I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places Page 18

  “What?” My head hurt. I had no idea what Jeanne was to Francesca, who, like me, had found out that she had an aunt later than usual. “Jeanne is my half-sister, so she’s my father’s half-daughter.”

  “No, she’s not.” Francesca looked at me like I was crazy. “She’s his full daughter. She’s his daughter. Like you.”

  I gasped. “Oh my God. Really?”

  “There is no such thing as a half-daughter. I’m in AP Bio.”

  Suddenly it struck me that Francesca was right. She was in AP Bio and I was grief-stricken but didn’t know it. My brain simply wasn’t working.

  I scrambled to call the newspaper back, but I couldn’t get the same woman on the phone, and I couldn’t get the notice corrected. It ran in the paper just as I had dictated it, saying that my father is “survived by his half daughter Jeanne…”

  They didn’t have a hyphen between half and daughter.

  It should have been half-daughter.

  More appropriate to a word that didn’t exist.

  Arg.

  Of course when I saw Jeanne, I explained what had happened with the death notice and apologized profusely. She laughed it off in her peaceful, easy-going way.

  Which she got from my father.

  And that was the exact notice that I found today on Veterans Day, when I went online, trying to find my father’s military records.

  Because I realize now that I wasn’t looking for his military records at all.

  I was looking for him.

  Pieces of him that got left behind, that showed up online somewhere.

  Something, anything.

  But all I found was a memory.

  And a story, happy and sad, both at once.

  I wanted to tell it to you.

  And now it will remain.

  Mute.

  AARP, or American Association of Retired Pets

  Lisa

  It’s no secret that I’m getting older, and so are my pets.

  But only one of us is able to retire, and it ain’t me.

  I’ve always had dogs and cats, as well as the usual menagerie of pets that populated Francesca’s childhood, like guinea pigs, a gerbil, and even a pygmy bunny named Peewee, who lived to be twelve years old.

  Peewee was a sweet gray rabbit, who loved to be cuddled, and Francesca made sure of same, by cuddling him at every opportunity. He had soft gray eyes, a pinkish nose that moved almost constantly, and a heart-shaped mouth, which would’ve been adorable except for the fact that he had one tooth that actually grew outside of his mouth and up his nose.

  Yes, that happened.

  Twice.

  Luckily, my vet had seen this before and was able to snip the tooth both times, and though it grew back, at least Peewee got some oxygen.

  It’s tough to breathe with a tooth up your nose.

  This background is by way of saying that I’m familiar with pets and how wonderful they are, how much they can love you, and how much you can love them in return, as well as the sad fact that they pass away. I have had all of our pets cremated, and their remains are in my office as we speak, stored in little cedar chests with a sympathy card from the vet.

  Shout-out to all the vets who do thoughtful things like writing a sympathy card to pet owners when their pets pass away.

  Your kindness does not go unnoticed, believe me.

  My point is that I know pets die, but what is coming as a surprise as I’ve gotten older is that my pets are aging along with me, and something else is happening at this point. By that I mean, in the past I always felt that my age was a constant, and I was in temporal standstill, while my pets got older and passed away.

  But that is no longer the case.

  This revelation dawned on me only slowly, because that’s the way I am, when I realized that my back was a little achy in the morning. It happened because I’d been on deadline, so I’d been sitting a lot at the computer, and of course the first thing that gets jettisoned when there’s work to be done is exercise.

  In contrast, there’s always time for meals.

  It’s a bad combination.

  In any event, I got out of the chair yesterday, feeling sluggish and unsteady, and I stumbled just a little. At the same moment, I just happened to look over at Little Tony, who had gotten out of the chair because I did, and he stumbled a little before he stood up.

  The comparison was undeniable, though only one of us has fur.

  (Me, on my legs.)

  And then I thought about the relative ages of the pets, realizing that Tony, whom I still thought of as a new dog, was about seven years old, and that Ruby is even older. I got her when Francesca went to college, as a daughter replacement.

  It almost worked.

  But only because Ruby is a corgi, a breed that is just as much fun, and just as much trouble, as a daughter.

  I calculated quickly and realized that Ruby is almost thirteen years old, and obviously infirm. As I’ve written before, she has developed degenerative myelopathy, which means that her back legs are paralyzed and she has to use a little wheeled cart to walk.

  Still she gets around better than I do. I had some ramps built at the front and back doors, and she shoots down them like she’s at NASCAR. In fact, she speeds everywhere around the house, catching her wheels’ legs on the table and the corners of the walls, but she crashes ahead willy-nilly and yesterday, she ran over Tony.

  Ruby is a bad driver, even for a dog.

  The most touching thing is that she still can walk, in her dreams.

  When she falls asleep on the rug, there will inevitably be a time when all of her forelegs start to wiggle in a way they can’t when she’s awake. At first I thought it was seizures, but it’s more regular, clearly her legs in a walking and running motion, obeying whatever nerves still exist.

  We can always dream, can’t we?

  Even corgis.

