Stolen car

He did it several times a month. Everyone was asleep, or at least he hoped they were, when he tiptoed into our father’s bedroom. I don’t know what excuse he would have used if my parents woke and found him reaching inside my father’s pocket. He might have had one ready or maybe not. With breath held he made his way over the brown linoleum, past their double bed and must have groped toward the closet like a blind man with arms extended, feeling his way in the dark. The keys must have clanged because they lived on a fat silver ring with many others, but Sparky didn’t care, or had perfected his deception, I don’t know which. That was my brother’s name, Sparky. 

I stayed up most nights cutting paper dolls, so I knew he was doing it. I begged him to take me along, and one night he did. There were three gentle taps on my bedroom door and a whisper. If you’re coming, come, cause I’m not going to wait.

My hair was a scramble, my eyes heavy with sleep, but I jumped from my bed eager for adventure.

I’m coming now. Don’t go without me.

He was 14, I was 11. My brother wanted nothing to do with me on my best day, so I was thrilled to be included.

We moved down the stairs, Spark looking over his shoulder to schuss me with his finger. My pajama bottoms dragged on each step, threatening to trip me and foil our escape. I pulled them up and followed, silently like an obedient dog.

Once outside he opened the door of the Chrysler Imperial and motioned to me. I slid past the steering wheel and waited, breathless and full of risk.

The engine purred, Spark lowered the gearshift on the steering column from P to D and we crept away.

Once we hit route 14, the main highway that ran in front of the restaurant, my brother slammed the door shut and let it rip.

Watch this, he shouted, as he drove into Mr. Palmer’s yard, up over his lawn and out the other side. I can do anything I want and no one can stop me.

He swerved to the right and we were back on the highway. Next it was Gail Allen’s house.  He headed straight for her mailbox and took it out with a quick, thump. Up and down we went over neighbor’s yards, through shrubbery, past loaded wheelbarrows and into flower gardens.

My eyes were round with shock and excitement. Just don’t tell anybody, he said, if nobody knows we’ll be okay. I sunk low in my seat, eyes in the sky, swallowing moonlight.

Eventually he tired and turned the car toward home, but home was not the way we left it. Every light in the house shone through the windows like a lighthouse, which welcomed and warned at the same time.

When we pulled into the drive my father was waiting, rage seething from every pore. He grabbed my brother and began beating him, as my mother marched me to my room. I listened, my ear pressed against the door, my heart frozen in my chest, hot tears running down my face for my brother’s pain. I waited for my turn, as Spark’s screams rose and fell again and again.

When my father reached my door, my mother blocked his path. That’s enough now, she said. That’s enough for one night.

The Dream

 

I hurried through morning chores so I could be at the pool as soon as it opened. As a teenager, I lived to swim, swimming and diving were my life. I performed every kind of high board acrobatic: flips, back dives, swan dives, jack knives and anything else suggested. Completely without fear, I was the daughter of Neptune and the water was my home. My skills were openly applauded by spectators and lifeguards who passed time dreaming up new and different variations for me to try. I was willing and able to match anything they offered.

One hot summer evening I tossed and turned in my bed, unable to sleep. My mind was spinning and I couldn’t quiet. When I finally dosed off, I wished I hadn’t because I slipped into an alarming dream.  I was measuring my steps on the high board and pacing them off as usual; one, two, three. But in the dream, as I lifted my arms to take flight on the final spring, my foot twisted to the right, my head caught on the board and I fell unconscious and bloody into the water. The dream woke me, breathless and frightened. My white sheet fell to the floor as I bolted from bed and walked through the house attempting to rid myself of its memory. In the morning I dismissed the whole thing as indigestion.

But the next time I went to the pool, I became irritated, restless and uncomfortable. Dread hung over me like a cloud I couldn’t shake or identify – a nasty mood. I swam a few laps to free myself then dripped from the pool and made my way to the board. I wrapped my fingers around the ladder and climbed to the top. I held the side bars and began measuring my steps, creating a shadow version of the dive I would do. When I got to number three, a voice spoke to me. Remember your dream, it said.  I froze, as I relived the images of raised arms, the slip of the right foot and the unconscious fall into the water. There was no way I was going to risk anything with those dark images in my head.

