Life at 8 mph

by Peter Bowling Anderson

I scrambled to write her back, explaining that I didn’t feel pressured and I wanted to speak to her and she’d misinterpreted my Yikes and not to sever all ties, but the blasted Internet connection was frozen again and wouldn’t melt. I knew I couldn’t trust computers, I growled inside.

  I didn’t know what to do. I had no way of reaching her. We’d communicated only online. She’d never given me her phone number or mailing address or even her email address. I knew her full name, yet she’d mentioned she wasn’t listed in the phone book. She was a ghost with no trail. There was the distinct possibility I’d never talk to Leslie again, and it deeply bothered me. This was the first time I realized my feelings for her had grown more serious than I’d noticed or been willing to acknowledge.

  I paced around my bedroom trying to solve the riddle, each second gulping an hour. I knew the longer she didn’t hear from me, her false assumptions set more firmly in concrete. I had to nip this in the bud tonight before it unraveled out of my control. But how could I reach her?

  Then I saw the box she’d sent me a few weeks earlier with some thoughtful gifts, and I remembered something. While she’d slyly omitted her street address from the box, she’d scribbled down her phone number under her name. Maybe the post office had made her (drill sergeants). I hadn’t even paid attention to it when the package first arrived (I was a little preoccupied with getting to my loot), but I grabbed the box and found the number. It wasn’t wishful thinking—it was a postal miracle! I was so thankful a little of Bryan’s hoarding had rubbed off on me and I hadn’t thrown away the box. Maybe he was onto something.

  I had Leslie’s number—now I just had to dial it.

  Normally, this would’ve been an agonizing, time-chewing ordeal involving many aborted attempts at pushing each imposing number, along with the green gatekeeper button, without caving in. However, I had no time for such childish games. Lives hung in the balance. I stood at full attention with my feet planted shoulder-width apart, gripping my TracFone so tightly it knew I meant business. No monkeying around this time. I had a call to make. Operator, patch me through to mi amore!

  It rang and rang again. More ringing. Another ring. One more excruciating ring. Was this her real number? Had I been hoodwinked? I was about to hang up when her mailbox message kicked in. It was Leslie. She told me so. She said, “Hi, you’ve reached Leslie.” Jackpot! I’d found her. I’d never heard her voice before. She spoke with a southern accent, naturally—a good Tennessee girl. But why hadn’t she answered? She must’ve been packing for her journey out of my life, screening calls to ensure I couldn’t snag her ankle on the way out the door.

  When it was time to deliver my earth-shattering message, Cary Grant I was not. I fumbled and stumbled my way through a rambling apology/explanation, repeating several key points, not for emphasis, but for lack of originality. I stressed how much I enjoyed writing her, that I looked forward to it every day, and that I hoped she called me back. I wrapped up the whole shebang by giving my name, in case I’d forgotten to do so. I honestly couldn’t remember.

  After I hung up, I had a staring contest with my little phone waiting for Leslie to call me back. It was a long wait. Nothing happened for the next seventeen minutes. She must’ve listened to my message and deleted it, perhaps changed her number, or chucked her phone into the toilet like a bandit covering her tracks. Maybe she had a drawer full of cellphones and passports. Aliases from Memphis to Bangladesh. And a microchip in her left hip. Leslie probably wasn’t even her real name. I was definitely losing the staring contest.

  I checked the Internet connection again to see if it was still frozen and there was a message from Leslie. I couldn’t believe it. She wrote that hearing my voice on the phone had calmed her down and eased her worst fears, and that she’d never written her number on a package like that. Lucky for me, she had.

  “Thank you, God,” I whispered, before writing her back as fast as my fingers could type. After I sent my message, I patted the computer like it was a good doggie. The computer had found Leslie, and my cellphone had saved her. Technology and I had made up!

  Leslie and I arranged to talk on the phone that Saturday evening. After our hurricane of a night, we both needed a few days to recover and reset. This gave me time to prepare for our phone conversation, which wasn’t my specialty. I wrote a list of pertinent biographical data Leslie had relayed during our correspondence that I could refer to when we rapped on the phone in case I forgot anything under pressure. I didn’t want to get her brother’s name wrong, and I hoped to impress her by “remembering” all three of her dogs. I listed, in order, names and ages for her three siblings, three dogs, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so forth, her employment and education history, church affiliation, previous dating relationships (very short list), and anything else I could recall. I typed it up in outline format with various sections underlined or highlighted for degrees of emphasis. I felt like I was either about to assassinate her or give a PowerPoint.

  When the evening finally arrived to call Leslie, I locked my bedroom door, set out my list of facts, another page of questions to ask her to avoid dead air, a book of Laffy Taffy jokes (she adored them), and rehearsed my icebreaker joke I’d memorized: “What do you get if you cross a gold dog with a telephone? A golden receiver!” Bahahahahaha!!

