Longest Day of the Year
Does anybody even know who Mickey Rooney was? A walking-along thought out of nowhere, the kind of thing the mind comes up with when it gets a chance.
Those Andy Hardy movies used to be on TV on Sunday mornings. Judy Garland was in the best of them. She and Mickey made quite the pair. Song and dance and mischief team. Especially him for the mischief. Those were the days.
Years later I saw him in concert, I guess that’s what it was, in the tiny town where I lived. I was married then and my husband also went to the show and so did my dad who was visiting and was Mickey’s generation, more or less. The show was at the high school. Mickey’s younger and presumably super-attractive-at-one-time wife was there too. Probably to keep him on task. The show was mostly a montage of his movies. Some songs. Light dancing, if you can even call it that. The whole thing was awful and sweet.
Beyond that, I don’t remember what any of us thought of it. An outing, that’s probably what my dad said. Something to do.
So anyway, we sat beside one another in the dark in an auditorium where we never had been before and never would be again. A dramatic sentence, maybe, but also those are the facts.
Awful and sweet is how I would describe a lot of old age, from what I’ve witnessed. That’s before it becomes downright grim.
Probably the caregivers at my mom’s assisted living place thought that calling her Annie was cute, but did she? I know I didn’t. She’d never been Annie. Except maybe to her sisters when she was a little girl. At 85, she may have been circling back, but that far?
Feeling better enough, I recently quit going to PT for the same reason. I was too annoyed by the way the therapists talked to the many elderly people there. Like they were cute and dumb. Or just dumb. People often mean well, but still.
I saw this happen with both of my parents in the last years. Time passed slowly.
There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong for you. I say each of these sentences daily. Many times. It is true, almost no matter what is happening. Even when something does go badly, I hurry back to the sentences. After years of turmoil, I’m enamored with peace.
In love with it, even.
Once, ardent was a word I might have used to describe myself. I think I want peacefulness more now. Not everyone can handle peace. Mostly I go it alone though I’m open to companionship. It’s just that drama is more popular, currently. What can you do, I say to myself. Most of what occurs to me is not anything I’d really like to do, so I take a walk until the next time the question pops up.
We were raised simply, my siblings and I. Each grateful, in our own way. As best I can, I hold onto those times. I don’t want to live in the past except for the ways in which I do.
I’m writing this on a Tuesday, first day of summer. Nearby I’ve got a photograph of my mother and her sisters on a beach. Is it Lake Huron, where their rich cousins had a cottage? Or is it Lake Michigan at Saugatuck, where I know they took at least one trip?
This would have been the 1940s. Mickey and Judy were tap dancing their hearts out at this very same time. My mother and aunts look modest and happy. Modest was a high compliment.
I’ve always been filled with longing, but now it seems sweet. One of the best things about me, actually. Walking the neighborhood where I grew up, I try to notice details. Stonework around a front door. A charmingly imperfect path into a garden. An old flowerpot with new flowers.
Soon it’ll be 100 years since my parents were born. “100!” my mom might say with an exclamation point. “Wow,” my dad would have said but mostly because “wow” was one of the few words he had left after the stroke.
I suppose if they were still alive, we’d have a party for 100. And we’d have balloons. A one and a zero and a zero. I like that balloons never stay tied down. Or at least one of them doesn’t. You can count on that.
And that’s part of the pleasure of it, I guess: watching a zero float away, let’s say, looking like an open mouth, drifting over the trees. If it’s saying something, we can’t hear. Thank goodness. And if it lands, we don’t know how or where or when.
* * * * *
Looking Good
That’s what the creeper said. He had slowed down, window already open because it was a nice morning, no stifling heat yet, this being about 7:45 a.m.
Do you remember that Joyce Carol Oates story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” — ? This was that guy, only older. 65-ish. Scrawny, it was obvious, just like it probably always had been.
My sister thought I knew him; I thought she did. We live in the same neighborhood, a block apart.
I’m sure our faces were cautious and skeptical. That’s our usual look. Not a bad thing, really. Our dogs didn’t bark, which was surprising and not especially helpful.
We said nothing. He said his big line — “looking good” — and then waited for us to appreciate his attention.
I’m sure I raised my eyebrows and rolled my eyes because that’s what I do and I never really have learned to conceal my reactions and also I don’t really try.
His car was a sedan, something typical and safe, but red, presumably because red is supposed to be sexy. For that and other reasons, red is my least favorite color.
Once, years ago, two of my former grad students did some interior painting at my house. They were good guys, definitely not creepers, and I laughed and was pleased when one of them pronounced all my color choices as “beguiling,” which was good because I wanted to cover up less-than-beguiling colors like country-crafty yellow and regular blue.
Red cars fall into the same category. Ok, we get it. Less-than-beguiling.
Another male friend, son of a cop, has impressed me with his ability to size up a situation and make mental notes of the colors of cars and the height and clothing of would-be criminal types. This is a good skill no matter who you are, and I try to do it, and I can say for certain that the creeper’s car was red and he was scrawny and he wore a wedding ring, which I saw because he had his hand on the open window.
Not that wearing a wedding ring, or not wearing one for that matter, means much of anything, certainly not in fact, but it was a thing to notice, and I did.
And probably this guy, this Arnold Friend, was harmless, but also maybe not.He did ruin our walks. I mean, he did until we stopped thinking about what had happened, which isn’t quite yet, obviously.
My sister and I had been out separately, she with her dog and me with my two dogs, and we had happened upon each other, which was nice, and we were talking about the day and the weekend, Fourth of July, and about the latest alarming things that were happening in the country.
I was feeling newly grateful not to be so young.
And then the creeper showed up and did his bit and sped off and we were dumbfounded and weirded out and wondered if we should walk together but decided not to, so close to home, after all, and etc.
But who does something like that — leans out a window and gives a compliment — I’m sure that’s how he thought of it, that’s always how they think of it — that early in the morning?
My sister thought he was going to ask for directions. She’s nice like that and always ready to help.
I have more of a “I can’t help you until you help yourself” vibe or even a “fuck off” vibe, which is something I quite like about myself but of course it does attract those who prize their own persistence.
The whole experience made me a little wistful for the pandemic, which hums along in background, biding its time. The days of masking had the super pleasing consequence of depriving random men of the opportunity to tell women to smile. By which they no doubt mean: smile at them.
This kind of thing — instructions to smile, aging creepers popping up just, oh, everywhere and at any hour — is tiresome, to say the least.
All this is private life, supposedly, but who knows anymore. I do find myself looking over my shoulder.
I often wonder what’s next.
And I do pity the wife of the creeper who no doubt has put up with much worse though everyone strikes bargains and maybe theirs is not all bad.
Does she have a credit card in her name? A legitimate question because having a credit card in one’s own name, if one is female, that is, is a thing that has, shockingly, only been possible since 1973, a fact that another male friend told me. He was equally appalled, which just goes to show that not all men are bad — I would never say that — and the world is messed up and it’s best not to take anything for granted. Likely, the creeper votes.
As do I.
Also, I have a credit card — several, actually — in my own name, and, to put it bluntly, I’m independently wealthy, somewhat financially and definitely otherwise and the otherwise is what really matters.
Can the creeper say the same?
Thus, to summarize: he said what he said, and we said, well, nothing, because that’s generally how it goes, caught off guard as, still and always and sadly, we should never be.