The saddest thing was when she stopped doing all those things we laughed at: the polite descending a-ha-ha-ha, the crinkling eyes to show she was listening, the joke about a wheelbarrow after we ate good, full plates of Logan’s Roadhouse or Exotic Thai. We had pointed out these quirks good-naturedly, embarrassed by her transparency, her predictable habits that made us think she was shallow. But then she stopped. We hovered over our plates, silver spoons levitating, even the small waitress lingered for a moment, leaning in her polo, but we never heard the faintest creak of a wheelbarrow. When I called home from college to tell her how I made up French for a presentation she said, “Oh that’s funny” without laughing. Merci le’jocul.

We kept teasing her: Hey bucko when a speedy green car with black stripes cut her off in traffic, horsies instead of horses, errr like brakes at every stopsign. Stop I told myself, or what will be left? Something sad. And old. My mother’s age frightened me; I felt her loss: all those years rushing by and what is left? Something sad? And old. She didn’t know yet, and I held my breath. The teasing was an egg toss. When the egg broke, there wouldn’t be another. There was only one wheelbarrow, after all, rusting in some ditch with chicory. So much depended on it. 

This is another character sketch based on another of Melanie's boyfriends... :D Perhaps it will turn into something more? 

*

Mike was an easy read, something with baseball in the title. He was appropriately patriotic, and anti-patriotic; a protestor of the government and a lover of his rights. If you’re eighteen, it’s your responsibility to vote. Or join the military. Or both. Whatever you do, don’t get married right out of college and expect to be happy. Mike was this kind of man. 

It surprised me to learn he was an English major with a stomach full of poetry that he occasionally rubbed, as if his body was a magic lamp, and he was the genie, stretching to fill the room with wonders, and his three wishes? To write a book about the origin of Blues music. To meet Clark Gable. To convince Clark Gable to direct a movie based on his book. But this wouldn't happen, he admitted, and when your fifty-seven, you don't dream anymore. I learned a lot about the Blues from him, although most of the poets he solicited I had never heard of, except for Bob Dylan, of whom I cheerfully approved. 

Mike had started off his career as an English teacher and a basketball coach, Corbit and I will make the play, not ‘me and Corbit’ and then started building houses when he was  no longer comfortable in his own, with Marney, his overweight wife, Emily, his anorexic daughter, and even Matthew, who ate pizza everyday and listened to Coldplay in his dark-and-do-not-enter room. They all left him eventually—for the neighbor, for rehab, for good, and all he had left was a two-hundred dollar hammer and a shrewd mind, sharp as nails. He started building houses on the lake, and soon millionaires were paying cash for his charming designs: floating furniture, the sewing-table vanity, a two-story kitchen. 

Mike considered himself a humanitarian as well; he spent his extra time fixing up crazy wheelchair Dee’s rotting trailer home, evading her inappropriate sexual advances, and despising the local churches for their missions to Mississippi and their donations to Africa when Dee was right there. Her bathtub had rotted through her trailer floorboards, and there were holes in the roof. The gas stove would be next to hit the ground, and then poof it would be over. That trailer would burn like a napkin. 

Mike wasn’t sure how much Dee understood when he told her she needed to keep an eye on the stove. An eye was all she could keep on it, probably; the rest of her was strapped into a motorized wheelchair and buried in fat fat fat. Mike had no idea what Dee ate, or where she got her money, or how she spent it, other than on Christmas decorations, and Thanksgiving decorations, and Halloween decorations, and most recently, Valentines day decorations. She dressed a teensy sugar maple for every season, and the tree looked embarrassed, like a ten year old in frilly socks for Easter, or a clip-on bowtie. Dee looked forward to holidays with relentless pleasure and whatever money she had. Mike wondered why. She didn’t have a job and she never received any gifts. No visits from out-of-town children or caroling Sunday school classes. Her reasons were mysteries wrapped with with crazy eyes, and a rancid grin. 

I've been reading a lot. Just finished the last of three books about families and their little problems. So, naturally, I'm channeling these subjects a bit. :) This is the beginning of a story, maybe, or just a step into a character's development, but I'm warning you that he is not necessarily like-able, neither is he completely dislike-able. Like most people. I know it's long. Just read it when you have a chance. No skimming. :)

*

He was that gelled sort of insincerity that looked like a button-up Hawaii shirt with a gold bracelet, and chest hair. Today, he was annoyed, and his jaw was twitching like he should have something to say. His girlfriend, Melanie, was asking questions about his ex-wife, and there was something provoking about the way she tried to see both sides, the way she tilted her head like she was looking into him, or worse, looking into the past, where his bright-and-popular ex hummed every-other-line of a Karen Carpenter song in the kitchen, looking busy and helpful. His wife’s desire to please him was obvious, even in the memory, a pink fever under her skin. When they touched, this smoldering made him uncomfortable, and guilty for his cool hands with their narrow, almost-invisible blue veins. He avoided touching her.

