The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

  “They’re not mine,” I say.

  “And I suppose you’re not feeding Hershey bars to my Agnes?”

  “That’s right, I’m not.”

  As though on cue, Agnes emerges, slinking through the crack in the apartment door, and begins rubbing herself around my ankle.

  “The heck you aren’t,” says Madge. “Now either you start fishing those butts out of my gladiolus, or I’m going to march right down to Chuck’s apar—”

  Before she can finish, I force my way through her blockade.

  “Hey!” she yells. “You come back here!”

  Over the rail, I see that her shouting has alerted the courier. He freezes. We lock eyes for an instant. Gotcha, he seems to say. We both break at once for the stairwell. Madge is calling after me.

  “You asked for it!” she hollers. “I’m going straight to Chuck with this!”

  I hit the top of the stairs at a sprint and don’t slow for the corners. I beat him to the bottom, just barely.

  “You! Benjamin Benjamin!” he calls. But I don’t turn—to turn would be to admit that I’m Benjamin Benjamin. Instead, I jump the boxwood hedge, sidestep a silver Lumina, and dart straight for the Subaru at the far corner of the lot. I jump behind the wheel and hit the ignition, which doesn’t catch the first time around. I can hear that little solenoid tapping away under the hood as I turn it over twice, three times, before it ignites on the fourth, and I whip the car in reverse. In the rearview, I see my pursuer turn halfway across the lot and run for his Bronco. He should have kept coming. Hemmed in by Emilio’s gardening truck, I’m forced to back into a three-point turn, which turns into an eight-point turn. I hook Emilio’s bumper on the final maneuver. The Subaru rears up on three wheels momentarily and crashes back down with a squawk from the rear suspension. No sooner am I free of Emilio’s bumper than I stomp on the gas. The Subaru chokes on her own exuberance. I give her a few seconds to recover, then lay rubber pulling out. Squealing around the corner of unit B, I nearly collide with the blue Bronco as it noses around the edge of the building. We both lay on the brakes in the nick of time. The little cockroach is smiling behind the wheel. He thinks he’s got me. We’re still locking eyes as I shoot past him, up on the curb, sideswiping the juniper hedge and narrowly eluding an electrical box. The back end squawks again as I regain four wheels and speed toward the exit. But the Bronco falls in right behind me. The kid is still smiling. He’s right on my tail as I swing onto Madison, where immediately the Subaru stalls. Desperately, I turn the key over once, twice, three times, looking anxiously up at the mirror. The kid is actually laughing now. On the fourth try, the Subaru lurches back to life, and I sputter north toward the library, gaining speed steadily. At the roundabout, I catch my first break as two school buses pull in behind me. I squirt out the north exit just ahead of some middle-schoolers at the crosswalk, for whom the Bronco is forced to pause. By the fire station, I’ve got three blocks on him. When I catch the light at Highway 305, I leave him in the dust. But I know I haven’t seen the last of him.

  Arriving at work ten minutes late, I find Elsa waiting impatiently in the kitchen with her gear. I can tell she’d rather give me the silent treatment, but she can’t help herself.

  “You know,” she says, hefting her tack bag. “I realize this job doesn’t pay much. And I realize you have a life outside of work. But if this job is getting in the way of your life, maybe it’s best for everybody if we have Social and Human Services assign a replacement. Frankly, I can’t leave in September without knowing I can count on a provider to be here when we need him.”

  She looks tired. I can tell it takes something out of her to give it to me like this, and I feel terrible for putting her in such a position. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It won’t happen again. Really. You can count on me.”

  “This isn’t personal,” she says.

  WHEN I GET home from work in the evening, I find a note from Chuck on the door.

  We need to talk, it says.

  So I march straight down to Chuck’s apartment and knock on the door. He doesn’t invite me in but steps grimly out under the causeway, scratching his neck. He’s wearing slippers and a Ravens jersey, and he smells like weed. He’d rather have this conversation some other time, I think.

  “Uh, look, Madge says you’re trying to poison her cat,” he says.

  “She’s nuts, Chuck. She thinks I’m siphoning her electricity, too.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t know about that, but she also says you’ve been using her planter box as an ashtray.”

