To Vicki's Anger

Vicki stood so close I could feel her breath.Her anger electrified her: eyes bright, cheeks flush, and her arms trembling beside her. She’s taller than I, but she’s only 15. She’s my favorite.

I graduated from college 4 months ago, spent the summer waiting tables at the Olive Garden, managing to lose money some nights because I was so bad at it. I needed another job, one that didn’t require having to be nice while trying to remember which is the diet Coke and which is the regular. I could not multi-task. So I got a job as a houseparent at a group home for teenage girls who had been taken away from abusive parents. I was 22.

It’s Friday and Vicki was invited by girls at school to go to a movie. It’s against the rules. And she doesn’t have a dime to her name. None of the girls do. I tell her no as if it’s obvious, and I see it start. Vicki’s anger is legendary: focused, sharp, controlled but just barely. She is speechless and I all I want is for her to say something.

Brenda walks in. She is younger than Vicki and even younger than her age. She will always be just behind. Brenda’s mom is an addict and always chooses drugs and the man they come with over Brenda. Brenda still loves her mom, though. They all do.

Nothing surprises me more about working here than this. One girl was abused by both her parents, repeatedly. One girl has scars. One has known mostly foster parents, the last one out in the country, and by the time the social worker made it back out, she was starving. They have been slapped and beaten. And still they dream of going home, that mom is sober or dad is working. It was all a mistake and everything is really fine.

Loren, the co-parent tonight, touches Vicki’s shoulders. He takes her for a walk and ignores her when she grabs one of his cigarettes, lets her smoke. She comes back smoother, calmer, but only just. She agrees to join us instead for the regular Friday night trip to KMart and the video store. Every girl will get $3 to spend as she wants.

Steven Tyler
Mick man34 at English Wikipedia [G
FDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

After dinner, we cram into the station wagon: 6 girls, me and Loren. Loren flips through the radio station until they yell at him to stop. It’s Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun.” They all sing along, looking out the window, each singing to herself. They would never hurt their dads. They would never hurt their moms. But they can understand it. They can sing it.

To The Brooklyn Dodgers

Nine years before I was born, you moved to LA, but in our house, the move was always yesterday. When we talk to others about the Dodgers, we say, “Which Dodgers? LA or Brooklyn?” Brooklyn is the real one.

The Dodgers Uniform, Framed

A wool Dodgers uniform hangs in my dad’s office, the one memento from his time in the minors. If the Major League team was “Dem Bums,” how scrappy were the guys in the minors? Dad has a BA in mechanical engineering, an MBA and a PhD in economics. I think of him as anything but scrappy. I picture him in the dugout, lifting the catcher’s mask to the top of his head, laughing with the other players. It’s a blurry movie at best.

The uniform was buried in an antique steamer truck in the den. Every now and then, Mom and I would dig something out of the trunk and the uniform was on top of everything. Heavy grey wool. I can still feel the weight of it, lifting it out. On Halloween, one of the five of us would wear it as a costume, Dad watching us fade down the street.

My dad, my grandmother Marion and my Aunt Sue: 1952

At some point, he knew he needed a plan other than baseball, another way out of the Brooklyn projects. He stumbled his way into college at King’s Point, picked a major because his friend suggested it. Later, stationed in New Orleans, he chose Tulane for grad school because it was the first school on the trolley stop and chose the MBA program because it was the first air conditioned building he came to. His life wasn’t so much planned, but rather just a continued willingness to give it a shot. “Why the hell not?”  Why not move to Switzerland? Why not move to Dallas? Why not have 3 kids? Why not have two more?

I wonder if he missed it, if he would have preferred a chance in the majors, playing in Ebbet’s Field, his dad watching him from the stands the way he and his dad watched year after year. I knew if he had, I wouldn’t be here.

He would say no, no regrets. He knew deep down he knew the odds. He knew it’s a short-lived career. He could see the writing on the locker room wall.

Besides, they moved to LA. What? Are ya kiddin me?

To the Furniture That Arrived in the Snowstorm and Barely Fit Through the Door

Today you look as if you have always been here, as if, in 1929, when they built this house, they built it for you. Your chocolate brown warms the room.

Music sounds better and pizza tastes better on the new sofa

But yesterday, the struggle, the battle, the war that was getting you home and through the door was, as the kids say, epic. The snowstorm was so bad, Keith could not back the U-Haul 5 yards up to the warehouse to have you loaded. He had to wait until it settled down, the clocking ticking off the rental time. Finally loaded, on the drive home, he watched drivers slide off the road like baby ducks following whatever guides them.

Still, he makes it home. And you are wrapped in heavy plastic to protect from the elements.  We measured the door at the smallest width and we measured you before we bought you, so we thought we would just carry you through the door, piece by piece. The first two pieces made it seem easy.

But you are a sectional, which means you have a funky corner piece with odd angles for a couch. That’s where the trouble starts. If there is a world record for swearing, it was broken. If there is a world record for ratio of swear words to non-swear words in a sentence, it was broken. If there is a record for dragging out one swear word into one long resounding call to the universe, it was broken.

I have already put the old furniture on the curb. It’s covered in snow. If the new couch doesn’t come in, we'll be sitting on the floor.

We have to take the door off the hinges. We have to push and smush and beg and plead and formulate and calculate, but finally, the whole corner piece is in the door. The last two pieces aren’t easy, but are not as hard. The snow never relents. 

Our rental truck stuck in the road. Took 4 men to dig it out.

The last task is to take the truck back. The snow is several feet deep and the road has ice grooves that make tracks in the road, tracks you have no choice but to follow. And he gets stuck. Three neighbors, a lot more swearing, and some ice smashing and finally the truck is free.

By the evening, the room was put together. Old chairs rearranged around you. We turn on Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” and light candles. We order a pizza. We talk about writing and and all the things we love about words. We feel the space we are in as new again. This year we will be married 20 years.