3797…
It started off like any other day. I know . . . That’s what everyone always says. Anyway, I’m grabbin’ all my shit, stuffin’ it into the new leather briefcase my wife got me for my birthday, crunchin’ my last bacon strip and headin’ out the door — Kisses for Penny and Tommy and . . . Don’t forget the wife!
Hop into the car, start her up and set the driver’s seat back from the wheel. Far back. I got a lot of work to finish up before I get to the office.

“Good morning, Robert! Work?”

“Work”

“Work it is. Seat belt?”

“Oh, yea. Right”

Thank you, Robert!”

Somewhere on the turnpike I must’ve nodded off. Been doin’ a lot of that these days. My wife says I’m workin’ too hard, and I’m not as young as I used to be. She’s right, of course. But what am I supposed to do? I got a mortgage, two kids, a dog and a cat I gotta keep in Honey Nut Cheerios, Alpo and
Meow-Mix — And a pertinacious millennial . . . Gen X . . . Or Y . . . Or pick a letter at the end of the alphabet, with his nose squirrelling up my asshole just waitin’ for me to cough and drop the ball. I should walk into my boss’s office and tell him I’m starin’ down the business end of a mid-life shotgun? That I’m tired of missin’ my kids’ dance recitals and basketball games and date night with the wonderfully ditzy cheerleader I fell in love with back in college? That I need a personal day?

How long was I out? How long was I sleeping in the parking lot. Did anyone see me? Better get out and ‘punch in’ —What the — Where am I? It was a rhetorical question, you know, ‘Where am I?’ Like in the movies, but at the same time, a real, right now, I need to know question. So I asked it.
“Where am I?”
‘Recalculating’
“What?”
‘Recalculating’

The car’s still on? Must be. It’s talking to me. But the screen’s dark and the dash . . . No clock . . . Odometer . . . Temperature . . . And the gauges . . . I didn’t turn it off. If you own a car these days, there are two things you still have to do —And just about the only things — Turn it on, and turn it off.
“What time is it?”
‘Recalculating’

The sun’s pretty high up in the sky. It’s not early morning anymore. Noon . . . Ish? I push the start button. Nothing. I push it again. Nothing again.
“Take me home!”
‘Recalculating’

I must’ve pushed the damn thing a — I wasn’t counting.
“What time is it?
‘Recalculating’
“Take me home!”
‘Recalculating’

Must be some kind of . . . Technical . . . Electrical glitch or . . . That might explain a lot. Like how I ended up here instead of — Gremlins’ll chow down on a plate of computer chips just as soon as an old fashioned bowl of nuts and bolts — North Star! That’s supposed to work no matter what. Now, where is that thing? I think it’s somewhere on the dash — No, up on the rearview mirror.
“Ehh . . . North Star? North . . . Star? Calling North . . .” Alas, the Car Valkyries do not descend from the heavens to sweep me up and deliver me to the nearest Valhalla dealership — Phone! Of course, same thing, only better. Time. GPS. Radio. And it’s a phone for Christ’s sake! I can call someone! I whip it out, my two kids staring back at me, my favorite picture of those two knuckleheads, swipe my tongue with the tip of my thumb like cowboys do in old movies and swipe up — Swipe up! Swipe . . . I’m still lookin’ at my kids . . .
Shake it. Yea, that’ll do it. Turn it off. Sometimes y’ gotta . . . Y’ know . . . The magic unplug it and plug
it . . . It’s a techie thing. I seen the IT kid do it a hundred times in the office . . . Nothin’. Battery? Says
it’s juiced. Doesn’t make any sense. First the car and now . . .
“What’s goin’ on here?”
‘Recalcul —‘

“Oh shut up, Hal! You’re behind all this. And you!” I cast a suspicious, disdainful eye down at my
phone. “I see the way you two hook up whenever I get in and — You’re both fuckin’ with me!” I open the door — It was getting hot in there — The sun straight up and beating down of the roof — I slam the door. Kick the tire! That’s right — Well, I shouldn’t’ve done that. Think I might’ve broken my big toe. Walk it off . . . Walk it . . . Off . . . Yea . . . I broke it.
The man in me simply cannot resist. Open the door, reach under the dash and pop the hood. But when I lift the thing up, what I’m staring down into doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen under any hood I’ve looked under before. Certainly not under the hoods of any of the cars me and my dad used to spend our weekends under, tinkering around— Trusty rachet set and Phillips head screwdriver at the ready, and quart after quart of 10W-40. Jammed, grill to firewall, not a space generous enough to welcome the tip of my pinky and not a fixed or moving part I could recognize.
Now, I don’t know how a lot of things work . . . From that particle collider thing in Switzerland to the Clapper that works the light in my bedroom . . . But I do know that there’s got to be someone in my room, palms at the ready, or standing by the light switch in Geneva to turn that damn thing on — or
off — The last bastion of control over our spiraling ingenuity. Ask Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein didn’t make the monster — He was the monster. Not an evil man. Not a greedy man. Just a man. A man blinded by his own genius. A man who just didn’t know when to stop.

Only thing to do now? Start walking. I look back to the dirt road I — We must’ve come in by. I’d have to follow that back to . . . The main road? And then back to the turnpike? Maybe there’s a house along the way. Someone walking their dog? Or maybe just far enough away to break the conspiratorial connection between my kidnapper and my traitorous phone.
I close the hood, gently pressing it down till I hear, and feel, the reassuring click . . . And for the first time since I woke up and found myself in this place, look around the place I had found myself in. The car had pulled off the dirt road, over the brush and the rocks and stopped under a massive, billowing Catalpa tree, heavy with long, thin, curly seed pods. ‘Johnny Smokers’, we used to call them. We actually used to smoke them like cigars— Or tried to anyway. They looked like cigars — Didn’t taste very much like cigars, but what did we know? We were kids. Never smoked a real cigar.
There’s a field . . . A meadow . . . Glade . . . Wildflowers take my eyes and run with them towards the hills in the distance. I climb up onto the hood and rest my back against the windshield. I don’t know how long I sat there . . . Staring . . . I don’t know where I am . . . Where this place is. It’s a nice place. And for the first time in a very long time I feel . . . Comfortable . . . At peace with where I am, even though I don’t know exactly where that place is.
“Where am I?” Barely a breath. Call it a whisper. Call it a silent cry in the wilderness. It was the same question I’d asked when I woke up from this curious trip, but that sense of urgency — The latitude, the longitude, the . . . GPSness of it all seemed to be evaporating, rising upward and upward into the aither, mingling with the clouds, and soon the stars. The Google Maps crew have yet to triangulate those coordinates.