I looked behind me and saw a long line of swimmers waiting to use the board. Too late to back down, I thought, so I jumped off the end, carefully, the way a beginner would jump – and slid safely into the water.

What was that? the life guard smirked.  I climbed from the pool and wrapped myself in a towel. The end of my career on the high board, I answered and meant it.

Roots

It was not unusual for me to greet strangers at the door of our childhood home completely naked – not that we had many visitors.

The grown-ups were too busy to protest or enforce rules, east coast summers were sweltering and humid and clothes were a bother. I went without a shirt in public until I began to develop and often drove the car shirtless as an adult. Since my curves were slight, I thought I could easily be mistaken for a man. This drove my kids crazy, so I stopped.

Because I wore my hair short, I had an idea that I looked like a man and believed strangers couldn’t tell the difference.  Some days I’d test my theory by going into a shopping mall dressed in a man’s suit and hat. Of course my skin was cream colored and smooth, and my figure thin and hourglass, but that never occurred to me. Sometimes I’d even glue a mustache above my lip to gain credibility. I did well if I kept my distance, but speaking was a dead give-away, so I would never answer a question, I would grunt or make deep guttural male sounds when a clerk asked if I needed help.

Well, I probably needed a lot of help, but not in the ways they thought. If I caught a clerk looking at me and giving me a broad knowing smile, I knew the gig was up, smiled back and made my way out the door. Must not look like a man today, I thought.

We went barefoot year round as kids. We were without shoes in all kinds of weather including snow. I imagined I would live my entire life without shoes until I stepped on a lit cigarette at the county fair. That left a lasting impression that changed my mind.

My parents ran an upscale restaurant, and customers often complained about our lack of shoes. You should supervise those kids, they’d say, or they’ll all have pneumonia.  My folks dealt with this by repeating their words, but there was never any threat or action. We were just kids being kids. They would report the conversation much like they’d say, Looks like Glenn’s cow is out. Guess someone ought to give him a call.

One afternoon I was walking back from the woods carrying my dad’s double barreled shotgun. It was a 20 gauge, which I liked better than the 12 gauge because that one recoiled and hurt my shoulder. I’d been doing some target practice and feeling good about my aim. We were all taught to use guns and to use them safely, it was part of living on a farm, but when a customer complained about a kid walking on her own through the pasture with a 20 gauge, my dad caved in. I never quite forgave him. I knew what I was doing and hated to be told I had to stop because someone else got scared.

It poured rain the other day. I was feeling stagnant and disconnected so I went outside in my bare feet for the first time in decades. I walked to a tree stump in the middle of the woods and let my feet rest in tall grass. I soaked the earth up through the mud and into my core. It was the perfect medicine, simple, immediate and right. Funny how a little thing like that could take me back to my roots and a clear remembering of the land that once held and defined me.

New York City

 

Every few years my parents treated us to a cultural week-end in NYC.  We drove four hours through vineyards and rolling acres of farmland to the heart of a cosmopolitan environment that was as different from our barefoot childhood as I could imagine. 

We stayed at the Hotel Astor, which in 1955 was the finest hotel in the city. The Astor embodied old world elegance, sat in the heart of the theater district and towered over Time Square. The Brooklyn Dodgers had just won their first world series and the city was alive with excitement. Cab Calloway and Fats Waller were hot stuff and the Cotton Club was birthing a new musical sound. But it was the Broadway shows that interested my folks.

Evenings found us in our finest clothes with fresh gardenias from a street vendor pinned to our coats. The smell of that delicate white flower can still bring back vivid memories of Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, sinking into red velvet theater seats, watching chandeliers dim against a ceiling of gold and holding our breath as plush curtains whooshed back to reveal a magical world of song and dance. We sat spellbound by every theatrical gesture and perfected vocal score. Those performances began my admiration and love for the theater, and also spoiled me for anything less professional. 

I was ten years old when I watched long rows of women called the Rockettes, high kick in unison at Radio City Music Hall. They were wholesome family entertainment, while a trip to the Latin Quarter opened our eyes to the exotic. Women on flower-covered trapezes, descended from the ceiling wearing high heeled shoes, seamed stockings and little else. The undeniable points of attention were their breasts, where long tassels adhered to each nipple, leaving their fullness bare and exposed. The tassels were smaller versions of the fabric ends that held back the drapes in our living room. I was stunned! I could not take my young eyes off them – grown women who amused themselves by swinging naked from the ceiling of a darkened theater. Was that really okay? Was that what women did when they got older? Apparently it was not only approved of but applause worthy.  I began to wonder about stringing ropes in the hayloft and doing some undercover surgery on my mother’s drapes.

