Panorama City (22 page)

 

The bus is a parade of noses and lips and eyes, and different colors and styles of hair, and different clothes, of course, all kinds of people wearing all kinds of clothes, shoes, boots, sneakers, sandals, and you can see in the way people carry themselves, you can see whether someone is having a good day, or whether they're in a hurry or just puttering along, you can even see those who would be in a hurry if their bodies would let them move more quickly, but their bodies won't, you can see it on their faces, they haven't quite resigned themselves to moving through the world at the speed of their bodies. You see fat people and skinny people, and fat people who want to be skinny, and fat people who are happy how they are, people of all different colors, speaking all different languages, all of them dreaming all different dreams, Juan-George, it's an amazing thing to ride the bus for a few hours. Clarence used to say that the world was always unfolding in front of him, no two days were ever the same, he was always on the move. I tell you, if driving had been my talent, you know where I would have ended up, of course then there would have been no you, but I don't want to trace the consequences, after all that's not how things turned out. It does make you wonder about someone like Phil, when Phil was driving you knew not to talk to the driver, you knew not to try to make friends with him. He never waited for someone to move their car out of the way, he always drove out into the left lane, people were always honking at him, it was no wonder he crashed the bus eventually, but that was later, and he argued successfully that it wasn't his fault, and for all I know he's still driving that bus around Panorama City, if you ever go down there and end up getting on a bus being driven by someone called Phil, he has a square head and red cheeks, just get off and wait for the next one. Phil only wanted to plow forward, plow through the streets and through the day. I suppose we need those kind of people, too, but still, what a shame.

***

It was while riding that bus, it was while watching people get on and off the bus, that I noticed a shopping cart pushed up against a bench, abandoned there, a regular old-style metal shopping cart with a supermarket logo on it, wheels in the grass, in the patch of hard yellow grass, looking lonely and lost, I don't quite know how to put it. I had been riding the bus for a while, we had looped back to come the other way, I had ridden to the end of the route and back, and so I wasn't far from places familiar to me, I knew where the cart had come from, a supermarket several blocks away, Aunt Liz shopped there sometimes. And so I decided, after saying goodbye to Clarence, after thanking him for the ride, I decided to get off the bus and walk that cart back to where it belonged. I don't know what possessed me, Juan-George, but when you're looking for your own path, you've got to trust your gut, and my gut was telling me that this stray shopping cart needed to go home, needed to be with its own kind, not bumped up against some bus bench blocks from the market it belonged to. I pushed it along the sidewalk, it made a terrible rattle, those wheels were designed for smoother surfaces than the sidewalks of Panorama City, I pushed it along and I whistled a tune, or I was still getting warmed up, I felt my way around the notes for a while, and nobody stopped me, nobody told me to shut the fuck up, as Roger had done, it was altogether a beautiful moment. My mind wandered in a most pleasant way, it felt like it had been ages since my mind had been able to wander the way I liked. When I reached the grocery store parking lot, I returned the cart to an area about halfway in, where carts are supposed to be returned, I pushed the cart into the back of a long line of carts, the cart in front obliged by lifting its hinged back panel, one fit into the other, and the lonely cart I'd found became one with the others, returned to where it could fulfill its purpose. Having returned the cart I'd found, I wandered the lot, bringing other shopping carts back to the designated area, until an employee came out of the grocery store and made it clear that I was doing his job for him, which would have been cool, he said, except it was really the only time he could get out of the store all day, and the more carts were spread around the lot, the longer he got to stay outside, and the longer he got to stay outside, the happier he was, and not just because he could sneak a smoke but more importantly because it sucked to be inside, his words, his manager was always crawling up his ass about something. At which point I wished him good luck and went on my way, there would be other carts elsewhere.