            “Hard or runny?” She had asked, holding the skillet out with both hands, as if it were very heavy. The uncooked egg had unsettled him, as so many things did at the time, and he had answered her crossly. In the end, she had burned the egg, overwhelmed the tiny sun with the hell of the stove, and possibly the heat of her gung-ho, but with an Oh, Neil, she made him feel responsible for the failure, and guilty for having a egg-preference, and guilty for not appearing grateful, and guilty for not helping in the first place. He thought if he had volunteered to help with breakfast, here honey, give me that, the kitchen wouldn’t smell so burnt, and maybe she would be happy, and maybe she would remember the whole Karen Carpenter song. Neil felt guilty for feeling superior to his little wife in her little apron with her little weak wrists and that heavy iron egg-pan. He felt guilty for buying her the apron and the iron egg-pan, for trapping her with these things, with household items that were nothing special and she knew it. He felt guilty that she knew, and here she was still, scraping blackened egg into the sink, while he hid his shame in the morning paper. He didn’t like to read, but reading was better than talking. He felt guilty because he hated her so much.

            Melanie was still giving him that look, less scrutinizing that blank, as if she was in the long-ago and far-away kitchen with him, reading the sports section over his shoulder, frowning at the egg, and watching his wife, mesmerized by the blue and orange roosters on the apron. She shook it off.

“But seriously, Neil, you’re supposed to learn something from it. You don’t go cheating on your husband for no reason, usually. I mean, I’m not saying you drove her away or anything, I’m just saying—“

            “I know what you’re saying.” Neil was tired, and he noticed, as he looked down at his fingernails, that they were yellow: dirty, unsettling yellow, like a smoker’s wallpaper. Twelve years ago, he had repapered the guest bathroom in his first house; poor ventilation in that room meant that whoever had regularly smoked in there had practically asphyxiated himself with ash and nicotine, and his lungs had no chance of making off better than the wallpaper, so heavy and saturated with smoke that it had begun to peel away from the plaster. Neil had imagined the previous resident, sitting on the toilet after a long day with a cigarette. Probably, his wife didn't want him smoking in the house, or her husband didn't know she burned through a pack a day, or some teenager thought it was his secret, and his mama pretended not to notice that the wallpaper curled and turned. Maybe that mama smoked in there too, because her son was keeping secrets, and her husband was keeping secrets, but in the bathroom there were just familiar drawers, and the sink, and the other household items that she had selected, one-by-one, with power and care. She had settled this room. She had made it match. She had chosen. Nothing like having children. Or getting married.

So the wallpaper was yellow and Neil had to tear it down and air out the room with giant fans, and then reassemble the feeling of order. Out with the old, in with the new. His radiant wife had watched him work with something more intense than approval. 

Melanie was watching him with another kind of intensity when he looked up.

“I left her home too much and she couldn’t forgive me, I guess. We moved to California and fell in love with other people.” Neil watched Melanie trying to fit his story together, and he heard each word strike her eardrums with a hollow dong, like an old church bell pillowed in fog. He could see that she was dissatisfied, so he added, “She fell in love with some Presbyterian, and I met you.” More bells. He hadn’t said, directly, that he loved her, and Melanie had noticed. She fell in love with some Presbyterian, and I—met you. Dong. Dong. Neil knew she would drop the subject now; he had frightened her with his tone, and something more—like she could hear the clock striking too, tasted the fog, and felt they were counting down to the end of something. 

Historical Mind Museums

Everyone should have a museum of memories and stories at least in their head. But we aren't allowed to make physical museums of ourselves, because it would be at least perceived as being arrogant. No museum has been made by the most qualified person to do the job. For example, Abraham Lincoln never got to see how his life would be presented. We're probably leaving out parts that are extremely significant to understanding him. Autobiographies are the only socially acceptable presentation of a plain explanation of self...and even those are full of disguises.

Could the jumble of stuff we stick in our attics, garages, or storehouses be an expression of the personal museum? Aren't sentimental objects kept because of the story? Museums are attics of sentimental objects on a national, or at least more wide spread level. All we need for a personal, physical museum is a bit of organization. It would be interesting if a thing like that became popular, everyone visiting everyone else's museums.

On the down side, sharing your own museum like that is way too vulnerable. Just like in speech, you would have to have levels of openness, doors that only special keys can unlock, some doors that can only be opened by you. Of course the exhibit would rotate as you matured, some becoming more prominent, some only notable for being prominent at one time, some coming out of storage, shy and blinking in the sun, as other people view them for the first time, some hustled into the back, secret rooms with heavy cloaks concealing their features.

I suppose the opening exhibits wouldn't be much different from the opening conversations you have with visitors over the dinner table. Emily Tate, born 1989 to wealthy parents in Dublin, Ireland; went on to pursue career in cooking while at Dublin University for the Blind. Married John Holmes after graduating in 2012, had two children, Adam and Jessica Holmes. Basic opening stuff, not even worth the organization needed to create the exhibit. Is a visit to someone's house close enough to a museum visit to warrant making rooms of information about yourself? All the internal nervousness that comes with explaining yourself to a visitor would become external.

You would watch your visitors inspect your memories. No longer having to explain them out loud, you would feel awkward, apologetic, wondering if the close inspection your exhibit on learning how to make brownies from your mom was warranting was purely politeness. "And this next exhibit," you might suggest, "is significant, because it marked the turning point between following my mom's instructions, and making my own recipes." A low, short table, plastic and childish, something you found in your parents' basement, squats on the floor, a plate of warm brownies inviting your visitor to taste the result of your experimental cooking. You're pretty sure your visitor's resulting excitement is genuine.

I suppose the initial public accusation that such a museum would be arrogant is partially true. If you can make a museum of your life, while maintaing confidence in the excellence of your exhibits, it shows a great deal of naivety and pride. Very few people will want to or even be allowed to view all the important artifacts and stories of your life. But all the same, there's no harm in organizing the attic.