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OPENING THE CAN OF WORMS (Chapter 6 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 6 

There came a heavy snow with a howling wind during my wakeful night.  Early the next morning I was exhausted, feeling like a dog left squished and bloodied to die by the side of the road, but while I was brushing snow off the windshield of my truck a swarm of gray birds suddenly rose in the air. All at once they changed direction, and in that split second the black of their bellies became a dark cluster in the sky over all the whiteness of snow below.  It seemed like a positive omen.  It seemed like looking God in the eye.

Oh, please, let it go well with Sally.

 I felt nervous, as usual when Sally and I were going to be together, since almost always we are on opposite sides of an argument.  We hadn't communicated in other than a trivial manner for years, though I've tried to breach the barriers and sometimes she has, too.  Many times we have renewed what can only be seen as a bad bargain.   It’s a problem between us that I must be at least partially responsible for—-even though the mote in my eye only allows me to see her very apparent faults and none of my own.  But no doubt about it, it takes two to tango.

Sally and two of her children lived in one spacious wing of an enormous antebellum house belonging to a wealthy old woman, Mrs. Lujan, who suffered with Parkinson's disease and was barely this side of comatose most of the time.  Sally was responsible for overseeing the woman’s care and managing her affairs, scheduling the many nurses and aides who were on round-the-clock duty.

Justin, Sally’s eight-year-old fatherless son that now was in deep doo-doo, lived there permanently with her, but his older brother, Brandon, stayed with his father, Val, on weekdays and was only with Sally and Justin after school on Fridays until school Monday mornings.  Her two older children, Jock and Katie, had lived for years with their father, Murry, in Pueblo, several hours away.  So you see there were three fathers, four children.

At Mrs. Lujan’s I parked among stiff icy weeds on the narrow roadside space in front of the elegant Victorian mansion.  I couldn’t chance driving up the snow-packed sloping driveway that right now could easily double as a toboggan run. Kicking a quantity of wet fluffy snow out of the way in order to open the icicle-laced wrought iron gate, I trudged around dead-on-the-vine lilac bushes to the back of the building through the patio.  I left a deep path in the fresh snow while sloshing my way to the sliding glass kitchen doors.

Where will this morning's conversation lead?

As she came to the door the sun shone fully on her face through the wall of glass, emphasizing her marvelous bone structure with a high wide forehead, prominent cheekbones, her chin nicely rounded.  She appeared pale and haggard, especially so because she was framed by a colorful riot of purple violets and pink azaleas growing inside where the sun penetrated through the glass doors.  All was intensely bright as the morning sun reflected off the fresh snow, dazzling as it bounced in all directions.

Under stress, as she obviously was, and totally devoid of make-up, still she was an elegant woman with whom I had donated DNA that gave her dark Irish features, but I have no idea where her deep dimples came from. She was stylishly thin, but not anorexic like when she was snorting all that cocaine.  Where the sun shown in through the glass doors it looked like diamonds were sparkling on her abundant curly black hair.  She wore it dramatically pulled to one side and fastened with a plain silver barrette; it fell in a graceful cascade over her shoulder.  Her eyes, though right then red and swollen from crying, are the color of those blue crayons that as a child I always used when coloring the sky.  Sometimes I’ve seen dragonflies that same shade of blue, also the blossoms of the Forget-me-nots I’d had in my garden the summer before.

We hugged each other briefly--more a formality, an old family ritual, than a warm embrace--then with shaking hands she poured us each a cup of coffee before she sat down opposite me at the Formica kitchen table. 

We were both very tense.  After only a minute I asked, "What's going on with Justin?  What’s been going on that you say I don't know?"

She lit a cigarette, then studied it for a few seconds before she took a big drag and exhaled a huge storm cloud.

"The problem isn't just that Justin was uncontrollable at school yesterday," she told me.  I was expecting her to begin an assemblage of evasions, but after another long pause she looked directly into my eyes and rapped off, sprinting toward the end of the sentence in a shrill voice: "Mama, recently I surprised Justin and Brandon engaging in sex together."

"What? Engaging? ‘Engaging’ in sex you say?’  That’s a funny way to put it. So? What kids haven't?"

I didn't feel surprised about any kind of the boys’ sexual shenanigans, however I was concerned that Sally was obviously so very distressed.  What I was apprehensive about was what was going to happen with Justin after the recent trouble at school.

I warily asked, "What were they doing?  How did you handle it?"

"They were on the bed together in their room.  I walked in unexpectedly and they both jumped up and tried to hide it, but I had seen."  

"Well, what did you see?"

"They were partly under the covers, but I saw that their pants were down and they had their mouths on each other.  They were engaging in sex!"

"Engaging, huh? You mean they were sucking each other’s cocks?”

“Yes.”

“Well!  It's not such a big deal, Honey. Don’t you know all kids screw around? I did and I’m sure you did, too.  What did you say to them?"

"I didn’t say anything.  I was shocked, of course, and they knew it."  Her lips were clasped in a straight line as she looked daggers of displeasure at my response.

 One dimple flashed as she blew on her coffee to cool it before she spoke again.  "I didn't know how to handle it.  They knew that I saw what they were doing and that I was upset, even though I didn’t say a word about it--not one word, Mama.  I was so stunned.  There wasn’t a peep out of them, either.  They immediately got dressed, grabbed their books and left lickety-split for school.  They left the house, without breakfast, without further ado, all of us avoiding eye contact.

“After they were gone skiddle-dee-dee and I had a chance to recover from the shock, I phoned for an appointment at the Rape Crisis Center, then made sure one of Mrs. Lujan's nurses would stay here at the house while I went to get advice."

"Advice?  Rape Crisis?  Why there?  What does rape have to do with it? Why did you call them?  What advice did they give you?"

Sally's brow furrowed in anguish as she answered.  "The psychologist said it was necessary to talk to the people at the State Child Abuse Division.  They said there was case history evidence that pedophiles begin this way, that the boys could grow up to be pedophiles, that they must immediately have the seriousness impressed upon them and get intensive therapy."

"Oh, come on, Sally, that’s crap."  I felt exasperated.  Again she had the bureaucrats involved.  The authorities, psychiatry, and the Catholic Church are her staples.  "Lots of children, if not all children, experiment with sex.  You shouldn't feel too concerned about the sexual acting out, though of course it should be curbed.  Tell the boys it’s okay to masturbate if they want, but alone, it must be a private thing.  Explain incest—that’s a giant taboo, though I doubt there's a man alive who didn't experiment with siblings and other kids when he was young.  Maybe no woman alive, either.

