The Heebie-Jeebies

So Wednesday I’m coming home from London Bridge on the overland train around 6:00. The train is packed, it’s pouring rain outside, but I have managed to get a seat. Usually I read on the way home from London Bridge, because the ride is about 20 minutes, and I can lose myself, if only a little, before I have to get off. I have to be careful, though, as I have looked up before to find that I’ve missed my stop.

On Wednesday I had spent the day working on my teeny-tiny map project for English PEN, and so my nearly-40-year-old eyes were shot. I could not face Bird and his terrible problems, and I could not focus on the printed page on the swaying train. So I pretended to stare into space, and surreptitiously observed the people around me.

This is what I do on the train.

The guy directly across from me looked just like my horrid law-school boyfriend, except that this man had brown eyes instead of blue. He was also wearing a wedding ring and carrying flowers for someone, and I wondered if Doug was married yet, if he had any kids. I felt reasonably sure, however, that wherever he was, he damn sure wasn’t bringing anybody any flowers.

Also bearing flowers on the train was a man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a blond flat-top straight out of the 50s. Because of the configuration of the seats he was facing me, about as far away as someone might be diagonally across the dinner table. He clutched a dozen damp red roses in his fist, the first two knuckles of his hand swollen, the skin reddened and bunched there. I wondered what had happened. Had there been a fight? Had he punched a wall during an argument, maybe, and was now bringing roses to his lover to apologize?

I played it cool, of course, but I was intrigued. A few minutes later he jammed his free hand in his mouth and bit his knuckles hard, baring his teeth and screwing up his face like someone in pain. When he lowered his hand I saw the same thick red knuckles, and a small crescent-shaped sore, from his teeth.

And for the next few minutes, I questioned it. It was the kind of bizarre thing you see that makes you wonder immediately afterwards: Did I see that? Maybe I misinterpreted it. But no, a few minutes later he did it again. At least three times more before my stop. Each bite seemed more anxious – more vicious — than the last, and by the time we reached my station I was glad to be getting off. What was he thinking of? Biting someone else? There was unmistakable fury there, although it was impossible for me to tell whether it was directed only at himself, or at someone else. For all I know, this is what your average serial-rapist murderer does on the train to pass the time.

He got off behind me. Had he seen me watching him? Did he think I knew his secrets now? And even after I saw him entering the cab stand I couldn’t shake that feeling that someone might be watching me, following me, all the way home.

Or Maybe An Artist?

Mommy, are we’re very close to our house now?

We are. Do you know the name of this street?

No.

It’s Cranes’ Walk. Can you say that? Say, We live off of Cranes’ Walk.

We do?

We do. Do you know what street we live on?

Um, Cranes’ Walk?

No, we live on Taylor Grove. Can you say that?

We live on Taylor Road.

Close enough. We live off of Cranes’ Walk on Taylor Grove.

We live off Cranes’ Walk on Taylor Grove.

Excellent. Do you know our house number?

36!

Oo, that’s very close. It’s 32.

Right. 32.

Say, We live at 32 Taylor Grove, off of Cranes’ Walk.

We live at 32 Taylor Grove, off Cranes’ Walk.

Very good. And how old are you now?

I’m four!

That’s right. When’s your birthday?

Uhh, Octember 83rd!

Um, no. Let’s quit while we’re ahead, shall we?

The Great Pulley-Swing Adventure

In which Boyish

and Turtle go swinging.

And poor duck is left behind.

The Eff Word

The crosswalks here have a little barricade in the middle of the street, where you can stop for a moment to let traffic pass. Pedestrians have the right-of-way, and cars are supposed to stop and let you cross the moment you set foot in the street.

This morning, on our way back from our “practice walk” to Girlish’s school, we—that’s me, the buggy with Babe-ish in it, Girlish, and Boyish—stood in the crosswalk, in the middle of the street, while one, two, three, FOUR cars passed without stopping right in front of our toes. I finally sort of stepped out in front of one, muttering, “What the fuck? You’re supposed to stop!”

As we safely reached the curb, Girlish said, “That’s the word in the song I was telling you about? On Lunchboxing?”

“Lunchboxing” is a mix-CD made for us by a friend. Girlish loves it, except for the f-word song, which she skips.

“Right,” I said. “The f-word.”

“Is that your favorite word?”

“No, it’s not my favorite word.” (I don’t say it that much, I swear.) “But when four cars go by leaving me trapped in the middle of the street with three small children, I might say, ‘What the eff?’ It seems not-so-inappropriate to me in those circumstances.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say, like ‘eff you,’ or something? I mean, that’s how you’re supposed to say the f-word?”

“Well you don’t have to say ‘eff you.’ You could say that, but you could also say, ‘what the eff,’ or ‘eff off,’ or even, ‘he’s an effing idiot.’ The f-word is good for versatility. But you shouldn’t say it, of course, until you’re much older, like—” (I tried to think of a realistic age when kids might try out the f-word. 12? 13?—“when you’re 15, or something.”

