sundays were free

"Sundays were free! They were days of tranquillity and general bliss. Perhaps we slept later on rainy winter Sundays, but usually we got up early and eagerly. Breakfast was special, with waffles now and then, and no school, and no piano practice. We talked and laughed." (M.F.K. Fisher, "Hellfire and All That")

The pause afforded by a Sunday afternoon has, historically, been a dangerous thing for me. The manic nature of a busy week leads to a proportionate depression when, with the dying of the car engine in the driveway upon returning from church, everything stops. Time, it seems, falls into a rut and doesn't feel like dragging itself out again.

I used to get ravenously hungry when we walked in the door, at about 12.30pm. My church clothes would be digging creases into my waist, and my feet hurt. I would run upstairs to my room to change clothes. Then, no matter how hungry I was, or how urgently my help was needed in the kitchen, I felt influenced by the torpid warmth of my room, freshened by a little breath of breeze through the door I had just opened for the first time in three hours, and the suggestively wilting sun glowing behind the slats of the blinds, to fall face-forward onto the bed and sleep like the dead.

There was always somebody sleeping on Sunday. When lunch was over, my mom went up to bed. My dad would fall asleep in front of a game on the TV. I would go upstairs and start to listen to the rebroadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, and wake up in the middle of This American Life. When I went downstairs, I had to be quiet, since someone else was usually asleep by then. Until around five in the evening, it was highly inconsiderate to talk in a normal tone of voice.

When I went away to college, Sunday afternoons were the worst times for my chronic nostalgia. Or, maybe, they were the best. Nostalgia is like the pain of getting rid of a hangnail, or what I imagine trichotillomania to be--as much a pleasure as it is a pain. I know I never tried hard to get past the overwhelmingly heavy sweetness that crept upon me while I sang the final hymn at church, engulfing me when I came in the door of one of my series of lonely apartments (on Maryland Avenue, on Spa Road, on Prince George Street, in Pinkney Hall). I never tried to fend it off. Sometimes I would call home, to hear a voice, but more often I just took off my shoes and my coat and fell into the warmth of my bed and pulled the covers over my head and sighed. Sometimes I cried a little, but that was more the tremors of tiredness than of real heartsickness, like the weakness that comes the day after having the twenty-four-hour flu.

Toward the second half of my second year, the nostalgia started to wear off my memories of home, because home started to change. J and W had become my new home in almost every way--I didn't live with them under any formal agreement, but theirs had become the safe place, the unassailable sanctuary of nourishment and comfort and hope and rest. Sunday afternoons I went to their house, whenever I could make the excuse, and I chatted with J while she alchemized in the kitchen. Usually she was baking something on Sunday afternoons--blondies for her kids, or cinnamon rolls for no reason, or gingerbread for Christmas. One time I came over and she was sculpting mushrooms out of cinnamon-dusted meringue, for a buche Noël. We played with her birds, and knitted, and watched her kids come in and out of the kitchen, and made fun of people we knew, and griped about our mothers, and quoted movie lines, and I wished that Sunday afternoon would last for freaking ever. The pain was glorious. She usually went to take a nap at some point within all of this, and I would clean up the kitchen and talk with whoever was around. If no one was around, I would do homework or read books while lying on the couch, or fall asleep while listening to A Prairie Home Companion and wake up in the middle of This American Life.

When I moved to New York last year, Sundays were a push and pull of longing and distaste. On one hand, church didn't start until afternoon, which gave me the freedom of Sunday morning, with tea and the radio, that I had long coveted. On the other hand, the imperative sleepiness of Sunday afternoon must, in that case, give way to the project of helping set up for the church service in the cathedral we rented on West 22nd Street. And by the time church was over, there was no time for the ensuing nostalgia with its anticlimactic nap--I had to get ready for work the next day. It resulted in the break-up of the entire rhythm of the week. My nostalgia was not cured, only stifled.