“I remember once when you and the little neighbor boy had the door locked to the bedroom and I suspicioned you were drawing on the walls with crayons or some such deviltry, but you opened the door and told me ‘It’s just a boy/girl thing,’ so I closed the door and left.  Remember?  So what if they find most pedophiles were farting around with sex as children?   Of course it’s in their case histories.  It’s in the case history of every human being on the planet who isn’t totally brain dead."

"The psychologists wouldn't agree with you."

"Look, Sugar. I don't give a tinker's dam if these educated imbeciles agree with what I think about sex or not.  When I was a little girl, all the neighborhood kids would get together and `show' themselves,” I confessed.  “Often we made fumbling attempts at missionary position intercourse, though I recall playing with some kids when we thought intercourse was standing back to back, pulling our buttocks apart and rubbing anuses."

"Maybe that's why you're so screwed up," she lashed out immediately, without even the time it would take to blink.

"Being screwed up seems to be a universal imperative," I lashed out right back, without delay, responding with the animosity that I usually managed to repress. 

We looked at one another for a drawn out moment of reciprocal surveillance.  After a few deep breaths I made an attempt to lighten things up a bit: “I wonder if being screwed up runs in our family, like hemophilia.”

She didn’t laugh at my little joke.  We sat quietly for a few more minutes like a mute pair of bookends. Sally had the stub of her thumbnail in her mouth, gnawing at it furiously. 

Finally she spoke in a low voice, her tone even, the cadence as if she were reciting a grocery list. "The therapist told me I should talk to Brandon's father right away, so I went over to his house.  Val wasn't too upset about it at the time.  He said about the same things you're telling me.  But he phoned me back late that night after he had talked to Brandon and his other kids.”

After taking a gulp of air, she sobbed: “He found out that not only Brandon, but Val's wife's son--Brandon's older step-brother--had been molesting their younger half-brother and sister."

Sally broke into tears.  Deep sobs shook her bent-over body. I went to where she was seated and put my arms around her, sharing her pain.  For a minute it was as if again she were still my darling little girl, bruised from a fall off of her tricycle.

I tried to comfort her.  "Oh, Honey, sex play is more contagious than Chicken Pox.  It's the measles of mankind.  It's good this has come out.  These kids need more wholesome activities, more attention, more supervision, some sanity in their lives.  It's good they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar—so to speak.  Now things can get better.  It's not the end of the world.  Be glad it's come out.  This should take care of the problem, now that you and Val know and can give the kids some interesting substitutes—-cut out the many hours they spend alone with each other without supervision.  And for Christ’s sake, stop those violent video games."

Though, I must admit-- I’ve never found any substitute as interesting as sex.

"You still don't understand," Sally looked up at me with her tearful blue eyes.  Sunlight sparkled rainbows on her thick wet eyelashes.  "Now both Brandon and Justin are on probation, so with Justin acting up at school it may be out of my hands what happens next with him.  I may have nothing to say about it."

"No! What!  Both? On probation!  What happened to put them on probation?"

"That was what happened after I talked to the psychologist at Rape Crisis Center," Sally said between racking sobs.  "I thought probation was a good idea when she recommended it.  There would be free therapy provided, as well as. . .”

“Hey, Sweetie.  Dog shit is free, too.”

 “. . . as well as giving me back-up support from a probation officer.  I felt the boys would have to behave me that way--it would give me more muscle, more clout, so to speak.  But now, by making trouble at school Justin has broken probation.  Now it's in the hands of the Children's Court."

                "Oh! No! NO!"  I collapsed back in my chair.  "He and Brandon screwing around has nothing at all to do with Justin's fits of anger.  It’s with you he’s angry.  Justin is expressing the fury he feels but always suppresses. This is just too stupid.  I can't believe it."

"Believe it," Sally said flatly, blowing her nose and dabbing at her eyes.

"So you're afraid there may be no choice other than Justin being kept again in Children's Hospital?  It isn't what you think is best?  What you think should happen?"

"I think it may be for the best.  These people are professionals.  They know what to do about cases like Justin."

"No, they don't, Sally."  I took her hand in mine and looked earnestly into her still-tearing eyes.  "They haven't known what to do, or Justin wouldn't be in a psychiatric hospital right now.  Don't accept everything these people tell you as if it were engraved in the UN Charter. 

"Did you know there are cultures where they masturbate infants to relieve colic?  Cultures where children are taught lovemaking by the elders of the tribe?  Margaret Mead said the Trobriand islanders were not monogamous like geese; there were no marriage ceremonies; they grew up open and free with sex.   Clitorectomies are still performed in the world today.  I knew an African artist it had been done to.  As horrible that seems to us, she seemed happy and was productive, a loving mother with two children.  She didn’t know what she's missing, of course; it's like a neutered dog is a happy pet.  There’s a whole gamut of sexual practices. 

“Honey, we certainly must honor our society's mores and taboos, but our sexual patterns aren't written by the finger of God. An act that brings admiration in one society will get you locked up in another.”

"That's not what the Church teaches," Sally said, shaking her curls vigorously.  "What you say happens with a bunch of heathens doesn't make it right."

“Great God, Sally.  Don’t you realize the Catholic Church itself is a hot bed of sexual perversion?  Especially man-boy.  Homosexuality is rampant there, too.” 

“You think homosexuality is okay, but you have a hard-on against the Catholic Church.”

"Well, that may be true, but clothes make the man, they say.  I think many of those priests are drag queens, prancing around with their velvet capes and fancy head dresses even as they condemn homosexuality. It’s a baby step from Boy Scout uniforms to those of the Green Berets--all those dudes that go in big for patriotism and medals. Those army blokes don’t prance around in velvet robes and jeweled crowns like the priests do in their performances of their liturgy, still the army has lots of their own rituals, like the medals they pass out, like the way they salute each other in the hierarchies they create: General, Colonel, Lieutenant, Sargent, down to the lowly Private First Class.  From the name to the thing itself is but a step.  It’s ludicrous how they line up all together in a row to march and shoot their guns.   Their group initiations, ceremonial induction, flags, oaths. . .”

What in the world am I talking about.

Take a breath. 

          “Let's drop this side issue,” I said in a calmer voice. “The point is Justin should live with Stacey, not be locked up in the hospital.  I know you truly love Justin and would miss him, still realize it’s like Einstein said, ‘You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.’  Cut the kid loose.  Unleash him from the wheels of your karma.  It's you he's so pissed about.  Surely if this time you would support his living with Stacey, the authorities can be convinced.  Brandon would do well there, too, if Val would ever agree."

