Ordinary Sins (6 page)

How easily the old farmer came to love this boy and his boom box. What the boy was doing to the city streets was more than he had done to pigs. Better than pig madness, the boy left in his wake a delirium of silent awe. Full of thanks, the old farmer stood with the others as the boy spread his terrific light.

FINDING HER FIRST JOB AFTER COLLEGE

So this is what it's all about: spend forty thousand dollars of my parents' money and another thirty in student loans, and employers look at me as if I'm a lice-infested waif from the wrong side of the tracks!

I don't like living with my parents, I'm a grown-up. I don't want to live with my roommates, I should be finished with dorm life. I can't afford good food. I can't afford a safe place to exercise. I can't afford a car to go look for a job—or even to be a pizza-delivery person.

My professors acted as if doing well for them would make a difference. As if their classes in the humanities were a test-drive for real life! Ha! Model student indeed! The only firm offers I've had are temp jobs typing forms for a law firm. That and telemarketing. Telemarketing? Now there's a crash course in the humanities for you. I've tried to get in on a trail-clearing crew on state forest land, but there's a waiting list of eighty. There's always teaching English overseas, but I'm too late to apply for this year. I think I'm a little old for babysitting, and all the waitresses in good places are hanging onto their jobs as if they were tenured appointments. I'm third in line for a job packing remaindered books in a book distribution warehouse. Discards from the Discard? Two nonprofit organizations have offered me nonpaying internships in development that might lead to an entry-level job. In development! That nice word for fund-raising! They want to pay me nothing to learn how to ask rich people for money? It's like asking a death-row inmate to serve on a jury. Exactly like that.

I'm not bitter. I'm too young and smart and energetic to be bitter. All I want to know is what my senior advisor meant when she said I should always be brave enough to challenge the system. System? There's a system? Syllabus, please!

SAD HOUR

In this bar, Happy Hour was followed by Sad Hour. It started as the bartender's joking way of clearing people out so he could clean up before the after-dinner crowd came in. When he hung up the Sad Hour sign, drinks jumped from two to nine dollars, the baskets of free peanuts were put away, and the music changed to slow organ preludes.

The first time Sad Hour happened, the Happy Hour customers grumbled and left, but in a few weeks some stayed.

I think this is what I needed, one said, and forked out nine dollars for a beer.

Me too, said another. You get what you pay for.

And so the idea of Sad Hour caught on. When the Sad Hour sign went up, more and more Happy Hour customers started lingering, as if knowing a trend when they saw one. Then there were those who came only for Sad Hour. These were the most sober, always entering by themselves and sitting alone. But all the Sad Hour customers were quiet and polite, laying out their money without complaining and cooperating with the bartender by lifting their feet as he swept up. They sipped their expensive drinks and slowly sank into their clothing as the hour wore on.

For the last fifteen minutes the bartender set the organ music at half speed so that the speakers gave out melodic groans. By now the Sad Hour customers had nearly faded into themselves, looking more like hats and coats draped over counters and tables than they did like people.

At some point even Sad Hour had to end. The bartender waved his arms and shouted, It's time!

There were some sighs of disappointment and occasional pleas for a slow last call, but the bartender turned up the lights and turned on the liveliest new rock-and-roll hits. He lifted his hands over and over, palms up, the way a minister might gesture for a congregation to rise. It's time! he shouted again and opened the front door. Together the Sad Hour customers got up, their bodies slowly refilling their clothes. Calmly, they walked out onto the noisy streets, almost smiling.

THE LOVE ADDICTS

They always found each other, the ones whose hearts had no guidelines. Often they lived within tame and domestic boundaries, but at parties their eyes flitted, looking for gold at the end of a reciprocal smile. In lonely places, their intense light broke through the fog of their surroundings. To each other's eyes, they were bright roses in a dense forest.

It was not malice that drew them to each other, nor a need to conquer or control. It was a pure and mutual hunger. The jealous cynics said their hearts were mere dustbins of appetite. The righteous purveyors of wisdom said they must be cured, their hollow hearts replenished with wheat bread and broccoli, with brown rice and beans. But they craved pomegranates, ripe peaches and melons. Their hearts were blueberry cream tarts and crème brûlée with Belgian chocolate. Their hearts were a fullness topped with lavish desire.

Look at them now. Don't they act as if they are normal, as if those beaming smiles were merely goodwill? What could be wrong with that lilt of the brow, that innocent grin? And the way they walk—can anyone tell what it tells, their strained casual maneuvers of shoulder and hip? Everything, including their clothing, is snug, a tightening restraint that fuels their urge to break free.

