Sputterpub's Blog

The catalyst for Ray’s epiphany is on page 70. “As a case in point,” wrote Peter Coyote in his autobiography, “consider Robert McNamara, sacrificing a generation of youth in Vietnam after concluding that the war was pointless, because he did not want to tarnish the dignity of the nation’s leaders by criticizing them.”

“Damn. I knew that and forgot it,” Ray says to the page. He sips his hot water and finds it lacking, but he recently gave up caffeinated beverages, and he has run out of herbal tea and lemons. It’s Sunday and he doesn’t want to use money, so Ray will make do. He’s accustomed to that.

“… I knew it when it happened and I was alive when he admitted it…” Ray continues to address the book. “But I never saw till now that we’ve been tarnishing their dignities ever since.” He stands up, pushing the metal-framed chair with the back of his legs. “Hey, Sharon,” he calls as he moves to the doorway of his cottage. “Hey, come here a minute.”

Sharon can’t hear him. She’s only about 15 feet away, across the paved patio and inside the back room of her house, windows open. But she’s running the vacuum. Her cousin Ray can hear the machine if he listens, but he’s not paying attention to anything except his thoughts right now. He’s not even aware yet that she hasn’t answered.

Sharon is pushing the do-everything attachment on the old canister machine she took from her grandparents’ home when it was sold. It was probably a good vacuum cleaner when it was new, but it is now pathetic. She has to run its bent bristles repeatedly over her rugs and floors, and even then a loose thread or feather can defeat the machine, successfully clutching the worn fibers of her cheap carpets against the weak pull. Sharon’s vacuum really doesn’t suck.

She has just finished raking the rug with the attachment and turns her attention to the painted flooring by the door to the patio when she spots something pink beneath the frame of the doorway. Hot, unnatural pink. She bends down and pulls at it with her right index fingernail. What emerges is a child’s barrette, one-piece plastic, pink with yellow, designed to hold hardly any hair. It is adorned with a picture of a fuzzy yellow chick pushing a barrow of what look to Sharon like Easter eggs, but she’s not sure, because the picture is only about two centimeters across, and the eggs or whatever are too small for Sharon’s 45 year-old eyes to examine.

That barrette may have been under the doorframe for decades, she tells herself, except the design isn’t that old. With compelling certainty she knows it came from the brown hair of her ex-stepdaughter, and she knows when. She turns off the vacuum with her foot. Her expression becomes pensive. Ray’s voice comes to her.

“Hey, Sharon…c’mere, will you?” She does.

Ray is two years older than Sharon, but lives and acts much younger. He’s 47 and still a starving student (of philosophy and religion). He spends the academic year in Boston, living a spare life off student loans, and he has taken to spending summers with Sharon, since she has taken to offering the cottage rent-free.

They didn’t grow up close; in fact, Sharon can only remember seeing Ray and his three sisters on two occasions when they were young: the death of each shared grandparent. Sharon’s inheritance from them was an old vacuum and a relationship with her cousin Ray.

As it happened, Sharon’s second divorce coincided with Ray’s arrival in Southern California ten years ago. He needed a place to live while working as a substitute third grade teacher, and she needed the bit of extra income his tenancy provided. She didn’t mind the idea of a daddy-aged male around for her son Tim either, but that was before she learned how un-daddy-like her cousin is.

“Hey, Shar…” Sharon interrupts Ray’s next summons by walking through his door. She holds the small barrette in her left hand.

“You know, Ray,” she starts, “if you really want to talk to me, you could get up and…” but he doesn’t let her finish; he rolls over the end of her sentence with “I can’t believe I’ve been so dense! Think about this: 25 years ago? when the assholes kept sending our guys to ‘Nam even though it was already a lost cause? you know? McNamara said they did that to protect the dignity of our so-called leaders. Well, look at what we’re doing now. Tearing into Clinton’s sex life. Pulling the covers off the congressmen, the judges, the mayors. In fact, we’ve been doing that ever since Watergate.” Ray’s red hair has faded to pink over the years, but his face still flushes with excitement.

“Hunh?” Sharon is distracted; she is still thinking about Nancy ten years ago. Her stepdaughter was seven then, two weeks away from ceasing to be her relative by operation of law. Pete brought Nancy by to see Sharon’s new house, and Nancy didn’t quite make it to the back patio before throwing up her breakfast. Pete and Sharon attributed Nancy’s illness to something she ate; only now does Sharon realize that the child’s body was wiser and more honest than the parents. For all the stress in Pete’s and Sharon’s marriage, it was a safer place than the home made by Nancy’s neurotic mother, it was the place where Nancy’s good friend and stepbrother Timmy lived, and it was splintering. Why not vomit? Sharon thinks Nancy lost the pink barrette on her hurried way to be sick.

