Dream Interupted

OK. You get a kick out of this, right? I woke even earlier today. I have a rule. If I wake up before four o'clock, I stay in bed. After four, I get up. I figure that fatigue will keep me in bed sooner or later.

I say to people I have the old man's disease, and maybe it is in my case because I don't remember getting up so early before. I don't remember getting up before dawn. But I have a friend who is very young and who has not been able to sleep for years. I work with a woman who never sleeps, she says. Stress? Drugs? Alcohol? Some trouble with the biorhythms?

I am dopey these mornings, heavy limbed and slow-witted. Since it is still dark as I write this, I am thinking of going back to bed as soon as this is posted. The three cups of coffee I've consumed will not bother my sleep. I don't know why. I usually sleep an hour when I go back to bed, and I finish dreaming. Well, of course, that gives me an idea of where to go with the narrative. The Narrative. Jesus, I kill myself, believe me. But one thing I must mention is that while I've changed some of the names of people in writing this, I have been away from it so long I can't remember what I was calling them. Tommy's wife, for instance. I think I only used a name for her once, and I can't remember it. I spent an hour yesterday going back through the posts trying to find it, but the search was fruitless. Leslie? Brenda? Let's call her "Brenda" today. And they have a child born the day that Nixon resigned. I don't think I've named her yet. Or maybe I did. Ashton. I think she is Ashton.

* * * * *

Tommy and Brenda had moved from the government housing project where they lived before. Something had happened and they lost the place. How do you get kicked out of welfare housing? They said something about some cars being broken into and something being stolen, and they said that they had not paid the rent. None of it added up, really, but when Tommy mentioned his little brother, Karl, I knew he had to have done something to queer the deal. Karl was evil, a little sociopath destined for prison. I'd always gotten along with him fine, but man, if you didn't know him, you sure didn't want him around.

The new place was a trailer in a weird sort of trailer park that looked more like an odd collection of trailers than anything actually plotted and planned. They were renting a ten by sixty trailer that was fairly new. I took Sherri over late one afternoon to see them. I don't know why I took her. Maybe I didn't think about it, or maybe I just didn't know better. Sherri's world had not been like this, had not been filled with people whose lives were broken down nor lives that were in the process of breaking. She did not know people who lived on the margins of things, in government housing and trailer parks, did not know those who could not or would not hold a job, who had arrest records and parole officers, who were drunks and addicts and worse. And even though I felt I had escaped all of that, I could not let go of everything. We still cling to the remnants of our past no matter how bad it is, for it is our past, the place of our youth and memories, the thing that formed us, the thing, above all, that makes us human.

Sherri wore that sweet smile that looked as if it had been there since birth, but I could see her eyes searching around for something familiar that she couldn't find. I watched her step carefully across the rutted lot and up to the grid metal stairs that led to the vinyl-covered door. Brenda let us in.

Inside, there was a Christmas tree decorated with shiny metal tinsel and colored light bulbs blinking on and off. Brenda gave me a hug and said hello to Sherri. "Tommy's getting up. He's getting dressed." I watched Sherri standing there, her smile more brilliant than ever, noticing as if for the first time how low a ceiling in a trailer was. "Sit down," Brenda offered, and Sherri situated herself on the low couch crossing her legs and adjusting her short skirt that barely covered her. Tommy was going to get an eyeful.

He came down the short hallway from the bedroom buttoning his shirt while we traded hey mans. I saw him notice Sherri with a little start. He sat across from us in a faux-colonial chair that popped and cracked at the joints every time he shifted his weight. And then Ashton came running out and everyone relaxed glad to make her the center of attention.

Tommy was working in the canning plant now like his step-father and Brenda's father and Brenda's two brothers. He told us a little about that, and I asked about some others we knew. They were all doing much the same thing. His sister's boyfriend was working at the canning plant, too. Donny had stayed with the union and had gotten his license as a carpenter's apprentice. Tommy's car wasn't running, so he was catching rides to work with his relatives. Sherri listened to all this talk of people she didn't know as Ashton told her about the Christmas tree, pointing to here and there while Brenda told her not to touch things.