When I decided to leave New York and move back to California, one of the things I most eagerly awaited was resumption of the Sunday afternoons of my childhood. The foggy morning drive to church, followed by the impatient return home to divest myself of the uncomfortable church clothes, the urgent preparation of Sunday lunch, the ensuing lethargy with my dad falling asleep on the couch in front of the game, and my mom staggering upstairs to nap, and myself sprawled on the floor, half-listening to the radio and steeping in the fulfillment of ten years' longing.

I really thought that.

A few complications, naturally, ensued. This year has been the hottest I have ever known in southern California--foggy mornings and honeyed noontime warmth were unavailable. More to the point, my church, and my family, and I have changed dramatically in character and behavioral patterns since I lived there. Specifically, I don't live at "home" now. The elements are out of their old order, and the resulting composition is unfamiliar. The worn-in ways I longed after were discarded so long ago that nobody knows what I'm missing.

Can you imagine the rude awakening?
Can you conceive of the glorious freedom?

It's really laughable to see how long it has taken me, since moving back here, to realize that Things Are Different. For eight months, I have been going to the family's house and trying to fit what now happens on a Sunday into the frame of my expectations. Trying to remember according to the present. It has been more frustrating, more distressing, than you might guess. Have you tried switching to green tea when you are used to coffee? It's been like that. The heavy, sweet addiction requires much to feed it.

I started to be nostalgic for J's house, then, but it wouldn't suffice, for two reasons. One has been discussed in an earlier post--I visited her last spring and came to terms with the inevitability of change there. The other reason is that I had begun to feed my nostalgia with the hope of fulfillment. That is strong stuff. Mere indulgence of memory was no longer enough.

Last Sunday, I was bone tired, from a busy week and several early mornings in a row. Instead of making my dutiful pilgrimage to the family house, I went to my lonely apartment and shucked off my shoes and fell into bed and pulled the covers over my head. Then I reached out and turned on the radio. Prairie Home Companion was on. I fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of This American Life. I looked around my darkened room, badly in need of tidying, insulated by the hum of the air conditioner, feeling my bones slowly reform after their melting repose. I thought, here it is. This is all I needed. The Sunday afternoon of the past has become the Sunday afternoon of the future.

our epic screenplay

FADE IN

SCENE: a comfortable house in a pastoral setting, more country than suburban. Crepe paper and decorations float from the porch railing and the trees in the front garden. As the camera pans in closer, we see little children running around with Easter baskets, hunting for eggs. Tracking shot brings us to the back of the house, a wide green lawn that slopes down toward a pond. About a dozen adults of various ages are standing together. It's a family party, obviously.

EMILY (or insert your character name of choice) is standing next to a card table that has food and party ephemera strewn all over it. She is filling up more plastic eggs with candy. An OLDER WOMAN, an aunt or somebody of that ilk, comes up to her.

OLDER WOMAN: It wasn't that long ago that you were hunting for eggs like them.

EMILY: (laughs) Almost twenty years. Not that long?

OLDER WOMAN: No! How old are you now?

EMILY: Twenty-three.

OLDER WOMAN: Really? My! I always see you as younger, somehow.

EMILY: Well, that's fine with...

OLDER WOMAN: Let's see, when I was twenty-three, I had just had Lucy and was pregnant with George.

EMILY: Yeah, that would make me feel old, too.

OLDER WOMAN: So, any men in your life yet?

EMILY: (with a good sense of humor, but a little annoyed) None. Ever.

OLDER WOMAN: None at all? Goodness, honey, what are you doing?

EMILY: (holds up the plastic eggs) Hiding my eggs.

(She heads toward a group of little children; CATHERINE, the cute little one whom we meet later, runs to meet her.)

SCENE: The family has gathered in. The children are opening their eggs and comparing results. The adults are half playing with them, half talking together.

OLDER WOMAN: But really, Emily, don't you think it's time to face real life? You're going to have to sometime.

EMILY: (playing with CATHERINE, who sits in her lap) I know. It's just so easy to hide in the shelter of going to college, working full time and paying bills, you know?

CATHERINE: Look, I found a ring! (She tries it on her finger.) Emily, where's your ring?

EMILY: What ring?

CATHERINE: Your wedding ring.

EMILY: Um. I lost it.

