Panorama City (3 page)

 

With all of this talk of my so-called mistake and Community Service Officer Mary and so on, I don't want to neglect the most important point, which was that I missed your grandfather already, I missed his goodnight kiss on my forehead, his goodnight kiss had always been like a door clicking open, the door to sleep clicking open in my head, he would kiss me on the forehead and I would fall asleep, like a magic trick. Without it, I did not know how to sleep. In the middle of the night I saw a light outside my window, a bright light that wasn't the sun. I got out of bed and looked into the front yard, the light hung there at the street, it was a foggy night, the light glowed white, I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. Officer Mary lay on her back on the sofa, not snoring but breathing deep and loud, her hair sticking out all over the place, her badge resting on the coffee table. I stepped through the front door into the darkness and fog. The bright light stayed where it was and I made my way toward it. All kinds of ideas went through my head, I remember thinking I had seen your grandfather at his typewriter earlier when it had only been Officer Mary, I wondered whether this light could have been a visitation, the goodnight kiss, even, that I had been missing, there seemed to be no other explanation for it. Only when I was past it, only when it wasn't blinding me any more, only then could I see that it was mounted on a tripod, there was a video camera and a tripod. The bright light was on top, there was a white van, too, with one of those dishes on a pole sticking up from the roof. I went to the front of the van and looked in the side window, two empty seats. I went to the back windows, they were tinted, it was difficult to see through them, there was a whole command center in there, switches and televisions, one of the televisions showed the morning news, or what would be the morning news if anyone was sitting at the desk, and another showed the view from the camera with the light on it, which was a view of lit-up fog with the dim outline of my house in the background. On the floor of the van was a pile of clothes, which turned out to be two people, a man and a woman, doing what men and women do, which is something no one should interrupt, I let them be, I let them go on. I went back to bed wondering why they were in front of my house. As I said, I am a slow absorber. Plus, I had never done anything newsworthy before.

 

I lay in bed and tried to sleep and eventually dawn came, then the sounds of machinery, then the reporter talking to the camera in front of the house, somehow her clothes were not at all wrinkled. From the bathroom window I could see a mini-excavator, they were scraping away the soil, they had come to unbury your grandfather. Officer Mary waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail, her shirt was wrinkled, her badge was missing, she had forgotten to reattach her badge, she looked as if all that sleep had tired her out. She said she had tried to stop them, she said they didn't really want to do it, it was the law, it was the law that made them do it, they were like a big rock at the summit of a steep hill, they had been knocked into motion. I stepped outside, I stepped out the back door. The guy who was operating the mini-excavator, I knew him, he was a friend from Madera, his name was Freddy, one of his legs was shorter than the other, I waved at him but he just lowered his head. People were arriving by the carload, there were people everywhere. The authorities pulled your grandfather's makeshift coffin, their words, out of the ground and they put it on the back of a flatbed truck, the funeral director didn't want to get his hearse dirty, the wood was caked with dirt but you could see the craftsmanship, the grapevine stakes held everything together perfectly, anyone could see the work that had gone into it. Most of Madera had come to watch and those who weren't there were seeing it on the news at home. I caught a glimpse of Wilfredo's blimplike arm hanging out of his truck window, from atop the pancake cushion and the wooden beads. Then the flatbed with the makeshift coffin headed onto the road, leaving behind two black gouges across our little patch of wilderness. People got into their vehicles and followed it into town, they made a parade into Madera. You can tell your children someday that when your grandfather died there was a parade, it was on the news.

