Melissa, December 17, 2007

Listen in MP3

"This has nothing to do with Lisa," said Gary. "It's only because I pretty much fucking built the place."

I nodded. "That’s... what I understand," I said.

"Not the electrical, of course. Or the plumbing. Or the concrete pours. Though I could've done a better job than those assholes the contractor hired."

"It was very generous of you," I said. "I mean, it is, still—"

"Fuck that," said Gary. "There was nothing fucking generous about it. Okay. I'm going out."

He opened the door and walked out into the snow. I looked out at the roof, the snow, the night, the big guy in the jumpsuit.

"Are you all right?" I called after him.

"I'm fine," he called back. "Close the fucking door. You're letting the heat out. It's a fucking green building, remember?"

I closed the door and tried to keep an eye on his progress through the window. Framed by the vertical slit, the scene had become even more disorienting: snowflakes illuminated from below, the hulking figure trudging among the vents and boxes. I saw him tug at something, kick it, then lift the thing, a snowy mass, and toss it into the darkness.

A minute later he was back on the landing, stomping the snow off his jumpsuit.

"Fucking big-assed tree branch," he said. "From the oak tree. Totally blocking the intake. It must've fallen in the windstorm. That was two weeks ago, before the snow. You been having problems that long?"

"Maybe," I said. "I thought it was just winter. I... I just... turned up the thermostat."

"You shouldn't let shit that go that long. You gotta get a regular maintenance man for this place."

The snow was flying off his clothes and boots. I stood as far from him as possible on the little landing.

"I'm working on it," I said. "With the board. It takes time."

The shaking and stomping and brushing stopped. He looked at me.

"Hey," he said. "I'm not getting down on you personally. Sorry if I came on too strong."

"No problem," I said. "It was so great for you to come over and help. I really didn't know who else to call. Let me get you some coffee."

"You're pretty much a volunteer here yourself, aren't you?" he said.

"Sort of," I said. "One of the donors made a deal with the biology department. Next semester my teaching load will be reduced by one class."

"That's not much," he said. "This is a big job here."

"There's a search committee," I said. "Maybe by summer we'll have a new executive director. C'mon, let's get that coffee."

Downstairs, you could already feel the warmth returning. I fixed a cup of coffee for Gary and a hot chocolate for me. We talked about our kids for a while. I asked about Samantha. He said she was trying to find her mother a job. He asked about Jake—how was he handling the steroid scandal in baseball? I said he was trying to use it as an excuse not to take his asthma medicine. Smart kid, he said. Smart at being stupid, I said. Gary had stopped swearing—as if he no longer needed the sparks of profanity to keep him warm.

His eyes wandered around the center for a moment. Builder's eyes. The same attention to detail that a biologist brings to the field, but something else, too. More willful.

"You did all the carpentry?" I said.

"Yeah," he said. "The rough and the finish."

"You did a great job," I said. "It must be difficult for you, now that Lisa—"

"Nothing fucking to do with her," he said. "I mean, she was the fucking client, but that wasn't why I did it."

He seemed to want to tell me something, but he wanted me to ask.

"Why then?" I finally said, after a pause.

"Sam's grandpa," he said, after his own pause.

"Raymond?" I said.

"You know," he said. "At the time, I had no fucking clue. Only when I looked back, I could see how old Raymond had put it all together. Know what I mean?"

"I don't quite follow..." I said.

"Look," he said. "This was the early nineties, after the band had finally gone fucking south. There I was, living off the book, no reported income, no visible fucking means of support."

"You were in a band?" I said. "I guess I should have known... from the tatoos."

I smiled awkwardly.

"Yeah," he said. "I was in Arbeit Macht Frei."

"No way!" I said. "My older brother had all your albums. And this disgusting t-shirt.... I thought the band was from West Berlin or Amsterdam or..."

"Someplace cool?" he said. "Nope. Three jews and a polack from right fucking here. Fucking suburbs, actually."

"Wow," I said. "You guys really had a following in Columbus. You were like... grunge before there was grunge."

"Like grunge before there was money," he said. "We toured for ten years. Most of the time we were crashing on our fans' fucking floors. I was telling you a story about Raymond. You wanna hear it?"

"Uh, sure," I said.

The story started with the breakup of the band. He told me how, in its last two years, Arbeit Macht Frei had made a little money and they had all started to hate each other. How he walked away with just enough cash to buy an old crackhouse in Barrio Lange and fix it up. How he built himself a studio and started painting again. How he and Lisa had had a thing. How Lisa had been almost as much of a fringe character as he was back then, this fucking crazy environmentalist chick. How she got pregnant. How she wanted to keep the baby, which surprised the fuck out of Gary. But how he knew she was serious because she quit drinking right away.

Then he leaned forward and gave me a little sociology lesson. He told me how the fucking state comes in and fucks up everyone's lives if a dad can't pay his fucking child support. He leaned back and shook his head. Fucking Lisa had been about to go ahead and apply for fucking welfare anyway.

But that was when Raymond Deveridge, Lisa's dad, whom Gary had never even fucking met before, showed up with a package deal to solve everyone's problems.

Gary lifted his arms and looked around the room.

"You mean the center?" I said. "The Tangled Bank? This was Raymond's idea?"

"Oh, the idea was Lisa's. But you gotta understand, Lisa had lots of fucking ideas. Raymond picked the one he was going to make happen."