"No way," Sally said emphatically, jerking her hand from under mine.

I continued begging: "Justin is always so good with her.  It would be a fresh start for him living there where no one would know of all the trouble he's had.  He'd be in a new school, have new friends, a new beginning.  He’d have a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card."

"Mama, you've said this so many times.  You know," she said to me just as earnestly as I had spoken to her, "there's no way I would let him live with Stacey.  I've refused before and I refuse again--especially since she's moved to Florida."

"Well, then, how about his living with me?  I can stay in Boulder if it's necessary."

"We won't even discuss it.”

What can we discuss?

(Written by Louise Pickering Scott)

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A SLOUGH OF DESPAIR (Chapter 5 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 5

During the day I left messages on Sally's answering machine.  All that cold, gray day at Melanie’s house the phone remained silent.  The upstairs windows looked out on a garden dead from the winter. There wasn't any sense in more packing until I knew when, indeed if, I would be leaving.  Perhaps I would need to be packing to rent a place in town.  There was nothing to do all day but wring my fingers and count on my worry beads about what was happening with Justin and to wait for the phone to ring.

Waiting is. . .

Melanie had radically decorated the upstairs guestroom with walls painted shocking pink, using bright pumpkin orange as accent on the silk pillows and curtains.  The bedside lamps had purple pleated shades that matched the purple frames on several ultra-dimensional Escher prints; the prints made me think of a Mobius strip--only a person versed in the unified field theory could understand Escher’s art: people seeming to go from level to level never succeeding.  The room was eccentrically decorated, but it worked.  Sliding glass doors led to a south-facing balcony. The other walls had large windows that gave a splendid view of the hills beyond that were speckled with dark green pine over a leftover dusting of snow. The sky was a crystalline blue though there was another storm approaching.  It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

I spent the day lethargically lounging around Melanie's spacious upstairs guestroom.  Comfy and cozy, swaddled with a soft down comforter around my shoulders like I was in a cocoon.  On one shelf of the bookcase was a small framed photograph taken at a luncheon barbecue that Sally had given in her lovely garden one sunny afternoon years ago; way before all this current trouble with Justin, way before the Saudi Arabians destroyed the World Trade Center and gave George Bush and Cheney an excuse to invade Afghanistan.

Melanie, then late-forties, looked radiant with her shapely arms and ample bosom somewhat exposed.  The sunshine was bouncing off her glorious red hair.  She was cuddling Justin on her lap--at that time he was an angelic cherub of six months or so.  Preschooler Brandon, seen in profile in the background, was just stepping into one of those cheap round Doughboy wading pools that they sold at K-Mart. 

My three sumptuous daughters--Sally, Stacey and Marta--were standing behind my chair with their arms around one another. We were all smiling in the beauty of our youth—even I looked good.  I never have felt I was good-looking except when I see myself in a photo taken at some previous year. Then I was pretty--not beautiful--but I am glad I didn’t have to deal with buck teeth, cross eyes, a harelip, jug ears, or an oversized schnoz. 

Melanie is my long time best friend from forever and shares a lot of love with my family, especially fulfilling for her since she never had children of her own.  She has a genuine kindness that transcends the social distinctions of her Southern upper-class background; she’s a natural born democrat.

She was proud of her family, especially a great-grandfather who was said by some to have been a successful shipping entrepreneur and by others to have been a rapacious pirate or a slave trader.  She never knew which version was true, but money in her family had trickled down from him through the next generations, spendthrifts one and all, until now nothing was left in the coffers for Melanie.  She did all right for herself anyway, owning a trendy clothing store that catered to the stylistic consumerism of the designer-jeans crowd.  She had the Midas touch. Her opulent boutique, aptly named Daddy’s Money, mainly catered to trust-fund college students.  It had been Daddy’s money, her inheritance, that had set her up in the business and paid for her magnificent home.

 The day passed slowly.  I was feeling as out of synch as the Escher prints that showed dozens of  people going up and down lots of stairs to no avail.  Up stairs and down stairs, up and down, although there was no up or down to the various floors where the steps led.  I could identify with those people.  Like them, I was going nowhere, waiting for God knew what, with nothing to do that would matter.  Right then it seemed as if my life was on fast-forward and re-wind at the same time.

  By changing the present we couldn't bend the past, we couldn't change the history that had carried us inexorably to today with this plot unfolding in a way most definitely not to my liking.  Never mind how large a part of the mess I must have created-- undoubtedly so.  The past was the prologue.

 Where was Glenda the Good with her magic wand?  Where’s a Yellow Brick Road? I wished for a script change, one with a prancing white horse waiting for me to climb upon its back and charge against the evils occurring in the world—evils occurring right in my own back yard--actually in what would have been my back yard if I still had one. And actually, I would have preferred to have it be a tall handsome hero wearing a Stetson, like Vincente Fernandez, who could ride up on his stallion to sing me a song and save us all.

There have been so many problems with Sally during the years that I've learned to live in spite of the agony, immunized against the pain.  Sorrow no longer flowed; it was coagulated, but each time I thought of Justin--the poor little bugger, probably again locked up in that sterile hospital--my constraint would burst like a dam and flood me with tears.  Finally I had hiccups, the hiccups turned into deep breaths, and then I was only aware of a deathly vacancy as minutes ate into the day.

Not knowing how else to handle my anxiety, I did a dynamite job of cleaning Melanie's elegant house, moving and polishing heavy antique furniture and even cleaning behind the refrigerator.  Mercifully, the edge of my misery was rusted a little by the housework routine while I was listening to Melanie’s collection of Mozart. To stop the futile pondering I concocted an eggplant Parmesan using leftover spaghetti sauce.  No Parmesan cheese, so I substituted ricotta and a nub of dried up Swiss I found.  

***

I was sprawled on the white leather couch, keeping my feet well off of it, staring blankly out the window at the gathering of sullen black clouds beyond, watching the storm clouds’ indigo rim stretching out to suck down and swallow the red sun, when Melanie's Subaru roared its way up the drive. 

Her cheeks and snub nose were rosy from the cold, her flaming red hair was lightly sprinkled with snow as she came tromping in juggling loaded market bags and bundles. Melanie is small but dynamic; a Mighty Mouse, Brandon once said. 

"Great God, Polly,” she drawled as she entered. “I declare! You look a mess!  Your eyes are puffed out like a bullfrog's.  What's the matter, Girl?  Are you sick?"  Her voice was particularly Southern as it is when she feels any strong emotion or drinks too much booze.  She always says ‘aaahnt’ and ‘aaahfter’ like the good Southern Belle she was raised to be.  She has a slight lisp whereby she holds on to the constants and slides over the vowels.

