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mallorys_cameraLiteracy Mike died.
Neighbor Ed is trying to wrap his head around it.
"I reconciled myself to this outcome", he told me yesterday morning. "I knew a month ago the hope that he might recover some semblance of a normal life was impossible, although I never understood what 'some semblance' meant. I attached myself to that goal."
"Oh, Ed", I said "I am so sorry. I know you’re fastidious when it comes to using words like 'love,' but I also know you loved Literacy Mike. And you really were steadfast & true when it came to helping him better his life. I am absolutely positive had it not been for you, he would have died 10 years ago."
"His body was fried," Ed said. "Nothing could undo that. A sad life in so many ways. As far as I know, nobody kept in touch. He only had two visitors (once) other than me and my family the last 8 months. The isolation is - I am at a loss for words."
"Heartbreaking," I said.
But really I was thinking, And not that different from the plight of the majority of people who live or have ever lived on this planet. Caring? It's the exception.
###
Around 5pm, Adrienne called.
"So, this immigration lawyer called me to hang out at his pool. He's married, so I don't know what's up with that. Anyway, he told me to bring a friend—"
Fifteen minutes later, I was driving through one of those tony developments that have been planted in what had been farmland for 300 years previously. The houses didn't appeal to me in the slightest being three-bedroom-ranch-style dwellings covered in uniformly grey siding, but they would have listed for around $700,000 apiece and the zoning laws called for two acres, so plenty of greenery.
The immigration lawyer's name was Irwin. My age, shaved head, slender of build but with a basketball belly.
Married to a woman named Jian who was spending the day in Flushing—
My mission—assigned by Adrienne!—was to figure out what the deal was.
Throughout the late afternoon, as Adrienne & I dangled our feet in the pool and Irwin slowly & ceremoniously treaded water, and then later, over surprisingly good food at an unprepossessing bistro in Pine Bush that smelled like Lysol, I set myself to extracting biographical details: Born in New Jersey, Jewish but wanted you to know how secular he was, worked for Price Waterhouse for many years but then went to law school at the age of 37. Stumbled into immigration law quite by accident—
"May I speak Italian to you, Patrizia?" he asked.
"No, you may not," I said.
That's because my Italian is (a) not very good and (b) a Calabrese-cum-Sicilian dialect they don't teach on Duolingo. But I certainly wasn't going to tell him that!
—was married for 27 years but finally got away from the Starter Wife. No, Jian hadn't been one of his clients! She was a Chinese interpreter; she spent most of the week in the City.
Nobody had to extract Adrienne's biographical details! She was quite forthcoming on her own! I felt like a duenna! And wondered whether I hadn't stumbled across some new kind of market: Online hookup sites are declining in popularity! But suppose OkayStupid offered up a third party to go along on first dates with you & negotiate all the rough patches?
At some point, Adrienne & Irwin started pulling out old photographs.
Adrienne in her late teens looked exactly like a member of the Shangra-Las! That black flip! That provocative stare! And, in fact, she and her girlfriends used to stand out on street corners singing doo wop in triple-part harmony. She'd been a musical theater kid.
Irwin's 20-ish mugshot revealed a surprisingly good-looking kid with pained eyes that marked him as too sensitive and thus doomed forever to be the little kid staring in through that bakery window at all the goodies he'd never get the chance to eat.
Since I had to play, too, I offered up this shot. Which is, in fact, one of my very, very favorite photographs of myself:
All through dinner, I'd been coughing up a storm. OkayStupid would have docked my bonus.
As we drove back to Irwin's house to pick up our cars, I figured out why: The full moon was rising over the bucolic landscape, and it was bright orange. Canadian wildfire smoke! Intensely beautiful, though.
Not sure Adrienne should have an affair with Irwin. More trouble than it's worth, I'm thinking. He seems needy & lonely. And not very kind—he was gratuitously mean to the pretty little waitress at the Lysol café, made her take back the bread basket twice. (WTF? The bread basket?)
But it was a diverting way to spend an evening, and now, I won't have to socialize for a while.