“Mom, I don’t think I want to say the f-word.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said, realizing I was doing that thing with my kid where I talk too much and I’m inappropriately honest. “You shouldn’t use the f-word. Of course.”

Old Flame

While I was in Austin I confess I wanted to see an Old Flame—a boy, now a man in his forties, who was the brother of my high-school boyfriend’s best friend.

Did you get that? It’s a bit incestuous, I know. High-school relationships often are. He was a senior when I was a freshman in our small-town high school, and he was one of four or five guys in that class that any girl—all the girls—would have gone out with. He was (is) blonde, not too tall, and he wore faded 501’s that hung loose on his hips. I don’t know what it was about him—I generally don’t dig blondes, and I always thought his younger brother was better looking. But his brother was also sort of a jackass, and also my boyfriend’s best friend, and thus off-limits under just about any circumstances, despite my extremely loose moral code regarding such matters at the time.

It wasn’t a purely physical attraction. I had in a speech and debate class, and we sat across from each other. Although I don’t recall specifically what we ever talked about, I recall his face across the table from me. I remember feeling young and cute and funny. I flirted. He laughed.

I don’t think we started hooking up until after he graduated, but when we did—oh my. Even now there are moments with him that I can recall a bit too vividly. About a year ago he emailed me out of the blue, wanting to reconnect, wanting maybe to get together sometime in his city or mine, and it was both surprising and good to hear from him. And during our email exchanges I realized that he was really smart, which was odd because I didn’t remember that about him. I like to think now his intelligence must have been the reason I was always so attracted to him, although I was somewhat distracted from appreciating his intellect at the time, you know, because we didn’t spend that much time talking.

I told my husband about the emails, of course. I told him about it in order to diffuse it a bit, to make him a part of it and ward off any inappropriate fantasies. And I didn’t pursue meeting up with Old Flame, even when I planned this trip to Texas. I told him I was coming, and he called a number of times trying to find out when we might get together, but I avoided his phone calls and when I did talk to him, I delayed making real plans. I’m not sure why. Maybe I liked the imagined rendezvous more than the awkward prospect of an actual meeting. Maybe I just couldn’t find a babysitter.

So I waited until the last minute and then called him up and invited him to Stew’s birthday party. Safety in numbers, you know. I told him to bring his wife and kids if he wanted, or to stop by after work and have a beer with me before he went home. He declined, politely, of course, and we left it for another time. The irony that I could’ve gotten away for lunch or coffee if Rod had been here to watch the kids wasn’t lost on me.

And so I didn’t get to see him, and I’m disappointed about it. It’s anti-climactic. When we first talked on the phone about a year ago he said, “I’m not going to mention to K____ (my high-school ex and his brother’s best friend) that I talked to you, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

They’re all still in Texas, and they all still hang out together. He said some version of it again, a few minutes later—something like “Yeah, well, I’m not going to mention that we talked. I don’t want to piss him off.” I ignored it the second time, but the third time he said it, I finally said, “Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t tell him, either? Because I haven’t talked to him in two or three years—and it’s been almost 20 years since we were even involved. Besides that, we’re all married now, with families. Why on earth would he even care that you talked to me?”

“Oh, Stace,” he said, and I could imagine him shaking his head at my naiveté. “People don’t change that much. All that stuff is still there, you know, just like when we were kids. Just like it was 17 years ago.”

I’m such a vixen, I thought. Did they squabble over me or something?

But what stuck with me was, “It’s all still there.” Because that’s why I wanted to see him, right?

Now, don’t get me wrong. My husband’s charms are many and I have no desire to trade them for the charms of another. Even if the old flame still burns, I hardly need a candle when I’ve spent the last 10 years building a rock fireplace with a man who loves me more than I deserve. But still. I haven’t chased or been chased in over ten years, and I might like to remember a bit of that spark I felt as a girl, who liked a boy and wondered what might happen. I might like to kiss my teenage lover chastely on the cheek and then sit across a table from him, and feel the thrill of temptation.

But I didn’t, and I won’t. At least until Rod’s around to watch the kids.

She’s Always Listening, And I Never Know What She’ll Say

That Meena, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

My sister and I are daily juggling five kids: three of mine and two of hers. They are 7, 6, 4 and 3 years, plus the baby, 8 months. We are a traveling zoo.

We are desperate for any downtime we can find, so last week they spent their mornings at Vacation Bible School; this week they’re at “gymnastics camp.” We discussed taking the three-year-old to gymnastics, too, but she’s not completely out of diapers yet, so they wouldn’t take her. The gymnastics camp hasn’t turned out to be as cool as it sounded anyway, but whatever, they’re exercising and occupied for three hours a day, right?

On Monday morning, I left the house with all three of mine in tow. My mom is having a sprinkler system installed, so there was a rather handsome gardener in the front yard, working, as we tripped down the sidewalk, arguing about whether the caterpillar on the front porch might sting or not. Meena said hi to him as we passed.