 In one motion she dropped her purse and grocery bags on the floor as she tossed her fur-lined coat and bright yellow scarf on top of the big seaman’s chest.

“Big problem with my grandson,” I told her.

“A big problem?  It must be something with Justin.  It can’t be with Brandon.”

"No.  Never a problem with Brandon.  But there is a heavy-duty mess with Justin.   Sally says he threw a tantrum at school.  A regular conniption fit.  The cops came and handcuffed him and took him away.”

“What?  Police? Trouble at school?”

“That's all I know.  I'm waiting for Sally to call with more information about what occurred."

“What?  Goodness Gracious! Cops?  Handcuffs?

“Yes,” I said. “The police handcuffed him.”

“A little squirt like him?  Handcuffed? You gotta be kidding.  He's spunky okay, rambunctious for sure, but handcuffs!   That's unbelievable. That's dreadful, atrocious, too barbaric," Melanie declared, astonished.  “Cops, eh?  They took him?  Where did they take our boisterous little lad?  Handcuffed like a criminal, he was?  Gee Whilikers! They took him to the hoosegow, you say?”

“No, I don’t think they took him to jail, but I think he’s back to the Children’s Psychiatric Hospital in Denver.” 

"Eh?  To the Funny Farm?  Again?"

"Again.  Sally says there’s a lot going on that I don’t know about.  No surprise that."

She stood there quietly for a few minutes, and then gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze before she picked up the bags of groceries, went to the kitchen and returned with two strong gin and tonics.  Mine must have been at least a double.  She placed the glasses on the coffee table as I scrunched and pulled my knees up to make room for her at my side.  She collapsed like a deflated balloon, then kicked off her snow boots and sprawled arms akimbo with her legs splayed straight out.  Melanie seldom relaxes, but when she does, she goes all the way.  There are no holds barred with anything she does.

"Well I’ll be jiggered. I thought things were going well with Sally and the kids,” she said, “now that she’s no longer being a hot floozy exotic dancer; no longer Pussy Galore.  But I guess you don’t make over a life the way you sew on a loose button.”

"I also thought things were better until a month or so ago when I had the boys sleep over at my place.  She was supposed to pick them up early the next morning.  She didn't come for them as expected, nor did she answer the phone, so I was worried.  Late that afternoon when I took the boys home she was laying on the sofa in her bedroom, the room dark with the curtains drawn--most gloomy.  I could only rouse her enough that she looked at me with lackluster eyes and mumbled that she had a migraine.

“I don't know, Melanie.  At the time I accepted that it was a migraine and whatever she'd taken to knock herself out with was necessary for the pain, but I don't know.  Maybe it was a hangover or maybe she was on downers again.  Drugs.

“I didn't know what to do.  I don’t know what to do now. I never know what to do. The boys had headed straight to their room and were gleefully murdering each other by proxy on one of those violent video games. One of Mrs. Lujan’s nurses was there in the house, so I left."

Melanie’s brow was furrowed as she asked: "But except for that, you thought she was doing well?"

"Yes, I've thought things were much better, that she finally had both oars in the water. She said that on weekends she’s been taking the boys to a motel where there's a heated pool.  She said she and the kids swim, go to Mass, then to the movies before eating at McDonald's or having pizza.  It's a big improvement over keeping them quiet at Mrs. Lujan's."

"Golly! It must cost her a fortune to do that, eh?  Why doesn't she get a different job and rent her own place?”

"Of course,” I sniveled. “Obviously.  But it's her business, not mine.  I don’t deserve any gold star for motherhood; much of Sally’s problems can be laid right at my door.  Mea culpa.  Anyway--going away with the boys on weekends is a solution--of sorts.  Without paying any rent, she easily earns enough taking care of Mrs. Lujan’s affairs to pay for it since she's stopped spending money for booze and drugs."

"If she's stopped," Melanie said, unconvinced.

"I've believed so."

"Well, Girl, do you believe it now?”

“I don't know.   I just don't know."

There was nothing more to say.  We’ve been friends since Jesus wore diapers so we don’t need a lot of conversation.  During the Beatnik era we had cemented a friendship as we spent hours drinking coffee or wine while we discussed politics, styles, books by Sartre, Camus, the other existentialist writers.  We wore black turtleneck sweaters as we listened to Billie Holiday and Miles Davis, told our fortunes with Tarot cards and the I Ching.  One of the nicest parts about a good friend is that when you don't know what you're doing, there’s at least a chance someone else does.  It was cathartic to talk it over, but nothing was solved.

We sat in silence as the sun briefly flashed through a break between the approaching ominous low-lying heavy black snow clouds.  The very noise of our breathing seemed a violation of the silence.

***

  Melanie was peeling potatoes and I was chopping leeks when finally Sally phoned.

“Well, Mama, they took Justin to Children's Hospital in Denver again," she mumbled.  "I can't go to see him for a couple of days--hospital rules for new admittees.”

“Not even you, his mother?”

“Not even me.  But Mama, you and I need to talk.  You don't have any idea about how things are. No idea at all.  Would you come over for breakfast in the morning?  There's a lot I need to tell you.  There's a lot you need to know."

 "Of course.  I'll be there by eight with the whole day free and will help in any way I can.  Is there any chance you can get Justin released right away?"

My hopes were up, maybe there could be a rewind.  Maybe this time we could arrange for Justin to live with his Aunt Stacey. Maybe we could right away get the paperwork done for whatever releases the hospital might need, undo the inevitable red tape that’s always strangling everyone in corporate bureaucracy.

"We'll talk about that and a whole lot more in the morning, Mama.  There’s much you need to know, but right now I'm too tired and discouraged to go into it.  I’m collapsing with fatigue.”  Her voice sounded wasted—pooped--ready to drop.  She said she still had to pick up Mrs. Lujan's medications and do payroll for the nurses before she could go to bed.  “We'll talk tomorrow and I’ll explain it all,” she promised.  “You’ll understand then.  See you at eight.”

“Good night.  And Sally, you know things will get better.  All is not lost."

“Well, Mama, if all is not lost, I’d like to know where the hell is it.”

Written by Louise Pickering Scott

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A DIRE SITUATION (Chapter 4 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 4

With Melanie's phone insistently ringing inside the house, I skipped over a stack of mixing bowls, bounded out of the garage, up the steps and across the porch, managing not to trip on Melanie’s Persian cat.  I dashed through the living room and caught the phone on the sixth or seventh ring.

