I live in a complex designed by Peter Osler. It features three man-made ponds with resident fowl including flocks of geese and a pair of swans, monogamous. Each year they bear between two and seven cygnets. It's heartbreaking to watch a group of them diminish from say five, to one. Walking past them, as they hiss, you wonder what fate befell the young. You imagine one was snatched up in the jaws of a dog, the other falling to its death in the cistern of the pond's filtration system. Whatever the case, it will be repeated the following year. This place is lush, verdant. The meat and bones of the structures are shit. The siding was replaced, the balconies enlarged. These were superficial measures to improve things. At dusk, though, bunny rabbits (and hares as well, apparently) appear and hop about. Deer amble past nibbling on the grass, raising their heads gracefully in alarm at the slightest movement. It's paradisal, really. I've lived here for seven years now. Unable to forge my way through graduate school, stopping and starting and finally withdrawing in disgrace...and disgust, I am prone to spotting fellow losers. They develop singular and, upon observation, similar habits. And I find it alarming. First, there's Glen. Fifteen years ago, he would pop up in my mother's unit and she would kindly listen to him as he contemplated suicide. His wife was leaving him. He was bereft. He was balding. He had long, wavy hair that he wore pulled back in a loose ponytail. It was disgusting. Having moved back here I am acutely aware of his habits. He drives a burgundy SUV. A headlight or tail light is always out. He drives in and out of the complex at all hours of the night, roaring over the giant speed bumps. I once asked him what he did for a living and he said something like, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." And now I think maybe he deals in penny stocks, something shady online. Or he's a drug dealer. Heroin. Pot's ubiquitous and doesn't require dealers anymore. When I go running, I pass his porch in the back and he's always smoking. He jerks his chin out in greeting. Or waves, cigarette in hand, always on the phone. His fat dog running after me, sniffing for my crotch. What Glen and I have in common is the smoking. No one smokes here. But I like to slip out the sliding glass door of my bedroom, slide down on my haunches and smoke cigarettes on the cement patio. When I'm done I stamp on them with my foot and put them in a can. And he stays up late. I stay up late. This is a sign of being a loser. Or it is symptomatic of being a loser.
I ride the bus because I crashed the car. All kinds of losers ride the bus. Losers who talk to themselves. Losers who talk to other people who have no interest in listening to them. When I choose to leave the house for a routine errand, a woman from the complex seems to time her excursions with mine. Or mine with hers, is maybe what she thinks. In another time, she would have been branded a witch. She wears a black, wide-brimmed hat, bristly gray hair bursting forth and a long, black coat to match. If she sees you, she will approach you, talk to you and not stop until you walk away. Sometimes she will follow you, still talking. She covers any topic you can think of. She has a strategy. If you say something, if you utter one word, she will pick up on it, contextualize it and start spewing. It's terrifying. She walks with purpose. She wears practical shoes. She is alone.
People fail. People lose. People fall. And don't get up. Mental illness might play a role. And I wonder, is this my future.
When I go grocery shopping, when I randomly go to DSW to browse, when I go to Michael's to get superglue I always see Chris on the bus, a man who might be called 'touched', a man who is slightly off, wearing a bright orange beanie, the kind you see during hunting season, talking up a storm with a pronounced lisp. Talking to no one.
As a child, I laid great stock in the quality of a backyard, the ratio of lawn to woods, the types of trees, the navigability of the forest floor. My best friend was named Brianna, a flaxen-haired girl whose squeals of delight became a permanent scowl as she grew older, an angelic face turned hard and bitter by chlorine and domestic discord. In her efforts to become an Olympic-grade swimmer, her body grew lean and hard, her hair turned green, and our friendship deteriorated. But oh, the glory of those early days. A lawn with brittle grass, peppered with acorns stretched from the back of her cape-cod style house. The siding was a warm, streaked gray, the inside crisp, clean white. A woodpile formed a wall on one side of the yard, perpetually occupied by wasps buzzing in and out of its dark recesses on their way to treachery. In Laura Ashley dresses with peter pan collars and paisley prints, we darted into the forest to disappear for hours. As houses cropped up around hers we collected felled trees to build a teepee. It was important that they were fir trees. We preferred white pine, the needles still green for having been so close to life. Is it a fir? Make sure it’s a fir, we would ask each other. We considered each limb, carefully inspecting it for the criteria we’d established; 3 to 4 inches in diameter, 15 to 25 feet long, supple but not too flexible. We would then drag it down the dirt road to prop it up against a giant pine tree, slowly amassing the conical shape of a teepee. We were wild. It was our primitive hut. One day, creeping along the forest floor, we discovered a crippled foundation. Huddled behind the wall, our small hands resting on the round stones protruding from the mortar, Brianna pointed to an animal, its hair bristly and tan. It had pointy ears and a short, stubby tail. Briana may have whispered, “It’s a bobcat!” but it’s unlikely she knew what we were observing. We became very still, very hushed, and suddenly very afraid. First, there was the matter of the creature’s size. It seemed large because we were small. It was on the prowl, we could see that, it’s nose lowered to the ground, following some invisible, scented path. This muscled animal had speed and power, we could tell. We sunk into the foundation and turned our backs to the creature. We waited. When we thought it was safe we peered over the edge. All we could see were patches of sky filtering through the branches, birds flitting about. We tiptoed back to the house and told her parents what we had seen. They smiled at our fear and were slightly astonished that we’d witnessed such a rare sight.Brianna and I worked all summer on that teepee. It’s apex lay far above our heads. Her mother Maureen would call for us at lunch time and feed us lentil soup in pink bowls that looked like roses. She always added cubes of tofu that bobbed up to the surface. She served us small salads with Italian dressing and a dollop of cottage cheese. She must have thought we needed all the extra protein we could get considering our unique choice of activity which was in fact, hard labor. Brianna and I were both vegetarians who grew to be big girls with strong bones. It was always our plan to spend one night in the teepee upon its completion. We left a small, triangular opening which served as an entrance and we began collecting the soft branches of fir trees and laying them down, creating what we imagined would be a soft bed. The long needles of the white pine mingled with the short needles of a different conifer. When we felt we had laid down a sufficient bed of boughs, we went inside for dinner. Dusk fell, we went back outside and surveyed our work, the dark mass of the teepee appearing as if it had always been there, a structure native to that very spot. We liked how you couldn’t see in. But once inside, the light entered in shafts and you could spy on the surroundings through the cracks. We entered the teepee, one after the other. The scent of pine was thick and rich. Droplets of sap trickled down the sides. We circled our spots like animals nestling in for the night. And when we lay down, we got right back up again, our bones already aching from the hard ground.