 

There was a service the next day, someone had arranged a service at a church even though we had never gone to church. Only a few people showed up to that, some of them must have been regular churchgoers, I didn't recognize them. And then Carmen, your mother, your future mother, walked in. I hardly knew her, I mean we had been introduced, Rowdy and Manuel had introduced us, they were painters from Fresno, they had introduced me to your mother, in a manner of speaking, I can't get into it right now, she is staring daggers at me. I hadn't seen her since. She came straight down the pew to me but didn't sit down. She had seen the unburial on television, she said, she had recognized my name. She handed me a bouquet of flowers, she kissed me on the cheek, she said she was sorry to have heard about my loss, and sorry too that she couldn't stay for the service. Everyone in the church gave her stern looks, she wore clothing that revealed her figure, she wore short skirts and low-cut shirts, people looked down on her for that, which was ridiculous because she had a right to show off her assets, her later words, let them say what they wanted. Officer Mary and I sat in the pews, the pastor gave his sermon, it concerned the well-being of your grandfather's soul, which I did not understand, which I did not comprehend, your grandfather had never mentioned anything about having a soul. But it seemed important and it was outside the areas of my expertise, which at the time were very small areas and very few, so I listened and kneeled and bowed my head when everyone else did, I mouthed the words like I used to back in school. After the service your grandfather was put into the ground for the second time, in a manner consistent with the general practices outlined in the law, he was put into the ground next to some people called Brown and next to some other people called Kutchinski, miles away from Ajax and Atlas and our piece of wilderness. The burial attracted less of a crowd than the unburial.

 

Afterward, Mary and I walked to the sandwich place for lunch, it was a strange walk, I mean everything inside my head was strange, I couldn't absorb what had just happened, everything felt temporary, like I was holding my breath while getting a shot, everything felt tight and suspended, I kept waiting for the moment to be over. But outside my head, too, things were strange, I mean even taking into account my mental state, things had changed around town. Everyone knew about my so-called mistake. Bad news
has wings, your grandfather's words. Nobody waved from across the street, nobody said, Hello, Mayor. No, the people who saw me, all my friends, they didn't know what to say, they didn't say anything. I had always been a target, it came with being tall, it came with being friends with everybody, it came with being called Mayor when technically I wasn't. Ever since I was a boy, my friends had found ways to trick me one way or another, always in the spirit of goodwill, it was fine with me, it had become fine with me, because I had discovered something early on, while still in grade school. Greg Yerkovich had tricked me into eating a clod of dirt, he had pulled what he called a truffle out of his lunch box, he had asked if anyone wanted it. We didn't have much money for food and I was on my way to being six and a half feet tall, so I was always hungry, and besides, I was always looking for, I am always looking for new experiences. It was shortly after biting into that dirt clod that I discovered, while breathing my own air in a janitor's closet, I discovered in my head an idea that stuck with me all through school, that saved me many trips to the blankets and closets, which was that when those boys were making fun of me, they weren't making fun of someone else. That idea gave me strength, Juan-George, most of what people call strength is just belief, is just believing that you're strong, I mean mental strength, no matter what you believe you're not going to be able to lift a car above your head. The idea that I was a shield made me into a stronger shield. After my so-called mistake, though, it stopped. Nobody mentioned your grandfather, nobody made jokes about burying him in the yard, nobody commented on my manner of walking with my hands behind my back, nobody tried to steal my binoculars, nobody tried to convince me of anything preposterous, nobody laughed, and so for the first and only time in my life Madera felt like a lonely place.

 