"Mama, it’s Sally."

"Well, Hi, Honeybunch,” I wheezed, slithering onto Melanie’s brand new leather couch--keeping my feet well off the edge of the white upholstery--catching my breath and settling in for an uncomfortable chat.

It was such a tangled skein of love with Sally, my oldest child.  I was always afraid a mundane conversation could veer off into a confrontational path that would make matters worse.  Talking with her usually felt like wading into icy water that was over my head, where each step could bring a downfall. With her schizophrenia it’s been catastrophe after catastrophe through many years, though she had been an exemplary child—always a straight A student, creative, alert, lots of friends.  My feelings for her stack up from the adorable dimpled infant on my breast, to a Brownie Scout selling cookies, a young bride and mother, to her more recent times as a hustler—as a coke whore.

A Bedlamite.  She’s not psychotic, at least I don’t think so.  But it was Looney Toons to deal with her.   I understood schizophrenics may not be able to differentiate between the external world’s circumstances and what their minds perceive in the everyday reality most of us live within--though that reality, too, maybe illusory. Other than consensus for mundane things, like whether it’s night or day, black or white, we each perceive differently.  Consider animals’ perceptions:  A dog smells a cat several blocks away; insects manage to find each other though separated for miles. If we could hear everything making noise in our radius, we’d go deaf.

However.

I took a long deep breath. “I’m so glad you phoned. I've been trying for several days to get in touch.  I want to see you and the boys, today if possible.  Kee-rist!  It’s cold enough to freeze the devil’s gonads, but I’ll be ready to truck on down the road just as soon as the fury of this forecasted storm passes.  I’m packing now, how are you?”

"Not so good," she said in a voice that sounded like the ghost in Hamlet. I heard the note of hysteria behind it.  "They just phoned me from the school.  Justin threw another tantrum and neither of the teachers could control him.”

“What?  What did he do? What happened?” 

“They have the police there.”

"What?  Police? At the school? What the. . .What happened?"

“I don’t know what started it,” she sobbed.  “He raised quite a ruckus, throwing papers all over the place; he spit at one teacher, they said, then bit and kicked the assistant in the shins.”

“Oh shit! That’s awful!  And how did cops get involved?”

“The teachers called the police. The cops put him in handcuffs."

"Cops! Handcuffs! What the fuck! The police put Justin in handcuffs? You mean he’s shackled? Manacled! Holy Mackerel! Is this what happened?"

"Yes. They just phoned me."

"Oh! My God!  That really sucks! Why aren't you at the school right now?  Why haven’t you gone to get him?"

"They told me to wait.  There's nothing I can do right now.”

"Well then, I’ll go get him,” I said as I struggled up from the couch heading for my purse and car keys, trailing the phone’s long cord behind me.  “I can't believe the teachers didn't just twist his arm behind his back.  Really stupid of them to call the cops!  What bloody idiots."

"Well,” Sally said in an abrupt tone, “the teachers aren't allowed to hit the children."

"Crap, Sally.  I'm not talking about hitting our incipient Mike Tyson, only restraining him--just grabbing an arm behind him or grabbing a tight hold of one ear.  How can it be possible that two fully-grown teachers can't control a seven-year-old boy, no matter how obstreperous he might be?  And calling in the police!  Holy cow!  Handcuffing a child!  Justin must be terrified.

“I’ll go calm him down.  But we don’t need to waste time talking.  I'll go get the problem child right now."

"No, Mama, they won't release him to you.  They won't even let you see him; not even me, his mother.  They told me to wait until they phone.  Anyway, if the teachers and police can't control him, there's no way you’d be able to do so."

"Come on, Sally! That’s humbug.  I certainly can.  I’m on my way.  Right now! At least I can be there to give him some sort of moral support.  Holy Moly! Handcuffs!  That’s terrible.”

"NO!”  She screamed so loud it hurt my ear, “You can’t go.”

“I’m on my way. . . ”

“NO!  It's gone past that point.  I think they may take him to Children's Psychiatric Hospital.  Chances are they've even left the school by now."  I was so shocked I couldn’t think of a word to say. After her initial outburst she was quiet, but I kept the phone’s receiver away from my ear just the same.  

When she again spoke her lowered tone betrayed no emotion; it sounded as if she simply stated a fact, such as what day of the week it was.  I suddenly realized that she’d known even before she called me that the child was going to be sent to the psychiatric hospital again.

"Heaven forbid!” I exploded.  “Putting him in that hospital is sure to make things worse! No way! Absolutely not! We've absolutely got to prevent it! What can we do? What can we do?"

Sally was quiet for a minute, then gave a long sigh.  "Well, Mama, no matter what you or I think about it, they will do what they think best.  Laws are laws; rules are rules.”

"And shit is shit! Sally, for Christ's sake!  Laws are rules that sometimes must be broken. They don’t know anything about Justin’s problems, his fears.  Don’t take a defeatist attitude.”

Her voice changed to somber--like an old style preacher orating from the pulpit the way Dylan Thomas sounded reading his poetry. “My attitude isn’t defeatist.  I’m very much a realist and it’s me in touch with the school and the cops.” 

The silence was deafening.  Then in a more pleasant voice she spoke. "Look, Mama.  There's a whole lot I haven't told you.  It isn’t just that Justin made a scene at school.  You have absolutely no idea at all about what’s been happening.  But I can’t get into it with you now.  I'll call you back when I hear what they're going to do," she said with finality.

There was a click.

Sally had hung up.  I stood there dumbfounded, holding the dead line, raking my brains trying to think of something to do, some way to make things better.  For years I had kept hoping a day would come when all the dots would be connected and a clean picture would appear so I would know what to do about the dire situation.  What to do about Sally.

And now what is it I don’t know?

***

This was Act II for Justin to be in the psychiatric hospital.  A year earlier my other daughters and I had tried our best to prevent his being sent there. That was after he had attacked Sally, but that’s all we knew.  We didn’t know whether it had been Sally that called the authorities or if the call was made by one of Mrs. Lujan’s nurses-- from the house where Sally both worked and lived.  She had a roomy wing at Mrs. Lujan’s luxurious house where she stayed with Justin and Brandon, his older brother.

We had pleaded that Justin could stay with his aunt Stacey instead of the hospital, but she wouldn’t talk to us at all.  She kept telling us to “Bugger off!”  In desperation Marta got us together in some government office with authorities that dealt with child custody or abuse.  Marta, Stacey and I sat around a conference room table twiddling our thumbs until Sally came in with her long legged loping gait closely followed by two male and two female bureaucrats. She seemed to be part of the chummy group.

