Synonyms

[mallorys_camera]

In the middle of the night, I had to pee. Staggered blindly into the bathroom. Almost fell into the toilet.

Someone had forgotten to put the seat back down.

The boys are back.

On the phone, Ben kept telling me, "We have a lot of luggage. Don't know how we're gonna fit it all into my mother's car for the ride to the airport," and this I understood to be his subtle way of telling me: pick us up in the van. So on Sunday, I set forth in the old Veedub Vanagon. Hate driving that thing. It's designed with a canvas top that goes up when it's parked to make an airy, leisurely interior. But that makes the damn thing really aerodynamically unsound. Any stray breeze on the road buffets it back and forth so I can never really take my mind off driving, get into the happy fugue state of the open road. Still, I was having fun. Listening to talk radio, singing old Band songs to myself. Fill the tank with gas, tell the world to kiss yr ass and take a load off Manny.

Then right outside of Fremont, I heard a grinding noise from the right front wheel.

Fuck.

"That's not a flat tire," said the Triple A guy.

"So what is it?"

"What did yr husband say on the phone?"

"He said it was either the brake cylindar or a broken wheel bearing."

"That sounds about right," the Triple A guy grinned.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the smartest thing to do was to get him to tow me back to Monterey. Before then I was frantically planning ways to make my life more difficult. Have the thing towed to Oakland. Park it in Eleanor's driveway. Call uber-mechanic Bob Howard whom I haven't talked to in fifteen years. Beg him to fix my car. Cry if necessary. Then accompany Eleanor and Bill to the barbecue where I could feel totally alienated and stressed out and maybe not even have to postpone my inevitable meltdown to the third beer!

The Triple A guy was a trip. A kind of updated Neal Cassady-smooth model psychopath. Spent the first fifty miles or so discussing the restoration of his 1969 vintage Mustang. His wife almost sold it out from under him. A guy knocked on their front door one day, checkbook in hand: "I'll give you twelve thousand bucks for that car –"

"So I came home and the guy had the nerve to ask me for the keys," Mr. Triple A told me, shaking his head. "I told him, 'That's not hers to sell,' and I tore up the check. Right in front of him. Jesus. She thinks we're hurting for money."

"What does your wife do?"

"She's a counselor in a group home," he said.

"So what do you have to do to get a job with Triple A anyway?" I ask. Ever open to midlife career shifts.

"They train you for a couple of weeks. How to tow. How to break into cars. That part I got in about twenty minutes. 'Have you ever done this before?' they asked."

"And I hope you told them, 'Those records are sealed.'"

He laughed softly. "You know I really like doing this. Before I got this gig, I was a graphic designer for a dot-com."

"You're an artist?"

"Oh, yeah. I can draw." By this time we were in Prunedale, driving on that part of 101 that is no longer freeway but frontage road connecting to front driveways. "I used to live right down there. When I was fifteen."

"You went to North County high?"

"No, we went to school in Gilroy. They bussed us. A special bus. I was in a group home," he added softly.

I'd already figured that one out but I didn't tell him.

"A lot of my buddies didn't do so good as me," he said. "A lot of them got into things. Living in their girlfriend's grandmother's garage, shooting up." He shook his head. "Now I like to party as much as anyone but I keep it to one, maybe two days a week. Like it or not, it's their world. You gotta figure out a way to live in it."

"Sure you do," I said.

If my house had been only ten miles farther, I'm sure he would have handed me his business card – Licensed Methamphetamine Resales. As it was, I signed the Triple A form and handed him back his pen. He was lighting a cigarette. "So how much older than you is yr wife anyway?"

"Thirteen years," he said absently. He was already some place else.

Last night of solitude in the house. Heidi came over to look at the new bathroom. Mr. Cardinale and Steffano the tile guy stopped by at the same time. Phone numbers exchanged. The cat came back. Made a big batch of pesto and baked an enormous gooey German chocolate cake against the menfolk's return. I have a weird thing going on that almost verges on an eating disorder – though I'm told I'm an excellent cook, I can never eat anything I cook. Food I cook always nauseates me. Instead I ducked out to Troia's, bought a pastrami sandwich and a pint of butter pecan icecream.

Sat down at the computer.

Instead of opening the business plan, I opened the first page of the manuscript of Women Who Leave. This was supposed to be my month for tunneling down into this manuscript. Michael Gruber had told me to send it to him when it was complete, that he would send it on to Sidney Lipskar. But instead I've barely even looked at it.

Among the international set in Monterey – a quaint tourist town on California's scenic central coast – the number one attraction was not the famous aquarium, or the Pebble Beach golf courses, or even the ghost of John Steinbeck stalking vacationers along Cannery Row, but Costco, a discount shopping depot, whose aisles were stacked twenty feet high with toilet paper and giant tubs of laundry detergent.

On Sundays when Jessie Morasca dragged her kids shopping, she often felt as though she'd ditched the car in a lot outside the Tower of Babel.

First sentence doesn't work. I like the tinny, manic treadmill cadence but "international set" conjures up tight-jawed women in bikinis recovering from Botox injections along the Riviera, and what I'm really talking about is working class foreigners of whom, oddly enough, there are many here in Monterey – two language schools plus it's a big translation center.

Racked my brain for synonyms. Foreign nationals? Longterm tourists?

My brain does its prize-winning imitation of a cauliflower.

Next morning I get lost on my way to the Oakland airport so that I'm not there waving the Welcome Home banner as Ben and Robin and Legolas emerge past the security gate but instead first spy them from afar in the baggage rotunda. Robin is interestingly dressed in shorts, bright red shirt, blue checked ghetto do-rag and knee-high Western riding boots.

"Mommy!" he screams.

A magic child. He teleports himself across twenty cubic feet of business travelers desperately punching buttons to squash that cell phone jones.

"I missed you!" says Robin. "Here's a thousand kisses and a thousand hugs."

My arms close around him. And he's solid enough but somehow I can't believe what I'm feeling.