  “I don’t even smoke.”

  “Well, what about Emilio’s truck? He says you dented the front fender.”

  “I just clipped the bumper. I was late. He boxed me in, Chuck. I was in a hurry.”

  “Look, man,” Chuck says. “I like you, I do. Until recently, you’ve been a decent tenant.” He looks down at his slippers, and scratches his neck some more. “But . . .”

  “But?”

  “Look, I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re mixed up in, and to tell the truth I don’t want to know. What I do know is that I looked out my window this morning and saw some guy chasing you through the parking lot.”

  “I can explain.”

  “Don’t bother. Just do me a favor, okay? Just keep the shady stuff away from the complex, man. And quit feeding chocolate to Madge’s cat.”

  “But Chuck—”

  “Dude. I’m just doing my job.”

  Walking back to the compartment, I’m shell-shocked. How did I arrive here? At what point did my character become so suspect? When did I sink so low that I can hardly sustain a nine-dollar-an-hour job, that my car stalls at every intersection, that I can’t hit a lousy .250 in slow-pitch softball?

  green beans

  Janet used to take long lunches on Fridays. When weather permitted, the kids and I would meet her by the duck pond at Battle Point. We would buy fresh artisan bread from the T&C deli at four and a half bucks a loaf. Janet would’ve killed me had she known. But Piper insisted that it wasn’t fair that ducks should have to eat stale bread all the time.

  “And not the white kind, either,” she said. “Mommy says it’s not good for you. So it must not be good for ducks.”

  Piper and I would pack a picnic, Jodi watching with dark placid eyes from his high chair as we assembled peanut butter sandwiches. Piper handled the peanut butter side, since I always made it lumpy, and we cut the sandwiches into tiny squares as per Piper’s instructions.

  We’d fill Ziploc bags with cold canned green beans. Jodi loved them, ate them like jelly beans while the rest of us endured them. For dessert, there was Yoplait yogurts. I once tried passing the healthy brand (alternately known as the lumpy brand) off as dessert, but it didn’t fly. Piper ate it (and seemed to enjoy it, I might add) but only under strict protest. She also managed to finagle Scooby-Doo Push-Ups and a player to be named later out of the deal. We’d bring a gallon jug of apple juice to wash it all down. I let the kids drink all the apple juice they wanted on Friday afternoons, though Janet swore it would rot their teeth.

  Picnic packed, we’d gather our raincoats, boots, and artisan bread and the umbrella we’d never use, and pour out into the driveway to the RAV4. The RAV4 was my choice. Janet wanted a minivan. She wanted an automatic. I told her no self-respecting dude drove a minivan. Or an automatic. I’m often reminded of this. What if we’d bought an automatic?

  I’d buckle the kids in the backseat and hike up socks and boots. Sometimes when I was well rested, we’d sing on the drive to the park. Sometimes we’d talk about alligators. Or special schools people could attend to learn how to speak dog or other animal languages and how you could use it to explain to the coyotes why they should stay out of garbage cans so people wouldn’t want to shoot them. Or you could warn mice about traps. Or teach raccoons to look both ways before crossing.

  We were invariably at least five minutes late when Janet stepped out from beneath the gazebo to greet us. We’d trample out into th
e muddy parking lot and across the field to the pond, where honking ducks converged to greet us. Bread in hand, Piper would dash to the shoreline while Jodi faltered along in her wake, his little hands grasping at the air in front of him. Janet would begin setting the picnic out on the table, under the cover of a maple. Yum, she’d say, in reference to the canned green beans. She’d talk about work. A sixteen-year-old retriever riddled with lymphomas. A tabby with heartworm. She’d ask me about my day. I’d tell her about dirty dishes and the Wiggles and how Jeff fell asleep in the Big Red Car. Again. And if I seemed tired or grumpy or a little short on patience as I watched my kids like a hawk at the water’s edge, it’s not because I didn’t live for those Friday afternoons, for muddy feet and dandelion bouquets, for grass-stained knees and half-eaten lunches. Friday afternoons were perfection, the sort of perfection childless people can’t possibly understand. It wasn’t an easy perfection, all of that wiping noses and scuttling around duck ponds. It tried my patience to the ragged edges. But today I would trade an afternoon of cold green beans and muddy feet for every tomorrow I have left. And if that’s not a convincing argument for eating your green beans, I don’t know what is.

