I sit. I sit in the park on a perfectly nice winter day — alone. The place is so goddamned empty that I feel nervous, afraid to be in the middle of the open field alone. Something comes over me. It’s not exactly an anxiety attack but more a cloud, a heavy, dark cloud, all the more threatening because the sky is perfectly clear. Everything is fine, or should be fine, except I’ve been kicked out of my brother’s house by an execution squad. I’m sunk. Flat out in the grass, feeling the depth of it all, and maybe it’s always been there. If pressed, I’d say I know that: I know I did all kinds of tricks and turns and fancy maneu-vers to buffer myself, to puff myself up, to simply fucking survive. But now I’m feeling it, I’m feeling what it was like a thousand years ago in my parents’ house — maybe my five minutes on the swing loosened something, but it’s all coming back like a kind of psychic tidal wave, and there’s a bad taste in my mouth, metallic and steely, and I’m feeling how much everyone in my family hated each other, how little we actually cared for or respected anyone but ourselves. I’m feeling how profoundly my family disappointed me and in the end how I retreated, how I became nothing, because that was much less risky than attempting to be something, to be anything in the face of such contempt.
Look at me. Look what has happened. Look what I have done. Take notice. At the moment I am not even talking to you, I am talking to myself. Look at me, homeless in a public park. I curl into a ball, a fucking human ball in the far corner of the park. I can’t look at myself — there is nothing to see.
I am sobbing, wailing, crying so deep, so hard, it is the cry of a lifetime; I am bellowing. The dog comes to me, licks my face, my ears, tries to get me to stop, but I can’t stop, I have just begun. It is as though I will cry like this for years — look what I have done. And, god-fucking-damn it, I’m not even an alcoholic, I’m nothing, just a guy, a truly average Joe — which is probably the worst part of it all, knowing that I am not in any way exceptional or distinguished. Except for and until what happened with Jane, I was entirely regular, normal; since my wedding I hadn’t slept with anyone except my wife. …
Look at me — even though no one’s come out and said it, you know it as well as I do, I’m as much a murderer as my brother, no more, no less.
I say it to myself — and I am undone.
A young cop shows up, “You okay?”
I nod.
“We got a call about a crying man?”
“Is that illegal?”
“No, but you don’t see much of that around here, especially this time of year. Home from work?”
“Laid off, and the exterminator is in the house today, and they asked me to leave. Park seemed like the place to go.”
“Most people go shopping,” the cop says.
“Really?”
“Yeah, when people don’t know what to do with themselves, they go to the mall, walk up and down, and spend money.”
“I never thought of it,” I say. “I’m not much of a shopper.”
“It’s what they do.”
“Even with a dog?”
“Yep, you’ve got your outdoor malls and your indoor.”
The cop stands there.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but this is a public park and I’m minding my own business.”
“No camping,” the cop says. “No loitering.”
“How can you tell if someone is loitering versus just enjoying the park? The sign says it’s open from seven a.m. to dusk. I walked here with the dog so we could enjoy being outside. Apparently that’s not okay, apparently in this town going into the park is considered weird. And you know what, you’re right — it must be, because there’s no one here; the whole park is empty except for you and me, so I apologize.”
With both the cat and the dog in the car, I go off to teach. I drive to school, park in a shady spot — leave each animal a bowl of water on the floor, crack the windows, the air temperature is in the low fifties. I leave them knowing they’re no better or worse off than parked outside the house.
“Today we are scheduled to discuss the Bay of Pigs. …”
Several students raise their hands and announce that they feel uncomfortable with the subject matter.
“Why?”
“I’m vegetarian,” one student says.
“It’s unpatriotic,” a foreign student suggests.
“While I appreciate your concerns, I’ll carry on as planned. And, indeed, the action was patriotic, if flawed — inspired by love of our country from within the government. The Bay of Pigs is not a restaurant or a food group but refers to an unsuccessful attempt in 1961 by CIA-trained operatives to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. The plan was Nixon’s idea and developed with Eisenhower’s support but wasn’t launched until after Kennedy took office. In retrospect, the idea of a new administration assuming the responsibility for the execution of a covert action planned by another ‘team’ seems problematic. Nixon’s responsibility for the training of the Cuban exiles by the CIA was significant and is discussed in Nixon’s book Six Crises. And yet it is safe to assume that many activities of our government are passed from administration to administration — one sees this retrospectively in the history of the Vietnam War and, more recently, in Iraq. The 1961 failure of Kennedy to overthrow Castro, and the mess made of the carefully laid and then abruptly changed plans, aggravated Nixon and his ‘colleagues’ to no end. It’s interesting to note that several of the CIA players in this event make a return appearance with Watergate.”
The students look at me empty-eyed. “Is any of this familiar?” I ask.
“Nope,” the vegetarian says.
I let the rope out a little bit. I allow the conversation to wander. I talk about history’s knack for repeating itself, the importance of knowing who you are, where you come from. We talk about history as a narrative, a true story writ both large and small. We talk about how one learns, researches — what it means to investigate, to explore. We talk about the value of historical documents and how that’s changing in the age of the Internet and the hard drive. I ask what materials they hold on to.
“Texts,” they say. “Like, when I’m dating someone — or have a fight with someone — I save the texts.”
“We don’t print out,” another says. “It’s not environmental.”
I ask what their first memories were, when they knew there was a larger world, and who they think the most powerful person in the country is. It’s usually either a sports figure or a movie star — not the President.
I remind them they are supposed to be working on a paper in which they have been asked to define and describe their own political views and compare and contrast their positions to the views held by leading political figures.
“That’s hard,” one of the students says.
“For some,” I say, bringing the class to an abrupt close.
I go back to the car — the dog and cat are fine, though the stink is enormous. The cat, in a fit of anxiety, has shredded the passenger seat and used it as a bathroom. I drive home breathing only through my mouth.
Back at the house, there’s a note on the floor. “Big surprise coming for you.” The house still stinks of bug killer. I get cleaning supplies and go back to the car. I take the cat out of the car and put her back into the house — hoping she’s not asthmatic — and clean the shit and shredded interior as best I can.
From the basement I drag an old webbed lounge chair and set it up in the backyard. I find an old arctic sleeping bag and make myself a bed of sorts and fall asleep, waking only when Tessie barks. Coming around the corner of the house, I spot a white van parked at the curb.
The passenger door opens, and an Asian man gets out carrying a small white square of paper — a note!