 

I spent the rest of the day collecting shopping carts from around the neighborhood and returning them to their respective stores. Sometimes I had to ask people where the stores were, I didn't recognize the logos on the carts, in general people were helpful and decent, as they always were in Panorama City. Only once, when I tried to retrieve
a cart that was upside down in an alleyway, upside down so it wouldn't roll away, I later realized, only that one time did I encounter any resistance, when an old woman came out of her apartment onto her balcony, it was only one story above the alley, she must have heard me out there, she came out and yelled down that it was her cart, that she kept it there, that I had no business taking her cart away, that it was the only way she could carry the things she had to carry, that I should keep my hands off her cart. I obliged, I upturned it and apologized. And then, two carts later, I was walking down a street not unlike Aunt Liz's, I was close to Aunt Liz's, I was in her general neighborhood, and I saw a cart tipped on its side on the grassy parkway and I went to pick it up, I knew where to return it, in fact it was the grocery store I'd returned the first cart to. I became aware of a rumbling behind me, a vehicle coming down the street very slowly. I looked over my shoulder, I tried to do so casually, as I did it I felt anything but casual, I half expected to see Aunt Liz or a police car, but it was a pickup truck with a panel truck back end, full of shopping carts. The driver asked me if the cart was mine, I said it wasn't, I told him I'd found it, I was returning it to the market, someone had abandoned it. He looked at me strangely, he looked up and down the street and asked where my truck was. I told him I was walking it back, and he said I must have a lot of time on my hands. No more than anyone else, I said. He told me his name, which was Roland, and that it was his occupation, it was his vocation to drive around collecting abandoned shopping carts in various neighborhoods, stores gave him a small reward for each cart returned. I told him it sounded like a nice job and he said it had been, until he'd jacked his back, and so right now he was having trouble and could use a hand, was I interested? It was the end of his workday, he said, he was heading to drop off carts now, he didn't need my help just yet, but if I was available tomorrow, we could meet up in the morning. We arranged the time and location and he drove away. I pushed that last cart all the way back to the grocery store, whistling the tune I'd composed and thinking I'd finally discovered the perfect job.

 

As a result of all this, I missed a session with Dr. Rosenkleig. I mean I missed it deliberately, I was aware I was supposed to be at his office, and instead I continued returning shopping carts. In our previous session, he'd declared, from under that mass of salt-and-pepper hair, he'd declared that the key to the future lay in the past. And so he'd wanted to talk with me about your grandfather, he'd wanted to open the subject of your grandfather's death and how it had affected me. Despite his string-cutting moments, Dr. Rosenkleig was a puppet, and a professional, and I wasn't going to talk to him about your grandfather. My reluctance made him, Dr. Rosenkleig, all the more suspicious that I was covering something up, some emotional wound, his words, it made him all the more concerned that I wasn't willing to wrestle with issues from my past, it made him all the more concerned that I wasn't facing my demons. I searched high and low, as they say, for those demons, Juan-George, but I couldn't find them. And so my plan, my own plan, involved me missing all future appointments with Dr. Rosenkleig. Later, much later, I received a piece of information that was shocking and illuminating and yet to be expected, which was that even if I did not show up for a session Dr. Rosenkleig got paid, which meant that the best strategy for him, financially, I mean, in a business sense, beyond speaking and thinking as slowly as possible, was to hope nobody ever showed up.

 

I knew that Aunt Liz wouldn't be pleased with the plan I'd made up, with the plan I'd discovered on my own for myself in Panorama City, I knew she would object, because it was not her plan for me, I knew she would not be happy that I'd missed work and Dr. Rosenkleig, I knew I was in for a long discussion, that I was, as used to happen sometimes when I was a boy, that I was in so-called trouble or hot water with Aunt Liz, but frankly I wasn't worried, I could take whatever Aunt Liz wanted to throw at me, I could handle any of it. Because I'd become, as I had become in Madera in my youth, I had become a shield again, but where in Madera I had been shielding the weak, the targets of bullies, in Panorama City I was shielding Paul Renfro. I was protecting and shielding a thinker, I was providing him with a place to think, uninterrupted by quotidian concerns, his words, I was a shield and a protector of the most valuable thing I had come across in Panorama City, the delicate iridescent soap bubble of Paul Renfro's advanced thinking.

