Tocopilla

I remembered this house so well. It was on Platt St, backing the Canacadea Creek, which emptied into the Canisteo River. It was a Victorian in white slatted wood siding, a fairly ordinary cross-layout design. It didn’t have much of a front porch, but the bay-ish front windows gave it character. It wasn’t a large plot of land, but who needs a large plot of land?

When we were kids the lawn had always been properly trimmed, my mother was obsessed about her flowers and bushes. She would trim them with a pair of pruning scissors, not a stem out of place. We had a swing set in the backyard which opened out to the creek. I longingly remembered my mother screaming at Suzie and me for playing on the retaining wall overlooking the creek.

We moved here when I was ten. It was a nice house- way nicer than the apartment we had lived in before. It was a four bedroom; one my dad used as a study, one was used for guests, my parents took the big one, and I used the second largest. Suzie and I would play in the semi-finished attic; it was our little “fort”. My mother refused to climb the ladder up there, so we could keep it just as messy as we wanted.

It was a rather old house; it was over 100 years old when my parents bought it, in 1977. I had such fond memories of it. My mother kept the whole house spic and span, besides our little hideaway in the attic. She had nice carpets from AM&As (Adam, Meldrum & Anderson) at the Olean Center Mall. She always took us shopping at nice stores. The house was always so well turned out.

My dad opened the door. I walked in and was taken aback anew. It was so worn out, uncared for. The floors needed work. The house was worn down. I was back at the scene of my youth yet again. Except now, this was my only loose end.

“I almost can’t believe you came back,” my dad said.

“I told you I would,” I replied, “Didn’t I?”

“Yes,” he said, “I still can’t believe it, though. Did you settle things with Suzie?”

“A little,” I said, “She’s so unhappy, I think. I feel sorry for her. I think she got what she wanted, and then realized she didn’t want it.”

“I think a lot of people are like that, Johnny,” my dad replied, “You didn’t get what you wanted when you were a kid, did you?”

“No,” I admitted, “But I think overall, I wanted what I’ve gotten.”

“That makes you lucky,” he replied, “But what about-”

“I didn’t say life was perfect,” I told him, “There were lots of things that could have been better, and there has been a high cost to some of it. But the truth is, I’ve mostly enjoyed the life I lived.”

“I’m glad.” He said, a bit gruff. We needed to work on that; we still had a lot of things to work on. I had made too many mistakes; hurt too many people. Having him truly forgive me for disappearing for 25 years would take some time. I could tell he wanted to, though.

“Are you packed yet, dad?”

“Where are we going?”

“Ultimately, a small farm north west of Fargo, North Dakota,” I told him, “It is time you meet my family. I know this is going to be a process, but it’s time to start it.”

“I need to pack, I might need some help,” he said, “I don’t know if I have everything I need.”

“Trust me, you’ll do fine.”

We walked up the old staircase to the second floor. He went into his room and dragged out an ancient suitcase. I had last seen it used for the cruise. It was a long time ago. A long, long time ago. He looked like he was doing ok so I walked from his room down the hall to what had been mine.

It was very dusty. But other than that, it was very neat. It was exactly as I had left it. No, actually, I’m sure my mother had cleaned it a bit. But my twin-size sleigh bed was still wearing the same sheets, the same blankets, as the night I ran away. Blue comforter, beige blanket, white sheets. Two big pillows and the big stuffed Eeyore I always hugged at night.

My bookcases still held my many books my dad and I had bought from the used book store on Main St. My desk was still sitting there, my old wooden desk chair right where I left it, my old Underwood manual typewriter sitting ready to type another good-bye to somebody. The hardwood floors were just as creaky and uneven as they had been. It was like a time capsule.

I looked out the window, and across the space, to the next house. It was the same house that had always been there. There were blinds now in the window of what had been Suzie’s room. I remember standing at this very spot, blushing as she undressed for bed having “accidentally” left the window shade open. The brash, forward, daring Suzie of back then was not really there anymore, but the shell of her seemed to remain buried in the well-off, veterinarian, doctor’s wife.

I sat on the old reading chair in my room and thought. Being happy does not always mean a lack of regret. The game of ‘What if?’

What if I had never beat Frank up? What if I had come back sooner? What if Suzie and I had stayed together? What if we went to college together? What if we had done our work life here, or near here? What if she had never tried to become an upper-middle-class Manhattanite? Would she have had the happy life she wanted with me? Or would we have inevitably changed into serious adults who gave a hoot what other people thought, together?

I pushed it from my mind. It was a pointless exercise. You can learn from your mistakes, but you can’t define any one choice as inherently wrong. What if I had done better on a math exam? And so I rushed home to show my mom, instead of dragging my feet. And in my rush I got ran over by a bus. That’s not an excuse to not try harder in school, but it is a reason not to dwell on the already done failure.

“Johnny?” My dad called from the next room.

