Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
Last night about an hour after I fell asleep some wind from a storm woke me up. I was so tired when I went to bed and I was so wide awake after I heard the wind. I stayed that way well after midnight. I beat my pillow in frustration. I doubt that helped. It just felt childish. Even through earplugs I heard more wind and rain splattering the window over the next few hours. Before being woken I dreamed about serving pizza to men from the shelter coming up from a mine in the front hallway of Granny’s house. I offered them paper napkins. Do you want one? I asked. No, they all said, don’t need it. They waved me off and filed past in barn coats and carpenter jeans and yellow work boots with orange laces on their way to the kitchen, each carrying a thin paper plate holding two floppy, slippery pieces of pizza. Elude was among Spelling Bee’s answers today. Awol was the answer in the Mini for the clue Nowhere to be found. Jan posted about how the word approachable now blights the Times’ book review, along with accessible, propulsive, and relatable. A few months ago Jan began a bingo card of book review cliches and I bet she has bingoed several times.
At fitness class we did five rounds of five exercises with three TRX rows between each exercise. Susan returned from her trip with her husband to Puerto Rico over the weekend. I asked the name of the resort where they stayed. El Conquistador, Susan said. Of course, said Michelle. Katie and her husband Bobby have started packing for a house they just bought. Last week Katie packed a box of Bobby’s coffee mugs and then Bobby unpacked all of them and then repacked them, telling the story behind each mug. It took him two hours, Katie said. We’re not packing together, Katie told him. Katie is not sentimental. Neither am I nor is Michelle. Michelle mentioned some of the gifts she received from parents for teaching their children. Picture frame, glass bowl, pen, sweater. The best was a gift card to Liquor Barn, Michelle said. Katie and Bobby’s new house is in the same neighborhood as Granny’s house. It was built 20 years ago on land where Mom used to ride her horse Candy. On my way home I saw again the man who has been at the stone entrance of the Beargrass Creek trail standing by a duffle bag and backpack and wearing a black hoodie and sweatpants and rubbing his hands together. A digital display by the ramp to the highway said Eyes on the Road… It Likes the Attention. In the alley just before the garage I drove around a child’s gold hobby horse ball, caught in a small depression in the brick like a marble in a saucer.
On my way to Dairy Queen at the grocery I asked Dennis the produce man what he will be doing after the store closes. He said he will be renting a cabin with some friends for a long weekend and then he and his girlfriend are going to Myrtle Beach for a few weeks where they have rented a condo in a small quiet community for years. Dennis said he has long been the youngest person there. I am sixty-two, he said. Dennis is bald with a trim salt-and-pepper beard and hazel eyes. He walks with a limp and drives a scooter with a milk crate bungeed onto the back and wears his produce knife sheathed in a thick leather case on his belt even after he finishes work. Neither of us goes for cotton candy grapes. They are too sweet for me, I said. They are too weird for me, Dennis said. It just doesn’t seem right to him for a grape to taste like cotton candy. In the parking lot I saw Andrew, wearing shorts and flip-flops. It’s not much above freezing today. In the 23 years of living across the street from Andrew, walking his dog, coming and going to and from work, out at the grocery and other places around the neighborhood, I have seen him wear pants and closed-toe shoes just twice and each time it was well below zero and snowing.
At Dairy Queen Scooter and Vicky were sitting in a booth by the counter and I said hello and asked if the bright red Chevy muscle car in the parking lot was theirs. It’s mine, Vicky said. She raised her spoon in her right and circled it between her and Scooter as if she were lassoing the air. I said I bet filling it up is expensive and Vicky said it’s not too bad but she conceded that its mileage could be better. I drive it like a freak, she said. Scooter smiled. Yes, she does, she said. A new employee took my order. He is skinny and pale and looks like he might be about 12. I’m Polly, I said. Brayden, he said. While I was at it I introduced myself to the tall bald sullen man when he peeked at me from around the wall by the kitchen. Clint, he said, like Eastwood. His voice is scratchy and low and he smiled and nodded and tucked himself back into the kitchen. Maybe he is just shy and not sullen after all.
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