 

Aunt Liz was not yet home when I arrived. I climbed into the crawl space, or I stuck my head up there, to see how Paul was doing. He'd been working on his obstacles, he'd been outlining the nature of the obstacles to his thinking so that he could begin to ask the essential questions about the obstacles that would permit him to advance his thinking, his mind was a thicket, he said, but he was hopeful, he was going to pace his way there, the movement remained an essential component of his thinking, or his preparations for thinking, his ankle ached, he'd come down on it hard, but the swelling had gone down, and he'd found an old board upstairs that he was using as a sort of crutch, to keep the weight off his bad ankle while he paced on the beams, it was ideal, the whole situation was ideal, his words.

Something is happening. The mylar balloon in the corner of my room, the balloon on which I have been watching the reflection of cars and trucks and their lights flowing on the freeway, the balloon bobbing and swaying in the air-conditioned breeze, is reddening, it is glowing. I am afraid, Juan-George, I am afraid, and I am not afraid. The terminus is approaching, I can feel it.

 

I am going to be asked, by no one, by some mysterious force, I am going to be asked to let go of all this, and I am not going to have a choice, and I am going to let go. The traffic is fading, the glow is lightening, the redness is glowing, my vision is narrowing.

 

I see a bright light. This is just as I have heard it described. I don't want to go, Juan-George, but I don't have a choice. Tell your mother every day that she was the love of my life.

 

It looks like I am not going just yet.

 

I have a few moments left, perhaps. I must tell you, I forgot to mention it, I did go back to the health club, I went back exactly two weeks later, to collect money from the sale of Paul's antioxidant cream, even though Paul was gone, even though I was supposed to be in the middle of my clinical trial, I went, I snuck down there by myself, I sat on the bench in the entrance for a few hours, nobody came, but someone had left an envelope, one person had left an envelope with my name on it, and a check for twenty dollars, with a happy face on the memo line, I never got a chance to cash it, I don't know what became of it.

 

Oh, Juan-George, the red glow is piercing my eyes, I can feel the terminus approaching. There's no manual to life, there's no arrow pointing at what's important and what isn't, you have to feel your way there, and of course if you had a thousand years you could do it on your own, but nobody gets a thousand years, most don't get even a hundred, life is short even when it is long, and so we have to listen to other people, we have to listen to others and then decide for ourselves, based on what we've heard, what's important and what isn't, which seems simple enough but is in fact treacherous because if everyone believes something it's probably not true.

 

Your mother is stirring now, I was hoping she would sleep through my passing, I didn't want to subject her to this, I am closing my eyes, I am going quietly.

***

I am here, I am still here, it is dawn and I am here. The sunrise, it was the sunrise, what I thought was death was the sunrise reflected on the balloon. Your mother has gone downstairs, she's at the cafeteria getting herself some tea. It is tomorrow, I have made it through the night, I have lived through the night, a miracle, the doctors said I wouldn't. It's a miracle I owe to you, Juan-George. You, your future ears, listening to this, you have helped me, you have reached back through time and kept me alive just a bit longer.