When the performance finished, my sister Kristen and I had to use the bathroom, but the lines were too long, so mother encouraged us to wait. We’ll be home soon, she promised. We hopped in a taxi, which vigorously whisked us through busy streets and hairpin corners. When we screeched to a halt, my father’s angry face matched the burgundy coat worn by the doorman. He was complaining about the driver as my sister and I pushed through revolving glass doors, past walls of glossy walnut, expensive paintings and potted palms. We jumped up and down in the elevator in our urgent need, reaching our fourth floor room before the white gloves of the elevator man disappeared behind us. Doors were never bolted at home, so we were stunned to find we’d been locked out.

I’m peeing my pants, Kristen told me. What should we do?

I had pushed my winter coat aside and was dancing up and down in a desperate attempt to wait.

We can’t pee right here, I said, it will make wet puddles right outside our door. We’ll surely get caught and get in big trouble. I have an idea. You run that way, and pee as you go. Run all the way to the window drapes. I’ll run to the marble statue. We’ll spread it out in long lines, that way nobody will be able to figure out what we did.

And so, on that eventful Saturday night, in one of the cities grand hotels, two little girls were pushing aside their fancy lace dresses to leave a bit of themselves in the lavish carpet at the Hotel Astor.

Elmer

Elmer was one of the evening bartenders who worked in my parent’s restaurant. His shift began at five, but he walked through the parking lot door at four thirty dressed in black pants, polished shoes, white shirt and tie. His hair was combed to the left and his cheeks were scrubbed and rosy.

We lived above the restaurant, five kids, mom and dad, a crow, raccoon, dogs and too many cats to count.

I’d filled a metal bucket from the barn with cold water and hauled it upstairs slopping it wet against my bib overalls and over my feet. The bucket was cold and hard to grasp but I managed to hoist it to the second story window.

I was eager to try a trick I’d seen on a morning cartoon show, the one where the cat fixes a bucket of water over a door, so the dog that’s chasing him gets drenched when it opens. Now Elmer had done nothing wrong, he was not chasing me; I just wanted to see how this worked and he was the first person I thought of. I didn’t have long to wait, he was punctual. 

Elmer straightened his tie as he left his Ford and took a quick peek at his image in the side mirror, then gave a little grin of self-approval. I studied him like a hawk. When he put his hand on the restaurant door, I tipped the bucket and let it go. A perfect bulls-eye!

I’ll never forget the way his hair plastered against his scalp and the transparent flesh tones of his shirt. He looked up at me with wide eyes, and an expression of horror and surprise.

I hoped he might compliment me on my daring and ingenuity, but he took a different view. God Damn you, he said, you little unsupervised shit. He walked in the door of the restaurant, had a talk with my dad and walked right out again. Elmer took the night off. 

A few months later I was walking barefoot in tall grass when I ran across a rusty fish hook. It lodged in the tender fold between my toes and had barbs that made it impossible to pull out. I don’t remember moving, just hollering for help. Elmer was on his way to work. When he saw me, he just smiled and walked by. I guess he still had the water incident stored in his grudge pile. I don’t remember how that one was resolved, but doctors were as hard to get to as outer space so they weren’t called. Someone cut that thing off me, but I no longer remember who.

You might think there were consequences for my actions with Elmer, since my dad lost a bartender that night, but there were none. We were spanked a few times, but mostly it was a case of live and let live.

Sanctuary

 

I have always loved the Catholic Church, not the religion, the philosophy, or the services, but the shelter of the sanctuary.

My level of sensitivity is extra-ordinary. A loud voice or shrill laugh can be physically painful, groups of people are over-stimulating. I can’t lay my head on a hotel pillow without knowing the character of the person who was there before me.

While other kids clamored from their desks for recess, I couldn’t wait to slip across the street into the quiet shelter of the Catholic Church, the only building that kept its doors unlocked, and welcomed all people at all hours.