The deal took a year or two to play out. Lisa got a job running the center, Gary got a job building the center, nobody had to get married who didn't fucking want to (the two of them sure as hell didn't), their paychecks were nice and low, but not too low, which looked good for the fundraising, which Raymond took care of, at least in the early years, until Lisa got good at it.

And when Samantha was born, she got a trust fund, with monthly payments right from the start. So the small paychecks didn't matter, because Lisa and Gary didn't have to use those paychecks to support their kid.

Gary paused, to let me catch up. I sat in silence for a moment.

"It's... it's a lot to absorb," I said.

"The trust fund even sends me checks when I take Samantha for the weekends," he said. "Fucking sweet, hey?"

"So that's how this place started," I said. "Kind of a... family thing."

"Hey," he said. "This place is real. Fuck the family drama. That river is real, all the nature is real, you know the science is real, and I can guarantee this building is fucking real."

"I know," I said. "Thanks. For everything. Well, I gotta get home. I have to be back here at 7:30 to unlock the doors for a busload of seventh graders."

I stood and picked up the cups. Gary stood up too.

"Yeah," he said. "I should get back to the studio."

"I'm sorry I had to interrupt you," I said.

"Don't worry," he said. "I never get started before midnight."

Lisa, November 12, 2007

Listen in MP3

After lunch, we took a walk in the old German graveyard, and for the first time all day, Sam dropped her sullen act.

"Look Mom, this one died when she was a baby."

She grabbed my hand and pointed to a gravestone.

Margaretha Schwab. Born June 3, 1842. Died August 12, 1842.

"1842," I said. "This was practically the frontier back then. A lot of infant mortality."

"That means babies dying, right?"

"That's right."

We walked toward another gravestone, her hand still in mine.

Hanna Schwab. That must be the mother. Born 1823, Leipzig. Died 1867. Here. That would be...

"Sam, what's sixty-seven minus twenty-three?"

"Forty-four."

My age. When Hanna died. How many more children did you have, Hanna, after losing Margaretha at...

"What's 42 minus 23?"

"Oh god, Mom. Nineteen." She looked at the stone. "You're figuring out how old she was..."

"Yeah."

"The gravestones are so gross," said Sam. "Somebody should clean them."

"Those are lichens," I said. "They grow on the old limestone. The calcium neutralizes the acid rain. It's a good place for them to grow."

"So they shouldn't clean them?"

"I would leave them just the way they are. Graveyards are good for nature."

We strolled quietly among the stones, still hand in hand. Keydel. Otterbein. Baum. Walsch. In England, they teach nature courses in graveyards. Rocks and weathering. Human populations. Biodiversity.

"Mom," said Sam, "are you a Wiccan?"

"I don't think so," I said. "I'm not very religious."

Who needs a nature center? You could hire the buses, set up day tours. Would that work here?

"Grandpa's an Episcopalian," said Sam. "And Dad says he's a half-assed Taoist—"

"Is that so?" I said.

"—and Grandma Shepanski is a Catholic, and that leaves you."

An old truck rumbled by on County E. There must still be a few working farms around here. The driver probably wouldn’t dream of stopping at the old church, now that it's been converted to a little café. What would he make of a busload of eco-tourists? Those old guys have a different relationship with the land—harsh. Hateful, sometimes. But intimate.

Sam tugged at my hand. "Mom! I'm asking you a question! What religion are you?"

"I'm not much of anything," I said. "Are you doing a report for school?"

"No," she said. "I'm just curious. I read a book on religions of the world."

I suppose this place could make you feel religious. Very quiet and peaceful. But then as soon as you think about it—as soon as you focus on the quiet—you can hear the highway. No buzz of transcendence. Just the distant angry roar. What is it? Ten miles away?

"You worship nature, don't you Mom?"

"I don't know about worship. I fight for it sometimes."

The wind shifted a little, and for a moment it filled my ears, masking the sound of the highway. The bleak November wind that Hanna Schwab would have heard, the season after baby Margaretha died, while her husband cleared the land, not primeval forest, but a forest a century or two old, grown unchecked since the European microbes had decimated the native population. You and your husband didn't need to fight the Indians, did you Hanna? Smallpox had done that already.

Sam let go of my hand, and ran off to study something—a few yards away. Under that bush—what is it?

I hope you had a daughter, Hanna. One that lived.