CATHERINE: Well where's your husband?

EMILY: (laughs, but notices the aunt staring at her) He's parking the car, Catherine.

CATHERINE: That's what you said before. It's taking a long time.

EMILY: Well, I guess he must be lost, then.

CATHERINE: Well, did you look all around the car? Did you look under it? Did you look over it?

EMILY: (looking straight at OLDER AUNT) You know what? I'll go look right now, Catherine, okay? I'm just going to go look right now. (She gets up and walks around the side of the house.

...TO BE CONTINUED...

where are you now?

I don't remember how I met Annick. I think it was between the first two years of college--my first first year and my second first year. At any rate, I was about nineteen and bored, and I had begun to study French from a book-and-tape series I found at the library. "Le Francais est Facile" or something like that, produced for tourists and business trippers. I loved it. I did pushups in my room as I chanted with the dry British host of the program, "Je suis alle, tu es alle, il est alle..." (I was also trying to condition myself for surfing, another wished-for skill.)

That was why my mother pointed me toward Annick. Her family started coming to our church after theirs broke up. Her husband had been a pastor there, and as I learned much later on, he had come to our pastors almost upon arrival and asked when he could start preaching at our church. Maybe this doesn't seem so out of order to some people. To us, it seemed something like the former president of one country approaching the president of another country and suggesting that they begin to share duties.

Somebody must have mediated the introduction--it might have been my mother, but I can't remember that she was particularly friendly with Annick. It seems so unlikely, as I look back on it. I was nineteen, restless, lazy except for a few chosen projects, with no immediate goals beyond making an hourly wage at Starbucks and practicing French and push-ups. She was in her mid-thirties, with three little girls and an out-of-work husband. She was tall, with black hair improbably long for a woman her age, that stayed shiny and smooth though she wore it loose. She had ice-blue eyes and a classic profile and graceful arms. She carried herself like the curator of an art museum. She spoke with a southern California accent. I can't even remember how she came by her French pedigree.

Somehow I ended up at her house for dinner one night, on the purpose of practicing French together while she made dinner. We conversed innocuously in French, but here and there she broke into English when she confessed the difficulties of her life. She was afraid for how they were going to pay the rent--they had just lost their house and had to move to a condo community in the northern wilds of Escondido. Their neighbor was a drug addict, or a pervert, or both--he had come over once or twice, in the beginning, and one day had sneaked in the open window of the house and surprised her while she was in the shower. Most of her friends had deserted her, now that her husband's former church had split up. And her husband...there she paused. No one understood him, and she allowed that he was sometimes hard to understand.

Her little girls were drawing pictures at the kitchen table. The oldest one, who was probably seven, drew a boy and a girl wearing striped middy blouses and berets with pompoms. The middle one scribbled. The baby I remember best--she was not a chubby American-style baby, but long-limbed, almost lanky, with a mature face and solemn eyes as big as puddles. Her reddish hair tendriled over her forehead in a china doll curlicue, as if it was her concession to infancy.

Annick wore a long dress with no sleeves. She opened plastic freezer bags and somehow constructed something that looked like Provencal chicken in her frying pan. I remember that it smelled delicious and that there were mushrooms. I asked her how to make it, and she gave an unexpected laugh--there wasn't any recipe, it was just something you throw together. Most French cooking is like that, she told me. She pulled out a couple of old textbooks and a dictionary, and gave them to me, saying that sometime I should give her back the textbooks but I could keep the dictionary.

Then her husband came home. He slammed the door and looked at me with an aggression that was almost lewd. He seemed to be sizing me up, whether I was worth challenging or not. He never smiled, even when he kissed his daughters hello. We sat around the table and he threw some French phrases at me--grammatically correct, atrociously pronounced. He asked if I spoke any other languages, and I told him that I spoke Spanish. Then he assailed me with a barrage of questions, straight out of Spanish 4. I didn't want to fight, so I gave simple answers and tried to indicate my willingness to be the beta dog. He gave up on me and looked at his middle daughter, saying, "Eat. Mangez." I smiled at them all, in turn.