I got up and walked over to this room. His suitcase was mostly packed.

“How much formal stuff do I need?”

“None at all,” I laughed, “My family are all rednecks.”

“What if they want to go out?”

“Most of them wouldn’t know how,” I said, “Most of them don’t even own formal clothing.”

“What about church?”

“They don’t believe in it,” I told him, “Raising my youngest son Jewish is pushing Cheryl to insanity, I think.”

“Your youngest son is Jewish?”

“Joshua, who I had with Rachel, is Jewish. She wanted him raised that way, it was her dying wish to me.”

“She died?”

“Dad, we have a train to catch in Buffalo, let’s talk about this later.”

He went back to packing. I went to the ladder.

I wasn’t sure I could fit through the trap door, but I decided to try. I made it with a little sucking in of my gut. I was overwhelmed yet again. This really was like we had left it. There were toys and games strewn about all messy. Puzzles we completed together. Books we had sat and read together. It was all covered by cobwebs and dust. I don’t think my parents had been here since I left.

There was a blanket on the floor. Memories came flooding back to me. I sat on the floor and curled into a fetal position. We never stopped making out. My god, no we had never stopped. The day before we had been caught we had been snuggling naked here. We had never had sex but ... we did a lot of other things.

I couldn’t believe I had buried it. Of course I had never wrote about it anywhere. God help me if anyone knew. I started crying. I had wrote this out of my mind, told myself it had never happened. Not because it hadn’t- because I needed to write Suzie down to get on with my life. I felt horrible.

I couldn’t go back here; as with all things well in the past, it was another country and the borders were closed. The couple who made love on that blanket were basically dead. Susan Levine wasn’t Suzie anymore, and I was most certainly not Johnathan Harris. They would have died anyway, true. We would be different people now; but we would have been different together and in totally different worlds. We would have either changed to better conform to each other, or we would have drifted apart as a pair.

I resolved then and there, I was not going to do this to Rachel, though. I didn’t know how to work this new piece of information into my plans. Rachel would want me to be happy, I knew that. But I didn’t want to write down what we had.

I flashed back to that day, Suzie in my arms on top of me, dry humping me, her soft breasts resting on my chest, that weird little closed-mouthed smile of hers. My hands cupping her buttocks. Her urging me to go farther. Me telling her that god forbid she got pregnant, we’d both be in early graves.

“Johnny, I’m done!”

I went to the trap door and started going down the ladder. I was crying and not paying attention. I missed a rung and fell.

“You ok?”

“I’m fine,” I said, crying. I had taken much worse falls in my life, believe me.

“Why are you crying?”

“Memories, dad, memories.”

“What the hell was up there?”

“Don’t you remember, dad?” I said, “That was Suzie’s and my hideout when we were kids.”

“Didn’t you guys stop using it when you were younger?”

“No, dad, we used it until the day before Frank caught us.”

“What did you use it for?”

“Making out, mostly. I had forgotten that part.”

“How do you forget something like that?”

“You want to,” I replied, “Look, we got to catch the midnight train out of Buffalo-Depew, so we really need to get moving.”

I had dawdled in the morning, and it was almost 8 PM now. It was a two hour drive at least to the station from Hornell, and we hadn’t eaten dinner so we’d probably stop on the way. I grabbed his suitcase and took it down the stairs.

“What if I don’t like your family, Johnny?”

“Why wouldn’t you like them?” I asked, “They are good people.”

“They must be a little nuts.”

“They are a little strange, but trust me, you’ll love them, dad.”

I went to the phone and called Kelly, and told her I’d be arriving in Fargo at about 4 AM two days hence, and then called Amtrak and reserved a roomette for me and my dad. Then I dragged him outside, put the suitcase in the trunk, and closed the lid on it.

“Come on, dad,” I said, “This is when we pull our family together and set the world straight.”

I opened the passenger door on his old 240D for him, and herded him in to it. Then I got into the drivers side, and started up the old diesel Benz. I backed it out onto Platt St, turned right onto Church, left onto Washington, right onto Seneca, and left onto Bethesda. We then turned right onto NY 36, and accelerated the still slow car out of Hornell. We followed 36 for a while, past Stony Brook campground. The scenery was nice and enjoyable.

When we got to Danville, I found Scovill’s Grill. We had some hamburgers with fries and tasty salads. It was pretty good, although they overcooked my burger. But then I like my burger close to raw in the center, so it’s probably more me than them. The service was a bit slow, and I regretted eating there, rather than someplace a little faster.

It was almost 9:30 when we got back on the road, and we quickly booked it to I-390. We got off on NY-63 near Genesso, and followed that for about 25 minutes, and I was having trouble maintaining the speed limit. There was a car in front of me that was going slow and I didn’t have the oomph to pass them. We finally got rid of them when I turned left onto US-20.