The moment of truth is not like a flower opening to the sun of their embrace. It is lightning and shattering leaves. Uprooted trees, downtrodden grass. They are their own aphrodisiac, smooth and moist and just short of violent. But in the delirium of their readiness, they are not helpless servants of lust. They are not desperate pilgrims on a treacherous frontier. Their marsh of passion does not foreshadow the ashy pyre. This is their verdant kingdom, and they are the king and queen.

THE EULOGIST

This gentleman was such a good eulogist that whenever somebody died, people asked him to speak at the funeral.

I'm not sure, said a grieving widow. I hardly know him and my husband hardly knew him.

You can at least ask. Let him decide.

The eulogist had no trouble with the request. I am so honored, he said. When and where is the funeral?

At the funeral, the priest mispronounced the eulogist's name when he introduced him. The eulogist smiled but did not correct the priest. The eulogist bowed to the cross, though no one knew if he was religious. He paused and studied the audience. He carried no notes, but he knew the names of every family member and addressed each one before he began. His expression was compassionate, though not sad.

What can be said about this beautiful man? he began, and paused. Mild sobbing rippled gently through the sanctuary.

What can we say of a man who was so truly good, so self-sacrificing, always tending to others' needs?

The sanctuary became a chorus of sad heads nodding in unison.

It is for us, he went on, to celebrate! And then to live! The truths! Of this good man's life!

The sanctuary shimmered with a grieving gladness. The priest crossed himself. Only the widow looked somewhat sour, as if she knew a different truth from what the eulogist was declaring.

We all have our stories, don't we? said the eulogist. We all have our stories of how this man touched us deeply, how his life transformed us—however modestly, because he was a modest man—into someone we might not have become if it were not for
him. He made a difference, didn't he? He made a difference for all of us.

Again the sanctuary was an assembly of grateful sighs and nods.

I am humbled, the eulogist continued, I am truly humbled to stand before you in the brilliant shadow of this man's glorious life.

Only the widow was sober-faced and tearless.

Now I, like you, must go on with the work of the world. That is what he would have us do, isn't it? In his spirit then. In his spirit. Thank you.

Amen, said the priest.

Amen! echoed the voices from the sanctuary.

A gentle friend touched the widow's arm after the service. The eulogy was so comforting, she said to the widow. Who is that wonderful man?

To praise the dead is easy, said the widow, but my husband was not a good man. The eulogist is not a good man either. A silver tongue on a sawdust man. His eulogy was vanilla frosting on a bed of nails. My husband was that bed of nails, a life composed of a thousand small but sharp bitternesses. There is no beauty in disguising the ugly truth. There is no comfort in presenting bile as crème de menthe.

I've never heard you talk like this before, said the gentle friend. I didn't even know you
could
talk like this.

I'm practicing my eulogy, said the widow.

For whom?

For the eulogist.

WHO LIVED IN A SEPARATE REALITY

He thought he was like everyone else. He wasn't. He lived in a separate reality.

When he shopped for clothing, he sometimes thought of cutting the antitheft device out of the sleeve of a sweater and walking out with it. In the grocery store, he would occasionally sample a grape to prove to himself what a natural thief he could be. Once he added five dollars to the donation column on his tax return and didn't get caught and felt all right about it. There were times when he blatantly crossed the street against a Don't Walk sign, and he once secretly unfastened his seat belt under his shirt when the airplane was almost up to the gate but before the captain had turned off the seat belt sign. More than once he ignored his dentist's reminder that it had been six months since he last had his teeth cleaned, and then—when he finally got to the dentist—with equal defiance, he lied about how often he flossed. He usually ate too much at Thanksgiving dinner. He twice forgot his mother's birthday until the day after. There are times when he picks his nose while driving his car, and at other times deliberately speeds on the freeway, simply because the car in front of him is going even faster and will probably catch the radar detector before he does. When someone tailgates him for ten miles or so, this man actually fantasizes slamming on the brakes and causing an accident that would be serious enough to put the tailgater in the hospital but not so serious that he wouldn't be able to sue the tailgater for every cent he has.

More than such a gross violent fantasy, this man is capable of actual, though more minor, forms of domestic violence. In just one day he may fail to rinse the bathtub after bathing, and fail to fold his bath towel and hang it up, and leave the toilet seat up, and put his clean underwear away without folding it, and fail to put the
cap back on the toothpaste container, and fail to put away the CDs he played the night before.