‘Recalculating’

The stolid Catalpa stands over me. I take comfort in my protector, it’s shimmering leaves and long curly ‘Johnny Smokers’ swaying in the gentle breeze — I jump. Something hit the hood. I pick the seed pod up and caress it in my fingers, run it back and forth under my nose. It smells of youth, my youth, and my time and times that only live when stirred by the senses — The most vivid and profound times, unlocked, released — Escaped! There’s nothing more exciting, more alive than a prisoner on the run. Or dangerous.
I’m tempted to light the thing up, for old time’s sake, but these days . . . Nobody carries matches, or a lighter — Even cars — There’s a hole in the bottom of the dash that looks like it’s missing something, but cars don’t come with what used to fit into that hole any more. It’s just a hole. Oh, they might cover it over with a patch or stick something else in there that’ll make your driving “experience” even more mindlessly insouciant. These days your car can do almost everything for you — Just don’t ask it for a light your Jonny Smoker.

After a while, I forget I had ever asked the question. The sun is starting to torch those far away hills.
The stars are making their entrances onto the red carpet — ‘Red sky at night’ . . . If there’s any truth to that old chestnut, it’s going to be a beautiful morning!

‘You have reached your destination’

ob

..

3797…

My wife is a Philadelphian, born and raised . . . But just as much raised ‘down the shore’. That’s how she says it — That’s how you say it when you’re born and raised in Philadelphia. Long Beach Island, New Jersey. L.B.I.
Her father was a strapping man. Played football, semi professional, for the Philadelphia Yellow Jackets back in the day, his day. Before the war. His war.
I don’t know what brought this man to the island in 1962, or the hurricane that wrested a two story house from its foundation, and dumping it into the bay, but when Paul saw it languishing, up to its second story windows in the cold, indifferent salt water, he just knew what he had to do. Single handedly — Well, he wasn’t that strapping — But that’s the way I’ve always envisioned it — Paul, pulling the once proud hearth and home out of the drink and setting it up on brand new
cinderblocks — New, secure roots dug deep into the sandy ground — His ground. Like so many other men, after returning home to the country he loved so much and served so well, he bought a little piece of it. This was where my wife spent her summers as a child.

We’d often spend a weekend down there at the ‘Old Man’s’ invitation — ‘Fun in the sun!’ ‘Take the boat out!’ ‘Cruise around the island!’ Get some fishing in!’ But the enticing invite would inevitably devolve into scraping barnacles off said boat, painting the other boat, mowing the lawn and a host of never ending chores. We were just married, and young — Just kids really — And the ‘Old Man’ knew he could get away with bossing us around.
We’d sneak off, play hooky, every chance we got — Sure, a lot of that — In the garage behind those damned boats — But also just enjoying the truly wonderful place my wife would speak of with such nostalgic delight.

We’re riding our bikes down Ocean Avenue, every now and then veering off the main drag down and around and through the neatly measured and manicured side streets. Bungalows and duplexes and front ‘lawns’ of rocks and sand and driftwood. My bike starts acting kind of weird. The front wheel’s out of whack or something. Won’t stay straight. We turn down Chatsworth and only a house or two in I notice a sign in the front ‘lawn’ of one of the houses, a shingle hanging just below the mailbox.
Robert Sherbourne
Bicycle Repair
The serendipity was not lost on me. We walked our bikes up the drive to the breezeway and to the right, a garage, a curious cross between a workshop and a curiosity shop.
“Can I help you?” He was a short, round man. Squat. His hair was white. His beard was white — A cascade of flowing cornsilk threatening his very bellybutton. Hawaiian shirt. Bermuda shorts. Sandals, soles cut from an old car tire. Very big back then.
He looked like Santa Claus on vacation, in his South Jersey toy shop. Comical, if not for the scars and blisters — A pink and purplish pair of ‘knee socks’ straight down to his toenails. They looked so painful, but who can fathom another’s pain, or tolerance?
“Well . . . it’s out of . . . the ax . . .” He notices my wife and me staring, entranced at the large and strange collection of what could only be described as gothic artifacts hanging on the walls. “Weird stuff huh?” I could only stare back at him and offer a non comital shrug. “That was a long, long time ago”.
Turns out, back in the day — His day — Before his war, Robert, a young and gifted engineer was recruited by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The country was about to send thousands of young men across the sea and straight to the battle fields of Europe. The whole world was at war, for the first time, and it was the dawning of new and ever more unconscionable weapons. Thankfully he was never asked to design these horrific contraptions or mix the deadly concoctions they spew. Robert and his team’s assignment was to try to stuff the reeking genie back into his bottle. Of course it couldn’t be done. Prometheus couldn’t do it, and if we just peek over our shoulder, back to our first campfire, we’d catch that flame in our eyes — Mesmerizing . . . Irresistible . . . The temptation to touch it, stick our hand in it — The blistering heat, the impending danger, not a deterrent but an even greater temptation. He spent eternity chained to a mountainside, tortured and humiliated. The gods don’t take kindly to mere mortals who steal their cool shit.
The stuff on the walls were all things Robert had designed. Whole sets of gas masks. Prototypes for men, women, teenagers, toddlers — Infants. You could attach it to the baby’s carriage. Even one for the dog — Great Dane to Chihuahua. We subtly recoiled as he went through his grisly presentation. He was not the least bit embarrassed or apologetic. And not a word of the monsters that created the demand for these grisly gadgets. He was proud of his work. And why not? Who knows how many people he’d saved, or at the very least eased their pain and fears during those terrifying times.
I left my bike. He said I could pick it up on Thursday. We took my wife’s bike back to our barnacles and our paint brushes and that old frustrating, pull cord on that old frustrating lawn mower. She took the seat and I peddled, standing up. Kind of romantic.

