Chapter Twenty-Six, Part IV
Sanctuary
The week we moved into Sumner, I found a box of books in the basement with a note from the previous tenant: Sorry! Didn’t have enough room for this in the van – thought you might like something to read.
At the top was a book of Northwest hiking trails. I opened it to the bookmark and found a listing circled with a highlighter: the Nisqually Delta Bird Sanctuary. I had a profound itch to explore our new region, and this certainly fit into the category of Sign from God.
That Saturday, we had a lot of chores to catch up on – we were still hunting up shower curtains and a microwave oven – so by the time we found the sanctuary parking lot the sun was getting low in the west. We walked straight into it, down a wide gravel path bordered by tall wetland grasses the color of dried bamboo.
“Look,” I said. I gestured above us, where the swallows were swirling from one field to the next, a haphazard, aerial tennis match. But Harvey’s gaze was fixed on the long trail. Always the distance with this one. I had to take him by the shoulders and nearly put him into a headlock to get him to look. When he saw the swallows, though, I could feel his muscles relax.
“Absolutely stunning,” he said.
Harvey the human dichotomy. He was a tough climb, but there was something about the challenge of the ascent that made the view that much sweeter when you got to the top. But. This could be the last kind memory I have of him. Because he snapped. Because he killed people. To that dichotomy, there is no bright side.
I am back in that very spot, the swallows of yesteryear weaving circles above me. The tall grasses are now a milky green. The sun is low in the west, but setting much further south.
He stood right here. The hands that massaged my neck at the end of a long day were used to separate five innocent men from their lives. There are no birds in this sanctuary, and the sky is brewing up a football team of icy-looking clouds.
I watch my steps carefully, as if I will be asked to describe them in a deposition. I have begun yet another process – that of deciding if my so-called life partner was inherently evil, or just inherently weak. A violent streak waiting for an invitation, or an average man too harshly squeezed by mortality and frustration? Are we all just one exploded comrade from taking lives? I picture Hamster bisected by an orange burst, and try to channel my reaction.
I am angry at Harvey, I am terribly sorry for him. I will love him forever, I will never ever forgive him. And I am most sorry for myself, who will have to live with these fucking what-ifs for the rest of my life, who will never have a joy that is not cut in half by the sulfuric acid percolating from my memory banks.
Somewhere in there, I should have some anger for Kai. The man killed my husband. Justifiably, yes, nobly, yes – but there ought to be something. Instead I find only sorrow, so deep I can’t get my hands around it. I don’t know if I will ever have the strength to be his lover, to handle these explosive chemicals he carries around in his brain, but I want to hold him and say, You did the right thing. You did what your own humanity demanded of you. The beauty of friendship is its forfeitability, and Harvey gave up Kai’s the instant he pulled that trigger.
Oh, God. The world is too gray, too empty of wings and song. I crave a bald eagle, a blue heron, some shocking stroke of color to empty my thoughts for the smallest second, but all I have are workaday seagulls rioting over the marsh. I am grateful for my job, which even on the dreariest of days carries the possibility of beauty: a bent note from a blues guitar, a cascade of horns, the apple-ish bite of a hi-hat at the end of a phrase.
I turn and look back at the parking lot. I have covered, at most, a city block. I can still read the numbers on my license plate. It’s time to go to that job.
The evening is utterly rote. I’m not even certain who’s here but I sense that it’s a healthy crowd. I sit next to the pond as a familiar face rises to the surface, sings a song and then sinks back down. I do a lot of smiling and nodding.
But the songs stay with me. “Name,” “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” “The Sweater Song,” “It’s All Right With Me,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Smooth,” “Chasing Cars,” “Tender When I Want to Be,” “What Is This Thing Called Love?” The words drift in and out like a dream before dawn. I try to piece them together, looking for some clue on how a life is supposed to be lived. It’s not simply that nothing makes sense to me, it’s that I am now beyond sense.
There is a word in karaoke that I’ve never seen anywhere else: “Outro.” It’s basically a made-up antonym of “intro.” It comes up on the lyric screen to let you know that the singing’s over, but the music’s going to go on a little longer. You’re free to stay at the mic and wait it out, but you’re also free to leave. Either way, the music goes on without you.
“Channy?”
Big blonde hair, like Joan Osborne in that “One of Us” video. I think this is Shari.
“Hi.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong track, honey. It’s track twelve.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Smile, nod – nudge the track to twelve. An acoustic guitar comes in like a rowboat in gentle water. It’s called “Fade Into You” by a group called Mazzy Star. This must be one of Shari’s CDs, because the song is sad and otherworldly, and if I had ever heard it I would remember it. Shari’s whiskey voice could squeeze tears from “The Hokey-Pokey,” and now she’s throwing in this drowsy Patsy Cline lift that grabs at the fraying ends of my heartstrings. I am able to hit the escape valve just in time, and I turn to face my little squad of business card holders. Busywork. Busywork. Ah, that’s better – a wide gravel path full of trivia.
The end of the night comes quickly, and before I’m even aware that I’ve begun, I am piling my last CD case into the truck. It could be that I can sneak away quietly and continue ceasing to exist.
But then there’s my paycheck, and the rent that’s coming due, so I trudge back in. Hamster is leaning against the bar in a rascally fashion as he nurses an Irish coffee. He’s a sipper; that’s how he keeps from becoming a drunk in a trade that breeds them by the millions. He lends me a rakish smile, a little bit higher on the right, the one he uses on his bevy of barfly Mrs. Robinsons.
“Hey dollface. Good night tonight.”