  postcards from the hinterlands

  Bob has a new strategy. Either he’s taken some vacation time, or he’s logging heavy miles on the weekends. He’s spending his money on postage in recent weeks. They arrive almost daily—postcards from the Utah hinterlands, from all corners of the Industry State; from Logan and Monticello, from Cedar City and Provo. The first card came about four days after his last visit. By now, a thin stack of them have accumulated on Trev’s tray table amid the pill jars and pushpins: Hobbitville, the World’s Largest Dog Head. Even the aforementioned Biggest Pit in the World.

  While Trev is sleeping, I make it my business to thumb through the stack. Bob’s roadside missives are invariably brief—a smart move, since Trev isn’t a big reader. Like the rest of Bob, his handwriting is mild-mannered. A cursory knowledge of graphology yields little in the way of insight. No felons claws or big looping letters to suggest his character flaws, no heavy pressure applied, no distinctive slant, no wavy baseline. He writes like he dresses. He signs them all Bob, not Dad—another wise move.

  OF THE BIGGEST Pit in the World, Bob has this to say: You’re right. Clifton is bigger.

  Of the Mormon Tabernacle, he says: Q: Why do you take two Mormons fishing with you? A: If you bring one, he’ll drink all your beer.

  Of the Two Story Outhouse near Moab, Bob offers this: Unfortunately, no wheelchair access for the top one. But at least there’s no line for the bottom one.

  Who is this guy? Al Gore was never this clever. I can’t help but feel a little proud of Bob. He’s making progress. He’s thinking outside himself. He’s giving himself a chance, albeit a slim one, to finally reach Trev.

  Bob, on the Bonneville Salt Flats: Just when you thought it couldn’t get more exciting than a big hole in the ground.

  Bob, on the IRS Headquarters in Ogden: Okay, the Salt Flats are starting to look fun now.

  Bob, on Monument Valley: Meep meep.

  Maybe Bob’s most brilliant tactic of all—if indeed it’s a tactic—is the general tone he employs in these briefs, the dry postmodern distance from which he delivers his summations. From the languid to the downright bored, his tone seems to suggest that Trev’s not really missing anything by sequestering himself in the living room all day long. What better way to arouse Trev’s curiosity than by withholding one’s own? What better way to entice his imagination than by forcing him to lean heavily upon it? What better measure to counter Trev’s resistance to the extraordinary than by embracing the cause oneself?

  Bob, on Bryce Canyon: Six bucks for two triple-A batteries in the gift shop. Amazing.

  Trev never talks about the cards, never really lets on that he even reads them, but I can’t help but notice that he stacks them scrupulously. This morning, drinking his Ensure, he says out of the blue, “The Mormons build some weird-looking shit.” And after breakfast he says, apropos of nothing, “You don’t really think about Utah being desert.”

  desperate measures

  I’ve taken to parking the Subaru three blocks away on Hildebrand, so the Cockroach can’t find it. Otherwise, he lies in wait behind the hedges clutching his legal envelope, and some form of foot race invariably ensues. I don’t wear my Chucks anymore because they won’t stick to the wet pavement. The Cockroach loves the chase. Whenever I look back, he’s smiling. Though he’s younger and faster than I, the Cockroach is easily outwitted. Wednesday I lost him by dodging around the northeast corner of unit A and quickly squatting between two Dumpsters, where I’m pretty sure Chuck saw me out his back window just as the Cockroach sprinted by. I waved sheepishly just in case, but Chuck didn’t wave back.

  Yesterday I was forced to shimmy out the bathroom window and drop eight feet onto the uneven knoll in order to elude not only the Cockroach, but Chuck, too, stationed outside my front door in his bathrobe, foot tapping. This morning, they’ve got me trapped in the kitchen again, pinned behind the counter. I scramble for my cell and frantically dial Janet from memory. She answers on the first ring.