Christmas Eve. Saint Nick somewhere over the trenches, desperately trying to carry out his yearly mission, spreading a little comfort and joy to a world of two faced cowards kidnapping Mathew and
Luke and hog tying them up with their own words — ‘peace on Earth and goodwill to men’ — while jockeying for the Holyland. And, as usual, the Holy Innocents sacrificed, sent to the front line to do their dirty work. Shhh . . . the little nipper in the manger’s trying to sleep.
Donner takes a stray round to the hind quarters, sending the sleigh and all eight pistons and its pilot into a tailspin. The old elf is trapped in no man’s land, slogging through the mud and slop. A weird colored cloud hugs the ground, knee high, a fog, or a mist, or something burning like a fire but without the flame. He’s surrounded by barbed wire and fear and despair and everything that’s ugly about us. But Santa’s a tough old bird. And if nothing at all — Inspirational.
“You got this, Donny! It’s just a flesh wound!” He rushes to the back of the sleigh and digs down into his big bag of — “Gotcha! Sorry Mrs. Hatfield, but this is an emergency! I’ll make up to you next year!” — Tears open the box of Egyptian Cotton bedsheets and starts ripping bandages. In no time at all ‘Right Jolly Old Elf’ has Donner’s reindeer butt wrapped up tighter than your Aunt Tillie’s Christmas Fruitcake. Sans the big red bow! No time for frills tonight! “What d’ y’ say, Donny? Let’s get this tired old Flexible Flyer up and . . . Flying again! We still have half a world to cover!”

Paul was reserved. But this wasn’t a sign of disapproval or some sort of passive aggressive scolding. He asked us where we went, and when we told him he only nodded, a kind of wistful nod. He was a young married man once upon a time. He and his young wife must’ve ridden their bikes down that main drag to Holgate and back a hundred times.
In that moment I saw him in a new, different light — AWOL — And on a crazy adventure with his pretty young wife. I was expecting an attitude, and I got one — Just not the one I’d expected.
“How about tomorrow we take the boat out? I haven’t seen this house from the water since I was in the water with it. We can dock down at Oscar’s for lunch”.

A strapping young soldier entrenched in the mud and slop and surrounded by barbed wire and everything that’s ugly about us manages to light his last, soggy smoke in the darkness of the new moon. He’s worn and weary and . . . Hot . . . Stinking hot in his stinking hot hole, on his stinking hot island, somewhere in the stinking hot Pacific.
The black hot sky is spattered with stuttering specks of light — The machine gunner gone mad in the madding heat and turning his every round to the heavens — Stars trying to escape the black hole of it all.
He doesn’t know why he’s here. All he knows is that somewhere . . . Something happened . . . And now he has a job to do, and everything he needs to do it is hanging from his belt and over his shoulder and itching to get into his hands.

Take a drop of suspicion, two drops of ambition, drop them into that genie’s bottle and step back . . . Into the shadow of a great and ghostly cloud with balls big enough to take on the very sun. War is a catalyst. But take the despair and desolation left in the wake of the holocaust, stand up to the ghostly cloud and something else is unleashed, something brighter and more powerful than Big Man and Fat Boy — Or even the sun. Something to heal our ravaged bodies. To feed our starving souls. Something approaching . . . Redemption? War is a catalyst. But so is hope.

The soldier notices one of the far off holes in the night sky moving. In his direction. Closer and
closer . . . A shooting star? . . . A meteor? . . . A comet? . . .

Cupid?
Donner?

Paul had no words of the monsters either.

O.B.