It is Sally, not Justin, who is crazy we told the people.  We emphasized how Sally had serious drug addictions, how she had been several times in psychiatric wards, but always denied she had any problems.  I quoted when she had told me: “I’m not crazy.  I only go to the psychiatric wards knowing there I could get drugs.”  As if this represented sanity. 

Stacey pleaded that Justin could live with her instead of being sent to the psychiatric hospital. 

The younger women responded that Sally claimed that although she had allowed Stacey to babysit on occasion, now Stacey wanted to take Justin with her on her up-coming move to Florida.  That she was trying to steal the boy.

‘Yes,” Stacey said. “I would like to take Justin with me when I move. But not steal him.  Right here and now I want to take care of the boy instead of his being hospitalized.  He has often stayed with me when Sally was drunk or otherwise out of commission.  Always he’s been well behaved and seems to feel privileged to be the big kid with my two daughters.  He’s an imaginative leader; the neighborhood children follow him in the games he comes up with.”

The gray-haired woman at the end of the conference table kept pursing her lips in a tight straight line, pushing her eyebrows together and scowling. She commented that Sally didn’t appear to be drugged or drunk.  “Quite the contrary,” she said. In her voice I felt accusation, as if I were a bad mother and now was talking bad about my dear daughter.

Lady, you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.

These yahoos were impressed by Sally’s well-mannered presence and proper appearance, the same qualities I’ve always been so proud of with her.  She presented herself as a paragon of virtue with such decorum though her demeanor was subtly coquettish when she flashed her dimples and flounced her abundant black curls.  She’s an excellent actress; we had nicknamed her Tallulah when she was little.

 She kept her beautiful baby blue eyes focused right on the middle-aged pot-bellied man, undoubtedly the head honcho, whose hair combed to one side still didn’t cover his baldness nor his fat hairy ear lobes. He burped and I wondered if he’d had a gastric bypass.

He was so smitten with her that the officious nit-wit simply dismissed our concerns—he and his cronies wouldn’t even listen to us.

Sally was out of the room before any of us could push our chairs out from the table.  Stacey, Marta and I left, exceedingly despondent.  We were stuck with a big sack of excrement.

With Sally adamantly opposed and supported by the law, in the face of her perversity there was nothing we could do then. There was probably nothing we could do now.  She held the poker hand.

She had the say-so with the boys unless we could take her to court to prove her an unfit mother, and what an ugly business that would be, besides requiring plenty of time and money for lawyers. These days family matters are resolved through highly paid surrogates-- the attorneys and establishment bureaucrats we’d tried to deal with.  We were severely hindered by those fuckers.

Sally’s sons were in jeopardy and it wasn't just that Sally couldn't see the solutions; she couldn't see the problems.  She couldn’t tell shit from Shinola.

And now what is it I don’t know?

***

It had been terrible for Justin when the little tyke was locked up at the hospital before.  He came out heavily armored with hard sharp edges, dosed on Ritalin or some other prescription drug.  We couldn't let him spend another two months with screwed up kids in that cold impersonal institution with his only guidance and comfort coming from probably well-meaning, but certainly underpaid, strangers trying to somehow manage to get their rent together on their five-day-per-week shifts. 

I'd gone to visit when he was there before and I saw what a Bedlam it was.  Just to tell you, I was smack dab in front of the nurses' station waiting for Justin, standing right there in the waiting area where there were nurses all about wearing their sweet little white starched uniforms, a couple of them within three feet of me, gossiping about some doctor, when a boy, eleven or twelve years old, walked up to me and with no further to-do aggressively thrust his fist right in my face—almost hit my nose--with his middle finger pointing skyward.  The little dork flipped me the finger, spat out "Fuck you, Lady," and nobody but me seemed to notice or care.

Meanwhile, huddled by himself in a corner by the barred windows, trembling like a little animal with fear of the vet, a small boy was staring at the parking lot outside.  He was perhaps eight or nine years old, scrawny and pale as a seedling thrust early from its seed in darkness.  The lad was still quivering there, staring out at nothing, alone and ignored, when I left several hours later.

"A lot of the kids here are strange," Justin had volunteered.

***

Feeling overwhelmed, I made another cup of coffee, my third or fourth of the morning, and carried it upstairs to Melanie’s guestroom that she euphemistically called the Old Broad’s Home. I sat on the sunny southeastern facing balcony warming my hands on the cup as I sipped and vacantly watched the early morning sun erase shadows as it bounced color off the corrugated wisps of shape-shifting clouds looming in the distance.  

It looked improbable that I would be on my way there in the next few days, now that this horror was back in my face again.

Lately I hadn’t often been thinking of Sally and her sons, but ignoring the problem rather like ignoring it as if there were a hurtful pebble in my shoe. I had been thinking more of how best to recreate order in my own discombobulated life.

What about Justin?  What is it I don’t know?

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THE WHY AND THE WHEREFORE (Chapter 3 of a novel by Louise Scott)

 Chapter 3

I had started on this enjoyable trip with the hope that moving to Mexico would recreate order in my helter-skeltered life.  Poorer than the biblical Job’s turkey, I was virtually homeless since cashing in my chips after ten years of homesteading and coming out with zilch.  All the equipment was sold: the expensive solar submerged pump from the well, a dozen solar panels, a good generator, a large Servel propane refrigerator and big cast iron stove—the list goes on and on, yet had raised only a pittance for the move.

Should I have postponed going to Mexico?  Should I have rented a house somewhere near Boulder and gotten some kind of a job until things could have straightened out?  I was baffled.  At my age I probably couldn’t have gotten a job that would pay even enough to cover my ass.  I was stymied.

All my household furniture, do-dads and appliances, everything except what was now strewed in Melanie’s garage waiting for me to pack, had been given away or sold.  Rents in town were exorbitant and the place was inundated with technocrats jogging along the roadsides with their earphones on, wearing fluorescent-colored Lycra outfits, getting their daily high by hyperventilating carbon dioxide from the mainly foreign-manufactured cars whizzing by.  Not my style.  It was time for me to leave Colorado.   Things were getting Orwellian.

Well fuck a duck!  I had no debt, but neither did I have any dinero except for minimum Social Security--and you can’t get much more minimal than that.