Aunt Liz, when she got home, she looked like she hadn't slept in days, her reddish hair had flopped down, her zebra print shirt was wrinkled, she opened the door and stared at me for at least ten seconds before saying anything. And then she said that she didn't know what to do with me. She said that she couldn't believe this had happened again. She had heard from Roger the manager, she had heard from Dr. Rosenkleig, she had driven all around town, she had checked the Lighthouse Fellowship, she had even gone back to that man Paul Renfro's building, she had found only an angry landlord. She didn't know what to do with me, she repeated that again and again. She was at the so-called end of her rope. How could she be expected to look after me if I continued to behave like this, if I continued to relapse, was the word she used. I had been doing so well, my one-month evaluation had been so positive, what had happened, why the backsliding? Had the positive reinforcement gone to my head? She decided it had started with the pushpins, and though she'd agreed I'd
only borrowed them they had caused her a great deal of undue concern, and she should have come down harder, she should have practiced some tough love at that point. She wouldn't, she couldn't be a party to my delinquency, she had taken me in with the hopes of undoing some of the damage my father, her brother, had done, or the damage that had occurred as a result of him doing nothing, she understood that I was still adjusting, Dr. Rosenkleig had told her that the process inevitably involved taking one step forward and two steps back, as he put it, or two steps forward and one step back, she couldn't recall, but in any case the time had come to step forward again, the time had come for me to shape up, another day like today, she said, and I don't know, her words, all she could say was, I don't know. As she spoke, I didn't respond or argue, I didn't tell her about my new job returning stray carts, I didn't tell her about how riding the buses had led to a new way of thinking, I didn't tell her anything about my own plan for my own life. It was all one long piece of uninterrupted speech from her mouth, and as she spoke I listened to something else, something only I could hear, because only I was listening for it, Aunt Liz was too heated up to notice, I listened to Paul Renfro's pacing, I listened to the rhythmic beat of his pacing and it was as if I had ears in another world, a higher world of advanced thinking and moving history forward. While Aunt Liz chided me, the rhythm of Paul Renfro's pacing, a rhythm enhanced by his use of the board to help keep his balance, carried me away, in my head, to another, more intellectual plane. Aunt Liz discussed the possibility of my beginning to pay rent and the problem of, her words, my Teflon attitude toward personal responsibility, and the difficulties inherent in my so-called adjustment, considering the absurd deprivations of my upbringing, but even as all of those words entered my head, and remained there, to emerge only now, even then I was pursuing, much as I had been at the french fry hopper the day I'd seen that abnormally long french fry, I was pursuing the thinking man's way to empowerment, I would not let Aunt Liz dictate the terms of the situation, I had other things in mind, literally, I had other things in my mind, I was a stronger shield than that. I was imagining, or trying to imagine the kinds of ideas Paul was having, or the kinds of basic questions that might emerge from his advanced thinking, I was trying to deduce from the rhythm of his footsteps and the board the direction in which his thinking was moving, it reminded me of watching the power wires on the side of the road while riding the bus, except that rather than making me sleepy this rhythmic pattern was making me more alert, I was trying to tap into what Maria had called the higher planes, where our spirits were not separate as they were here on earth, when I felt, in my core, an alarm going off, something wasn't right, the rhythm was off.
Pah-dump, pah-dump-dump, pah-dump, pah dump-dump-dump.
An alarm went off inside me and my whole body stiffened, this was automatic, there was no hesitation, it happened in an instant, my body stiffened, and Aunt Liz stopped talking. I don't know if she was responding to my body stiffening or if she'd felt an alarm inside her too, as I said this all happened in an instant. There was an enormous crash in the kitchen, it sounded like a backhoe had come through the wall. Then a patter like hail on the linoleum. We ran in, or I ran in and Aunt Liz followed. We looked up, we couldn't help but look up, the eye was drawn upward to where before there'd been smooth ceiling and now there was plaster spiderwebbed with cracks, and in the middle of it all a hole with a board hanging from it, a two-by-four with socks wrapped around the end, twitching and swinging like a busted windshield wiper. The only thing keeping the board from falling to the floor was an arm, a man's arm, which had followed the board through the hole in the ceiling. Aunt Liz screamed, the board dropped to the floor. I am a slow absorber, I have talked about this before, and one of the disadvantages of being a slow absorber is that I didn't know immediately, as I should have, that this meant everything was coming to an end. I saw Paul Renfro's arm, or most of his arm, scraped and dusty, hanging down through a hole in Aunt Liz's kitchen ceiling, and I saw Aunt Liz's horrified face staring up at it, and I thought, I remember thinking, There's something you don't see every day.