3797…

This was the last place I’d ever expected to see the inside of. It was sticky. A thin film covered everything, from the undistinguishable color of the tortured floor tiles, to the molded plastic seats, to the candy machine. As I waited for my name to be called, I looked around the room at all the others waiting for their names to be called. Mostly women — All women, on the verge of of middle age, with large tote bags at their feet. Clean underwear. Cigarettes. Homemade cookies. Stuff from home.
There were lots of kids. Little kids. Toddlers with their binkies and their sippies, clinging, and sucking. Older kids. Rushing around, snipping and snapping at their siblings. Teenagers. Poured into their sticky seats, simmering like French onion soup under a bubbling cover of melting cheese and croutons.
There wasn’t a smile to be found here. On the kids. The parents. The staff. The air was just too
heavy . . . The corners of your mouth simply couldn’t challenge it.
“Crumpton!”
That’s me. I rose and followed the guard through yet another metal detector and down a long corridor that led to the visitors’ area, when it wasn’t the cafeteria, and across the floor to my usual spot — Our usual spot — A table by the large picture window looking out onto a well manicured courtyard of sorts. Drab, but pastoral . . . Even pretty, if you squinted through the chicken wire glass.
“I’ll get her”
“Thank you — Ehhh . . . Can I ask you? How’s she doing?” My escort drooped just a little, gathered herself together and shrugged one of those painfully positive shrugs.
“Better . . . Better. She’s been helping some of the younger . . . Making a big difference. Sense of purpose, you know?”
She was so small! I mean she’s always been small, but in this place, this room . . . She always seems even smaller.
“Hi Mom”
“Hello Hon” She leaned in but —
“No personal contact!” The guard always says that, and she always takes it in her sorry stride, just another reminder of where she was, why she was there, and how much it had cost her.
“They treating you all right?”
“I can’t complain” My mother in a nutshell. A horse could be standing on her toe and you wouldn’t hear a word out of her. That motherly stoicism, a cross between martyrdom and passive aggression. “I have a job now. In the laundry” A hint of sarcasm — Sending a mother to prison to do more laundry. “And I’ve been working with some of the girls. She glanced across the room and waved. “That’s Thea. She’s really a good kid. Just fell for the Devil’s sweet talk. Like most of them. Smart. Taking her GED next month”
“Once a teacher . . .”
“Yea, I guess. Most of these girls are so behind the curve, their lives paralyzed after their mistakes. This place is a holding cell in Limbo. Not much to do, or learn, without someone to hold their hand and show them that even in the emotional squalor of a place like this you can still find something to hang on to. They can take everything away from you — Except your identity, and with that you can work and slowly buy back your dignity”
“Sounds like you’ve been keeping busy”
“And that’s not the half of it. They’re all so caught in legal red tape — And they don’t know their
rights — Or even if they have any! And there’s boyfriends and kids and . . . You know, family stuff. What a mess”
“But you’re . . .?”
“I’m fine, Bobby. I’m fine. Really. Don’t worry about me. There it is again.
“But I do. And I always will. And I . . . I just keep wondering if I . . . If there was something I could’ve done. Something . . . More . If I’d only —” She slowly slid her hand across the table top, her eyes shifting back and forth and, illegally, blanketed mine.
“Don’t do that, Bobby. I won’t let you. No one could have done more. You mortgaged your house!”
“I’m not talking about that. You needed a lawyer. I’m talking about . . .”
“Stop it. You were just a kid. What could you do?”
“Something. How many times did he send you to the —“
“”That’s all in the past now. We have to move on. You have to move on”
“Why didn’t you ever —” She sighed.
“And what good would that — He’d be locked up and . . . How were we . . . Your brothers and
sisters . . . On a school teacher’s salary — A Catholic school teacher’s salary. Your father made good money. And besides, they’d let him out eventually. And he’d be even more . . .” Her head dropped. Her shoulders dropped. Her whole body dropped. It was all she could do to resurrect. “How’s your sister?” I just shrugged a desperate shrug, and sighed desperate sigh. “I don’t blame her but . . . I’d sure like to see her. You don’t think she —“
“Why didn’t you report him? Elly needed your help. She feels like —“
“I abandoned her” I could barely hear what she said, a gentle breath, hardly enough to push it passed her lips before fading into the thin air of remorse.
“He set the fire, y’ know. When you took us to that shelter. After you caught — He was willing to burn three families to death just to get his way — Or get even — Or whatever the hell was going through his sick mind. One kid was burned so bad they had to take him to Saint Agnes’s. He was there for . . . Months! They said he may never . . . They don’t know if . . . ” She clasped her hands together as if in prayer. Or pain. Or both. “And you took him back. You always took him back. Why? And don’t tell me it’s about money. You could’ve divorced him”. I bit my lip.
“Divorce?” Terror. Nothing her husband ever said to her, or did to her — Or us — struck that much fear in her eyes or heart. *”What would Father Timothy say?”
“Mom, I know how important your faith is to you, and I respect that, but self preservation has to trump anything Father Tim has to say”
“But divorce . . .” The harrowing word was still holding her fragile mind hostage.
“A . . . Restraining order. The court would’ve mandated he pay child support. And, who knows? Might’ve put the fear of God in him. As long as his situation didn’t change, he wasn’t gonna change. At least he’d be out of the house, and if he ever came around . . . It wouldn’t be some half ass . . . Murky . . . domestic domestic . . . Lip service that cops could just step around like a burning bag of dog shit on the front porch. Without . . . Something signed by a judge . . . Their hands are tied. It’s a lose, lose situation for them. I mean, why go through that whole tired routine? All that paperwork — They know ninety-nine percent of the time the woman drops the charges? You would’ve. But this would have real teeth. Fines. Contempt of court! He couldn’t come near us. If we just saw him— Anywhere — 9-1-1! More headaches for him, hoops to jump through. He couldn’t come back. It wouldn’t be a one shot deal. You wouldn’t have to press charges. He wouldn’t be in jail, seething . . . Waiting to get out and make you . . . All of
us . . . Pay”
“They didn’t arrest him. They said they didn’t have any proo —“
“You’re still defending him! Proof ? Is that what you’re gonna tell Elly?” She started to quake and shiver. Her eyes transfixed.
“I didn’t know about that. I swear! I didn’t know — Bobby, you have to believe me!” I got up and reached across the table to embrace her.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay. I believe you! I —” I felt myself being pulled back and away from my inconsolable mother. “What’s the matter with you, Lady? Can’t you see she’s —“
“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s not permitted” I never felt so helpless in my life. My mother was breaking down right in front of me and I wasn’t allowed to hold her, squeeze her with all my might because . . . It was against the rules?
“Don’t you see? Bobby? Don’t you see? I had to do it. I had to. I . . . I . . . No priest! No priest! Promise me, Bobby! Promise me! You can’t do it without my consent! And no last rights! Promise me!”
“Last Rites? Mom, what are you talking about? You’re not gonna die”
“No. But when the time comes . . . I want you to promise me now. And I’ll hold you to it. Promise me.
Promise me!” I reluctantly agreed, to keep her from a straight jacket. “Okay, Mom. Okay. No priest. No priest. Not even Father Timothy?”
“No . . . Priest! Especially Father Tim”
I never asked her why she did it. I just assumed, just like everyone else, that after more than thirty years of systematic terrorism and torture she’d just snapped. But I was wrong. We were all wrong.
I got her the best lawyer I could afford — Or rather couldn’t afford. Second mortgage. The best in Philly, on the east coast, specialist in these kind of cases. But even with the best defense attorney, and a parade of expert witnesses on domestic abuse, and character witnesses, and an actual parade of loyal supporters marching outside the courthouse, people on juries just don’t like people who kill other people. Even people who some might say ‘They just got what they deserved’ or “These are monsters who through their own heinous behaviour inadvertently orchestrate their own execution’, a kind of extended suicide by cop.
And they don’t buy that temporary insanity bullshit in any of its guises. To them, self defense means he’s coming at you with a chainsaw — full on topiary. If he hasn’t killed you in thirty years he’s probably not going to kill you today. He’s dangerous, to be sure, but what you’re really worried about is his lack of self control, an accident — A garbage disposal with a hinky switch and a stubborn peach pit fucking with the blades down in the hole beckoning your fingertips.
When they came back with their verdict I was, naturally, distraught. How could they be so . . . unmoved by her story? So unforgiving? Dismissive of my mother’s heart. But I was wrong. And they were right. The jury wasn’t emotionally blinded the way I was in her defense. She wasn’t their mother. He wasn’t their father. But neither were they manipulated by the prosecutor’s portentous attempt to create yet another monster. It wasn’t self defense. She never claimed it was. My mother didn’t take her sharpest kitchen knife from the drawer, walk up to my father, passed out in his favorite chair, bathed in the colorful strobe of the tv, and run it straight into, and through his rye soaked heart out of self defense. Nor was it a crime of passion. Whatever love my mother once had for her husband had long been squeezed out of her and swallowed up by an insatiable, calculating python a long, long time ago.
A jury is instructed to consider every aspect of a defendant’s motivation and action. A jury is inclined to show mercy, and welcomes the chance and opportunity to do so at every turn. But there is one facet of a defendant’s version of the truth the jury simply will not abide. And if only one of the bloodhounds in the box senses a single molecule of selfish blood in the cracks and creases of their cold, wet, disinterested nose, the attorneys, the witnesses — The judge might as well pack it in and call it a day. And though the jury did not know the motive, they were convinced that this was a cold and calculated murder in the first degree.
She was calmer now. They’d given her a shot of something and it was working. The nurse who gave her the shot looked at me with even measures of sympathy and reassurance.
“She’ll be all right. She just . . . Gets this way . . . Sometimes. It’s such a shame. She’s so kind and good hearted and . . . Compassionate. Always offering to help. A shoulder. A sympathetic ear. All the girls — We all just love her so much. She really is a . . . Saint”
As she was just starting to come around I was tempted to just ask her, once and for all, without giving her any time to think, find a seam in that chainmail straightjacket she’d been painstakingly knitting ever since she reached for that drawer with all those neat and clean and sharp answers lined up in a neat and clean and sharp row — Just . . . Blurt it out and move on. It’s not like I’d never wanted to ask her before. But I’d made a promise to myself a long time ago that if and when she did finally tell me, it would be on her terms. After all, it was her life, her story to tell — Or not tell. She and only she held the complete intellectual and personal rights. And I wasn’t going to be the next bully in that life.
A part of me, the selfish part sensed that this was the perfect time — And probably the only time to strike but . . . Maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe she’d already blurted it out. ‘Don’t you see, Bobby? Don’t you see? I had to do it. I had to!’ She had to . . . Had to . . . What? Punish him? That wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t a member of the Justice League or the Hague. That’s not what moms do. Moms look out for their family. Protect their kids. Soothe their aging parents. Stand by their husbands — Through thick and thin. For better, for . . . Worse.
‘No priest! No priest!’ Of course. I didn’t ask her. I didn’t have to. I just looked at her. Without blame or pardon. She recoiled. She knew that I knew. She wasn’t afraid of him. She didn’t hate him. She wasn’t afraid of losing her life, to him, or to prison. She was afraid of losing her purpose in life. He was going to hell. And she . . . Well, the nurse said it . . . Was a saint.
No priest. No confession. No last rites. Not even Father Timothy. No chance of a last minute heart to heart with a friend. Or confidant. Too risky.
“You’re following him — You’re taking him back . . . Again”