Both John and Jen annoyed me. I felt impatient with each. But then I’m an impatient person. I think there may be a gene for patience/impatience. But since the trait doesn’t lead to social dysfunction, there’s no scientific grant money to find it, the way there are funds to find the “impulse gene.” I think it’s possible that the (im)patience gene influences our compatibility with others. I think we live at different rates, and we find our friends among our own velocity. Philosophers have spent too much thought on space and not enough on issues of time, duration, velocity. But that’s another monograph.

John and Jen annoyed me and intrigued me. Why did each persist with an insignificant issue, in the face of interlocutor disinterest?

First I tried to answer my own question. I thought John might be doing the Alzheimer’s-dance – he’s 66 and probably that much more concerned about any inability to remember little things. I’ve noticed that concern can produce quite a bit of tenacity about conversational recollection. But Jen couldn’t remember something she never knew – where Paul’s opera seats are – so I couldn’t make dementia issues explain both their behaviors. Could it be simple passive-aggressive stubbornness in response to my attempt to shut them up? Were they additional examples of what I often notice: people who appear to be conversing but who, for reasons of ADD or OCD or some spectral condition, are really just thinking out loud in my presence?

Then I tried to get an answer from another. I described the conversations to my business colleague. “So what do you think?” I asked Robin. “Why did they persist?”

She looked at me across her cluttered desk and announced, “They need to be right.”

***

Maybe. Probably all of the above. John and Jen each like to be authoritative. They’re fixers. They’re rationalists. They try to remember what eludes them. They probably resent my forcefulness.

But Robin’s words produced a resonance in me that I cannot ignore. I hear myself having an opinion on all subjects, and offering it without reservation or consideration. I see myself as a purveyor of unsolicited advice. I recognize myself as a dispenser of unwanted wisdom.

I now want to learn to stop asserting my knowledge or proclaiming my opinion. If I already know it I don’t need to say it.

I want to be quiet. Let some questions lie. Let some others answer. Unless asked. Until certain.

I will not attempt to stop opining within. I’d fail if I tried. I’ll be the Walter Mitty of righteous indignation. Around my soul as I live my days will float a fantastic field of strong, funny, indulgent, silent judgment.

I will learn to be less right.

That’s an affectation, and I hate affectation, but I think affectation has an effect (at which moment it becomes effectation). At least I admit it when I affect. One must be allowed to effectively affect, provided one owns it.

I state, “I want to learn to be wrong.” Here is what I mean:

Two days ago, I lunched with an old acquaintance in a good restaurant. It was John’s turn to buy, so he picked the place and made the reservation. After we were seated and had made our individual decisions about whether to hang our jackets on the old-fashioned wall-hooks or on the backs of our wooden chairs, he started one of those chef conversations.

“There’s a new chef here,” he said. “What’s his name?”John aimed his eyes upward without lifting his chin. “He used to work at that place in Sonoma; oh… what is it called?”

“It doesn’t matter, John.” I tried to knot that conversational thread. “This is San Francisco, there are a thousand great chefs, I don’t know their names so I can’t help you, and the name won’t mean anything to me. I expect we’ll eat good food.”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Oh, you know who I mean…” he prompted as he looked at me shaking my head in disagreement. “He started that place…”

***

Later the same afternoon, I returned a telephone call from a business friend. Jen regularly attends opera, symphony and ballet performances. I don’t; at age 47, my friend Paul had just taken me to my first opera the weekend before. She asked me how I liked it.

I said, “The opera. Oh boy. I read the review beforehand and went into it understanding that the performance was not considered admirable. I agreed with that opinion. But what did I know? I didn’t realize that the director reworked all the chorus parts and transformed the production. I was amazed that Paul found it wonderful. He applauded with his arms out, hands clapping up and down. It reminded me of a trained seal. I was also reminded of the description of a Navajo sweat lodge ceremony: after I adjusted to the confinement of the narrow seat, the restriction of my legs and feet in small uncrossable space, the beading of sweat on my face (around my hairline, in the creases beneath my eyes and beside my nose), the moistness of my hands as I tried (so discreetly) to wipe that face, after I accepted all that and slowed down to where I could appreciate the six molecules of cool air convecting about me, I believe I achieved a minor trance state which enabled me to tolerate and partially enjoy the experience.”

“You were too warm?” Jen asked, unnecessarily I thought.

“Oh, yeah. Me and everyone else. Apparently the renovated opera house is already famous for abysmal ventilation (actually, an abyss is probably better ventilated).”

“Where were you sitting?”

“I don’t know what it’s called. Third row something, not down on the bottom.”

“Grand tier?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Balcony?”

“Jen. I don’t know. Paul has had season tickets for 20 years now. I think we can count on him to have done as well for himself as he could. They’re respectable seats.”

“Must be balcony.” There was no deflecting her.