  But she still needs special care, and I have to take her out of her cart and lift her upstairs, or onto the bed, or outside to go to the bathroom.

  Nothing stops Ruby.

  Every time I pick her up to carry her somewhere, she squirms and looks down, trying to right herself. She’ll even bark and growl at the other dogs as they run around us, barking up at her. She used to be the leader of the pack, but her grip on power is loosening, and they sense it. They know she’s on the decline, and so does she. They’re already angling for position, in their minds.

  The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.

  Ruby weighs thirty-five pounds, and I confess to you that in the old days, I might’ve complained about having to lug her everywhere.

  Ruby runs her cart into a ditch. Boone and Tony attempt to change a tire.

  But I don’t feel that way anymore.

  I feel more tender with her than I ever have.

  I get her, now.

  She’s feisty, funny, smart, and accustomed to doing everything for herself as well as running the house.

  Sound familiar?

  And she still feels that way inside, but her body is undeniably aging.

  Check, check, check.

  I feel sorry for her that she’s no longer the undisputed queen and is sometimes even ignored.

  Every middle-aged woman knows what it’s like to feel marginalized.

  And we don’t like it.

  The more I perform these little tasks for her, hugging her dense little body close, the more I have come to feel a tender kinship with her.

  She needs me, in a way she didn’t before.

  And I realize how much I need her and value her particular brand of feistiness, which persists despite all common sense.

  I know I will cry when Ruby passes.

  And I will have her remains cremated and stored in a cedar box behind me, with a sympathy card written by a vet who sees her only twice a year but still understands how I feel to lose her.

  Because that loss will come hard.

  Maybe even hardest of all.

  And now I know why.

&n
bsp; They’re Playing My Song

  Francesca

  When I first laid eyes on my ex-boyfriend, he was on a stage. I’d gone with friends to his concert without expectation, but I found myself mesmerized by him, his passionate performance, and his songs full of heartache.

  I was a face in a crowd, but I was already thinking I could heal that music.

  Like every woman who hears a sad love song.

  Only then we actually did.

  For the two years we were together, I tried to go to every single gig he played in the city, big or small. I wanted to support him and help out, I hauled my share of equipment and stood in empty parking spots like a human traffic cone while he drove the van around the block, but I also loved watching him perform.

  Professional and personal worlds are often kept separate, so I felt lucky to get to see the person I loved doing the thing he loved. And when I could hear traces of us in his music, I felt especially close to him, like no part of his life was wholly apart from me. A rhyme he asked for my input on, or a guitar lick he discovered from the edge of my bed, were precious breadcrumbs that only I could follow. I felt like the special secret keeper in the audience.

  Which is not to say I knew all his secrets. Early on, most of the songs he sang in concert predated our relationship, and I actively tried not to think about whom they were about. But I’m only human, and once or twice I caved and asked him if a song was about anyone specific.

  He would shrug it off and say, “Not really.”

  I knew this could be a white lie, but it rang true at the time. He had only a couple love songs, and their angle wasn’t particularly flattering to their female subject. We were twenty-five when we met, so it was possible he hadn’t had a great love worthy of a great love song.

  I had a feeling we were on our way.

  I got my wish the next year, when he wrote a classic soul ballad about us. The lyrics were as good as it gets in “my boyfriend’s in a band” land. He captured the euphoria of our present and the excitement for our future together. He sent me an early, stripped-down version of him singing it into an iPhone, which I probably played a hundred times.

  That WAV file would have been enough for me, but seeing him perform it in person was even better. We had a brass section! Love deserves a brass section.

  Sometimes he would introduce the song and point me out in the crowd, making every head in the room turn to stare in envy. I’d avoid their eyes and look at him, unable to suppress a smile of equal parts embarrassment and joy. It used to make my heart race.

  I cried the first time I saw him perform it.

  I also cried the last time, when it was the end before the end—that wretched, miserable time when you both know a relationship is on its last legs. Knowing the plans in that soaring chorus wouldn’t come true gutted me.

  And everyone else dancing, looking at me in envy all the same.

  I no longer felt like the keeper of secrets in the audience, I felt like the coconspirator of a lie.

  I waited almost a year after we broke up before going to see him perform again. I was back on my feet, feeling like myself again, and my ex and I had formed a solid friendship from the rubble—occasional emails, friendly meals, that sort of thing. I had dated other people since him, too. I felt bullet-proof. So when he invited me to the launch of his new album, I said yes.

  But standing in that Brooklyn venue, listening to those songs again, watching him onstage, it felt the same in all the ways that didn’t matter—the almost-cold beer, the concrete floor, the silhouettes of heads, the blue-and-gold lighting—and different in all the ways that did.

  I still watch him perform like a girlfriend, part stage-mom, part-hawk. I still appraise his outfit, and he still wears the chambray shirt I bought him when I set out to upgrade his stage wardrobe. I still lift the corners of my mouth to telepathically keep his pitch up during that one note when he tends to go flat. I still smile when he nails it.

  I still think he looks great, and I still have radar for the girls in the audience who agree with me.