Samantha, November 12, 2007

Listen in MP3

Parents can get so crazy, they don't even know what they're doing sometimes, they don't listen to anyone, if they don't have a job, that's the worst. Just think about it, I mean if you're a like a kid you've got school to go to, but if you're a Mom and you don't have a job and your last job paid you like a whole year's salary just to go away, then there's no place you have to go where you have to act normal, so you can just stay home and be as crazy as you want and only your kid can see you. I asked my Mom, so when are you going to start looking for a job, and she said she had been working seven days a week at the center since before I was born, she was even signing papers with one hand and holding me on her breast with the other, Mom! I said, but she wouldn't stop, she was still in the hospital, she said, waiting for her milk to come, that's how devoted she had been to the center, and what she needed now was to get in touch with other things in her life, and I'm like okay, whatever, go be a yoga mom, I didn't really say that out loud. So then this morning I'm eating my breakfast like normal and she comes in and makes a big deal of cutting the grapefruit for me and then she starts carving out the little pieces with this weird little knife I'd never seen before, and I'm like Mom, what are you doing, I just dig it out with the spoon, and she said this was the way her mother did it for her, couldn't she do something nice for her daughter once in a while, and then she sprinked brown sugar on both halves of the grapefruit, smashing the clumps with her fingers which is so totally gross and she put each half on a little plate and set a spoon beside it like it was some kind of fancy dish from a chef show on TV, and then handed one of the dishes to me with like a total crazy person's smile. And I'm like, I can't eat that I don't eat sugar, and she said, what do you mean you don't eat sugar, don't you eat candy with your friends, and I'm like no, Mom, no I don't and she said fine, and threw both halves of the grapefruit in the garbage one after another, and walked out of the kitchen. So I put the stupid little plates and the stupid little knife in the dishwasher and I ate my toast and read a few more pages of my book, and then she came back in the kitchen with the phone in her hand and said she had just called my school and told them I wouldn't be coming in today, and I'm like what do you mean, my group is doing a presentation today, and she said, it's okay, I've got it all taken care of, but I'm like Mom! we're doing the rivers of North America, and ours is the Red River, the only one that flows north, but she said it's about time I let some of the other kids do the work, because today we're going for a drive in the country, just the two of us.

Betty, October 21, 2007

Listen in MP3

Seeing him at the grocery store—it's surprising, really, now that I look back, that there haven't been more awkward moments. We've been living here, in the same neighborhood, driving on the same streets, for twenty-five years now. Longer than that, of course, especially for him, but twenty-five years since.

"Betty," he said. "How nice to see you."

Our houses are less than a mile apart, but maybe, except for the brief period when we were actually pursuing each other, maybe we live in different worlds, move in different networks. Maybe the gradient in housing, from his sprawling brick tudor, every bedroom with its own bathroom and a few more just for the convenience of one's visitors, down the scale to my tidy bungalow with its vinyl siding—maybe that's the leading indicator of a different social ecosystem—different dry-cleaners, different auto mechanics, different florists. Different friends, that's for sure.

"Raymond," I said. "What a surprise."

And now, after twenty-five years, here in this aisle. My only indulgence—this expensive little store with its great produce section. Why did he show up now? He never did any of his own shopping, I'm know he didn't, even after his wife left him.

When did she leave? '84 maybe? No, it was at least '87. A good five years after we broke up. So I wasn't the direct cause.

"Are you still working?" he said.

Of course I always liked to think that I was more dangerous to him—to his equilibrium—than any of the others. A single woman. Perfectly happy with my lot in a modestly paid helping profession. He preferred married women, that was clear, or at least he felt more comfortable when the culpability was symmetrical.

"I still have a couple of years to go," I said.

We each had a bottle of red wine in our carts—Australian shiraz for me, Chateauneuf du Pape for him.

"Ah," he said. "About a week ago, I was having lunch with the new Superintendent..."

He paused, inviting me to interrupt. I thought for a moment, then accepted the invitation.

"You asked after me," I said. "That's nice. But the Super wouldn't know me."

He nodded, very thoughtfully, and then, like everyone else, I answered the question he hadn't even asked.

"That administrative job—" I said. "I gave it up a couple of years ago. I'm just a school nurse again. Prospect Elementary. I missed the kids."

"Good for you," he said.

"Yourself?" I said.

"Well, my name's still on the shingle," he said. "And my former partners let me use my old office. I sit on several boards, and there's an old client or two who insist on occasionally giving me a call."

He reached toward the shelf, picked up a can of Spanish olives, and studied the label, tilting his head back to position the small text in the appropriate part of his progressive lenses.

"Are these any good?" he said.

When did he become interested in ingredients? I shrugged my shoulders.

"I was reading recently," I said, "about your daughter. You're on the board of that nature center, aren't you?"

He put the olives back on the shelf.

"Yes," he said, "that was difficult. But it's a wonderful organization, still very much worthy of my support. And Lisa will certainly find a new project. I'm very grateful to her for getting me involved with the Tangled Bank in the first place."

How does he do it? He could walk out of prize fight and make it sound as if the knockout was the first step toward an amicable partnership.

"Raymond," I said, "I hate to ask you for legal advice, but there's a situation that's beginning to trouble me. It's about my father."