Annick gave me a ride to the church, where her daughters did Awana club that night, and where my mom was going to pick me up. We chatted some more in the car, but a somber resignation seemed to have come over her. We stood in the parking lot and watched the kids mill around in front of the entrance to the church. I wish that I could remember what she told me then, because it was probably the key to much of her mystery. It had to do with her husband's pugilistic nature, the circumstances of their church rupture, and the uncertainties that plagued her more than ever. All I can remember is thinking, "I'm nineteen. She shouldn't be telling me this." She finished it by saying, "And there, now you know it. Our histoire triste." Then I realized that I should have been paying much more attention. Why didn't I, I wonder now? Was I bored?

But I also look back with wonder on the way she concluded. It seems so melodramatic, so uncharacteristic of her, at least according to how I had learned her that evening. It was a mystery then how a woman like her ended up with a man like him, but that precipitate confession with its final phrase--"our histoire triste"--might be just what would resolve it all.

Somehow, that last phrase embarrassed me so that I hardly spoke to her again at church. They did not stay long, whether because of her husband's insufferability or because no one but a nineteen-year-old would befriend her, and even that for only an evening.

magic words, vol. 7

"All we have to do is live long enough and we will suffer."

urgent care

It's cold in here. ...What? Nothing--I wasn't really laughing. It was just...saying I'm cold seems a little unimportant.

...Right now, I don't feel very much. Maybe I'm trying to keep it that way.

I live at one-sixty-three Stater Road. Not with my family--with some friends. I'm on good terms with my family. I spend a lot of time with them. It's just better not to live there, trying to share food and stuff like that. It was the same in college--I shared an apartment with a friend, one year. We're still friends, it's just not a good thing for us to live together, we found out. Sometimes I used to eat her peanut butter. She noticed and asked me not to, but I still did it--I always thought maybe she wouldn't notice the next time. And she always did. She was really nice about it. She said, "Why don't you just buy your own?" But--I don't know--peanut butter seems like a stupid thing to buy. A whole jar. Who needs a whole jar to themselves? I don't. Just a little bit, here and there. I bought her a jar one time, to apologize. It made her mad. I don't know.

Well, currently, I'm working as a server. It's a terrible place. I'd never recommend it. I've done really good places, classy places, during college and the couple of years after. But this was the first thing I could find here. Plus it's close to my house, so it's convenient. But that's just my job at the moment. That's not what I do. I'm a filmmaker. I went to film school. Yes. I've made several short films. It's a hard field to squeeze into. If you're rich and connected, sure, you've got it in the bag. The film industry is no meritocracy, I can tell you that right now.

I'm sorry. I'm totally straying from the...from the subject.

What else do you need to know?

Yes, I know the Allans. Sorry--I can smoke, right? They're friends of my family's, from church. Probably a couple of years back. Well, probably more like four. Because Albie wasn't born yet, and Hallie...

No, I'm fine. Hallie was only about two, I think. My point is, I wasn't there when they all met. I heard about them while I was away, at college. All of a sudden it was "the Allans just left" or "Hallie said the cutest thing." Or "Tracy needs to clean up her house a little better." It took a while to realize they were all the same family. They came over for dinner after church one Sunday, I guess, and my family just adopted them. That's nice, isn't it? They'd recently moved from out of town. They didn't have any family or friends nearby. My family just took them in. My sisters started watching Hallie all the...time.

No, I'm fine. It's just...how is Tracy? Do you know? Is she here? Are my parents here? Thanks, I'm really fine. I just need to...

I guess it's lucky they had Albie last year. ...God!

Tonight? Yeah, okay. Tonight I was at my parents' house, having dinner. Unusual? I don't know. Sometimes I go over a lot, to their house, but then there are weeks where I keep my distance. It's not always any specific reason. I just feel like they're watching me, looking for something, and that they're constantly disappointed that they don't see it. When I can find a reason to not go, then I don't. It...it feels pretty good, you know? To call up and say, "Sorry, I can't come. I know you were expecting me, but..." Whatever. You know? It's like...it feels like a way to show them that I have other claims on my time. Other people think I'm valuable. But if I don't have anything going on... I don't want to stay away completely. I mean, they're my family. I want to have a good relationship. I kind of always hope that, if I keep my distance for a while, they'll be so glad to see me they'll forget what they were looking for. But to them, it's like no time has passed at all. They talk to me about things that happened in the last week like I should remember, and I have to remind them that I wasn't there.

