Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace (5 page)

I felt so happy there in her living room that I got drunk on her tea. I read once in a magazine that in Czechoslovakia, they say an echo in the woods always returns your own call, and so I started speaking sweetly to everyone—to the mother, to the boys. And my sweet voice started
getting all over me, like sunlight, like the smell of the Danish baking in the oven, two of which she put on a paper plate and covered with tinfoil for me and Sam to take home. Now obviously, the woman has a little baking disorder. And I am glad.

A
t the height of summer, my least favorite season, one I would have skipped if I were God, one of my best friends had a breakdown. He is my age and almost like a brother to me, highly accomplished, well employed, newly married to a fabulous woman, and prone to severe depression. He had not been able to stop thinking about killing himself, even though he adores his wife, his son, his work, and us, his friends. So he had been in what he referred to as “the bin” for three weeks, and was now at a halfway house, where he would stay for two weeks before reentry into his life. I had not seen him in a few days, and one sultry evening, empty and anxious, I suddenly got it in my head to go visit him. It was five o’clock,
three hours before visiting hours ended, and it made perfect sense that even in my mental and sweaty condition I would drive on the freeway for an hour to support him in dealing with the mess of his breakdown and rehab, the strain it put on his marriage, fatherhood, career. Maybe, subconsciously, it was to make myself feel holy and purposeful, and to buoy myself up.

Also, it would help me deal with my own loneliness, because I was going to drag someone else along with me. I knew just the person.

My friend Janine would agree to come, spur of the moment. She loves this man, too. She loves any excuse to escape from her house, where there were three kids, one of whom was recovering from a bleed in his brain, caused by tumor, along with the in-laws who had arrived to help her care for the kids. Now, you would think a woman with a sick kid would be exempt from being sucked into my good-idea field trips, but no, this is not how it works: see, it would help her, too. Two birds with one stone: Annie would be helping everyone! Plus, Janine would drive. She has a huge mega-car with GPS, a built-in hands-free speaker phone, a great stereo.

I printed out a map and directions from MapQuest before I went to her house. I brought two ice-cold bottles of water and a baggie full of almonds, which I believe have medicinal powers, like SSRIs and blueberries.

I drove to her house, which was bustling with good cheer. The kid who had been so sick sat watching TV, surrounded by loud love. I hugged all the teenagers and in-laws, and spent a few special quality Annie minutes with the recovering boy, cajoling him into a little chat. Then Janine and I set out for the town of Rohnert Park, which less charitable people called Rodent Park, a mysterious place with lots of meth labs and trailer parks, to which I have rarely been. We felt very superior and organized, in her perfect car, with our map, directions, water, and almonds. And we love each other’s company. We were both sober, crabby Christians, with a purpose: to bring our best selves to this dear friend, whose wife and child were at home while he recovered from suicidal fixation. Our directions gave us the confidence to start out on the journey, to get on the freeway and drive to the residential care facility, an hour away, one exit and two right turns off the freeway. Easy.

We didn’t even turn on the GPS.

The sun seemed to be thinking about setting, and hung low in the sky, and it was lovely to be together, cruising along, talking about her son’s slow but steady progress and our dear friend’s sudden breakdown.

“It’s all so lifey,” Janine said. “It’s why we love TV so much.”

We drove for nearly an hour and then started watching for our exit. The car phone rang, and Janine took it without seeming to move a thing. Maybe she has an AT&T chip embedded behind her ear. At any rate, she said, “Hello?” and it turned out to be Cathy, the woman in charge of transporting Janine’s car back from the hospital in Houston where her fourteen-year-old son had been in rehab. The car was going to be delivered the next day, and Janine made arrangements, which is to say, we both listened while the woman chattered. “Yes,” Janine said a number of times. “The post office in town, at noon.” I smiled and made the universal sign of chattering fingers. “Yes,” she said again. “Noon. Yes, correct: the post office.”

I studied the directions. But when Janine clicked off the phone, we noticed that none of the exits was listed, and we realized we had gone too
far. So we pulled over and turned on Janine’s GPS, shaking our heads and laughing at ourselves about what confident little schoolgirls we had been, gripping our MapQuest directions but not paying attention.