Arthur, September 28, 2007

Listen in MP3

Dorothy needed someone to take her shift at the center, there was a funeral she had to go to, Louise's friend Marian or Marianne or something like that, I'd never met the woman, not much point in me going to the funeral, so I said, Sure, I'll take your shift. Volunteer Greeter, they call it, you just sit by the door and say hello to anyone who comes in, they want the center to be open to drop-bys, even the teenagers in the park, and apparently having an old fart at the door prevents vandalism, I don't know how, I sure as hell couldn't stop those teenagers from indulging their destructive tendencies if they were so inclined, but you know, it works, you just look 'em in the eye and say Welcome to the Tangled Bank, have a look around, and the kids calm right down. That's only when they come in, of course, the rest of the time you're on your own, this was the 3 to 6 p.m. shift and there was one kid playing the ecology video game for a while but then his friends came and got him and that was that. When the place was empty I walked around, straightened up a little, I wasn't going to get out the spray bottle like Dorothy does but I do my part. I found a book on one of the tables and I was going to put it back on the shelf where it belonged but it wasn't a science or nature or ecology book, it was some sort of adventure book for girls, Wilhelmina and the Cro-Magnon Cave, maybe it was Cavern, I figured it must belong to that girl, the daughter of the director, she was always hanging around reading, kind of a sullen girl, but maybe all girls are sullen at that age, about the same age Betty was when she decided the neighbor lady was her best friend, going over there every night to help her with her collections, never understood what that was about, tearing pages out of magazines and cataloging them, now I don't think that neighbor lady was a bad influence, what was her name? there were a lot of people in Terre Haute who worked at the Federal Prison, we were very tolerant of those occupations, still a forty-year-old divorced woman, what was she? A nurse? A librarian? hell, I suppose she was alright, a little eccentric, said my wife, and Betty will have plenty of time for boys later on. I read a few pages of the book, there was nothing else to do, I didn't expect it to be be my cup of tea, but they got right to the cave drawings, I've always been partial to cave drawings, and it was set in 1918, the year I was born, Austria or Switzerland or some such place, but then they came out of the cave and went back to the boarding school and started giggling and that was enough of that book for me. A few minutes later the director came down the stairs, carrying one of those white bankers boxes, I didn't have any idea she was up there in her office, she must have been working there the whole time. I offered to carry the box for her, it never hurts to make the gesture, and she stopped and looked at me funny and eventually smiled and said no, no thanks, she had it under control. So I showed her the book and she said, Yes, that would be Samantha's, and I put on top of her box for her and asked if she would be locking up at six o'clock because I didn't have any keys. Then she finally put the box down and found some keys in her pocket and handed them to me and said that I could lock up, that would be good, and she picked up her box with book balanced on top and headed for the door, kind of in a hurry I'd say, but I called after her and asked, What should I do with the keys? and she turned and said I could keep the keys, for all she cared, because she didn't work there anymore.

Jacob, September 19, 2007

Listen in MP3

I'm okay... I just ran too hard... I told her... I don't need... to go to the... nurse's office.

Yeah. It's... in my backpack.

Okay. It's... it's... in here....

No, I'm... okay. This isn't bad. I can... still play.

Here it is... Okay.

Hhheewwwww...

But I only do it once. My dad says...

Okay. Hhheewwwww...

I used the nebulizer this morning. My mom makes me do it before breakfast. She makes me blow into the tester thing and if the needle doesn't go far enough she makes me do the nebulizer.

The inhaler? I dunno, I just put it in my backpack. For Emer...Gen...Cies.

Yeah. I remember. You said... I should use my inhaler before recess...

But I can't let the other kids see it.

They won't pick me for the teams. My dad said you can't show them any weakness.

I guess so. Ashley... and Brandon... and Mathew... They all have 'em.

I dunno, they get picked, I guess... but they aren't good.

At sports. You can tell who's good and who isn't... and the kids with inhalers, the way they hold the bat, you can tell.

I just have to try harder. You get asthma from sitting around too much watching TV. My dad says Teddy Roosevelt had asthma until he became a cowboy.

I dunno, he was a president or something. He's the one with the moustache on the mountain. My dad wants me to go out to a dude ranch next summer and get over my asthma.

It was great. Yeah we saw the presidents and my dad and I went hiking, up on the big rocks. We saw a prairie dog, and a bison, all by itself, and a tiger salamander on a rock and some mudpuppies and a tree frog and my mom didn't believe us but we saw a bobcat. In the afternoon. My mom says no one ever sees bobcats in the afternoon but we saw one. My dad took a picture on his phone but it was blurry. My mom said she wished we had taken a picture of the tree frog instead because it might be in danger specie.

No, I didn't need it at all when we were camping. It was only on the way back, at that motel...

My dad says they didn't clean right the room right. He's gonna sue the owner for cost of the emergency room and for him and mom staying up all night, or if he doesn't sue them he's going to call the agency in South Dakota and get their license in trouble because he knows someone.

No, my mom doesn't think I should go. She says I need to do what the nurse at school says before I can go to any dude ranch.

Yeah, I know. You say...

I should use my inhaler before recess.

Okay. One more time.

Hhheewwwww...

Samantha, September 9, 2007

Listen in MP3

Where's your mother? said the old guy, he just came up to me and asked, I mean this was like a really, really old guy, way older than Grandpa, older even than the Prefect from the Class of 1827, the one who was haunting the boathouse on the secluded lake in the Tyrolean mountains, of course the Prefect had been young and handsome in 1827, that was the big question about the ghost, whether he kept getting older after he died which would have made him like a zillion years old, my mom always gets mad me when I say a zillion because it's not a scientific number, so she makes me do the math and figure it out, if my mom were here she'd make me say that In the book, which is set in World War I, they just call it the War in the book, but none of the characters has to go anywhere near the battles or the trenches which were totally gross, the ghost would be like exactly 110 years old, which is 1917 minus 1827 plus 20, which is the age the Prefect was when he mysteriously disappeared and probably drowned at the bottom of the lake. Which is so stupid of my mom, because she can't do any math in her head herself, she's always asking me questions like What's 63 minus 47?, she should really just get herself a calculator instead of interrupting me all the time when I'm reading, and anyway it might as well be a zillion because in the opinion of Wilhelmina, the main character, ghosts don't get any older, they always stay the same age as they were when they died, or if they do get older, it's like what actually happens to their bodies, which means if you drown that your ghost would first get fat and bloated and disgusting and then get eaten by fishes, so Wilhelmina was like way, way more afraid of the school of fish with intelligent eyes that looked at her when she fell out of the boat and sank way down into the lake, but she didn't drown that time because she managed to take off the heavy shoes she was wearing and swim back up to the surface and get rescued, and they rowed her back to shore with her bare feet, which were totally scandalous because these were the old days when girls were expected to wear stupid heavy clothes which caused lots of unnecessary drownings. So if it wasn't a ghost, Wilhelmina figured there must be a real old man hanging around the boathouse and she made a plan to catch him by hiding overnight behind an old piece of sailcloth, and I was just reading that part, which sounds scary but it wasn't really because I'd already read the other books in the series and Wilhelmina always knows what she's doing, and that's when the real old man, I mean like really real, in my world, not the book, he came up to me and started asking me where my mother was, and I could tell he didn't really want to find my mother, he was worried about me being there by myself. So I was like, my Dad's up on the roof, I'm totally okay, just leave me alone and let me read, really I just said my Dad was around somewhere but that's what I meant, and the old man just looked at me and the old ladies started to come over and get him and he just shook his head and said, Nose always in a book, you should go out and play, and it was like I knew he wasn't talking to me at all, he was talking to someone else, a long time ago.