“Bobby. He needs me”

O.B.

3797 …

I awoke to my usual Sunday morning fanfare — Wynton Marsalis. ‘Sunday Morning’ — and made my way downstairs to the kitchen.
“He lives!” My wife thinks she’s droll.
“Any coffee?”
“Just made some. Want an egg or something?”
“Nah, just one of my breakfast bars” She went over to the pantry, that’s what we call it, it’s just a tall, white cabinet in the mud room and returned with —
“What’s this?”
“It’s your breakfast bar”
“Were they out of mine?”
“That is yours”
“Where’s the chawclit?”
The what?”
“Chawclit” A blank stare. “Y’know . . . My bars have a strip of —” The stare holds. ” — You’re kidding, right? I’ve been eating these things like for . . . ever” She snatches the thing out of my hand and proceeds to read the ingredients.
“Look, it’s got your almonds and your raisins and that granola oatsy — Whatever that shit — It’s the one I always buy. Believe me, I’ve made that mistake once before and I never heard the end of it”
“But —” She shoves it in my mouth. Paper and all.
“Shut up and eat your breakfast, Robert”
“Hey, Pop!” Our daughter, Lizzie.
“Hey Baby, look at this” I hold the dubious breakfast bar under her nose.
“Yea? So?”
“No, look at it” She squints.
“It’s one of your ‘healthy’ . . . Cardboard thingy treats. That reminds me, I gotta feed Hardtack. Hardtack lets out a hapless ‘what am I? Chopped liver’ whoop.
“What’s missin’?”
“Ehhh . . . Taste?”
“And . . . “
“I don’t know. Vitamin . . . ‘Who gives a —‘”
“Elisabeth!”
“Mother?”
“Chawclit! There’s no chawklit!”
“Mom! Where’s Daddy’s . . . Chawc lit?” My mother’s from New York, Hell’s Kitchen. The Dead End
Kids . . . Chawclit is just one of many woids I inherited from her. And my loving wife and children are merciless whenever Huntz Hall comes channeling out my mouth. “What’s chawclit?” My wife goes full white coat.
“You know, dear, the stuff they used to put on your father’s granola bar” Lizzie nodded, very big and slow nods. Don’t spook him nods.
“Yea, Pop. Yea. What are they trying to pull anyway?”
“That’s right, dear. I’m going to write them a letter!”
Those two love verbally boxing my ears but I sense something very different about this round of good natured mockery. In the past they’d make fun of how I said a particular word, but at least they understood . . . What I was talking about. The nuance was unsettling. I felt like Napoleon at the battle of Bellevue.
“C’mon guys. That’s enough. I mean . . . ‘Chawclit’ or ‘Chocolate’ . . . What difference does it make?”
“Right . . . Right. . .” Those big, slow nods again.
Were they really gonna make me try to explain chocolate? Could a mere mortal do justice to such nectar of the gods? I know they’re gaslighting me but how far were they going to take this? Well, the joke was on them. I could no more explain what chocolate is than give a lecture on quantum mechanics. Truth is, I really don’t know much — anything about the stuff. Never really gave it much thought. Except when I was gnawing away on one of my breakfast bars. I took my bar and my coffee and left them to their devious pleasure.
“Oh, Honey, don’t be like that!”
“Yea, Pop. You’re such a baby!”
Seeking refuge in our home office, slash den, slash . . . Y’ know, every house has one of those rooms . . . I plop myself down at the computer . . . Chocolate . . . Chocolate . . . It’s a bean, right? Like coffee and vanilla and . . . The cacao bean. And they do something to it. Roast it or boil it or . . . And they get cacao butter or fat . . . They add something to it. Milk . . . And sugar . . . There’s semi-sweet . . . And white . . . And dark . . . And . . .
‘Chocolate’
‘Cacao bean’
‘Chocolate bar’
‘Hershey’s ‘
‘Chocolate Mousse’
‘Hot choco —‘

