Friday night I ate dinner in the bathroom, which seemed weird but there was no one there to comment. I was gnawing on the roast chicken I'd bought a couple of days before, but my cats frothed into Chicken Madness with such ferocity that the Big Chicken and I fled to the john. As I hung over the sink, tearing at a thigh, I could hear sounds of gnashing and howling just outside the door, like animal mutants from some sleazebag gore fest. I ignored them.
Chewing on the ass end of a chicken was a celebration. I'd coaxed my elderly Benz with its all its fearsome nuh-nuh-nuh sounds from greasepit to grease pit before winding up at Faustino's Transmission Repair. There, with the TV jammed on a blaring Mexican channel and a small beautiful child asleep on an oily couch, the Universe delivered me to a shop where the mechanics truly knew their shit. I got to stand under the carraige and, with a guy pointing things out, I actually eyeballed the three dripping seals and dented pan signaling an apocolyptic tranny burn-out. They couldn't do it that very day, but they poured in two quarts of oil and said I'd be okay until Monday.
On Saturday my dear pal called me to say he could cut my hair afterall, and I blew a kiss to God and all his crazy angels. This never happened during hippie days, when I actually wanted my hair down to my ass, but now in my declining years, my hair has turned into something kudzu-like. I was moving toward dreads as a clear next-stage.
"Oh, my God," my friend said, when I climbed out of the car. He looked pretty awestruck himself .
"I know, I know," I said. "I look like a goddamned troll-doll. Then happily settled on his fold-out high kitchen stool, I suggested, "Maybe cut to the middle of my neck."
"You'll get it cut the way I fucking cut it..." he started bitterly, yanking a comb through my raggedy multi-colored mane.
"...and I'll like it," I finished. I know how these things work: the kindness of others, that is.
Two weeks ago, Lynn's work place delivered three oozing file-boxes full of hot food. When I tore one open I stared down at a fatty pork chop casserole floating in oil, canned vegetables, and mushroom soup, next to it was a plastic container full of pink rubber slabs of ham. But this is what the generous hearts of others send. You get what they like, what comforts them, and their love is the real taste of the thing. I wonder how many Poor Souls have smacked their lips over my Super-dooper Gazpacho Tastee Delight. Probably they've sighed deeply, wondering why I sent over a jug of iced down V-8 juice with crap floating in it.
We do our best, you and I. We do our best.
Sunday, another old friend hauled my wild ass over to Baylor. My boy had called me the morning before, while I stared dully into space, wondering why he was calling on the phone when we lived in the same house. This is something I do every morning, and I'm so glad I'm not a widow. If I were, no doubt his naggy ghost would haunt my every waking hour, like some sorrowful mirage of loss.
"This is extremely important," he said impatiently. "Write this down."
"Okay, okay," I said, scrabbling for my pen, still hoping he'd hurry up and come down the hall to get his coffee.
"When you come on Sunday, I need you to bring the clippers. I need to get all these Old Guy whiskers off. Got that? Next, I need the nose-hair clippers. I've got one that that's like four feet long."
"Gotcha," I said. And all day Saturday, I wondered if I could shave him because I never have, but I decided I'd give it a shot. I remembered myself with my broken hip, staring at my chipped toenail polish, my scaly heels, wanting to kill myself.
So Sunday, when my friend and I finally tumbled into his room like a couple of clowns, I got out all the stuff, wrapped a towel around his neck, then shaved and trimmed, not doing a great job, but doing what I could.
"You look like yourself!" I said, amazed, watching his familiar face emerge out of all that Gentle Ben shubbery.
"Stay a little longer," he coaxed.
And I did.
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