  But I don’t stand front and center like I used to. I tuck myself back left.

  Front and center is for eye-sexing, and now we are just eye-friends.

  Speaking of sex, some of the old songs were fun to hear again, like that one song he wrote about me.

  Mm-hm, that’s right.

  The language is veiled, but that’s what it’s about. How do I know for sure? For one, he told me so when he was writing it.

  And two, I recognize my moves.

  The song is entitled “Exorcism,” which I’m actually proud of.

  If you date a musician and don’t leave him with a song about sex-demon possession, you went too easy on him.

  At one point during the song, a tall guy with curly hair dancing near me tapped me on the shoulder and leaned in to say something over the music.

  “Your hair smells amazing.”

  I smiled. It was too dark for him to see me blush.

  “You like this band?”

  The irony made me laugh. “They’re not bad.”

  I’m not going to lie, there’s a certain satisfaction to getting hit on while your ex milks the crowd with a song about you.

  But it was too weird, and I felt almost guilty. I excused myself to get a beer.

  My ex cannot play the sound track to my next meet-cute.

  This will probably not surprise you, but I don’t like the song he wrote about our breakup. He’s certainly entitled to his own spin on our parting, but that doesn’t mean I have to dig it. Honestly, I could live with the fact that it oversimplifies things—there are only so many bars—but I hate that it reduces us to cliché.

  We deserved better metaphors.

  Did he forget his ex is a writer?

  Though I confess, the chorus—a chorus about being free of me—got stuck in my head. It’s very catchy, which is almost rude.

  I had heard it before only because he released a video for it online, so at least I listened to it first in private. But while that mental preparation removed some of the lyrics’ sting, it was a surreal and unpleasant experience to be surrounded by people dancing to the beat of breaking my heart.

  But by far, the hardest part was hearing our happy love ballad back in rotation. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. And I don’t blame him. It’s a good song, and it’s his product to sell.

  But man, he sold it.

  How did those words make him feel? Did they take him back like they did me? Or had he detached so much that the lyrics no longer held emotional truth, now they’re just words that rhymed?

  Maybe they always were.

  Perhaps he’s gotten used to the distance by now. There’s an element of artifice to any performance. He rehearses these songs, plays them again and again, sells them to new people, woos new women with them.

  Some other woman will listen to it and think, “I could be that girl.” And she’ll hear the breakup one and think, “I could heal that.”

  And if she asks him if it’s about anyone specific, he’ll answer, “Not really.”

  And maybe, by then, it will be true.

  But it will never be true for me. Few things are as evocative of memory as music. Songs are emotions preserved in sap. Those are my emotions, so those are my songs.

  When I went home from the concert that night, I knew then that I wouldn’t go to any more of his shows. Because no matter how “over it” I am in real life, it’s impossible to listen to him sing the words to real feelings we felt and not have my chest in knots. Watching him perform them only makes me feel more freakishly vulnerable by comparison.

  He’s the one up onstage, with the microphone, and the brass backup, and the applause at the end.

  And I’m a face in the crowd, imagining I know what he means.

  To Error Is Human

  Lisa

  There’s a lesson in every news story.

  Luckily, you have me to find it for you.

  Today’s news s
tory is the driverless car, about which you might have heard.

  It’s an Audi SUV outfitted with special electronics by a company named Delphi Automotive, and those electronics enable the car to drive itself. In fact, the car left San Francisco last weekend and is now driving itself thirty-five hundred miles to New York City.

  I’m not making this up. I saw it online, so you know it’s real.

  The car is due to arrive in New York this weekend.

  It better be on time.

  And it probably will be.

  Why?

  Because there’s no people around to make it late.

  In fact, that’s the theory of the driverless car. That it can drive itself anywhere, speed up or slow down, switch lanes, enter and exit highways, merge, and in short, get itself where it wants to even safer than a “human-piloted” car.

  Why?

  Because to err is human, and if you want to eliminate the err, you have to eliminate the human.

  In other words, there’s no pilot to mess up the piloting.

  No knucklehead’s at the wheel to text, eat, talk on the phone, or swill vodka while driving, nobody to be distracted or sleepy, no man or woman to make the mistakes that humans inevitably make.

  And don’t get me started on teenagers, who, though adorable, are programmed to make more driving mistakes than the general population.

  It’s not their fault, it’s their hormones.

  In that they have them.

  There are few fuels more powerful than high-octane testosterone.

  And at certain times of the month, estrogen can light an entire city.

  I barely remember my estrogen.

  And I’m not trying to replace her.

  Because I don’t miss her.

  Nor does anyone around me.

  When you think about it, the idea of a driverless car is very simple, and in fact, I wonder why it took so long to accomplish.

  After all, planes have autopilot, so why shouldn’t cars?

  I know what you’re thinking, that there’s a lot more things to bump into on the road than in the sky, but you’re forgetting that there’s one big thing you could bump into in the sky, which is that large round ball located beneath the plane.

  If you hit it, you’ll do more than bend your fender.

  The downside risk is greater. As in, it’s down.