One morning I had a missed FaceTime call from my sister’s phone, though, I learned later, not from my sister. Now that Sticky Fingers has learned to operate all manner of devices, including apps, I am apparently tops on her list of people to try to talk to at 7:24 am.
John has this book called The
Daily Stoic which marries quotations from famous stoic philosophers with
modern commentary/interpretation. Later that morning we tried to FaceTime my
mother so we could share our daily reading with her, I don’t judge whatever
weird shit your family is doing together, but it was 11:30 and therefore lunchtime
and thus the only audience made available to us was Sticky Fingers herself. She
likes to put her face right up to the camera and shout CASEY CASEY CASEY, which
is in part why I avoid the pre-8 am calls. She wants to know where John is, she
wants me to show her my bathroom, then she’s disappeared from view and I hear,
off-camera, Wait wait wait, don’t do that, and my sister picks up the
phone to show me where the puppy is holed up in the far corner of the laundry
room, you know there is a LOT going on when even the puppy needs to take a
break.
I saw tweet somewhere, a man
writing something like, “My wife and I are playing a fun quarantine game
called, ‘Why do you do it like that?’ There are no winners.” I am hashtag
RELATE on that one. I have lived alone for ten thousand years and I have very
definitive ways in which things are done. John’s ways of doing those same
things are not always the same as my ways so now we follow each other around
the house saying, “Why do you do it like THAT,” which is a fun way to pass the
time.
The bird is a big deal. Thwack
thwack thwack. He starts early in the morning, six, seven am. His dumb
little bird feet are muddy from how wet it’s been and so he’s left an
impressive trail of dumb little bird-foot smudges down his preferred door. If I
hang a towel over that spot, he’ll sort of halfheartedly attack the other
panel of the door but it’s not the same. Sometimes I get lonely and I take the
towel down and poof! within minutes he’s back. My father told us to hang
up a picture of a dead robin, to make the bird feel accomplished, but we’ve
decided to pretend like we’re his personal trainers. Leg day, we shout
at him when he first shows up each morning. It’s leg day, bird! He
gathers himself and flies up to kick at the door again, Yes, bird! Get some,
bird!
***
One day I was FaceTiming with my
mother, I talk to SO. MANY. PEOPLE. now. I was showing her the trail mix and
explaining how John had gone through BOTH packages and picked out ALL the
walnuts and a lot of the dried cranberries. He came flying out of his room to
defend himself, yelling, “I gave you a CHOICE!” and sure I guess if you ask a
person whether they would rather be stranded on a desert island with an almond
or a walnut that’s kind of a choice, but I’m not sure that when a person
answers “almond,” thinking about what a versatile nut that is, you have then
been given license to go through the trail mix and pick out all the walnuts.
Another day, this time talking to
the old man. He read an article about what it’s like to be intubated, on a
ventilator, and decided that’s not for him. “If I get it,” he told me, “just go
ahead and dig a hole.” This kicked off negotiations: I am willing to dig the
hole, but I want to know if I can squish him so I don’t have to dig as much,
digging holes is not easy work. Maybe I could get the tree saw involved? He
doesn’t care, do whatever you want, he told me, squish away. He’s always been
an easy-going guy.
***
There’s a basket of assorted animals,
including an impressive array of plastic dinosaurs, under the coffee table and
I got them out one Junie FT day, desperate times, desperate measures, etc. I
got some kind of awkward half-puppet show going and three minutes in I was
sweating like crazy, I couldn’t remember the dinosaurs’ names or which one had
an accent, I knew Alistair was supposed to sound British and I was pretty sure
he was orange but I really should have made a cast list before I got myself
mixed up with running a full-scale production of plastic dinosaurs.
The next time I saw June, she asked
how the dinosaurs were. Sleeping, I told her, and that worked for about three
minutes. John was in his room, but I had no qualms about standing outside his
door and saying very loudly, “I wonder if anyone wants to go with me to visit
the dinosaurs.” He had the door open before I’d finished my sentence that man
is a born performer. He once told me offhandedly that he didn’t pay any
attention in high school because he was going to be an actor. I asked if he
regretted that once he shifted his focus away from the theater. He thought
about it for a second: “Nah.”
June made her Most! Excited! face
when John flung open his door and the two of them got started trading screams
while I got the dinosaurs out. Junie would scream, then John would scream back,
and this went on for a minute when John let loose a scream so loud that June
stopped, her face blank. “Wow,” she said, and turned and walked away.
You just out-screamed a TWO year
old, I told him, and if you want to know what it’s like to be roommates with
this guy, well, there you go. He also makes the most elaborate artisanal toasts
for us most mornings, three types of cheese and two kinds of pepper and a
drizzling of olive oil. I do most of the rest of the cooking, which is fine
because it turns out John is like a Depression-era housewife, or a British lady
of the manor during the Blitz. He’s got ten thousand ideas for ways to stretch
an ingredient and he’ll happily sit on a stool and keep me company while I work
up one of his creations. I don’t trust him to do the grocery shopping—he’d just
fill the cart with Chloe Pops and coffee—but the man can make a list and
supervise the heck out of me, his silent, brooding, downstairs maid.
***
I’ve been sewing masks, of course,
because every person in the country who has a sewing machine has SPRUNG to
attention and rallied to this (homemade) banner: it is SUCH a pleasure to find
our skills are finally useful. I’ve shipped out 78 so far and the only fly in
my soup is that I bought a machine up here (since I hadn’t brought mine from
home, though John told me over and over I should just pack it and okay, he was
RIGHT, UGH I wish I had that machine) and it’s kind of a shitty one and I’m
having a ton of trouble with the tension on the bobbin thread. That means that
sometimes the stitches are fine and sometimes they’re fine on one side but all
gnarled and loopy on the other side and it physically hurts me to send those
nasty little sh*ts out into the world but I don’t really have a choice, I can’t
unpick and resew every single seam, especially since the bobbin thread keeps
getting messed up, so if you have a mask I made, know that in my heart of
hearts I am weeping over what that bobbin thread has done.
***
We’ve been buying those bags of
cuties or whatever dumb thing those little mini oranges called and while we eat
a lot of them, we’re just two people and those things come in a three-pound bag.
The other night John had gone to bed and I was just wandering around the house drinking
some bourbon and tidying up, as one does. I used my liquid courage to
ruthlessly cull the shriveled-up cuties from the pile, sorry little guys, no
one is going to eat you. But even a couple of bourbons deep I was feeling sad
about putting them in the trash which is how around 10 pm on a Tuesday I came
to be out on the deck throwing fruit into the lake. It turns out it is hugely
satisfying to throw fruit from the deck into the lake, which isn’t that far but
is kinda far, far enough to make a person feel pretty accomplished each time
she hears the tell-tale plop of a little cutie going home to mother nature.
The next morning John took his coffee
out onto the deck, he’s one of those deep-breaths-of-brisk-morning-air people,
and came back inside with a weird look on his face. “Can I ask you a question,”
he started, which is never a good sign. “Do you know why there is a tangerine
on the dock?”
“It’s a mandarin,” I told him, and
just then the bird showed up for his morning workout. Thwack, thwack. “Yeah,
bird!” I shouted, easing off my stool and using the distraction to slink away.
I went down to the water and threw the cutie in properly, job DONE, and the
morning was so beautiful that I hung out on the dock for a few minutes, watching
the cutie bob away, listening to the thwack of the bird flying into the door
over and over again. Just another Wednesday, time to get to work, every day is
leg day, right, bird? I checked my phone, almost 8 am, time to go wake up the
dinosaurs and get ready for whatever this day, Wednesday?, whichday, who knows, might be about to bring.
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