“Yes.” I smile and nod, but I can hear how flat my voice is. “Can I get my check?”
“Sure.” He reaches into the cash register and pulls out a brown envelope. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks.” I start for the door, feeling suddenly panicky.
“Channy? Are you okay? You seem a little…”
Oh God. That tone of courtly concern, it’s much too fatherly, avuncular, the vice principal, the elder psychologist, the softball coach, and it’s precisely this quality that snips the frayed ends of my heartstrings – the ones that held up the marionette. I sink to my knees and it all comes pouring out of me, a sobbing so deep that it sounds like some large, gray animal at the zoo. I’m melting into the freshly mopped ammonia-smelling floor, and then I’m aloft on a cloud of musky, old-fashioned cologne, Hamster’s day-old beard scratching my cheek. I land on the cold vinyl of a bar booth, where my strange new song just keeps spilling and spilling out.
In the great Northwest, gray is our color of choice, the raincloud our team mascot. Precipitation is such a dominant presence that we have invented a term for its temporary cessation: sunbreak. This morning is my sunbreak, ten minutes of slick beauty during which I have forgotten whatever it was that was plaguing me.
I follow the sunbreak across the room, where it lands on three fuzzy balls making their way along tubes of yellow, red and green. I quickly designate the lightswitch as their finish line and place my money on red. The second I do so, my steed is off, as if someone has turned a faucet and shot him forward on a rush of water. He reaches the switch and disappears around the corner, leaving his rivals to choke on his primary-colored dust.
Victory! Followed quickly by consciousness. I’m at Hamster’s. I’m at Hamster’s because…
Damn.
Sunbreak over. But it’s followed by a slowly spreading smile that smells like coffee. I take a steaming mug that says, It Must Be Love (either that or this coffee is really strong!).
“Thanks, boss.”
“I forget how you like it,” he says.
The first sip goes right to my head, sweeping aside the autumn leaves, prodding me into untoward flirtation.
“I like my coffee like I like my employers,” I say. “Hot and black.”
That sends us both into titters, and I notice that Hamster is fully groomed and dressed: jeans, tennis shoes, golf shirt. Apparently, I have slept in. He leans an elbow against the doorjamb and gives me an appraising look.
“You know, you’ve really got to cut this out. You’re ruining both sides of my reputation.”
I’ve got to latch onto something, and this seems like a solid opening.
“Well now right there! See? Yet another of your enigmatic pronouncements. What the hell do you mean, ‘both sides’? And what the hell is your last name?”
“Don’t you read your paychecks?”
“Have you seen your signature lately? It’s a freakin’ Jackson Pollock.”
Hamster cups a hand around his chin, considering how much of himself to divulge.
“Jenner. Hamilton Beauregard Jenner.”
“You have got to be kidding me!” I am pounding the top of my sleeping bag in disbelief.
“As for the other bit of information, that is a great big fat secret that can only be traded for a secret of similar proportions. Such as, perhaps, whatever it was that liquified you all over my floor last night.”
I take an overlong sip that scalds my tongue. I rub a finger along the hot-spot.
“Well. It’s a whopper. But seeing how that bitch Ruby has absconded to Mexico, I guess I gotta tell someone.”
He beckons me down the hall. “Join me in my breakfast nook.”
I smile. “Said the spider to the fly.”
Hamster’s nook is a key lime pie of white tiles and yellow trim, with a small blondewood table, white chairs and a bay window that looks across the harbor to Karz. I picture him here each morning, nibbling a piece of toast, hamster-like, as he ponders his greatest possession. I sit down and launch into my work, spitting out the whole miniseries, chunk by grisly chunk. My conclusion turns Hamilton Beauregard Jenner into a Catholic.
“Jesus Mary Joseph and Richard Nixon,” he says. “Channy! You should be in a mental ward by now. Certainly not doling out pop music in Gig Harbor. Are you seeing someone?”
“Well I just… broke up to-…”
“Seeing a therapist, sweetheart. It’s fine telling a friend, but eventually you need a professional. This is some grade-A shit.”
I keep forcing my genteel boss to swear, which only adds to my feelings of guilt.
“You got someone in mind?”
He takes a bite from his scone – his first bite, such was his fascination with my story – and smiles.
“How about mine?”
I roll out a finger like I’m laying a tiny carpet. “Which you’re seeing for…?”
He proffers a pinkie. I recognize this from childhood. It’s a pledge of secrecy. I hook my pink pinkie around his mocha pinkie and we pull them away like we’re unplug
ging a bathtub.
“Just for clarity,” he says, “absolute confidentiality.”
“Absolutely.”
“Your boss prefers men. And he got most of those stock tips during late-night rendezvouz on Amtrak.”
“Scandalous! So… why the closet?”
“Different times, honey. I didn’t need both races on my ass. So to speak. My youngers speak to me of rainbows, and Pride movements, but it’s just not my bag. Besides, I take great pleasure in the cash of all those Gig Harbor housewives who come to my bar to indulge their Harry Belafonte fantasies.”
I laugh out loud, which feels strange and lovely. “I was thinking Nat King Cole.”
Hamster lets out a sandpapery Belafonte laugh (I’ll be damned) and says “Nat King Cole! I’ll be damned.”
I stand from my chair, so touched by this long-delayed confidence that I must have an embrace.
“Mr. Jenner – Harry, Nat – give me a big, gay hug.”
“I will,” he says, and does. Wrapped in Hammie’s muscular limbs, I feel that perhaps the world will stop beating on me, at least for the duration of a sunbreak. A trio of cormorants slides by the window.
Next: The Return of Ruby
Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1
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