I tried to look on the bright side. I had tried--I’d kept trying—to do the best I could, knowing that’s all life ever seemed to require of me and it had been wondrous so far even with the ups and downs.  I started out in life naked with nothing; I still had my original birthday suit of skin, though it had become quite wrinkled and worn during the years.  As the song goes: ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’  I knew this to be true though sometimes difficult to remember.

The day was as cloudy as my turmoil.  I felt like a turtle pulled out of its shell.

“I can’t wait to get out of fucking Boulder, fucking Colorado, the United fucking States of America. . .”  I was fired up to kvetch more, but Melanie put her cheek against mine and enclosed me in her arms while I cried. Sometimes a good cry is the best solution to life’s problems.

“Well, gee-whiz, Polly dear,” Melanie--always the practical one—drawled, “here’s a tissue.  Blow your nose and let’s get going on what we can accomplish instead of crying about what we can’t.”

So after this tearful time of commiseration, she left for work and I went out to the garage to work on what I could do.  I could get my pickup loaded and get myself on the road to Mexico.

***

Only the day before Melanie had helped me finish vacating my homestead a few miles outside Boulder.  We’d dumped all the household items I planned to haul to Mexico in her icy-cold garage—now it was all scattered on the concrete floor waiting for me to pack my Toyota pickup.  Some items I’d managed to sort into preliminary piles.  At least some of the dishes were stacked up, with the smallest items inside larger bowls, trying to conserve space as much as possible, but most of the junk was totally disorganized. The hodgepodge looked like leftover trash from a rummage sale in Shantytown.

             Melanie was a small dynamic green-eyed redhead who was capable dealing with the material providence—much more so than I.  Her home in Boulder was a delight of comfort and beauty that she worked diligently to create and maintain by sales at her trendy boutique.

              I was a dilettante who had lived for years on the edge of my economic incompetency.  I never was any good at coloring within the lines; I’d always lost playing Monopoly.  Still I’d managed through the years to always provide my daughters with eggs on the breakfast table and I made loaves of whole wheat bread and healthy cookies with oatmeal, nuts and raisins, delicious goat milk cheeses and yogurt. Amazing how much children eat: milk and meat, vegetables, fruit, bread, p-nut butter of course, and candy when they can get hold of it.

I had hated to go back out to Melanie’s frigid garage --it was as cold as a witch’s teat there --but as soon as I could load my pickup with my few remaining household possessions I’d be on my way south to a more tropical, warmer Mexico.

Hot Diggity Dog!  Mexico!

  There I planned to live cheaply on refried beans and tortillas. This would far surpass other unpleasant options I could think of:  having to be dependent on my friend, Melanie, or Stacey and Marta, or being a homeless bag lady pushing a market cart while going through trash bin.  No way!!! Anyway, my daughters both had moved from Boulder leaving me there with only Sally and two of my grandsons.

It didn't seem as if I would be able to fit even a small portion of the useful junk in the back of my little Toyota.  That paltry truck now seemed to shrink more every time I looked at it.  How much could be squeezed in?  First the most essential things like a few dishes, pots and pans, but then?

The past five years had been burdened by dealing with son-of-a-bitch bankers and lawyers and accountants while I attempted to hold on to my homestead-- I was plumb tuckered out from it.  Basta!  Enough of living in Gringoville with its Disney fascism and King George Bush in the White House, of watching land developers and oil barons screwing Mother Nature up the gazoo.  The bureaucrats swimming in their polluted sea; the politicians floating in their own bubble.

In Mexico I figured I could make some sort of a home for myself-- create an unknown new life, a life not yet visualized, blank as a newly-gessoed canvas.

It was time to move forward--onward through the fog-- to search for and trust in some beneficent future as an ex-patriot in Patzcuaro, a charming historical Mexican town I’d visited during my hippie days.  There I’d seen huge Ponderosa pines with orange orchids perched on their branches.  Muy bonito.  

Patzcuaro was high up, a lot higher than Boulder, high up in the volcanic mountains of Michoacan.  The small town was perched by a large lake that had a little island, Janitzio, the center of Los Dias Del Muerto (The Days of the Dead).  The lake was surrounded by native Purepacha Indians living in small adobe pueblos, using boats that went back and forth from Patzcuaro’s harbor.

 As I kicked open the door of the garage, a gaggle of geese flying overhead made a V in the sky as they flew south.  South to Mexico!  I became full of optimistic enthusiasm as I began to pack my Toyota.

Then I heard Melanie’s phone ringing. 

(Written by Louise Pickering Scott)

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GETTING AS GOOD AS IT GOT (Chapter 2 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 2

GETTING AS GOOD AS IT GOT

 Espanola epitomized the worse of everything in so many poverty stricken places in the USA.  After choking down that morning’s cup of the watery motel coffee,  I mounted my trusty Toyota and drove over one last hill and there was Santa Fe spread out below in a broad valley with a stream flowing from the hills and running through the town, surrounded by flowering cottonwoods.  I had visited during my Hippie days when it was a small town, but now it had become the private property of the rich and famous. I could see how much it showed its recent years as the developers' delight, a Disneyesque city of Indian-style adobes with Mercedes Benzes or Jaguars on the driveways.  I noticed two Hummers. Now the place had grown in a sprawl of expensive cardboard-appearing- adobe houses, each dispersed on greedy plots of extensive acreage over the surrounding Juniper covered hillsides.

 When Woody Guthrie was busking around New Mexico in 1936 or so-- shortly after the wooden houses in the Texas Panhandle where he lived had been destroyed by a devastating freezing dust storm they still call Black Sunday--he had an epiphany concerning the New Mexican adobe homes.  Comfortably warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and inexpensive, using free materials found right at the building site.  The technique was simple; anyone could do it--but it did take a lot of labor.

 Mud and straw were mixed and poured into wooden forms--rather like putting a cake in a pan to bake.  Then the bricks were stacked up to dry completely before building up walls on rock foundations.  Windows could be framed; rooms could be circular or whatever, though most buildings used straight lines; beehive fireplaces could be made even by a child.  Using the same beehive shape, outside they made hornos to bake--great to make bread and especially useful during hot weather when they traditionally put up ramadas (outside kitchens) under a shade tree.

 Adobe was one of the first building materials ever.

 Guthrie even believed Jesus’ manger must have been such as these.  He was inspired to write a best-seller, House of Earth, as a way to teach the building techniques.  Now the Santa Fe ‘adobe’ houses were sheets of plywood nailed to two-by-fours bought from Home Depot, daubed with an adobe-appearing coating.

 I understood a bumper sticker that said DON’T CALIFORNICATE NEW MEXICO.