Me and my buddies headin’ up to Jack Frost. None of us know how to ski. Just a bunch of city kids. I don’t remember who came up with the idea — Big Ed probably. He was the closest thing we had to a social director. He’d see something on the tube or in a movie and the next thing we know — We’re
all jammed into my ’92 Taurus heading up to Jack Frost.
We all thought it was gonna be a lark. I mean, how hard could it be? We all saw them doin’ it on tv. Just stab those polls into the powder and — Of course, none of us bothered with the complimentary mini lesson on the Bunny Hill. Straight to the lift and up . . . And up . . . To the ‘Sidewinder’!
It was ugly. We looked like a bunch of busted up barrels of bootleg whiskey being hurled down a Tennessee mountainside by axe wielding revenuers.
After our baptism of fire we all came away with a newfound respect for this lightning fast and scalpel sharp mode of transportation. Most of the guys took their humble pie and Ace bandages back to the Bunny Hill and that mini lesson. Big Ed turned out to be a natural. Who would’ve guessed? And me? I spent the rest of my day in the lodge, burrowing my frozen ass cheeks deep into the cushion of a big leather recliner nestled by the grandiose granite fireplace. It was just a sprain but I was grounded. But I was fine with that. What was I missing? For a couple of weeks I couldn’t do something I couldn’t do anyway. Orders from the crack medical staff at Jack Frost Mountain — Nurse Pam.
In fact, I was kinda diggin’ it. It was like one of those old Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon movies. Robert in the lodge . . . Hot cocoa and checkin’ out all the ski babes . . . ‘Hello Ladies’ . . . And then I see her. She’s hobbling in on her crutches. Not just a sprain.
She’s looking downward, carefully, pensively placing the rubber stoppers onto the wooden floor, one after the other. Down, down . . . hop. Down, down . . . hop. Down, down . . . I stand up and offer her my recliner. And for the first time she looks up — Startled — Then a smile. A crooked smile. Her smile.
“Oh, thank you but I couldn’t . . .”
“I insist” I insist? Where did that come from? When did I get so grown up?”
“Oh, well . . . That’s very kind. Frankly I was starting to wonder how much longer I could stay vertical”
“This is for you too” My coco.
“No, that’s yours”
“No. No. You look like you need it more than I do — I didn’t drink it. Or anything. I’ll go get another one”
And that was it. Everything. Every . . . thing I have today. Everything that’s good in my life — My life , traced back to a crooked smile and cup of hot chocolate. And that day was only a few days away. Our anniversary, the day Jack and Jill fell down the mountainside. How was I gonna get through that day? How was my wife gonna tell our kids, for the umpteenth time, how we met — Without chocolate?
It’s a small thing, I know. A minor detail. Like leaving out Santa’s pipe . . . Or . . . Blitzen. Does it change the story of Christmas? Does it change Christmas? I mean, what’s one reindeer more or less?
When me and my kids pop in ‘Willy Wanka and the . . . Caramel . . . Factory’? Will it somehow alter the experience? Will there be something missing? Of course, but will it . . . Lizzie, Max and me scrunched up together on the sofa transfixed by Gene Wilder and ‘Pure Imagination’ . . . Will it really be any different? Is ‘Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory’ even about chocolate?
Of course there is the chocolate experience itself. Chocolate ice cream. Chocolate donuts. Chocolate chip cookies — But if you were to ask me right now, ‘What exactly does this thing called chocolate taste like?’ I’m not sure I could tell you And it’s only been one day! What time is it?
“Babe! I’m headin’ over now, okay?”
“What? Okay!”

I was her lifeline to the world, from her world. Whenever she found herself in a panic, she’d beg the nurses to call me and I’d come running, so she could look at my face — The only face she could still recognize — And try to find some comfort in it, and maybe, just maybe, wrest a small piece of a memory from my eyes or my smile.
And then, one day, she didn’t recognize my face. The heart cannot bear such a pain as this. You can feel each chamber being boarded up one by one. In her mind I was no longer her son. I only existed when I was sitting in front of her. And when I left . . . I wasn’t even a memory. And yet there I was — Here I
am — No matter where I am — Every bit, every beat of this wounded heart, her son.

We were in the cafeteria. She was staring out the big picture window. Across the nursing home lawn there’s a house, the back of a house, and the back yard of a house. A big silver maple tree, a long, long rope reaching up into its limbs. A swing, or what used to be a swing, dangling in the weak breeze. Her gaze was fixed. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her gaze fixed on anything, her eyes venturing beyond the lenses of her glasses. She actually looked . . . engaged , curious.
“No one lives there”
“What?”
“No one lives there” I squinted, studying the old Victorian, looking for some sign of life until . . . Really? She might’ve been right. She might’ve been wrong, What did it matter? All she was for sure, was lost.