The GPS lady told us to make a U-turn and get back on the freeway, heading south. We had driven 11.2 miles too far. Eleven miles too far! Oh, well, we said, and drove south. We drove along, gossiping, eating toasted almonds, and were within two miles of our destination when Janine’s wonderful husband, Alan, called from Europe. His name and cell phone number appeared on the GPS screen, replacing the map. His big booming voice came through the speakers, asking her if she had a few minutes, but she explained that we were nearly at our destination, and had already missed our exit once. Could she call him back as soon as we arrived?

All the pieces of the puzzle of Janine’s impossible life and sick child had kind-of-sort-of come back together today, and she didn’t want to bum anyone out, especially her husband, who’d been through so much. But there was a long, bad silence from his end. It was clear that he was in a state, not just out of the country. And not just in any country, but in Germany.

“Fine,” he said. “Good NIGHT.” She tried to wheedle him into a better mood and said she’d return his call within five minutes—but he’d hung up. Oh, well, we said again, shrugging. It seemed to be our mantra. It’s actually not a bad prayer, either.

One mile away now by the map on the GPS, we went back to concentrating like children. We were going to get there with close to an hour left. The GPS lady said our exit was in .3 miles.

And right then,
Ring Ring Ring
.

Cathy’s phone number replaced the map on the GPS screen. The Houston car-transport person had one more question.

We both laughed, even though I realized somehow that we were going to miss the turnoff again. There were construction signs everywhere down here, blocking our view of the exits. Janine took the call.

Cathy wanted to verify that there was only one post office in town.

Janine said, “Correct,” and then covered her mouth. Now we were in hysterics, the kind women friends dissolve into where there is seriously risk of pee. I saw out of the corner of my eye that we
were about to pass the exit. I yelped, and Janine hit the brakes, but she had to drive on or risk being hit by the car behind us.

We shook our heads and looked to the GPS for rerouting information, and it was then I understood that beneath the hysterics were the other kind, of weeping and gnashing of teeth. We drove another mile looking for an exit, but it was all wreckage and detour signs. What seems true is that something in life, on the highways or in our hearts, is
always
being installed, or being repaired, or being torn down for the next installation. Or the mess of the repair or tear-down is being cleaned up and cleared out. I wiped at my eyes, kind of confused about the tears, and wondered if Janine’s massive car had a gift shop where I could buy some Kleenex. I found some in the glove box.

Somehow, now silenced, we took the overpass that got us back on 101 North, and we made a right turn, and then one more turn, and another, until we pulled up in front of our friend’s halfway house.
Bzzzztt
, my BlackBerry buzzed with a text: Our friend’s wife wanted me to know she appreciated our visiting her husband, but her feelings were
hurt that we hadn’t included her. She would have loved to be part of our outing.

I wrote back from the passenger seat that I loved her and was sorry but it had been spur-of-the-moment and I had rushed out the door without thinking.

Janine stayed in the car and called her husband in Germany. I could tell it was going to be an unhappy conversation. I got out and walked to the front door. I automatically became the take-charge auntie you’d think
anyone
would like to have step into their screwed-up life now: organized, positive, on board.

It was twenty past seven, which meant we still had forty minutes to visit. My friend was waiting near the door, expressing worry that something had happened to us, and he looked so vulnerable there—I felt terrible that we were late, and I hate when people are late, even for dinner or a movie, much less a situation like this—that I started to cry.

Tears just burst into my eyes, pooled, and ran down my cheeks. Of course I know by this late in life that laughter and weeping are connected at the hip, but I had so wanted to bring my friend the peace of God, and for life and comfort to work, however briefly. Is that so much to ask?

Yeah, well, good luck.

My friend showed me around. He had his own room, with a photo of his family, and books. It was sweet. I breathed into that fact, this hilarious demonstration of what you set as the direct trajectory of your goal and, instead, of how things tend to turn out in real life—the overshooting of exits, and Cathy, and the angry husband and the hurt wife, and the messes of our lives pulling on our hems like sticky two-year-olds—and how at the same time, you got where you wanted to be.