 The plaza area both surprised and charmed me—it had changed into rich men’s delight with all upscale shops displaying not only local artists but global work.  Indian artists were prominently displayed and a there were a lot of canvases where Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings were copied.

 I gorged on  breakfast at the rooftop dining room of the La Fonda Hotel, an elegant two-story adobe that sits on one corner of the square plaza as it has for four or five hundred years. This is right at the end of the fabled Santa Fe Trail.  La Fonda means ‘the end.’  Breakfast was delicious: eggs smothered with green chili served with fresh blue corn tortillas.  I admired the lobby’s hand-carved beamed ceiling done by the Spanish architects long ago, and the furnishings of beautiful antique pieces I assumed were mahogany.  Spanish architects were the best ever; they sure beat anything I see being built today out of concrete, steel, and plastic using noisy, polluting, power tools.

 I watched Indians unloading pickup trucks on one side of the plaza.  Under the portal of a one- story adobe building Indians spread displays of silver and turquoise jewelry and different styles of pottery on colorfully patterned Indian blankets. Without much ado, they settled themselves comfortably by using the building to rest against.  This was the governor’s palace, where once spread throughout the building there had been a festoon of Indian ears on strings that had been turned in from hunters to collect bounty money--during the days of Kit Carson, a bounty hunter himself.

 Muy triste.

 I window shopped at a few of the high end galleries.  It amazes me that there are enough rich people to support these shops.  Enough of Santa Fe.  I headed to Albuquerque.

The hour’s drive went through scenic escarpments of red rock, an elevated hill of tortured red clay outcrops with fantastic spiral forms chiseled by the winds and weather—something like Disneyworld advertises where a castle is shown on high.

 There were no houses.  Nothing marred the spectacle until off-ramps began and kept increasing, each with a Mobile or Exxon gas station and a McDonalds or Howard Johnsons offering the usual trans-fat high calorie unhealthy slop that would be good to fatten pigs for slaughter.  After the nightmare of the I-40 and I-25 interchanges I was through the city and past its blue scarf of smoke.

 Fields of green alfalfa began to appear off to the left where I could tell by the abundance of cottonwoods in the distance that the Rio Grande flowed on.  I spied Texas Blue Bonnet, lupine and poppies, brilliant patches of mustard and little pink wild flowers showing themselves at the side of the road, where huge crows loitered waiting for the morning’s road kills. The big birds looked like hooded highway men or like the Zapatistas who wear black ski masks, the enmascarados (masked rebels from Chiapas). The black birds made such a straight line arrayed roadside they looked as formal as the Royal Guard standing at attention waiting for the Queen’s royal coach to pass, or masked participants in a medieval ball.  

 

It was past noon when, famished, I stopped in Socorro for a late lunch and devoured two tacos again using blue corn and  smothered with green chili. A Primrose path led to the tree-shaded plaza where I stretched out to rest on thick green grass under tall leafy elms.  I was traveling forward in time, going from earliest spring in the Colorado mountains to what now felt like mid-summer.  There were roses and pansies blooming in nuptial bliss, being impregnated by the pollen-coated proboscis of the buzzing bees.  A sprinkler was turned on in one corner of the plaza with children running through it, laughing and tumbling about.

 Water, blessed water.  God’s beverage.   I thought of water here in Socorro where once upon a time the stagecoaches arrived from El Paso, coming safely north through the Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of the Dead, where there was not one drop of water. Not a drop, not even a mouthful to dampen parched lips.  Well named, Jornada del Muerto.  This is where White Sands is, where the fuckers exploded the first atomic bombs.

 Resting in the shade of the lofty elm trees, it was easy to see why they named this delightful little town, this oasis, Socorro--which means succor, which means relief when in difficulty or distress.  That’s how it must have been perceived by the people arriving by stagecoach or wagon train not so many years ago.  The gratitude, the relief that must have been felt for having survived the deadly desert without dying of thirst or heat prostration, without being overcome on the parched sands under the pitiless sun,  without a raid of outlaws or the dreaded Apaches.  Beautiful was the name of the town Socorro.  I thought of other pleasant Mexican names: smiling brown-eyed girls called Innocencia, Esperanza, Remedios, Salud.

 Well rested, I drove on down the dry tough cowhide of a plain that was split with cracks and dry arroyos and riverbeds whose banks were carved by their distant memory of water.  So much land, so good for nothing, so it was astonishing to see water by the roadside where the sign said it was the Bosque del Apache refuge. Lots of ducks were flying about.

 It wasn’t far until a huge lake appeared.  I mean huge!  There were piers and a harbor; there were  boats sailing around; there were  people fishing.  What appeared to be a big island in the middle I suppose was the remains of a volcano.

 I don’t recall whether this was before or after I stopped at a small town called Truth or Consequences by the chatty waitress.  She said it used to be called Radium Springs until Truth or Consequences, a radio program of the 40’s, paid the inhabitants to change the name. 

 I stopped early at a cheap hotel outside El Paso and paid what was asked by a surly attendant who had a bronchial wheeze and a belly pregnant with age and dissipation.  At its convenient restaurant I ate part of a wilted salad and didn't drink a glass of wine that was aged with something other than time.  In my dingy room, lit by a dangling flickering lightbulb, I studied the vocabulary sections in my Mexican tourist books and meditated on the roadmap of watermarked streaks from yesteryears’ rains that had dribbled down the motel walls.   In one corner I again watched a spider create its arbitrary world with a complicated web.  Echos of turbulent past days were trapped in those corners.

 I was wound up as tight as my travel clock that pounded on the silence; my mind continuously chewing its cud of worries about my grandsons.

 I tossed and turned wondering why the fuck I was on this trip.  Why Sally was so nuts; why my other daughters, Stacey and Marta, had moved away—left me and Sally living like strangers in Boulder. Why was my family scattered?--Stacey on the Florida coast; Marta on the Pacific West; me heading clear out of the friggin’ USA.

 Why?  Families weren’t meant to be scattered. This is a new phenomena of the 20^th century in industrialized countries.^. Now with cars that whiz 80 mph, new vistas have appeared. It’s conceivable that my grandsons could someday live on Mars.

‘See the USA in a Chevrolet, America’s favorite car.’

‘You can’t keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree.’

No shit! 

 Finally I slept well in spite of the images that were snarled in my head; finally lulled by rich memories of the day. But the next morning, knowing there would be no gourmet French Roasted coffee at that motel, wishing there was something better than McDonald's excuse for coffee, I continued south; excited to cross the border. 

(From a novel by Louise Pickering Scott)

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