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iamnotthedog · 6 years

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CHICAGO: DECEMBER 14, 2012

Alise is gone. I drove her out to O’Hare this morning before the sun came up. We listened to talk radio and didn’t really say much on the drive. Then we stood there on the curb where steam from the exhaust pipes of the idling cabs swirls around in the chilly air and people stand next to ashtrays and smoke cigarettes and husbands in hats lift their wives’ suitcases out of open car trunks, and we hugged with tears in our eyes, and a Salvation Army volunteer was standing there by the sliding glass doors ringing her little bell and the sound of that bell was pretty much the most depressing thing in the world.

Alise blew her nose and smiled. Her lips quivered. “I need a Bloody Mary,” she said. Then she put on her sunglasses even though it was still dark, and she walked through those sliding glass doors, into the airy lobby decorated with forest green garland and sparkling white Christmas lights, and out of my life.

I would be lying if I said the whole thing didn’t make me want to puke. I made the mistake of starting to clean our place out as soon as I got home this morning, when the sky outside the frosted apartment windows was just starting to show signs of daylight and the coffee maker was gurgling away on the kitchen counter. I thought cleaning would make me feel better about the whole thing, but after not ten minutes of packing up a drawer full of random crap we had collected over the past four years, I came upon a stack of photographs of the two of us together—the two of us drinking Manhattans in a dark bar in Logan Square on the week we first met, the two of us sunburnt and windswept on top of Lembert Dome in Yosemite, the two of us kissing at a legendary Labor Day barbecue in my buddy’s beautiful, rat-infested wood chip backyard down on Armitage Avenue, the two of us standing outside Li Po in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Thanksgiving—along with a bunch of birthday cards and Valentine’s Day cards and anniversary cards that Alise had drawn for me in her cute way. I started to trip out about her being gone, thinking about all the people I had left in my life and then never connected with again, and also thinking about my friends and relatives who had died recently, which is ridiculous because there is nothing any of us can do about people dying, of course.

My Uncle John just died. I told you about Uncle John. There is nothing I could have done about his death, and he is most certainly never coming back. But even if he was, would I be hanging out with him right now? I wish I was, but I probably wouldn’t be. And my dear friend Jessie, who was honestly one of the nicest people I ever met in my life. Jessie was a surfer—she was a fish out there in the water—and she drowned in a freak accident in a swimming pool several years back. I didn’t get into that earlier, because I quite frankly don’t have the stomach for it, and I’m not up to that point in the timeline of my life, anyway.1 My point is just that all the goodness and beauty that Jessie brought into all of her friends’ and family members’ lives couldn’t do a thing to change the fact that she drowned in someone’s swimming pool. There is nothing anyone can do to change that. But even if Jessie was still here, still being her wonderful self, where would I be? Would we still even keep in touch with each other anymore? I hope so, but my point is that no one knows. Time never stops, and no one knows anything.

I was thinking about all this earlier this morning while looking at those photographs of Alise and I, and I thought about how I was letting yet another person slip out of my life possibly forever, and then I pretty much started bawling like a baby. It was weird. Willie just sat there on the floor next to me with this concerned look on his face, wondering what the hell was going on. Then he started licking my forearm. After about fifteen minutes of that—me crying and Willie really going to town on my forearm with his sloppy tongue—I decided that we needed to get out of the house, so I put Willie’s little sweatshirt on him, and I clipped on his harness and hooked him with the leash, and then I put on my coat and scarf and my old grey stocking hat that I got from Morrison True Value Hardware last Christmas, and the two of us walked out into the blustery morning.

I wasn’t exactly sure where we were headed, but we started walking north and I decided I’d pop in on my good buddy Kevin and see how he was doing. Last I heard, his wife Kate told me he had finished the first round of chemotherapy and was starting the second, and he was really doing a lot better, considering. I mean, no one’s ever really doing well when they are going through that sort of thing, but it is generally agreed upon that the first round of chemotherapy is the worst, so that’s something. Kevin was less nauseated and he wasn’t puking as much, and he got a blood transfusion that made him feel pretty good, and he also got to get the PICC line taken out of him, at least for a couple weeks.2 Can you imagine what that must feel like, having that tube running through your veins for so long, and then getting it taken out? It must feel pretty damned good. And you also can just take a regular old shower because don’t have to worry about covering it up and waterproofing it and all that anymore. I bet taking a regular shower is pretty amazing after weeks of covering your arm with a plastic bag and trying to tape it down and all that every time you get anywhere near the bath tub.