  “Call them off,” I say.

  “I want the papers, Ben.”

  “Look,” I plead, sneaking a look around the corner of the counter, where I see Chuck’s bushy mustache pressed to the window. “I’ll sign the papers, I swear. But I want to do it in person.”

  “You had your chance at the mall.”

  “Okay, I blew it. But I want to do it right, I just need to say one thing first. That’s all. And it probably won’t change anything—and I know that. But I need to say it.”

  “So say it.”

  “In person, to your face.”

  Chuck and the Cockroach are tapping madly at the window pane. I think they can see my foot sticking out from behind the counter. I reel it in slowly.

  “Ben, damnit, there’s nothing to say.”

  “But there is!”

  “What, Ben? What is there to say?”

  Wedging the phone between shoulder and ear, I sidle crabwise across the linoleum toward the mouth of the hallway, where I plan on making a run for the bathroom. “What I’ve got to say, I want to say in person. I need you to hear it.”

  I’m only half lying. I do need her to hear it; I’ve never needed anything so badly in my life. I just have no idea what it is I need her to hear. What is there to say? What word or acknowledgment could possibly undo any of the damage? Why do I bother clinging so desperately to this crumbling hillside when I know in my heart of hearts that I’m destined to go over the edge?

  The fact that Janet has given even the slightest of pauses to consider this proposition, especially after what I’ve put her through, is another testament to her weak will.

  I’m on my knees now, readying myself to slink around the corner undetected. I can hear Chuck and the Cockroach conferring on my doorstep. I hear keys jingling. “I’ll come to you this time,” I say to Janet, darting down the hallway. “I’ll bring the papers.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “Because it doesn’t cost you anything.”

  “So far it’s cost me nearly two years of my life.”

  “So what’s another week or two?” I can hear the doorknob rattling, as I wedge myself up through the bathroom window. “Hold on a sec,” I say.

  She takes in a long breath. If there’s no hope for us, why is she on the verge of caving in? The thought that maybe, just maybe, there’s more at work here than Janet’s weak will has me smiling ear to ear as I shimmy out the window and drop once again onto the grassy knoll eight feet below, landing with a thud and rolling over onto my shoulder.

  “You still there?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  Yes! Like a welling of sunshine deep down in my belly, yes! Yes, she’s still there—willing to jump out of windows with me, willing to sprint down Madison weaving between cars with me. Yes!

  “Are you ru
nning?” she says.

  “Just walking fast,” I say, stealing a look over my shoulder.

  “You sound strange. Like you’re out of breath.”

  “I guess I’m walking pretty fast is all.” Another glance over my shoulder tells me I’m probably free and clear. Still, I tear around the corner at Wallace, jump a weed whacker laying across the sidewalk, slalom between a team of Mexican landscapers clearing ivy along the edge, and immediately slacken my pace, doing my best to disguise the fact that I’m out of breath.

  “Are you okay?” she says.

  “I’m fine,” I say. Especially fine considering the circumstances—and there really are so many to consider.

  “You don’t sound fine. You sound crazy.”

  “I’m just walking fast.”

  “Maybe you should slow down, then. Take a deep breath.”

  “Maybe if I wasn’t being chased down the street by a . . . Oh, look, never mind. What about you? How are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Ben.”

  “Still working at the zoo?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  “That’s good. You sound good.”

  I’m sitting on the curb in front of the Subaru now, fully intent on Janet on the other end of the phone, reminding myself not to rush intimacy, to disarm her first, to elicit casual conversation, rather than to leap headlong into full disclosure. The problem is, I can’t think of anything to say. It seems that I’m only capable of full disclosure. With anybody. Maybe that’s what happens to crazy people, they become too honest. They can’t see anything but truth anymore, and they’re compelled to share it, when they ought to shut up about it.

  “Is it raining down there?” I say.

  “I’m not by a window. But yes, it has been. You need to pull yourself together, Ben,” she says. “Start thinking about the future.”

  I should probably take offense, even if it’s true. But along the hoarse edges of her exasperation, I hear strains of genuine concern.