Her neighbor heard her car door slam. Same time every morning, like clockwork. Set your watch to that slam. About twenty, twenty-five minutes later she’s passing through the living room and out of the corner of her eye catches a glimpse of her neighbor’s car. Back already? She doesn’t recall hearing the car starting up or driving away. She shrugs and gets back to her housework. Another pass through the living room — Something’s wrong. There’s someone in the driver’s seat, flailing around. She rushes out to find my mother in a state of panic.
The cops show up and gingerly talk her out of the car and back into her house. By the time the ambulance arrives she’s surprisingly self possessed and lucid again. She knows who she is, where she was going, and how to get there, who she was going to meet there, and why. What she didn’t know, was how to start her car.
Is that how it happens? You don’t lose a memory. You lose a piece of one. And then another piece of a different memory. Little things. Details. That’s what makes it so confusing. Frightening. If the whole memory were to dissipate you wouldn’t have any reason to nervously slough it off — ‘A senior
moment’ — Or after a series of those ‘senior moments’, to start to panic.
Like a computer, our brain meticulously records and files everything entered into the system, our search engine, that monorail snaking through the dry cleaners, its clean, dried and pressed memories wrapped up and sealed in plastic, waiting to be summoned. Press a number and wait for your confirmation suit to come roaring down the rails right up to the cash register. But our brain isn’t a computer, and our search engine isn’t a monorail. It doesn’t methodically seek out specific data. When we access our mind’s cloud, it opens up and rains memories — Joyous, wonderful memories — Tragic, heartbreaking memories. The biggest and best notions we’ve ever dreamed, right alongside the most licentious and petty.
They’re not organized. Alphabetically. Chronologically. By subject matter. Or even by importance. And they keep coming, all the time — Hundreds — Thousands — Every second. Every nano second. And like children in the rain we can only catch so many drops on our tongues while millions hit the ground, splash in the grass and soak into the garden soil, or run down the gutter in the drive to the inlet in the street, lost forever.
We forget more memories than we could ever remember. Make up as many as we forget. And each time we retrieve one it’s different. We edit. Amend. Shape it to fit the space in our soul we need to restore or appease. You can’t make a hard copy of a memory.
We like to believe our most treasured memories are etched into a gold, heart shaped locket, pressed tightly till you hear the neat click, and always at the ready — Our most harrowing and haunting, stuffed into an old Cunard trunk forsaken among the cobwebs in the attic. But memories have no stake in our happiness or well being. Your first kiss. The birth of your children. The death of your parents. The theme song to ‘Gilligan’s Island’. Each and every one is as vibrant and as vulnerable as the next.

It was Sunday. I used to visit her every day. And whenever the nurses would call. I was ‘on call’ twenty-four seven. But, selfish son that I am, when I found myself no longer the center of her universe, every day became three times a week, and then two, and then . . . Sundays.
“Mom” I pulled her around to face me. “Do you remember when we were kids and you’d take us shopping at the Acme?” I might as well have been asking her to recite the Preamble to the
Constitution or the names of Santa’s eight reindeers. “We’d all get a cart — Jimmy would climb in
and . . .” It was such a happy memory — Not one of hers anymore, but I wanted to share it with her, even if it was in vain, I wanted to share it with someone who was there, someone who helped create it. I wanted to savor it, hang on to it for as long as I could before . . . Before it wasn’t one of mine anymore either. “. . . And at the checkout you’d reach over the cart, and Jimmy, and grab us a Hershey’s bar — One of the big ones with almonds and break it up into three pieces and Eddy would always —“

My mother’s eyes flashed.

“Chawlit!”

ob

3797 .

So,  I’m making dinner and drinking wine — A little too much wine — and listening to Charlie
Parker — There’s no such thing as too much Charlie Parker. ‘A Night in Tunisia’ I hear the car door slam. My wife. A little wobble in my step as I head to the mud room to let her in, help her with all her stuff. I reach for her big,  red bag, the one with all the kids’ work books. She’s a teacher.
“Oh! Look! A bird!” There it was, on the deck. Couldn’t have been more than a few days old. Featherless. It’s skin almost transparent.  Is this a baby bird? Or an x-ray of a baby bird?
“Happens all the time. Mama tosses them out of the nest” I shoot her a questionable glance.
“Why?”
“I don’t know . . . Nature?”
“Is that true? I mean . . . Could’ve been . . . I don’t know . . . It’s windy . . . Could’ve — Is that true?”
“All I know is what I see on Animal Plan — It’s still alive!” Sure enough, the little thing was moving . . . Barely.  It’s head was way too big and it’s neck way too skinny to support it. It was just sort of . . . Writhing in a sorry little heap.
I pick the pathetic creature up and carry it inside where I frantically look around for something to serve as a make shift bird hospital bed. A Styrofoam tray in the trash can catches my eye. My wife is nonplussed –  at once proud of my well intentions and resigned to my complete ineptitude.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t . . . Know !” Of course, I don’t know what I doing. I’m not a vet — Or even one of those people who wash baby ducks with Dawn after an oil spill — “But we’ve got to do something!”
Out of desperation, I grab the honey off the counter — Honey mustard chicken, my wife’s favorite.  “Couldn’t hurt, right? I mean, it’s just sugar. No one ever died from eating sugar, right? I mean . . . Everything . . . Everything , sooner or later, turns into sugar. Right?
“It’s a bird, not a bee. Or a bear”
“Right. What do baby birds eat?
“What do birds eat?”
“Right! The Mama bird goes out and find berries and bugs and worms and . . . The regurgitation thing!”  I run outside, turn over one of the big pots in the garden and

Ssss . . . Mup!