Willie and I walked up Damen Avenue to Irving Park Road and cut east on Irving Park all the way to the Graceland Cemetery. The tall iron gate at the main entrance was open, so we walked among the snowy graves for a freezing cold hour or so until I figured Kevin would probably be awake. Then we walked up Clark Street to Leland and tiny little Chase Park, where I let Willie off his leash and let him run around and get some of his crazy puppy energy out before we walked a block over to Kevin and Kate’s big apartment building on Paulina.

My plan the whole time was just to pop in on Kevin and surprise him with a hot cup of coffee or something, but I thought better of that as soon as Willie and I got to Paulina. I mean, Kevin was going through chemo after all. He might be getting a treatment at that very moment, or he might just be feeling like shit or having one of his headaches, and might not be up to having a visitor. Especially not a visitor with a dog who would probably want to jump all over him and lick him a thousand times.

So, standing out by the gate right in front of their apartment building, I took off my gloves and got my phone out of my pocket while Willie snorted at the snow and ran around in circles until he was tangled in his leash, and I gave Kevin a call.

After just a ring or two, I heard his voice. “Dan?”

“Kevin! How are you, buddy? How’re you doing? Are you home?”

“Hey man. I’m doing pretty good. I’m not home, though. Kate and I have actually been up at her parents’ house in Antioch while our kitchen is being worked on.”

“Oh, shit. I’m in front of your place right now.”

Kevin laughed. “What the hell are you doing there?”

“I don’t know. I was just walking the dog and thinking about stuff. What the hell happened to your kitchen?”

“A water pipe burst in the wall this summer, and we fixed the dining room, but never got around to fixing the kitchen. So Kate’s dad is actually doing it right now, replacing all the cabinets with help from the family.” He paused a minute and cleared his throat. I heard a television in the background. “So, you’re outside our building right now? Isn’t it freezing cold outside? It’s zero degrees here.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ cold. And it just started snowing. Willie and I are going to walk home right now. How’re Kate and the baby?”

“They’re both great. Kate’s huge. She’s due in a month.”

“Holy shit, man.” I stopped for a second and swallowed. The whole situation choked me up, to tell you the truth. “That’s great!” I continued. I untangled Willie from his leash and we started walking. My feet were really cold. My toes hurt like hell.

“How are things with you?” Kevin asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell Kevin about Alise and I over the phone. I didn’t even really want to tell him at all, frankly. He had enough going on in his own life.

“I’ll be home in a couple days,” Kevin said. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got some time and I’m up for hanging out. I could use a bánh mì pretty soon.”

“Alright, man. Sounds good. I’ll talk to you soon.”

What a great guy, that Kevin. No bullshit. I stood there and looked up at his apartment and smiled thinking about him being so selfless. Then I put my phone back in my pocket and kind of looked around at all the houses and the big apartment buildings right there on Paulina as I put my gloves on, and I got creeped out. I can’t really explain it—that section of the neighborhood is perfectly nice and everything, with rows of big trees and nice lawns and all that—and I wasn’t afraid or anything, I just felt like I was somewhere where I definitely did not belong. Not without Kevin there. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. But Willie and I started walking really fast together—almost running at times—which is hilarious because all we were doing was running towards more of the same. That’s the thing about living in a big a city—you have to run pretty goddamned far to get out of it. I mean, in Chicago you can go to the lake and look out on the water. That calms me down sometimes when I’m really feeling bummed out. But if you head any other direction—north, west, or south—it’s going to be a while before you see a landscape that even remotely resembles anything different.