Which is funny, because that's exactly what would happen while I was in college, you know? I'd talk to them on the phone, and they'd be like "Remember the time that...?" Whatever. And I would have to say, "No, I don't remember. I wasn't there." And they'd argue! They'd be like, "Yes, it was the night before Easter, when..." Blah blah blah. And I'd say, "Got it. That night, I was at my friend Anna's apartment making s'mores, and wondering why Giancarlo wouldn't talk to me." Well, usually I didn't tell them that part. The last part. I don't talk about guys around my family, usually. They're just funny about marriage. Everything is leading up to marriage, and if I express interest in anybody, they immediately want to know his background. And then if I don't know it, they look at me like, "Why are we having this conversation?" You know?

Yeah, I was at their house having dinner. But something came up, and I left early. No, it wasn't like that. I was upset--well, frustrated--so I decided to leave early. I was in a hurry, yeah. I'm not sure I told anyone goodbye. It occurred to me to leave, while everyone was getting up from the table and taking in the dishes, so I kind of edged over and grabbed my coat. Then I booked to the door. I heard someone calling after me as I went out to my car. I think someone must have run to the door and stood there while I was backing out. Because they were all right there when...it happened, yeah.

What? No. I'm fine, actually. Maybe it's, like, shock. Do you think? I shouldn't be fine, should I? But... I guess it's just shock.

Jesus.

I don't remember what it was about. It doesn't really matter. It could come out of anything. They just have to look at me with that sort of disappointment on their faces. It's a really quiet kind of reaction. We're just talking and someone asks a question that is, like, out of left field. I mean, I'm sure it makes perfect sense to them, but I'm usually weirded out by it. Like, I'll be talking about a funny thing that happened with a customer at work, and my mom will say, "How did your manager take it when you told her?" And I'll be like, "I didn't tell her." And she'll say, "Why not? It sounds like a big problem." I mean, my mother has never waitressed, so she has no idea. But you'd think she might respect the fact that I know something about this that she doesn't. That it doesn't necessarily follow that every problem has to be reported to a manager. I mean, I've never worked for a restaurant manager that even wanted to know about problems with customers. And when I try to explain this, she'll counter with a big argument for why I should report incidents like that, in order to get constructive feedback and show that I want to improve. In order to show leadership. And I'll just be like, "Mom! Leadership is something that corporations look for. In the food service industry, there is the captain, the...whatever, vice-captain...and then there are the slaves in the galley. That's all. There's no upward movement, except for a pecking order." And she said, "Pecking order?" She said, "Aren't we talking about the same thing?"

But you don't want all this. No, we didn't really fight. I was just sick of it and I wanted to get out. Especially because I knew the Allans were coming over for dessert. Yes, I knew that. That is, I didn't know until I got to my parents' house. If I'd known before, I probably wouldn't have come.

...But! I know what you're thinking. I don't dislike the Allans, really. I don't. They're great people, and I'm glad that they have my family, and my family has them. They really need my family to help them out--two little kids like that... Oh, God.

No, it's okay, I'm fine. I'm just trying to say that I don't dislike them at all. I mean, I don't get along great with Tracy, but I think that's just because our personalities don't mesh. She's really out there with her opinions, you know? And she kind of puts the responsibility for her emotional maintenance on everyone else. I mean, my sister has had to apologize so many times to her for misunderstandings, it juts kills me. Misunderstandings on Tracy's part, you see. Where she got offended and wouldn't bring it up but acted sort of distant, until my sister got the message and had to come crawling and apologize. I just hate that. Have you talked to my sister? Well, when you do, you'll understand. My sister is the least offensive person you could imagine. You'd have to be a sociopath not to get along with her.

