don’t know who laughs more, you or your daughter.”

“Toni taught her.”

“She should have taught you. Melanie’s hitting her knee while you’re clapping, and guess who has it right?”

“She does, but speaking of right, what was that with the fridge? You dropped it on purpose.”

“How did you know?”

“It was the look on your face after Frank yelled.”

“It wasn’t right that you let him pick on you. He’s not hurt, and what the hell, a dent or two in the fridge. Didn’t teach him a thing, but it made me feel better. Besides, why did you let him push you around like that?”

“Like what?”

“Shoving you into the stair rail, making fun of you. He kept pushing and you kept taking. How come, mo’ ? “ Mo’ as in mo’ fo’ . We were relaxed, feeling accomplished, and with John, you could always play in the margins.

“Didn’t bother me.”

“It bothered me.”

“You don’t know about bother.” John pulled another sip from the clear bottle, passed it to me, and leaned back on his elbows.

“Huh?” I responded, my defensiveness mellowed by the spirits.

“Bother is when you see friends picked off by snipers. Bother is when they die in front of you. My best friend had the top of his head shot off and I was the only medic. I acted like he wasn’t dead, when he was. I gave him morphine, I sopped up the blood, I did what I was trained to do.”

Funny, that John was telling me this. He, mostly, kept his war hidden. Except from our friend Peggy, who relayed John’s stories. She gave me the distance I needed to hear them and she gave him the refuge in which to tell them. Peggy had those winsome, huge brown eyes of a Margaret Keane painting. All the time, not just when John was telling her about the pencil.

“But we got him, the sniper.”

I thought how poor a substitute vodka was for Peggy, and I tried to stop him. I really wanted to go back to Pat-a-cake. “John, Peggy told me. She already told me about the pencil.”

“About how I put it in the gook’s ear and kicked it through his head. While he was on his knees, begging for his life.”

I didn’t want to hear it from him and I didn’t know what to say, so I rambled, “Reminded me of a ride I got hitchhiking four summers ago. About the time you were discharged, right? The guy who picked me up was a vet too. He told me about picking off a Viet Cong with his grenade rifle. Told me, ‘All that was left was his legs.’ Laughed as he said it.

***************

John told me about cradling his friend on a Sunday and the accident occurred a week, to the day , later. Panting, as I always do when I run, I finished my second lap around the neighborhood when I saw the blue flashing lights a block beyond my apartment. Those lights enticed me past my front door, to the car oddly stopped, in the wrong lane.

There had been an accident, that was now obvious and from a distance I saw a flame decal. The kind as a child, I would glue on my model cars. It began as a depression in the car’s roof, right above the driver side window, yellow, the color of the car, but quickly, streaks of red. It was where his head hit, the motorcyclist running from the town cops, when Martha Felton pulled out from the supermarket parking lot. The colors on the roof of the car mirrored by the reflection in the windshield of the neon supermarket sign.

After Mike Morton ( I remember his name, because it’s like mine) hit the roof of the car, he made one faceless flip, and landed on his back in the middle of the street. He was dead on impact, essentially so, after all, he didn’t have a face, and his brains were right there. The ambulance arrived five minutes later and while, they , surely everyone, assumed this would be a drive to the morgue, Larry the EMT, noticed blood pumping. Not oozing.

Larry and the ambulance driver quickly, not carefully, rolled Mike onto their stretcher, looking away from where his face should have been. The wheels popped out, and up Mike went, leather jacket opened to his waist, into the ambulance. Larry stared at his head and thought, The guy has no face. Mother of God what do I do?” So he did nothing. He sat frozen in the back of the ambulance with Mike.

When they finally got Mike to the hospital, with the heart beat of a sparrow, people rushed around to help. The breathing tube was inserted in what was left of Mike’s throat, and John the respiratory therapist hunkered down. He had been here before.

*************

The following day, I walked up the hill to the hospital that looked like many built in towns that grow: stately red bricks but with glass and steel additions. I wanted to commiserate with John about the night before, and I headed for the cafeteria. Without vodka, I didn’t know what I ‘d get out of him but it didn’t matter.

“I heard about last night. That guy ran into a car in front of my apartment. I can’t believe they brought him in. I’m so glad I wasn’t on, but I’m sorry that you were, John.”

“No face, man. Still, a heart beat. We worked on him, hard, even though, he wasn’t coming back. But you know the worst part? The cops who were chasing him, standing outside the room, laughing.”

************

The halls in the basement of the hospital were well lit, but at two in the morning, empty. John softly padded along the scrubbed and waxed tile floor, silently clapping his hands, reaching down to tap his knee, laughing to himself, an audience of one. He passed the door that read PHARMACY, then turned right, down a narrower corridor, where the finished plaster ceiling changed to the pitted, white rectangles of a dropped ceiling. Panels that could be pushed back, exposing wires and pipes above, but so too, the clean white wall on the other side. Where the Pharmacist’s diploma hung.

Fentanyl was John’s opiate of choice. Not as good as heroin in Vietnam but the dosage safer, more predictable. He had stolen from the locked-up cabinets on the floors, when busy nurses in white turned their backs, but this, he thought, was less risky. He had been here before so his movements were clipped, economical. He had never crawled those tunnels in ‘Nam but he liked the thought. Light, dark, light, and then peace. The kill? The memories that plagued him.

Placing a gray folding metal chair against the white painted wall, he stepped up, pushed a single ceiling tile back, grabbed the top of the wall and smoothly lifted himself. He then grabbed the rusty steam heating pipe so he could balance, and move from above, the single ceiling tile in his white sanctuary. He hung from the pipe, briefly, then dropped silently to the floor. He was in again and all was good.