There were a bunch of in-town moves on US-20, which was to be expected on a US highway. When we got to the ugly Amshack station in Buffalo, I dropped my father and his luggage off at the station entrance, and then found a parking spot in the lot of the station. Thankfully, parking was free. It was around 11:25, and I found out that the train was running on time.

My father had trouble walking which is why he needed a rather ugly aluminum cane. I was going to have one of the kids at Cheryl’s make him something nicer than that, if I didn’t do it myself. Ugly little thing.

The train pulled in and the sleeping car attendant and I managed to help him up the stairs of the car. The room had already been made up for us, and I let him, obviously, take the lower berth. I wasn’t having an easy time going to sleep; fortunately he seemed to be out like a light.

I remembered the last little fling I had, about two years ago. I was in San Diego at the time...

San Diego is a beach city in California on the border with Mexico. As with a lot of California, there are deeply misguided people who think it is a fine place to live. It is hard, however, to consider anyplace that almost never has snow to be a pleasant place to live. At least that is my philosophy on the subject.

What makes places like San Diego particularly bad is that people consider the weather “pleasant”, which makes it a popular place for homeless people. The more homeless people, the less the locals tend to be willing to put up with them. Which makes my life harder. Options for roofing over my head were distinctly limited.

It was also a bad time for our country. The economy was starting to teeter, due to years of letting Wall St get away with business practices that no sane businessman would ever want any part of. While all of operating a business involves a degree of gambling, premising a business on winning a losing gamble is an act of sheer idiocy. There is a reason I keep my money in a locker in Chicago and not a bank.

Worst of all, it was starting to become nearly impossible to stay anonymous. It was hard to get work without a lot of documentation, and what work there was in that area tended to go to Hispanics, who were willing to work for next to nothing. So it was becoming assumed in that job area, that white people were lazy. Whether that is true is not is immaterial, it was just the lens people viewed me through.

How good a worker could I be if I don’t hold down a job, raise a family, stay in one place? Build a reputation? All that ordinary people stuff. The crack down on “terrorists” and immigrants, plus this general perception of white laziness made it harder and harder for me to find work. Worse was the decreasing number of small businesses that were willing to hire anybody to do small work for peanuts.

Which brings us to the why of me coming to a city where I do not generally find it enjoyable. The answer lays in the trouble finding work. Some years ago Rachel and I found ourselves in San Diego, I don’t remember exactly how or why. There was a first generation Mexican-American named Jorge who was operating a small bodega in an area that was ... perhaps less than desirable.

Rachel got a job as a waitress in a small cafe down the street, and I got a job as a general gopher working in Jorge’s bodega. Jorge owned the building; there were two apartments above the store; a decent sized three bedroom duplex where Jorge, his wife, and his son lived, and a studio that Jorge let me stay in as partial payment for my work. Rachel’s job came with scraps and we were living life quite comfortably between my job’s free lodging and her job’s free food.

The beach was beautiful and we spent a good portion of our time off romping on the beach and trying our hands at surfing. I was a bit too big; Rachel was an ace at it. We had been having fun enjoying it, but they were activities that really required a companion, and I didn’t have one in San Diego at this point. Rachel could make even the most boring place fun.

Anyway, we were in San Diego for a month and a half or so, when a member of a local gang tried to rob the bodega. Jorge usually ran the store and his wife took care of their child, but that day they were reversing roles and she was at the cash register. She was more reluctant to give up the cash than she should have been, and in the exchange the gangster’s gun went off and paralyzed the poor woman from the neck down.

I had seen the idiot from the back room, and could identify him, partially because he was wearing a distinctive gold fake Rolex Daytona loose like a bracelet, but Jorge urged me not to. The CCTV footage of the incident was mysteriously erased down at police headquarters, and I could tell that they had no interest in fully investigating the crime.

Rachel had made rare friends with his wife, Camilla, and was, to put it lightly, livid. Between the two of us we found the two-bit criminal. I held him in place as Rachel gagged him and used a hammer to break the bones in his hands, feet, elbows, and knees so thoroughly he’d probably have been happier being paralyzed. We found a couple thousand in his wallet, and took it and the watch. When we left, we wished the bozo, with great sincerity, a very long life, indeed.

We gave Jorge the watch, which he recognized, and told him that his wife’s attacker had been properly dealt with. He was extremely profuse in his thanks. We, of course, immediately left San Diego; the gang never tied the attack to Jorge because, well, why would a bunch of gringos avenge a local bodega owner? In the years since, I have been back to San Diego, and he always had a job for me, or found me one.

This time it had been a while since I had been back; before Rachel died, actually. He was mortified to hear of Rachel’s death, and I had found out that after over a decade of suffering the life of a quadriplegic, his wife had finally died mercifully in her sleep. He had nobody to help in the store, so he took me in, and while he had rented the studio, he had a spare bedroom since his kid had gone away to college.

I was replenishing my depleted funds working for him at a generous, although well below minimum wage, rate. It included room and board, so it was more than fair.