We sat on his bed in his small room for a moment, until Janine came through the doorway, shaking her head with exasperation at whatever she and her husband had talked about. Now she looked drawn and pale, like the mother of a kid with a brain tumor. She and our friend hugged. Everything suddenly felt awkward, and as if there was not nearly enough time. Here is the one tiny problem with good intentions: There are always uninvited voices and obstructions, nattering and nipping and whining and tugging at you. Always. The kernel, the motive, may be lovely, compassion and selflessness, wanting to be of service, and it is still nourishing, but there is the rest of the shit that comes with it. All of it takes so much more energy,
and detours, to get anywhere in life, even to Rodent Park.

Janine’s husband had only wanted comfort. Our friend’s wife just wanted to be included, to have company and camaraderie in the hardship. Cathy at the car company wanted to make plans to return Janine’s car, and to celebrate the completion of the toughest, saddest possible circuit—the family and the car back home after such a haul. Kind of a miracle, really.

Getting found almost always means being lost for a while.

The circuitous routes and endless interruptions continued inside the halfway house, with lost souls wandering around or sitting dazed in front of bad TV in the living room; two people sat in the den, where our friend had planned for us to sit and talk.
Here I wanted to bring my goddamn solace, and all the visiting solace rooms were taken!
It so sucked.

Our friend took us to the kitchen, where a number of people sat around the big table, strange and sad-looking. A hugely obese woman with a neck tattoo sat beside an emaciated man with glazed eyes. Talk about lifey. There was no room at the table for three more.

Disappointment crossed our friend’s face, and he sighed, but we assured him it didn’t matter, so we got plastic tumblers of cold water, and he led us next to a small library. There were more strange people sitting in the chairs here, too, as well as a nerdy young man with a scraped-up face who was hugging himself tightly, ignoring the visitors.

Then, as is almost always the case, God sent along a minder, who had noticed our distressed milling. It would have been hard not to: we looked like exhausted moose. She had come by to give the person in charge at the front desk a ride home when her shift was over. She seemed to understand that all we needed was to be together for a while. She said, “I have an idea. I personally love to hang out in the garage. It’s hidden away and relaxed.”

And the three of us found ourselves in the quiet, dim garage, with lamps, coffee tables, and floor fans jammed in everywhere, and boxes, shelves of books, bicycle helmets. It was like a hoarder’s rec room. Our minder turned on a standing lamp for us. A minder and some light. Voilà—heaven.

We each got our own couch, shoved close together, and did the plop-and-flop in lovely
familiarity. Now it seemed funny that we had gotten so lost, even with a map, GPS, directions . . . Sort of like real life.

And we got our brief reprieve. I thanked God for that tiny breath of peace. Who knows, maybe there would be another. You don’t know what shape, and what crazy interruptions, it will take to experience it. But our faces were lit now with affection and amazement at the perfect solution in such humble and homely surroundings.

The garage gave us a taste of normality, which none of us had felt for a while because of all the grief and strangeness. You have to be grateful whenever you get to someplace safe and okay, even if it turns out it wasn’t quite where you were heading. The light you see when people are in the tunnel of deep trouble is domestic flashes of recognition and kitchen comforts, not Blake’s radiance, which would be my preference.

The sky had shifted again when we stepped outside to the dusk. There were hints of the dying sunset. The three of us stood at the open door, admiring the sky. When you’re in the dark, you have to try to remember that it’s a dance—dark, light, dark, light, dim. Or when you’re in the sun but the clouds come, of course you instantly think,
Oh, God, now it’s going to get cold and wet, and it’s all fucked, but then you might remember that when it was dark an earlier time, your friends shined a little thin light on it, and you remember one thing that sort of helped, one more step you can take, maybe one more thing you can try. I was reminded of something my friend Tasha told me once, that when she and her friends hike in a group, they leave trail ducks for the stragglers, piles of rocks by the path to show that they’ve gone left here, or right. I had to laugh, standing there in the open door: If a map, directions, GPS, and numerous highway signs hadn’t helped, would we have even noticed a duck made of rocks? Well, yeah: I think so, deep inside. We had gotten here tonight, with enough time, and there had been warmth and tumblers of cool water. The rocks that marked our path had been the desire in our hearts to be there for one another. Through the window next to where we stood in the doorway, hugging our friend good-bye, we could see our mindful minder putting on her jacket and the person who’d been in charge showing her notes to the man about to take the next shift.