By the time Willie and I got back down to Addison after about twenty minutes, I was nice and worked up, breathing heavy, and I really didn’t even feel that cold anymore. I didn’t want to go back to the apartment quite yet—I wanted some company—so I decided that we’d walk over to Schubas and I’d get a Bloody Mary and talk to whichever of my coworkers was tending bar for a little while. I thought I could just drink a Bloody Mary and pretend that I was sitting with Alise in the airport, and we were going somewhere nice together. But once Willie and I got back out onto a main thoroughfare, I got kind of creeped out again. All the people we passed walking down Lincoln Avenue were on their cell phones. I mean, they weren’t talking on their cell phones, they were just looking at them. And I know that’s pretty much the way things are these days—everyone is constantly on a phone all the time, checking their e-mails or looking at Facebook or writing something mind-numbingly enlightening and important on Twitter or playing Words With Friends or goddamned Angry Birds or whatever—but this was different. All the people we passed who were on their phones also had really concerned looks on their faces. I almost didn’t want to know what was happening, too tell you the truth, so I just left my phone in my pocket and decided I’d figure it all out when we got to Schubas. I’d hear the news from a real live human being. Then, just south of Roscoe Street on Lincoln, we were walking by Dinkel’s Bakery where my 92 year-old Grandma Jevne used to buy cupcakes as a little girl in post-WWI Chicago when I noticed a group of four older women all huddled around an open car window with their coat collars pulled up around their necks and scarves wrapped around their heads. They were all listening to the radio playing inside the car and a couple of them were crying.

“What’s going on?” I asked them.

“There’s been another school shooting,” one of them said. She wiped at her eyes with a wrinkled off-white handkerchief that had lipstick all over it. “At an elementary school in Connecticut.”

Willie sniffed at one of the old ladies’ sneakers and she leaned over and patted him gently on the head.

“The victims were just first graders,” she said. “Twenty of them. And teachers.”

What exactly I said next, I’m not really sure. I may have thanked the old ladies or said, “I’m so sorry,” or “Take care of yourselves,” or something along those lines. Then I decided the last thing I wanted was to go to a bar and have to sit there and listen to a bunch of people form opinions about the whole thing before taking any time to think about it all first, which is what people do most of the time. So Willie and I walked back to our apartment, and he ran around in the yard and ate snow while I stood on the porch and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I had my phone in my hand while I smoked, and I thought about calling Mom, Jeni, Jim, Adam, or maybe even Kevin again. But I didn’t end up calling anyone. I went inside and did what I am still doing now, which is listening to an old Ethiopian music compilation with the volume turned almost all the way up, and putting four years of accumulated domestic belongings into cardboard beer boxes from Schubas, which I will then take to the Village Outlet thrift store down the block.

And you know, despite the things I’m doing right now to try to distract myself from any sort of negative feelings about anything, the one thing I haven’t been able to get out of my head all morning is that after the shock of the tragedy that took place today dissipates—after we all find our miraculous ways come to terms with such young and innocent lives being taken in such a grotesquely violent way—I am absolutely positive that there are a bunch of people out there in the world—the kind of people who think they are good and righteous, but are really just holding on to an antiquated and ridiculous world view that allows them to feel like they have some sort of control over their existence—people who are just itching to get on their cell phones and their computers—on Facebook and Twitter and maybe some of them will even end up sitting in front of a microphone on ABC and NBC and CNN and MSNBC and definitely Fox News—and they’ll somehow find a way to make this all about them, all about their lives, all about their GUNS and their JOBS and their OPINIONS and their FREEDOM (whatever that is), and they’ll start saying that nothing can be done about anything, that this stuff just happens and will keep happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And while they are saying all that and going on in the way that they do, there will be these parents—these brokenhearted, emotionally destroyed people—sitting in their living rooms next to Christmas trees, and there will be some lights twinkling on the trees and maybe some music on the stereo—and at least a few presents under those trees will be all wrapped up for absolutely no one.

That’s what this has become, hasn’t it? A timeline of my life, with a big chunk missing from 2001 to 2012, which I’ll probably end up writing about later if I don’t get run over by a bus or something first. ↩︎

A peripherally inserted central catheter is a long tube that is inserted in a vein in the crook of the elbow, such as the cephalic vein or basilic vein or one of those, and then it runs through increasingly larger veins toward the chest until the tip actual comes to rest in an upper portion of the heart. ↩︎

#sandyhookelementary #guns #christmas #america #airports #death #time #endings #dogs #snow #cancer #chemotherapy #friendship #banhmi #dinkelsbakery #chicago

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