Neighbor Ed is trying to wrap his head around it.
"I reconciled myself to this outcome", he told me yesterday morning. "I knew a month ago the hope that he might recover some semblance of a normal life was impossible, although I never understood what 'some semblance' meant. I attached myself to that goal."
"Oh, Ed", I said "I am so sorry. I know you’re fastidious when it comes to using words like 'love,' but I also know you loved Literacy Mike. And you really were steadfast & true when it came to helping him better his life. I am absolutely positive had it not been for you, he would have died 10 years ago."
"His body was fried," Ed said. "Nothing could undo that. A sad life in so many ways. As far as I know, nobody kept in touch. He only had two visitors (once) other than me and my family the last 8 months. The isolation is - I am at a loss for words."
"Heartbreaking," I said.
But really I was thinking, And not that different from the plight of the majority of people who live or have ever lived on this planet. Caring? It's the exception.
###
Around 5pm, Adrienne called.
"So, this immigration lawyer called me to hang out at his pool. He's married, so I don't know what's up with that. Anyway, he told me to bring a friend—"
Fifteen minutes later, I was driving through one of those tony developments that have been planted in what had been farmland for 300 years previously. The houses didn't appeal to me in the slightest being three-bedroom-ranch-style dwellings covered in uniformly grey siding, but they would have listed for around $700,000 apiece and the zoning laws called for two acres, so plenty of greenery.
The immigration lawyer's name was Irwin. My age, shaved head, slender of build but with a basketball belly.
Married to a woman named Jian who was spending the day in Flushing—
My mission—assigned by Adrienne!—was to figure out what the deal was.
Throughout the late afternoon, as Adrienne & I dangled our feet in the pool and Irwin slowly & ceremoniously treaded water, and then later, over surprisingly good food at an unprepossessing bistro in Pine Bush that smelled like Lysol, I set myself to extracting biographical details: Born in New Jersey, Jewish but wanted you to know how secular he was, worked for Price Waterhouse for many years but then went to law school at the age of 37. Stumbled into immigration law quite by accident—
"May I speak Italian to you, Patrizia?" he asked.
"No, you may not," I said.
That's because my Italian is (a) not very good and (b) a Calabrese-cum-Sicilian dialect they don't teach on Duolingo. But I certainly wasn't going to tell him that!
—was married for 27 years but finally got away from the Starter Wife. No, Jian hadn't been one of his clients! She was a Chinese interpreter; she spent most of the week in the City.
Nobody had to extract Adrienne's biographical details! She was quite forthcoming on her own! I felt like a duenna! And wondered whether I hadn't stumbled across some new kind of market: Online hookup sites are declining in popularity! But suppose OkayStupid offered up a third party to go along on first dates with you & negotiate all the rough patches?
At some point, Adrienne & Irwin started pulling out old photographs.
Adrienne in her late teens looked exactly like a member of the Shangra-Las! That black flip! That provocative stare! And, in fact, she and her girlfriends used to stand out on street corners singing doo wop in triple-part harmony. She'd been a musical theater kid.
Irwin's 20-ish mugshot revealed a surprisingly good-looking kid with pained eyes that marked him as too sensitive and thus doomed forever to be the little kid staring in through that bakery window at all the goodies he'd never get the chance to eat.
Since I had to play, too, I offered up this shot. Which is, in fact, one of my very, very favorite photographs of myself:
All through dinner, I'd been coughing up a storm. OkayStupid would have docked my bonus.
As we drove back to Irwin's house to pick up our cars, I figured out why: The full moon was rising over the bucolic landscape, and it was bright orange. Canadian wildfire smoke! Intensely beautiful, though.
Not sure Adrienne should have an affair with Irwin. More trouble than it's worth, I'm thinking. He seems needy & lonely. And not very kind—he was gratuitously mean to the pretty little waitress at the Lysol café, made her take back the bread basket twice. (WTF? The bread basket?)
But it was a diverting way to spend an evening, and now, I won't have to socialize for a while.