The Pharmacy night light was all he needed. Full banks of fluorescents turned on at once, is what he got. The hospital administrator, Mr. Rembrandt, had laid his trap. He knew about John’s addiction and he knew how to catch him. And when he flipped on the light switch, he laughed.

Last Christmas, the Canning sisters decided to give Flo a bouquet of flowers, one a month, for the entire year. Early this week, while replacing an exterior wall of a condominium rotted by an improperly installed deck (have you checked your flashing lately?), I met Amelia, of Amelia’s Flowers, and bought this bouquet for Flo. The last of the series. I’m pretty sure she’ll say to me, as she has repeated every month, “Oh, you didn’t have to.”

P.S. If there are any inaccuracies in this story, I am sure that either Stickler, or Stickler’s Sister will correct them.

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One could make a cogent argument that I should have told Matthew I had disengaged four wheel drive. Matt drove home from Daryl’s last night, his first in the snow, and I thought at the time, this doesn’t teach him anything.

When we picked him up at after his Saturday job, I shifted back to two wheel drive, then moved from the passenger seat, allowing him to drive. The streets were thoroughly snow covered and slick. Just past the Christian Science church on Windsor, Matt fishtailed, compensated by turning right, then had to immediately yank the wheel, again, to the left to bring the nose of truck back in line.

Diane, from the back seat, said, “Good job Matthew.”

From the front seat, I could see the flushed, Oh Shit! look on Matt’s face.

Last Christmas, the Canning sisters decided to give Flo a bouquet of flowers, one a month, for the entire year. Early this week, while replacing an exterior wall of a condominium rotted by an improperly installed deck (have you checked your flashing lately?), I met Amelia, of Amelia’s Flowers, and bought this bouquet for Flo. The last of the series. I’m pretty sure she’ll say to me, as she has repeated every month, “Oh, you didn’t have to.”

P.S. If there are any inaccuracies in this story, I am sure that either Stickler, or Stickler’s Sister will correct them.

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One could make a cogent argument that I should have told Matthew I had disengaged four wheel drive. Matt drove home from Daryl’s last night, his first in the snow, and I thought at the time, this doesn’t teach him anything.

When we picked him up at after his Saturday job, I shifted back to two wheel drive, then moved from the passenger seat, allowing him to drive. The streets were thoroughly snow covered and slick. Just past the Christian Science church on Windsor, Matt fishtailed, compensated by turning right, then had to immediately yank the wheel, again, to the left to bring the nose of truck back in line.

Diane, from the back seat, said, “Good job Matthew.”

From the front seat, I could see the flushed, Oh Shit! look on Matt’s face.

Berkeley Breathed is back in the Sunday Globe, knocking Doonesbury off the front page. Here is an old Bloom County:

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Thursday night was my last writing class and it ended with discussion of how to improve the class, what comes next, and how many people were going to take the same course in the winter. There are two or three people who keep repeating.

I also got feedback on my last story, “Tunnels.”

Besides the usual, “it lacks clarity”, “How about an occasional connecting paragraph or phrase,” and “It was hard to follow,” I got far more positive than negative comments. Such as: “Economy of words”, “All show,” “Left much to the imagination,” “Good close,” and “Chilling.” People also mentioned specific sentences they liked. This one, for instance: “I saw a flame decal. The kind as a child, I would glue on my model cars. It began as a depression in the car’s roof, right above the driver side window, yellow, the color of the car, but quickly, streaks of red … .”

And, like most of my stories, it generated lots of conversation. There was so much chatter that I wanted everyone to shut up, much like during my summer course. Except this time, it was shut up in a good way, but still, shut up. Matthew has the world’s best, “Shut up,” and if I thought they would all laugh as I do, I’d a tried it out.

Ms. Cass left this note: “Michael: You’ve created a dreadful world with very effective images: cruelty and laughter,” And, “Is the idea that a person is like a tunnel – if you dig into him you find rust? Sewage?”

I was quite happy given that I knew I had handed it in unfinished. With a few more hours, I might have had a chance to tie up loose ends, but Wednesday was poker night, and at my house.

Now what?

I dropped by Annís to trap whatever rodent was now living in her attic and to see what could be done about her screened-in porch. The porch is a bit bigger than the Kibbesí, but without the cool stainless steel tie rods.

In fact, there are no tie rods, nor a supporting ridge, and the existing collar ties were installed too high, which is why the walls are now spreading. I guess the good news is it lasted twenty-three years, but the bad news is it may collapse this winter.

As an aside, Adam, have you tapped your tie rods lately?

We talked about the new sun room, the one I might build in the spring, and whether it would be a three or four season living space with heat.

Anyway, the discussion of the room reminded Ann of Bandit, her ferret who used the porch as his protected playground. She had two ferrets, Bandit and Rocky, but Rocky died a year ago. Bandit, she told me, died two weeks ago. The thought brought tears to her eyes. More loss. Like water in her basement, only worse, Banditís passing was further proof that ìnothing is going right.î Maybe the sagging porch roof is too.

I jumped in (what would you expect?) and asked, ìHow about another ferret?î She said no, that there could never be another Bandit, and besides California (she has thoughts about moving) prohibits ferrets and … and then the tears really began to fall. She said something about Andrew, and I guess this is the place she always gets to.

I tried to tell her why she should get another ferret, or a cat, or a dog, or something to get attached to but I stopped myself.

This time I shut up and hugged her.