Snapshots
I’m watering my plants and watching the construction workers laboring on the roof of the building across the street instead of finishing my report for the board meeting on Monday. My friend Leslie sticks her head in my door.
“What are you doing this weekend?”
“There’s a band I kind of want to see at the 9:30 Club, but the film fest starts this weekend too, so I’m not sure yet. Why, what’s up?”
“Richard just called to see if we were coming to his opening tomorrow night, and to see if we wanted to go to the party after.”
“I forgot all about that. Are we comped?”
“Of course.”
“Well then, The Theataahh it is. Hey, isn’t that new Thai place near the Studio?”
“Yeah, I’ll call and see if we can get in. 6 o’clock?”
“Perfect.”
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I’m on the porch of my group house, reveling in our end-of-term kegger. I am actively not thinking about the fact that tomorrow I’ll be an hour and a universe away from here, at my parents house for the summer. The surprisingly nice black skinhead trophy-boy from the Bronx my friend Lolo brought with her tells me he’s having a great time. He thanks me for having him, especially since if the cop he accidentally hit in the head with a brick during that fight those gang guys started doesn’t come out of the coma soon, this might be the last party he ever goes to. The glamorous skinhead asks me where I came to West Virginia from.
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I am in the kitchen of my first solo apartment making ravioli by hand and listening to the Texaco Metropolitan Opera International Radio Broadcast. The unearthly beauty of the music weaves the basil perfumed atmosphere into a fabric of almost unimaginable delicacy and enchantment. Through this curtain, I can vaguely make out rows upon rows of elegant, bejeweled people who would be amused to learn that tuna is available in cans, and who’s grandfathers suffered from gout, not black lung.
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I have invited some college friends to come up to the city to visit me for the weekend. I outfit them with a Metro guide and a map of Capitol Hill before giving them directions to the Smithsonian, recommending they check out the Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery, and leaving for work. They come back in as I’m making dinner reservations. “Look at this!”, they marvel, dumping their booty onto my sofa. “Washington, DC tee-shirts, three for ten dollars! And look at this suit we found for Mitzy’s baby–‘Future President of the United States’, isn’t that too cute?”
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I am just walking into my boss’s office as he opens the e-mail from the office manager. For the third time in two months, a temp will be attending to front desk duties because Etta, the new receptionist, is at the doctor with the sister she moved here from South Carolina to take care of.
Thom swivels his chair toward me, his eyes beseeching sympathy and understanding. He shakes his head wearily, in a manner evoking the bottomless well of patience upon which he must daily draw to endure a constant barrage of slings and arrows.
“I don’t want this in any way to come across as a comment on sex or race or education or economic level… But this,” here sweeping his arm grandly before the offending message, “is a sublime illustration of why there will always be an underclass.”
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I’m picking apples up off the ground and putting them into one of the hundreds of red plastic food service buckets my grandmother has brought home over the years from her job at the elementary school. I think my bucket is full, but she can’t resist precariously balancing just a few more apples on top. She spreads out newspaper on the kitchen table and hands me a paring knife. The apple quarters, cleansed of bruises and worm holes, bob white in the lemon water. I get back from dumping the peelings on the compost pile as she’s scraping the last bits of fried apple off the bottom of the skillet into Mamaw May’s bowl, the pink one with the rose in the bottom. She puts the bowl on the table next to the plate of biscuits left from breakfast. Reaching for a Mason jar, she tells me to eat while its hot.
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I’ve gotten a tech theater job with my best friend Maggie at a summer stock company in a state park down in the hills. On a break we walk down to the scenic overlook that gives the park its name. I draw her attention to the brilliant green of a tiny patch of lichen growing on a rock beside the path. She points out the amazing gracefulness of a hawk flying by, miniaturized by the seven mile sweep of the New River valley visible from our vantage. She looks at the lichen. I look at the hawk. We look at each other and laugh.
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I’ve taken off work to go down to Big Fork for my cousin Johnathan’s wedding. He and his fiancÈe Jinni are showing me around the house they’ve been fixing up. Lloyd Paul sold it to them after he had to kick his last renters out for doing drugs and messing up the place. They illustrate the before and after by holding up Polaroids of caved in floors and piles of trash in front of their handiwork. They excitedly talk over one another, detailing the improvements. Jimbo and Billy came over every day for a week to help Johnathan rebuild the floor in the back bedroom. Bobby Hodgekiss helped them put up the paneling in the front room, and Bobby Ray brought over new linoleum for the kitchen when they were throwing it out at work. Everybody had to come over to help get all the trash out, it was something awful.
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I finally finish my board report and am logging off my computer for the weekend. Thom sticks his head in my door.
“A few of us are going over to the Jefferson for cocktails. Coming?”
“No, thanks. There’s somewhere else I need to be.”