Once inside I was transported into gentle stillness, a world I longed to live in and never leave. Light filtered through colored glass, frankincense and holy water filled my lungs, and banks of candles flickered in neat little rows near statues of Mary. The only sound was the occasional creak of golden oak yielding under the weight of a bent knee.

There were never loud voices in the church or groups pushing, shoving or competing. The people who came and went were few, and always internal and reverent. The Catholic Church was my oasis and sanity. It was a place I could breathe and rest until the school bell rang and I was summoned back inside to endure.

Last weekend I went to a baby shower. When it was time to return home, something in me recoiled. I pointed the car in the opposite direction and kept on driving until I reached Mt Angel Abbey, which sits high on a mountain with a panoramic view of pastures and forest.

Being away from civilization, computers and conversation was just the medicine I needed. I had not realized my exhaustion until I sat near the bell tower and looked out into the serene fields of the Williamette valley. The quiet was tangible; I could reach out and touch it. A few Benedictine monks walked by in silence like black shadows, humble and privately engaged, while the sun rested on my shoulder like a friend’s hand reminding me to unwind and let go.

That was all I needed. I picked up my cell phone and called my husband. I won’t be home tonight, I told him. I’m at the Abbey and it’s too lovely to leave.

Father Vincent was in the garden among a symphony of goldfinch. He was filling the birdbath as they darted over stalks of yellow and white iris, and on to the budding branches of mimosa trees. Father Vincent has been at the abbey for forty-seven years. He tells me he’ll arrange a room, so I go back to my car for my checkbook and hair brush, the only luggage I have. When I return he is gone. The woman at the gift shop hands me my room key. I ask how much I owe and she says she doesn’t know. It’s Saturday. Someone should be around on Monday. Call when you get home and find out. You can mail us a check then. I’ve gone to the Abbey for the past twenty years. It’s the way they do business.

The room is simple, a bed with white sheets and spread, cream colored walls and windows that look into a sky dotted with tiny cotton clouds. There is a desk and gold lamp. I look out and watch a red-necked hummingbird feed on small blue flowers nested in rambling ground cover.

 I unpack by placing my hair brush on the bathroom shelf and walk to the church for vespers. The monks chant five times a day. When I sit down, the sound of it travels through the pores of my skin and settles at my core.

I stand looking up at the domed ceilings, the pink front wall of the sanctuary and the aqua and purple colors that grace the side walls above arched chanting stalls. The room is full of white linen and candles above a foundation of marble and oak. The organ is one of the finest in the world.

Being there is filling me up, it’s filling an empty space I didn’t know I had. How strange to be so at home in a place I have no business being in at all.

Abandoning Ship

The plane landed in England where we were to disembark and spend a week sightseeing. Extremely uncomfortable with the idea of being herded around in a group, I got busy devising a plan of escape. As we claimed our luggage in the London airport, I went up to the tour director.

This is where we part, I said. Guess I’ll be seeing you later.

She looked at me in astonished wonder.

Oh, didn’t Mother tell you? We have relatives here and I’ll be staying with them now. I’ll catch up with you in Austria.

I had received a London address from my older sister for a friend she’d made when she was an exchange student in Denmark. I displayed the address with confidence.

This is where I can be reached if you need me.

The address was a good ten years old and I had no idea who lived there now, but I was like a horse too tightly reined, sensed freedom and was moving towards it. 

I waved goodbye as the others caught the bus from Heathrow. A great relief at being free washed over me as I stepped into a taxi and handed the driver my address. I planned to knock on the door, ask for my sister’s friend, visit and be off, exactly where I didn’t know. Or if I were really lucky, he’d be fun, handsome and interesting; maybe we’d have a night on the town.

The driver pulled over at the house. I reached in my travel bag to pay him, but he was not happy to see American currency and refused it. Payment became an ordeal as I convinced him to, first, find a bank that would exchange funds and then continue to drive around while I tracked down the missing resident. He reluctantly agreed; I changed my money and we drove from house to house to inquire. Turns out this fellow had moved some time ago, but it was a small village and everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who might help. It became a rather expensive game.

Finally, I knocked on the door of a quaint English cottage. An older woman with carefully pressed curls, a plaid dress and flat black shoes stood in the entrance.

Yes that’s my son, she told me, but he moved away years ago.

I was becoming weary and travel worn; my adventure was wearing thin.

I bring regards from my sister, a friend of his from long ago.