Arthur, August 8, 2007

Listen in MP3

I've never had much use for people who leave notes on my door, there was this fellow in the Navy, not on the ship, mind you, you couldn’t get away with kind of nonsense at sea, he was a petty officer third class I believe, I was only a seaman at the time, this was in one of the stateside ports, Portsmouth probably, but this fellow, we were always finding notes from him on doors, stuck there with thumbtacks, nobody ever saw him coming or going, how the hell did he do it we used to wonder. And the other guy, this was years later, at the store, after the Groeschlers had sold the business, sure I hoped the new owners would let me run the store by myself, and eventually it did work out that way, but right after the sale, this kid from Indianapolis, a college kid, he'd taken a course in efficiency or some damn thing like that, of course he didn't know shit about the lumber business, he made us all line our desks up in a row, and we all had to get inboxes and outboxes, every damn salesman had to put an inbox on the left front corner of his desk and an outbox on the right front corner of the desk, do you get the picture, can you imagine a lumber salesman with a desk like that, I gotta tell you, one thing about the Navy, it gives you a damn good preparation for putting up with guys like that, not that there's any comparison between keeping your ordnance in a nice tight pattern when the shit is flying all around you and making sure that your inbox is exactly one inch from the left front corner of your desk, so your college-kid boss can drop off purchase orders without looking you in the eye, no comparison at all, except that in both cases, you just say Yes Sir and you do it, and if you're lucky you survive. At least for a while it seems lucky, surviving one thing and then another, although my wife made it very clear that she was the lucky one, the one to go first, she didn't want to be a widow, not at all, she didn't think much of surviving for survival's sake, unless she was just saying that to make me feel better, though how it would make me feel better I don't know, telling someone they are unlucky for being alive, no consolation there, still it hasn't been that bad, living without her, I've still got my health, except for forgetting a few things and not keeping the old house clean enough for my daughter's standards, good riddance to that place, my social life, if you know what I mean, it's been much livelier here, I never thought I'd put on a pair of hip waders again in my life, and the apartment itself is alright, a pretty good place to live, except that I can't understand why that new case worker needs to leave so many notes on my door.

Raymond, July 23, 2007

Listen in MP3

It was on a Wednesday night, a couple of weeks ago. Melissa and I had had a brief meeting, a sidebar if you will, in preparation for the full board meeting the next day. I was escorting her out to her car, when suddenly her back stiffened in fright. A figure was stepping out of the shadows—a tattooed arm, a cordless drill—and speaking my name. Melissa cursed at the figure, who responded in language equally vulgar but far warmer in tone, and in a moment the situation dissolved, as such situations usually do, into hasty acknowledgements of recognition and breathless apologies.

The figure was Gary. It's not unusual to find Gary around the Tangled Bank at odd hours. He displays a certain—let's call it a proprietary tenderness for the physical structure of the place, and far be it from me to challenge his feelings of ownership, particularly when they manifest themselves in frequents acts of unbilled light maintenance.

On this evening, he had stopped by to fix a piece of molding, to which he referred as if I would undoubtedly know which piece of molding, and why it needed fixing. I did not disabuse him of this impression, which encouraged him to mention additional maintenance projects, projects which would require specific budget items, as he no longer had the spare time to devote to such matters, the demand for his art work having taken off.

Of course I understood. And I was happy, and I wanted him to know I was happy, that he chose to keep coming back to the center and keep things in fine shape, but however happy I was, there was no trace of complacency in my happiness, no expectation—

A car door swung shut. Headlights came on. The lights swung to and fro as Melissa backed out of her parking space. She called out to us her sorrow at having to leave so quickly, but her son was waiting. Gary called back his complete understanding. I simply waved.

Gary and I watched her drive off, insects sparkling in the torches of her headlights, a glimpse of the glistening river as her tires caught the dip in the gravel.

I turned back to Gary and reassured him that we on the board understood that we could not count on his continued in-kind donations of skilled labor, and that if we came in under budget in the building maintenance account, it was because of his continued generosity, and that we all understood how his gifts were as good as cash.

He did not respond immediately, and for a moment I had the unusual feeling that I was the one who had been talking too much. Sometimes it seems as if you are negotiating about one thing, when in fact an entirely different issue is in play. In such cases it's best to let the other party tell you what's going on. They always do.

