Mallory's Camera

Met up with BB in Wappinger’s for cake and coffee and conversation.

“So!” I said to BB, “Both my kids have told me within the past month that I’m one of the most anxious human beings that they know! Let me ask you a question: Do you think I’m anxious?”

“No,” said BB.

“Right?” I said. “I don’t think I’m particularly anxious either! But when I look at my behavior, I can see that I am anxious around them! In fact, my entire blood family makes me intensely neurotic. Maybe that’s the reason why I have chosen to live at a safe distance from them. I didn’t like the person I feel like they’ve defined me as, so I reinvented myself. All that personal history makes me feel like I’m in a box.”

All day long, I kept thinking about this.

How people can love you, how you can love them, but how that love can make you feel weak and dependent. Not your best self.

###

On my way back from Wappinger’s, I swung by Aldi’s—now the third largest grocery chain in the U.S.—where I have never shopped before.



Aldi’s is dead cheap. I bought an enormous amount of food for less than $40, but when I got it home and looked at it, it nauseated me because the store itself had been so ugly.

Cafeteria food, I thought. Homeless shelter food.

I didn’t want to cook it or eat it.

Although, of course, I did.

Neurotic behavior, of course.

Maybe this is what your kids are talking about, I thought.

###

Other than that, I am back in the Remuneration groove, and since the sky is blue today and temps are at least 15 degrees warmer than they’ve been all this week, I will mosey along to the garden after I tromp to see what’s up.

I confess I’m not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the garden this year.

Possibly because the garden was so sucky last year.

Or, possibly because I was too lazy last October to put the garden to bed properly. I still have to do the manure and topsoil thing. Seems like a lot of work. And I don’t want to work.

My first Food Pantry shift is tomorrow, and I am not looking forward to it.

I feel as though I ought to be doing Good Works to offset some of the awfulness I see around me—even though I have created a life that’s fairly insulated from the awfulness.

But the awfulness is quite intense.

And I’m not at all convinced that one can offset it.

Possibly the best way to handle it is to ignore it.

Milo the puppy got into my bedroom while I wasn’t looking. Headed straight for the laundry basket. A few minutes later as I was hunched over my accounting ledger, I heard an agonized screech.

Robin.

“Mommy, Mommy – Milo’s got your brazilla.”

“Brazilla?” I said.

I got up and walked over. Milo wagged his tail when he saw me. In his mouth was one of my expensive black lace Italian brassieres. Madam, can I interest you in a game of tug-of-war? his eyes asked.

Now “zilla” has become the suffix du jour around Casa Chaos. The pets are dogzillas. The President is Bushzilla. The store is Slow Zilla.

I knocked off shop-tending early yesterday to go to an ISM auction meeting. ISM, a charter school, spends approximately $1800 per pupil more than what the state of California allots towards education and the deficit has to be made up somehow. I am donating a couple of gift baskets, street value around $600 but really I only spent half that to acquire the goods and they’re all things that moved very, very s-l-o-w-l-y off the shelves. But that’s just a dropzilla in the bucket. Somehow I was volunteered to go hat in hand, door to door, through Cannery Row, soliciting donations.

“What’s the pitch?” I asked.

The organization lady stared at me blankly.

“Well, I mean, there has to be a pay-off for them, doesn’t there? They have to get something out of it.”

“They’re helping our school,” she said. “And they get a tax write-off.”

Lady, get a cluezilla, I thought.

Went home to find Robin involved in an intense phone conversation. Who’s that? I mouthed silently.

“It’s Uncle Jon,” he said.

Right. My brother-in-law came back to the States last week to meet with Colin Powell. Today he’s flying back to the Republic of Georgia. We don’t know exactly what it is he does there. At first, it had something to do with organizing their Coast Guard. Then it escalated into planning their presidential election. We think it’s all very John LeCarre. The Spyzilla Who Came In From the Cold.

“And how many ships do they have?” asked Robin. “Can’t you just take them away from the guys who don’t use them?”

When the phone was finally handed over to me, I said, “So, Jon – I keep having all these Lawrence of Arabia fantasies about you. Like one of these days you’re going to don the native headdress and start storming Aqaba.”

He laughed. “Not very likely,” he said. But I wasn’t convinced.

“What feels like home to you these days?”

“Oh, the States, the States. But it is a little bit odd to come back and see all the stuff people have here. And how wasteful they are.”

We chattered a while longer. The unique properties of the Georgian alphabet and the Georgian language, the weirdness of attempting to bring order to what is ultimately an oversized border town, a transit nation, a place that things must go through in order to end up some place else.

“Listen, I’m always looking for hot sauce for you.”

“I appreciate that, Jon. And I’ll let you go now.”

I felt weird when I hung up the phone. Other people are doing important stuff – covertly running nations, writing bestselling novels. And I’m raising children and selling hot sauce.

I wandered into Robin’s room. He was bent over his computer, deep in the throes of some analog reality game. The television was blaring – Robin’s partial to eighties sit coms, Happy Days, that other weird one that starred the Olsen twins. I seem to recall that Max too had an unwholesome fixation on the infantile Olsen twins when he was Robin’s age. It upsets me that I can’t remember more about Max when he was Robin’s age. Milo was sprawled on the bed, chewing happily on a pair of stained underpants.

I reached over and shut the computer off.

“Mom! What are you doing?”

“Put your shoes on,” I said. “Turn the goddam television off. Round up the dogzillas. We’re going to the beach.”

Carmel Beach at low tide. The sea had receded almost a quarter of a mile, ancient, potholed rocks revealed, pounding waves in the far, far distance. The sun was setting. Wholesome ions floated everywhere. We were members in good standing of the dog-walking tribe and as such, were the beach’s chosen. The dogs raced and played with other dogs. Robin scouted for things to climb. “We should do this every day!” he told me.

“We should,” I said. “Watch the sun. At the exact moment that it sets you’re supposed to see a green flash.”

“Have you ever seen it?” he asked.

“Well, no, I never have. But you’re supposed to. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.”

We counted down. Ten, nine, eight…

A particle of light shimmered on the far horizon while I held my breath. Then poof! Gone.

“Did you see it, Mommy? Did you see it?” asked Robin.

I shook my head. “Nope. I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough this time either.”

“The trick isn’t to look hard,” said Robin. “The trick is to not know you’re looking. I saw it.” He laughed. “Flashzilla!”