That was all. I turned to leave.

Don’t go, she said. Come in and have some tea.

I dismissed the taxi at last and settled at a doily-covered table to visit.

I told her about my family, boarding school and being on my way to Austria to study music. She took golden framed photos from the fireplace, and dusted each one with her napkin as she spoke of her son and other grown children who were away at universities. When she asked where I was staying, I told her I didn’t know. I hoped she would offer her guest room and she did, but first she insisted we go to Western Union to wire my mother. When I wrote the telegram, I was careful to word the message about my safe arrival so my parents wouldn’t suspect my decision to abandon ship. 

That evening my hostess cooked one of the worst dinners I’ve ever had, which she made with great love, attention and care. I ate with appreciation, then excused myself and went to sleep – for twenty hours.

Food trays covered the floor when I woke. Plates and bowls were stacked on linen covered trays, which contained more unidentified dense, creamy, mushy stuff. They had been generously delivered for three missed meals for an entire day. I was recovering from the effects of travel vaccinations, jetlag and exhaustion.

The next day, I was introduced to people my age and asked to join them at political meetings, where they questioned me about the politics of my government, the Vietnam War and the recent death of John F. Kennedy. They wanted to hear my views, believing my thoughts represented the entire country. We had all grieved the death of the president, were alarmed by racial upheaval in the south, and wanted to get out of the war, but I had little knowledge of American policies, domestic or foreign. I wasn’t a watcher of television, and reading was no friend to me, so I came up disappointingly short, having known little more in my life than the interior of bedroom walls, mucking stables, music classes and boarding school. Government had been my favorite class in high school, but that was due to a hopeless infatuation with the teacher. Teenage sexual fantasies and exploding hormones had blocked the retention of any useful information. 

My hostess was proud of having a foreign visitor and openly announced my presence. This is my visitor from America, she said, like she was showing off a prize plant at the county fair.  Eighteen years old and traveling about on her own. She showed me off when we went in and out of shops, visited her friends, and met acquaintances on the street.

She was sweet and generous, but I became restricted by her good intentions and decided to head out on my own again. My brother had married a French woman and I had the name and address of her sister in Vincennes.  I thanked the dear woman, said my goodbyes and made Paris my next stop.

Vespa

I was supposed to be studying music at the Mozarteum in Austria, but I couldn’t get myself to care. I had been sprung from boarding school in early June and boarded a plane for Europe shortly after. I was scheduled for a summer of study, before landing in another music school in Cambridge, but how could I study? I’d just been put in a cornucopia of new experiences and cultures. Why would I put my face in a book or run up and down musical scales in another academic world? 

The night clerk where I stayed was young and cute. He owned a red Vespa and offered to show me the countryside.

Show away! I said. 

I did show up for classes a few times, but when I walked into my German class, my instructor actually announced that he hated Americans. Well you know what, I hate ya back. You are just the excuse I need to get out of here.

Our group was watched over by Jesuit priests from Georgetown University. I found my favorite guy and told him a story about being overwhelmed and unable to adjust to a full academic schedule. He agreed to tutor me, so my class schedule was cut in half. The gates were open. I’d return home with half the credits, but didn’t care.

I still tell people I was in Salsburg when Van Cliburn won the international Mozart competition. He was amazing and wonderful, but the truth of my summer would be found more honestly in another place. I was the girl with hair flying free on the back of a red vespa.

One can never be too careful about the stress of academic overload.

Dyslexia

I was in my last year at boarding school before I picked up a book and read it from cover to cover. Before that, words were a collection of tiny line drawings in black ink, placed against a light background and bunched together in clusters of illegible form. Much of my childhood was spent alone in my room with one illness or another. School became a place I rarely went, so my mother hired tutors to keep me in the educational loop.  I didn’t fully realize that I couldn’t read, because I’d been taught the mechanics in school, I simply could not gain entry.

Tutors came to my bedroom and left stacks of books on the night table, with demands for memorizing and reciting to avoid failure. Bright pink markers guided me with clear certainty to mountains of exercises and reading assignments. I saw the tutors and the books as ugly intruders, the certain onset of a headache. I would look at the pages as one would look at a book of Latin or Greek, and put it aside. I wanted to comply but didn’t know how. Once, in my frustration, I copied the pictures I saw in pencil and ink. I made a great sweeping portrait of Mark Twain and handed it over instead of a book report. It landed in the trash with more threats and verbal lashings describing the dismal future I’d have if I failed to cooperate. If I had been brave, I would have torn the pages and filled my bedroom with paper airplanes, but I didn’t do that. I was not brave.