Gary shuffled for a moment, the cordless drill swinging in his hand, a useless tool for the current task.

Eventually he set the drill down on a window sill. Then he turned to me and asked if I meant that the debt had been paid.

There was never a debt, I explained. Samantha was my granddaughter, and it had been my privilege to contribute to her support.

Betty, June 30, 2007

Listen in MP3

I was at Van Buren Hill—a nice place, my first choice among all the places I'd been looking at, not disgusting or depressing, but not full of Republicans either. I was doing quick calculations in my head—multiply dollars per month by twelve to get dollars per year, then add years—how many?—to eighty-nine, when the case worker asked for proof of residency.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Usually a utility bill," he said.

"Is it required?"

"Well there's a different fee structure for out-of-state residents." He looked at me and smiled. "We do get some funding from the state."

I smiled back. "Really. What's the difference?"

"Oh, at the level of care we're setting up for Arthur"—he used Dad's name as if he were talking about a kindergarten student—"the difference would be about five hundred a month. At the assisted living level—let's see, that would be about twelve-fifty. Two thousand for in-state, thirty-two-fifty for out-of-state."

I thought for a moment.

"All the utility bills are in my name," I said. "Except for his cell phone."

"Cell phone?" he said. "Do the bills have the street address?"

"I think so," I said, but in fact I knew so. I had bought Dad a cell phone and a national plan five years ago. The bills had his name on them, but they came to my house, and I paid them.

"That'll do," said the case worker.

And so I needed Dad to be discreet. For a month or so. Till he settled in.

"Try not to talk about Terre Haute." I said. "Or the house."

"What else will I talk about?" he said.

"You don't have to lie," I told him. "Just... push that stuff back into the past. Act as if you've been living here for a few years."

After all, he has spent at least five or six weeks a year visiting me. For a good decade or so. It's not as if he's unfamiliar with my house, my neighborhood, and therefore, ipso facto, his new official state of residency. And people know him around here—in a way. The clerk at the bakery would see him every day for a week, she even got to know his breakfast order, coffee and a scone, no butter, and she would recognize him when he returned, two months, three months, four months later, and joke with him about having his breakfast somewhere else. He enjoyed that.

Of course, there's a lot of turnover at that bakery. There was only the one clerk who remembered him, and she's gone now.

Ten years he's been coming, or, actually, ten years I've been going to get him. Every school vacation and twice each summer.

He moved into Van Buren Hill today. One day before the end of the month—no extra charge, said the case worker. They call them case workers but they're really sales agents. This guy was okay, though.

The movers were carrying the flattened cardboard boxes out of the new apartment and I was taking care of the last few bits of paperwork when I noticed that Dad wasn't around.

"Don't worry," said the case worker. "He's probably meeting his neighbors. Everyone's very friendly here."

We found him in a little alcove near the elevator, sitting on a bench, talking with two women about ten years younger than himself.

"That's wonderful," he was saying as the case worker and I approached. "We don't have anything like that in Terre Haute—"

"There you are!" I said, maybe too loudly.

"You must be his daughter!" said one of the women. She stood and shook my hand. "My name's Dorothy," she said, "and this is my friend Louise. We've just invited Arthur to join us on an expedition."

Gary, June 25, 2007

Listen in MP3

I used to get calls at three in the morning all the time. Made 'em, too. Didn't think anything of it—3 a.m. was like fucking happy hour. Done with work, call up your friends, figure out what the fuck is going on. Or something like that. Rock 'n roll. Life on the road.

One time I remember I called my buddy Gerry in Seattle. From Amsterdam. I didn't know what the fuck time it was in Seattle. Or Amsterdam. All I knew was he had no fucking excuse for being asleep.

Somebody in Amsterdam must've know how to hack the phones. It's not like we had credit cards or any shit like that.

These days, three in the morning is my quiet time. When things get rolling in the studio. I try to get in there most nights by nine. Maybe ten. Which means eleven. And really, I'm just hanging out until midnight. Looking at what I did the night before. Different angles.

Then something starts to happen. When the rest of the world has gone to sleep.

Which is why I looked at my phone funny when it rang last night.

3:23 a.m.

I picked it up, checked the CallerID. Lisa. Shit. I'd better answer.

We went through the usual dance. Yeah I was awake. Yeah I was in my studio. Yeah I was working. No I didn't mind.

And I didn't mind, really, although the game she was playing pissed the fuck out of me, because I knew, ultimately, she was calling about Sam.

So eventually she gets around to it. She needs me to take Samantha on Thursday night and Friday during the day.

She always calls her "Samantha" when she wants me to do something, as if I need to be reminded what her full name is, as if I'm some stranger who might think she's talking about a boy if she calls her "Sam."

The fucking little insults.

I told her it would have to be Thursday night through Saturday morning—my show was opening Friday night in Chicago. I told her I'd be happy to take Sam with me. It'd be great. Sam would have a blast at the opening.

Lisa had to think about that one.

You really have a show? she said.

Yeah, I said. A real gallery. I sent you a postcard.

I'm sorry, she said, I've been—

It's okay, I said. I know you've got shit going down at the center.

And then I explained to her how it was all legit. How the people who came to see Arbeit Macht Frei in 1983, they've got money now, and they wanna buy the bass player's art. How the gallery was putting me up in a nice hotel. How I'd get 'em to spring for an adjoining room for Sam, no problem. How I'd really, really love to have Sam with me at the reception.