“Good morning,” he said, “Where are y’all off to?”

“We are off to our first day of gymnastics camp,” I told him.

He smiled. “That sounds like fun. You think I could come, too?”

“I guess you could,” Meena said, climbing into the car. “As long as you’re potty-trained.”

Wild Wild West

Boy, Texas is a wild place. I’d forgotten all about that. To give you
an example, this is my sister’s bank, where we went today to get a
cashier’s check for my movers.

Don’t tell the lady that sits up front that I took this picture, because she told me I couldn’t take it. I took a couple others, just because she said not to.

Actually, what she said was, “I’m sorry, but you can’t take pictures in here because we have video cameras.”

This confused me. How, I wondered aloud, might my camera interfere with the video cameras?

“Oh, it won’t,” she said. “They’re for security.”

“Really?” I said, as if I found the idea of security cameras in
banks a rather puzzling idea. “Are you afraid someone might
steal the taxidermy?”

So please, everyone, please don’t steal any of this bank’s taxidermy because you might get me in a lot of trouble, not only for taking pictures of the bank’s fascinating dead animal decorations, but probably also for tempting you to steal them by posting them on the internet.

You’ll also notice in the pictures that there are an abundance of deer and deer antlers mounted on the walls. Texans have an uncommon appreciation for the decorative potential of antlers, and if I was an animal with antlers (or horns of any kind), then I would stay the hell out of Texas. But the deer around here aren’t as smart as I am; they roam the streets of town, just waiting to be mounted over someone’s fireplace or turned into a lamp. The other night, when I drove from my sister’s to my mother’s, I passed like–ten of them on a street in my mother’s neighborhood, which is cute, utterly populated, and right next to downtown. What I’m saying is it’s not rural. At all. These town deer were milling around in a church parking lot, grazing on people’s lawns, and loping across the road in front of me. I even saw—get this—a doe with twin fawns peeping out of some tall grass in a vacant lot. We stopped for that.

“You should take a picture,” Meena told me.

And the BIRDS, my god, the birds in Texas are the noisiest birds I have ever heard in my life. I sat in my mother’s backyard and recorded them, and if I can find my digital recorder plugger-inner-thingie (hopefully, I packed it in my bags and not on the moving truck), I will upload that for you to hear later. It was so raucous that Oliver, who was playing in the sandbox in the backyard, stopped what he was doing, looked up and said, “Mommy, what’s making that noise?”

I actually noticed the birds when we first got here, but I didn’t remember that big-throated one that hoots and whoops. Maybe he doesn’t start doing his thing until the afternoon, when Ollie and I heard him. Anyway, that first morning we walked to the gas station to get milk for breakfast, and on the way back, Meena and I counted seven different kinds of birds we could hear. And underneath the birdsong, I heard the rise and fall of the cicadas’, buzzing like summer heat itself. It was—it was the loudest quiet I’ve ever heard.

Ah, Texas, I’m remembering it now, you do have a certain charm.

Gary & Ivan’s Garage Sale

Gary & Ivan’s Garage Sale, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

These are my next-door neighbors, Gary and Ivan.

That’s Ivan on the left, and Gary on the right. But to us they’re always Gary & Ivan, not Ivan & Gary. Ivan is more reserved, often bustling around in the background while Gary stands at the foot of their driveway, holding court with one neighbor or another.

Unlike us, with our noisy kids and generally disorganized existence, Gary & Ivan are the perfect next-door
neighbors.
Their yard is the most fantastic in our culdesac, a Seussian landscape
of native California plants and a tumbled-rock streambed they
constructed themselves. Ivan warmed up to me a bit last
summer because my morning walks coincided with his morning gardening,
and I often stopped to chat him up for a few minutes when
I got home.

Gary is the more gregarious of the two, and we got to know him earlier on. He’s the guy on the block who always has
excellent information, like, how to get paid for recycling your moving
boxes, who will haul away your electronics for free, and where to buy
the best yellow lantana. They
are the kind of neighbors that you aspire never to let down by allowing
the paint on your gutters to peel, your grass to get too high, or your
trash cans sitting on the curb too long.

A month or so ago, when we had a garage sale before we put our house on the market, Gary and Ivan said that when we had the next one, we should let them know, because two garage sales are better than one in terms of attracting buyers. So this time around, I placed the ad for a two-house Saturday sale.

On Friday, when that umbrella over Ivan’s left shoulder went up, Rod and I knew we were in trouble. Because see, that’s their sale up there, and um, this was ours:

In my brief defense, I will say that this has been an insanely crazy time: Meena’s last week of school, pack-out day coming up on Monday, last-minute good-bye dinners and unexpected wine-drinking marathons with friends. But, honestly, it was so bad that one guy wandered into our garage early on, before we put that sad table out front, and said, “Are you having a sale, too, or do you just have your garage door open?”