Reading was painfully slow, but I got better as I got older, better at faking my inability and better at recognizing words. I envied those who saw it as a source of comfort or escape into a better world. When we were assigned book reports in school I would ask others to describe the story or ask a librarian to talk to me about the book. I was able to slide by, but hiding and the extra effort made me weary.

When I was sent to boarding school to recover my health, my roommate gave me John Steinbeck’s  Of Mice and Men. She owned his entire collection which sat on a shelf between our beds. Here, read this, she said, as I lay in bed with a cold. It will help pass the time. I had never read anything that was not academic. I opened the book out of sheer boredom, expecting as ever to be turned away, either by dull content or its failure to allow entry. To my surprise and delight, I was invited inside. The words were easy and enjoyable. I could read it!  I went from cover to cover and wanted another. I was so proud of myself. I was 17 years old and it was the first book I’d read from start to finish. This Steinbeck guy didn’t seem so bad.

Unfortunately, the experience didn’t begin a love affair. I had too many year of seeing books as the enemy for that, plus they required holding still, which I didn’t enjoy either. After so many years of illness, I wanted to be out in the world, doing, not stuck in a room reading.

My character is not very different now. I do love finding a good book, but never suffer an author I don’t connect with immediately. I find beauty and comfort in language, especially in classics like Anna Karenina, and the well-met phrases of Shakespeare.  Dick Francis and his stories from being the jockey for Queen Elizabeth are other favorites.  And now, as miracles have it, I have my own book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Who would have thunk? Surely not the little girl lying miserable and alone in her room, starring at the towering piles of books near her bed,  and wanting to burn each and every one.

The Key

Crocuse and snowbells reached for the sun in the shelter of a broken foundation. Red-winged blackbirds made a racket from the branches of an ancient elm, as I surveyed the vacant property where the farm used to be. A stray barn swallow dove and swirled in the distance as if protesting the destruction of his home. I sat among the rocks where the milkhouse once stood and felt, for the first time, the fragility of life.

I saw myself as a young girl heading for the chicken house to collect eggs and being stopped by mean-tempered geese. I remembered bedding down my horse for the night after a dusty afternoon ride, and looking wistfully at the runners of the horse-pulled sleigh stored in the loft. Looking in the direction of the now missing barn, I remembered wrestling giant silver milk cans as big as myself, as I rolled and pushed them into place for the collection truck.

A great sadness welled in me at the impermanence of life. Everything I valued and loved about the farm, and the people who made it real, was gone forever. The only place it lived now was in me. I cried long and hard for everything in my life that was dying, but most of all for the farm and all it represented. It had been my safe place. The only one I had. Now it looked like a giant wind had picked it up and blown it all away.

I knelt near a pile of broken cement to admire the snowbells, and noticed a glimpse of silver wedged beneath the soil. I dug it out with my fingers, cleaned off its encrusted surface and discovered the long silver key to the kitchen door. I pressed it in my palm, turning it slowly in my hand.

Aunt Ethel was yelling at me through a closed door. I’m going to lock this door and you can not come in, do you understand? I was just big enough to see through the window and was devastated by her intentions. Every Friday she mopped the floor, and every Friday I forgot her instructions and went parading across the wet surface in muddy boots. She was determined to keep me out, and I was just as determined to be let in. In my youthful fury, I braced the offending boots against the front porch wall and shook the door for all I was worth. I couldn’t bear to be locked out by the one woman who cared for me. I yelled, screamed and pounded to let her know. Finally I fell in an exhausted heap against the door.

After what seems like hours she relented and came outside. I was so crestfallen I could hardly speak. Don’t lock me out anymore, I sobbed, I can’t bear it, not from you. We reached an agreement that day about muddy boots, kitchen floors and love.

Now some forty years later, I stood with the same key in my hand and was glad to have it. Actually, I was more than glad to have it. The child in me was literally beaming. I tucked it within the silk lining of my jacket as a treasured reminder of another life. She can never lock me out again, I told myself, because I’ll always have the key.