And how I'd keep her away from the crack and the heroin and the whores.

I got a little laugh out of Lisa with that one.

A rueful little fuck of a laugh.

Dorothy, June 19, 2007

Listen in MP3

Yesterday, for the first day of class, Louise insisted on driving me. I told her that I had been driving every day, everywhere I wanted to go except those few places where she was also going, places that didn't seem to me much different at all from all my other destinations, to which she replied that I had obviously been driving much too much, and if I didn't want to have that cast put back on my arm I needed to take a break now and then, and as far as she was concerned the issue was closed, but of course she kept talking, it would be silly for both of us to drive and park our cars right next to each other in that tiny parking lot where it was so easy to hit the dumpster with your taillight when you're pulling back out, and it made more sense for me to be in her car as her navigator, as it was only my wrist which I had broken and not my neck, leaving me fully capable of turning around and looking out the back window when needed. I listened to her and eventually I agreed, because in fact my wrist had been hurting me, it had kept me up most of Sunday night, and I even had begun to wonder if I had been driving too much.

We drove into the park and Louise pointed to the new benches and picnic tables and we talked about how much nicer the park had become in the past few years, how upset we had been four years ago when Professor Jorgensen had moved the Elder Summer Science Series from a classroom at the university to this park where none of us had set foot in years, some of us remembered taking our kids there for the swimming pool, which was the nicest one in the city in the early 1960s-but all that ended a few years later with the riots, not the swimming pool, but our coming there with our kids. We both agreed that even though we had been upset at first, it had all worked out for the best. Louise said that Professor Jorgensen had been very brave to build a nature center in park with so many troubles, and I told her that I didn't think Professor Jorgensen was the one who actually built the nature center, it was that Deveridge girl, Lisa, the attorney's daughter, but Louise said that even if the girl had been the one to do all the work and appear on television all the time, it was obvious that Professor Jorgensen had been in charge, and I decided not to correct her, because sometimes it's better to seem as if you only know what you've read in the papers.

There were only two other cars in the parking lot and Louise recognized one of them, I don't know how she does it, all cars look the same to me. It's those Lutheran ladies, she said, and I told her to shush, she knows very well I don't like it when she labels everybody by what church they go to. They're such flirts, she said, and I knew what she meant, because the Lutheran ladies had only started coming to the Elder Summer Science Series two years ago, after Sonya, Professor Jorgensen's wife, had died, but all I said to Louise was that I hoped she could be ecumenical.

Inside the center the Lutheran ladies were looking at the posters of Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes designed by the high school class, and at the other end of the room, typing on a laptop computer, was a young girl, maybe thirty years old. It must be his new assistant, whispered Louise, those Lutheran ladies don't have a chance, and I didn't say anything but I noticed the wedding band on the girl's finger as she typed.

Then Louise walked right over and introduced herself to the girl. And the girl looked up and smiled and said her name was Melissa, she was an assistant professor in the Biology Department, and gathered us all together, and said that and even though she had never really worked with Professor Jorgensen as he had retired from regular teaching moved away, except for the summers, before she was hired, she was honored to take over a program which he had started, and she was so delighted that we had all decided to continue with the program, it was really a wonderful tribute to a great man's memory.

At which point she looked at our faces and realized that we had all come to the class expecting to find Professor Jorgensen.

None of us had heard the news. Not even me.

Lisa, June 15, 2007

Listen in MP3

I knew the first thing he was going to say.

"Never threaten to resign, dear, unless you really want to leave."

I told him that it wasn't a threat; it was simply a contingency plan as to how I would respond if the board decided to act in certain ways, and that the future behavior of the board was far from a foregone conclusion.

Did he smile when I said that? Did he acknowledge, even for an instant, that his wacko tree-hugger daughter could hold her own in his world—"the world," as he called it, "of practical affairs"—or as I call it, of diplomatic double talk?

The pause on the phone was long enough to permit a smile—but also long enough for a scowl, or an exasperated shake of the head.

"Are you asking me to attempt to influence the future behavior of the board?" he said at last.

"You have one vote," I said.

"And you know I must recuse myself from all personnel matters, due to my close family relationship with the executive director."

That's when I exploded. I think I started off with something like "It isn't a personnel matter, it's a fucking policy matter—"

And then it was as if the calendar had shifted back twenty-five years, and I was standing in the rain at a truck stop at the edge of some swamp that I refused to call a swamp, screaming into a payphone at the Neanderthal who lived just beneath the surface of the suave corporate attorney who was trying to send me money, pedantically explaining to this imbecile how insane it was to stay in school and study environmental science when the battle was raging right now, right here, in this precarious habitat, these fragile wetlands, where the only thing protecting the delicate balance of the ecosystem from the developer's bulldozer was my tent, my sleeping bag, my body. I screamed at him as if I had never learned to work within the system, never written a grant proposal, never sweet-talked my conservative father, discreet counselor to the status quo, into serving on the board of an urban nature center set on the banks of a polluted tributary of an industrial sewer in a crime-ridden park surrounded by ghetto.

I lectured him; I berated him; I insulted him—I reverted completely back to the self-righteousness of the girl who really believed that it was her own courage that stopped those bulldozers, not her privileged status as the telegenic daughter of the white upper-middle-class.