That evening I got a call from Aunt Liz, your grandfather's sister, I hadn't seen her in years, she asked first if I was okay, if I was doing okay. Then she told me, despite the fact that I was twenty-seven years old and perfectly able to take care of myself, despite the fact that I had friends everywhere in Madera and made new ones all the time, despite the fact that I could ride my bicycle into town and find interesting work to do every day of the week, she told me that it would be best if I packed my things and left my bicycle and got on a bus and came to live with her in Panorama City. She was concerned for my well-being, she was concerned about my ability to take care of myself, she thought I should be with family in this time of need, her words, rather than in that drafty old house all alone, also her words. I got to thinking about what Madera had been like that day, I got to thinking about how things had already changed because of my so-called mistake, which got me thinking about whether I really wanted to go back to being Mayor, and I felt a shift inside me, a movement. I thought about your grandfather's radio, about my idea to move his radio into the kitchen, and I thought about what other things I would like to change, I don't usually do much thinking about change, I am not one of those people who seeks out change, it is not one of my qualities, but if I can say anything about the shape of life, if I can give you any idea of what it is like to live a whole life, even one cut short at the Madera Community Hospital, I can say this, which is that everything stays the same for a long time, and then suddenly there comes a moment when everything changes. Aunt Liz talked for a while about keeping an eye on me, she talked about my potential, and while she talked I thought, my head was somewhere else, I thought about what it would be like to be Oppen Porter instead of Mayor, I thought about going someplace where no one had ever heard of my so-called mistake, where no one had seen me covered in algae from when I went coin hunting in the wishing well, where no one remembered the time I went over the handlebars on a scooter while trying to see if the headlight was working, I hadn't thought of sticking my hand in front, your grandfather had said it was physically clumsy but philosophically admirable, I was the type who required primary sources, his words, I wasn't going to settle for shadows in a cave. I had enjoyed being Mayor, I was a good sport, as they say, I had been a good sport, but I was done.

 

[Extended beeping sound. Nurses talking.]
An automatic pump sends painkillers into my veins, without them I would be in unspeakable agonies, Dr. Singh's words. The doctors have made a plaster statue of me, but only literally, I am a rigid mass of what Dr. Singh called bonesetting, the setting process, all we can do is wait, his words, wait it out and see how you do, he said, at which point I knew he was a man to trust, because my philosophy is, my philosophy has always been, that most problems can be solved by waiting.

TAPE
2,
SIDES A & B;
TAPE
3,
SIDES A & B

C: You're not dying.

O: It's just in case, I'm recording this for Juan-George just in case, just in case I die, you never know, Carmen, you never know what might happen once you get inside a hospital.

C: You're healing up.

O: My father used to point at this building and say that if you were in there, you were either coming or going.

C:
Dios mio.
So dramatic.

O: I'm wrapped in plaster and bolted together, I can't move.

C: Just don't go on and on about dying, I can't bear it. When they called me, when they told me you'd been in an accident, I nearly died myself.

O: Now that sounds dramatic.

C: I did. I felt a tightness in my chest, Oppen, I pictured my whole life without you in it, and little Juan-George, and I felt my chest go tight. I told God that if he let you live I wouldn't let you out of my sight ever again.

O: And what did God say?

C: You're here, aren't you?

 

If you had seen me boarding that bus to Panorama City, Juan-George, if you had been able to witness me handing over my ticket to the meticulous driver, with his meticulous mustache, handing it to him with confidence, dressed not in my usual Mayor clothes, which were work jeans and a T-shirt from a business in Madera, I wore them in rotation, people used to say that on my bicycle I was a rolling billboard, if you could have seen me wearing your grandfather's brown corduroy suit and excused the fact that it was too warm to be wearing a corduroy suit, and excused the fact that I had taken out the tailoring at the ankles and wrists so it would better fit me, which left frayed fabric there and a band of dark where the fabric hadn't for a long time been exposed, if you could have seen me and excused those facts and noticed the handsome leather suitcase I handed to the driver nonchalantly, and the fact that I'd polished my boots until they looked almost like dress shoes, and saw too that I was carrying an elegant carry-on bag, actually your grandfather's old shaving kit, containing various papers, money, and my compact binoculars, carrying it under my arm as if gravity did not apply to it, and if you'd admired the hat upon my head, which had been your grandfather's and was a real hat, not a baseball cap or fishing hat but a real proper hat, if you had seen my watch, my Rotary Club tie, my tie clip, if you had watched me say to the meticulous bus driver that I was headed to Panorama City, as if I'd been there and back a million times, if you'd seen how I bowed my head when I thanked Officer Mary for everything and shook her hand, and the way I removed my hat at precisely the moment my head entered the bus itself, you might have said, you couldn't be blamed for saying, There goes a man of the world.