But the thing is, I sort of get Tracy. And I can tell she needs my mom, my family. She probably is the type who had kids before she knew what to do with them. I think she expects everyone to take care of her and doesn't even realize it. So it's cool. And it's great that my parents can have the experience of having grandchildren, you know, when Tracy and Bryan bring the kids over. My dad loves little kids so much. It's adorable, watching him play with Hallie. The way he teases her a little and then puts her up on his shoulders, and asks her questions like she's a grown-up. I totally remember all of that from when I was a kid. That's the great thing about being the oldest. You get that one-on-one stuff. Not like I remember every minute of it, but it puts this special thing between you and your parents--you're the only one who knows what your parents are like without other kids. The only one! Think about that.

Growing up sucks, you know? Didn't somebody write a song about that? I just mean that sometimes, I used to get sort of...really...jealous. Of Hallie. Watching her and my dad. Like I'd been replaced. Which is crazy. Isn't it crazy, to be jealous of a three-year-old? Especially one as bad-behaved as her... I guess I shouldn't say that, except it's true. Not like it matters that much, now. But you know, she was really kind of a brat. I'd have these crazy thoughts, watching my dad play with her, thinking, "I was way better behaved at her age."

And then Tracy talking with my mom, and my mom listening to her go on and on about stupid problems. The guy who painted her house left a footprint on her back porch! The internet connection is so slow at her house! She hasn't found a decent hairstylist in this whole town! I mean, okay, problems--if they're stupid or not, friends listen to them. Right? Fine. But when I tell my mom about real problems--can't pay my rent type of problems, what's my direction in life problems--she just glazes over and goes "Mmm," and moves on to another topic of conversation with someone else. So...I guess I'm just explaining why I wasn't thrilled that the Allans were coming over, that night, on top of everything else.

I was really hoping to get out of the driveway before they showed up. But they had just pulled up, I guess. They were coming toward the house. It was dark. I was a little bit panicked, I didn't want to make a scene, but I also didn't want to be forced to come back inside and act like everything was fine. My mom doesn't like to show inside problems to anyone outside. I didn't want to have to sit there and act like they were part of my family. I mean, if they want to act like that, and my family wants to act like that, that's fine. Their business. But I'm not close with them, and I don't feel like pretending it's a big family togetherness night when I hardly know the Allans and I'm pissed at my own family for making me feel like an outsider.

So I was in a hurry. I just didn't see anything. I kind of went blind, I was in such a hurry to get in my car and get out of there, before they knew that I knew they'd arrived. And...yeah. I felt a bump. I didn't hear anything. I'm sure somebody must have screamed or shouted, but I didn't hear anything. My music volume was turned way up, and it came on when I turned on the car, and I was in such a hurry. I started backing out, pretty fast, and I felt this bump...

God...I need something. Can you...something...

So, yeah. That's everything.

What happens now?

Is my family out there? Shit. Do I have to go out there now? I just don't know what to say to them. What they're going to think... See, that's the thing. I know what they're going to think. You know? No, I'm fine. Please, don't bother. I'm fine. I'm not hysterical. It's just funny. I mean, it's fantastically perfect. Can you imagine what they're going to say? I mean, what are you thinking, now that I've told you? And her parents--Tracy, and Bryan--what everyone's going to think. It's not about whether I did it on purpose or or not. I wish to God it was that black and white. Then you could say, "Yes, I did it," or "No, I didn't." It's the whole thing. Everything I told you goes into it. That I would never have intentionally backed my car over their daughter? Sure. But that I might have wanted to? I don't know. They don't know. They don't know, I don't know. I never would have wanted to kill anybody. But now that I have? Do you think they're going to comfort me when I walk out there? It's just another piece in the puzzle. If I had died, it would be just the same. I'm the ongoing mistake.

No, I'm fine now. Thanks for getting the bag...sorry about... Yeah, I'm really fine. It's kind of weird, I don't know. Maybe it's normal. Just that I don't feel anything. I feel, like, nothing. But in a good way? I don't know. I guess, it just feels so much better, now that I've told you everything.