Suddenly Ashton said, "I've got to go to the bathroom," and ran out of the room. In a minute, though, she was back, dragging her potty chair behind her. She took care to place it in the center of the room, then pulled her dress up and her drawers down and sat down to pee. Tommy was laughing as Brenda said, "Ashton is learning to use the potty." I wasn't sure what to do, so Brenda said,"Just clap for her when she is finished." Ashton was all concentration and seriousness for awhile, then she stood up smiling while we all applauded and told her what a wonderful thing she had done. I looked over at Sherri uneasily to see how she was taking it.

Just then, there was a knock on the door. It was the neighbors, people I had known from the old trailer park. Bill had been the nerdiest fellow there. He was soft and quiet and looked like something made from Playdough. He was considered an artist because he liked to draw, and now he was working in a framing store. His wife had once been the girlfriend of his best friend, but he had moved on and so out of disappointment and with the hope of somehow keeping him near, she had taken up with Bill. She was clearly the master of that relationship, and he was happy about it. After some chit-chat, they asked us over to see their trailer and we said we would stop by before we left. And then, when they were gone, Tommy and Brenda smiled and told us their story.

"They're swingers," Tommy said. "They hang around with other couples who are swingers, too, and they all swap." I looked at Brenda who was nodding with seriousness. "They tried to get us over to play Twister," she said. "It's really weird."

I couldn't get my mind around it. I could see the plastic matt with all the painted dots and tried to imagine the four of them in the living room of a small trailer stretching and bending their arms and legs around. Jesus Christ--Bill! Surely this was the first girl he'd ever slept with.

"It's her," Brenda said. "He just goes along with it." I don't know what Sherri was thinking. Things had gone seriously strange, and I figured it was time to go.

"Well, listen man, it's good to see you, but we've got to go to Sherri's friend's house for dinner, so. . . ."

While Brenda was saying goodbye to Sherri, Tommy walked out with me and said, "I screwed her."

"What?"

"I fucked Bill's wife. She's crazy. Every time Bill's at work and Brenda leaves, she comes over. She won't leave me alone. Brenda's suspicious."

Just then, Bill's wife came outside. She was walking over to where we stood.

"C'mon, you said you were coming over to see the trailer."

"Well, we've got to go. . . ."

"No, you said you'd come over. Come over. You said."

"Tommy was looking at Brenda who was smirking. Sherri's eyes were wider than usual."

"Well, OK, just for a second."

Tommy gave a sardonic chuckle. "OK, man, see you later."

I was not friends with Bill and barely knew her, so stepping inside the trailer was awkward. The trailer was neat as a pin, all the furniture new, Bill's paintings and drawings covering the walls.

"Are these yours?" I asked him. Yes he said modestly. There were several nude sketches of a woman.

"That's me," his wife exclaimed pointing to one of them. And just like that, she had hold of my hand pulling me toward the bedroom, saying, "Come here, I want to show you more." Bill was trying to show Sherri some of the work he had done in clay, but I could see the panic in her eyes. Suddenly, Sherri had hold of my other hand and was pulling me hard and saying, "No, we've got to go," with an anxious outrage I'd never heard from her before. And there I stood, arms extended, pulled in two directions in a human tug-of-war. And though I knew it was wrong, I was excited hoping guiltily that somehow Bill's wife might be persuasive. It was an unconscious desire, I am sure, not something I thought out, just a moment's youthful passion at the thought of it all. Sherri was undaunted.

"What whackos," I said to her as we pulled away. "I mean really. . . ." Sherri said nothing, so I kept talking. "Can you imagine that? Who'd want to have sex with them? They're not even attractive. Boy, I wouldn't want to see the couples they're hanging out with," all this while visions of the wife's willing, naked body flooded my brain. "I love you," I said. "I'm glad you're not like that."

And truly, I was. She was an angel. But now she was a quiet angel saying nothing.

In the silence that filled the car, I thought about it all. I mean, I couldn't not come over again. Tommy was my friend.