A big wriggler, right out of its sss . . . mup hole!
I mash the thing up into a gooey mess, using a hastily grabbed spoon from the dish rack, and a dish. A half assed mortar and pestle.
“Robert! That’s our good . . .”
“C’mom, Jo! I’m in ER mode! We gotta to save Charlie!”
“Char — Oh,  the poor thing” She picked little Charlie up — His name was Charlie now, and he was a little boy bird — And gently stroked his head. “Do you think he’ll make it?”
“I don’t know” I took the flat end of a toothpick, dipped it into the awful worm gruel and held it up,  just above his head.  As if on cue,  Charlie’s beak springs wide open,  just like on Animal Planet.  I felt like a proud mama as I fed him from toothpick  ‘beak’. 
“Attaboy, Charlie!”
I wondered about his real mama and how she could have let this happen. I mean, she probably didn’t push little Chas out of the nest but . . . One mom to another? . . . None of my kids ever fell out of their bedroom windows onto the deck.
After he seemed to have his fill I picked up Charlie and his Styrofoam bed and made my way out onto the deck where I placed him on the table under the folding umbrella to rest up — Him and me both.
I sat down and looked out onto my garden, and up into the boughs of the trees just above.  The nest must be up there somewhere.
”Here. You look like you could use this, ‘Doctor’” We click our glasses and take our sips.  Dinner was simmering on the stove, Mozart was simmering on Alexa, wafting through the kitchen and spilling out onto the deck. She always changes the music when she comes home.
Every now and then I’d look down at the tray on the table and my charge. He didn’t look all that much different from the first time I saw him, but where there was once so much turmoil in this naked little waif’s life,  there now seemed to be . . . Tranquility? Peace? Big words for such a tiny and fragile creature but I could see a measure of . . . Even a bigger word in his little, goofy face. Hope?
Of course it was just transference — But then Charlie let out a long and contented yawn, like a spoiled fat cat sprawled out on its owner’s favorite easy chair.  And in that moment I dared to think that he just might make it.
 
He didn’t.

I don’t know if I helped the little guy or just killed him faster. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve got involved at all.  Charlie was a baby bird that got a bad break — Maybe two. The first was falling out of the nest. The second was falling onto the deck of a man drinking too much wine and making honey mustard chicken.

It was my wife’s idea. She saw how much the short life of this little bird had affected me. So the next day, we all, the whole family — She thought it important to involve the kids too — marched out to the honeysuckle tree in the back yard to officially say ‘good bye’ to my newest old friend. ‘A Night in Tunisia’  makes for a . . . unique funerial processional but I simply could not fathom any other.
Charlie looked so peaceful, laid out in his oven match matchbox. Truly peaceful. No transference there.
“What’s that,  Daddy?”  A sound in the distance, a steady, whirring sound. They say an approaching tornado sounds like a freight train. This wasn’t a train — Well, neither is a tornado — This was an ear piercing, shrill . . . Like a million penny whistles in the sky and heading our way.
“I don’t know,  Honey.  Sounds like . . .”
“Birds,  Dad.  Sounds like . . . birds” She was right. A great, cackling cacophony of birds, and it was swelling, growing louder and louder. And then we saw them — Hundreds — Thousands — Millions? Birds filling the sky, blocking the sun.
“Daddy,  I’m scared”
“It’s okay,  Baby.  It’s okay” Hollow words of comfort. I mean, these were Charlie’s peeps. What did they think of me? And who can ever know what’s on a bird’s mind — Or a million birds’ minds. And then as of one mind, the birds starting swirling . . . Swirling . . . A feathery dome winding round and round . . . Slowly descending . . . Down and down . . .
The sky cleared.  The trees and bushes were encrusted.  The wires.  The rooftops — Any and every place there was to light,  birds were lighting, and singing and clicking and clucking and chirping — Sounding their bird voices,  right along with another ‘bird’, the ‘Yardbird’ himself,  sounding his magnificent voice through a hot and sweaty, bent and tarnished, twisted brass bill.
I knelt down,  lowered little Charlie into the ground, dropped the ‘casket’ into what was little more than a glorified divot, rose, and gave a nod to my son to push the button on the little boom box.  The music stopped, and then all the music — The entire chorus, up in the trees and on the wires and the rooftops and in the bushes and every place there was to light — All the singing, all the clicking, all the clucking, all the chirping and whirring, all the birds’ voices . . .

Silence.

My wife, noticing the growing look of concern on the kids’ faces, gives me a little elbow jab, as if to
say  ‘Hey, Babe. You want to wrap this thing up?’ Her eyes fixed on the back door. I straighten up, clear my throat and . . .
“Charlie, I remember the first time we met. Like it was yesterday” She rolls her eyes.
“It was yesterday!”
“Right! Right. It was indeed, only yesterday, but though our time together was short . . . ”  I really should have written something down. “. . . Short . . . And . . . You never got the chance to grow up, or get your feathers, or even open your eyes . . . See the world from a bird’s eye view — Fly. But in my mind, in my heart, you’re up there . . . In the clouds . . . Soaring . . . Like . . . ‘The Bird’  himself” Another elbow.
“Okay, Rev. Nice service!  Now, shall we all get the hell back inside?”
We started slowly, deliberately, walking back to the deck, looking like the family at the end of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’. And just as I reach for the handle of the sliding doors I feel my heels being sucked out of my . . . Heels! Every and any place there was to light — Un lighted! The trees and bushes. The wires and rooftops. All in one mighty . . . Ssss . . . Mup! A tornado of feathers stirred . . . And . . .
Spun . . . And churned on its way upward and out of my back yard. The whirring, the singing and clucking and clicking and chirping — All the birds’ voices were back, and rose higher and higher, filling our ears and the sky, billowing, blocking the sun again before evanescing, like a dream or a memory.

I never really thought I’d ever see Charlie squawking and strutting around his Styrofoam tray like some tiny gangsta Jaybird . . . Or whatever kind of bird he was. Deep down, I knew that image I had of me triumphantly,  releasing him one afternoon in the back yard to the strains of the ‘Flying High Now!’ was just wishful thinking . . . Lining up preschools . . . And prospective colleges . . . It’s a mom thing.
Whether it was his mother or an ill wind,  Little Charlie didn’t have a chance in this world. If I didn’t kill him,  the neighbor’s cat certainly would’ve. The sobering truth is . . . Mother Nature is a real mother!   She doesn’t give a second thought to shivering, featherless, baby birds that fall, or get pushed out of their nests.  And she doesn’t give anyone a second chance.

She gives us life.
And worms.
And honey.

*

O.B.