He must have held the phone away from his ear—the way I remember him holding it when the Mayor called—bemused, patient, the tinny speaker just far enough away, so that the words remained intelligible but the anger was reduced to a comic effect—and he would catch my eye, watching him from the door of his study in my pajamas, and he would smile at me, and explain to me the next morning that our Mayor had a terrible temper, but that it was a great honor to receive a call like that, to be entrusted with the delivery of an important message.

Melissa, June 13, 2007

Listen in MP3

It's the little things, sometimes, that make you think your energies are going in the wrong direction.

I really believe in living up to my commitments, and last year I made a commitment: to a three-year term on the board. It was an honor, sort of—at least something that I could put on my C.V.—the sort of third-tier community service that might give you a little extra insurance when the tenure review comes around. But I didn't kid myself—I knew that being secretary of the board of directors of The Tangled Bank Nature Center was worth, at most, about 2% of my tenure, and that every hour of actual work it obligated me to do was essentially a wasted hour.

But you know, that wasn't the problem.

Even when Lisa started talking about resigning, and suddenly the executive committee became a search committee and a damage control committee, and a let's-sit-down-with-a-bottle-of-wine-and- tell-each-other-it's-the-mission-not-Lisa committee (which usually required a second or third bottle of wine, because we all knew that Lisa was the reason we had all gotten involved, after all, Lisa was The Tangled Bank, but now we, as board members, had to dedicate ourselves to the fiction that the center was an ongoing community institution and that Lisa was merely our employee)—even then, it didn't seem much of a burden. I guess once you get into committee mode—when you've spent your afternoon sorting through the pre-defined agendas that your colleagues bring to a Biology Department four-year-plan "brainstorming" session, it almost seems natural to spend an hour on the phone discussing the impact on extant grant applications of the impending departure of the founder, executive director, principal fundraiser, and very visible public face of the Tangled Bank Nature Center.

No, it wasn't that my position on the center's board distracted me from Biology Department business—or even from my own teaching and research. It was that one particular phone call—the phone call where I agreed, wholeheartedly, that the board would keep the center going without Lisa—distracted me from Jake.

Jacob. My son. My sweetheart.

I knew something had been bothering Jake—since Memorial Day he had been acting strangely—not to me, so much, as to his father. Jake's a great kid—very patient and understanding—he knows how hard I work, but he also knows that I make time when we can be together. Sometimes it almost seems as if he keeps an agenda of important things for us to talk about. When we get the chance. The way I keep a list of issues I need to discuss with the department chair.

That's too much to ask of an eight-year-old, isn't it?

Anyway, that night he had something to tell me. I think he had saved it up—waiting patiently until we were alone—until his father had left the house.

"Mom," he said. "Remember the picnic?"

"You mean Memorial Day?" I said. It wasn't a big picnic—we had some people over to grill out—including Lisa and her daughter Samantha. Whatever the conflicts of interest involved, Lisa's still my neighbor. And my friend.

"Yeah," said Jake. "You know how Samantha and I went inside to play chess?"

And that's when the phone rang.

Christopher, June 4, 2007

Listen in MP3

Look, I'm not the kind of guy who has to win all the time. I hear about professional athletes, how they're all afflicted with competitive natures so intense that they turn every moment of their lives into a contest, a life or death contest about who has the best stuff, who got the best deal, whoever can say, "I'm the winner." I mean, I guess that's why we like to watch them on TV—they give it their all. But I've always thought—I'm glad I don't have to hang out with guys like that—guys who won't let a little kid win a game of tic-tac-toe.

Tic-tac-toe might be a bad example. It's such a trivial game—the first player has an absolute win-or-draw strategy—just mark the center box—and the second player has an absolute draw strategy, even if the first player makes his best move—just respond by marking one of the corners.

Everyone knows that, right?

Now that I think of it, tic-tac-toe is a great example.

The point is, when you're playing tic-tac-toe with a kid, and you want the kid to win—you've actually got to try to lose—you've got to deliberately make moves that you know are bad. Sure, it goes against your competitive instincts, but you do it. Apparently this is something that Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Magic Johnson just cannot bring themselves to do—and it's not just the superstars. I know some guys who know some minor leaguers—and they all say the same thing—what separates professional athletes, even the ones at the bottom of the heap—from all ordinary people—is this simple thing—an inability to throw a game to a kid.

And I gotta tell you, I've thrown plenty of games to my kid. Tic-tac-toe, Chinese checkers, Super Mario 64—I've thrown them all. I've let the whiffle ball float past my outstretched hand so I could call it a home run. And not because Jake is one of those whiny, narcissistic kids who throw a tantrum if they don't win every time. He's not. But I want him to taste victory sometimes. It gives me pleasure. Of course, if he starts celebrating too much, well then I turn it up a notch, let him feel what it feels like to lose.

But on the whole, I think I'm pretty well-balanced when it comes to competition.

Which is why it's so weird that I got into such a thing with that neighbor girl. Samantha. Sam's eleven, and Jake is eight—now I'd be kidding you if I didn't say right up front that this is a friendship that I keep a close eye on. One of these days, Sam is going to get into girly stuff, clothes and make-up and gossip and so on, and if everything goes well, she'll lose interest in playing with the scrappy little boy down the block. On the other hand, if she tries to pull Jake into that stuff, then I'll have to intervene.

But right now, she's a tom boy—bigger and stronger than Jake, and a lot more coordinated. If my boy can take what she dishes out, more power to him.