  Yet when she answered the phone, she spoke with a British accent pretending to be her sister visiting from overseas. I said, “Ha ha. Very funny.” But she continued playing the part, insisting Leslie was in the bathroom and would be right out. She apologized for the delay. She said Leslie had told her many great things about me. She wouldn’t break character. The accent sounded authentic, at least compared to the James Bond movies I’d seen. I asked her how she had a British accent if she’d grown up in Memphis, yet she said she’d lived overseas for the last ten years. I scanned Leslie’s dossier for anything about a sister in England but came up empty. This went on for five minutes. At one point, I even mentioned my mom had awakened me when I was little to watch Princess Diana’s wedding. What was going on here?! If Leslie really was in the bathroom, what in tarnation was she doing there? Vomiting because she’d been roped into talking to me?

  Finally, Leslie started laughing and gave up. She would’ve made a good actress. She dove headfirst into her role. I was so thrown off, I completely forgot my icebreaker joke, though it was a tad late for it now. It probably wouldn’t have been that funny anyway. Good thing her sister had shown up.

  By the end of our phone call thirty-four minutes later, I was exhausted, sweaty, and needed a shower. This whole talking-on-the-phone thing wore me out. How did people do it every day? I felt like I’d taken a final exam, and I wasn’t even sure I’d passed. I’d tried to relax and joke around, casually dropping key facts from my list here and there, but I could’ve done better. I wished there was a way I could write the entire transcript for our phone conversation before we actually had it so I could merely deliver lines like an actor. That would’ve been much more effective. I needed to look into precognition.

  But above everything else, I had to prepare for what came after the phone calls. It was inevitable and chugging ’round the mountain at breakneck speed. I had to travel to Memphis to meet Leslie in person. No lists or icebreakers or dossiers could save me then. No flash cards or Laffy Taffy books allowed. I’d be in the land of Elvis to meet her whole family without a parachute. Maybe I’d go to England to visit her sister instead.

  R

  School, school, school, school. Between Richard’s relentless pursuit of his master’s degree and spending my free time helping Bryan stay on track at seminary, I felt like I was back in graduate school juggling classes. My master’s program in communications at seminary had included plenty of extra Bible and theology courses, so in order to graduate in two years I had to take seven or eight classes a semester. By the time I limped across the finish line, my head was spinning and I was sick of school (especially after the previ
ous sixteen years of education—seventeen including kindergarten, which had some tricky finger-painting assignments). For several years after I graduated, I awoke from nightmares that I still had one more class to complete or I’d forgotten to turn in a paper. Turn it in now, I’d think for a few seconds.

  The longer I listened to Computer Lady read to Richard, the more it reminded me of my endless school days. Our hours in front of Richard’s computer schlepping our way through History of Christianity or Introduction to Pastoral Counseling were wearing on me. We’d been at it for a year and a half, with probably another year and a half to go. I began craving errands, even volunteering to run to the store or to the post office or anywhere Computer Lady wasn’t. “You need me to go put gas in the van?” I’d ask Richard hopefully. “You don’t want it running out on you and stranding you on the side of the road.” Any task was fine with me.

  Unfortunately, when we went out in public, we left a controlled environment for a thoroughly unpredictable one where I usually ended up in an awkward, unenviable spot that made me long for the safety of Richard’s school lair.

  Through a lifetime of being pushed around or ignored, Richard had learned that to be seen, he often had to thrust himself right in someone’s face. So that was what he did, though not always at the appropriate time. If we were in Walmart to return something at Customer Service, he had a habit of inching his way beside the line like he was coasting by a row of cars stuck in traffic probing for the best spot to slip in. Sometimes he simply headed straight for the counter and stared at the employee handling customers until he or she asked what he needed. When we were done and alone, I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t fair or polite to barge past everyone waiting patiently. His answer was surprisingly logical: “I need the manager so I can explain my situation. If I sit in line, when I get to the front, it’ll take longer and everybody has to wait.” I wasn’t sure how to refute that, so I let it go.

  Wherever we went, Richard always wanted to speak to the manager, sometimes to expedite successful clarification, other times to strike a deal. Again, Richard had learned the hard way that to survive on little income, he couldn’t be afraid or too prideful to ask for help, and that if he didn’t initiate, people typically didn’t offer. Invariably, at some point during our conversations with managers across Fort Worth, Richard pulled out his tried-and-true sales pitch: “What can you do for me?” He reminded me of a car salesman asking a waffling customer, “What’s it gonna take to put you in this car?” It was bold, direct, pushy, slightly inappropriate, and generally effective. Yet it was also incredibly embarrassing for me since I didn’t possess a tenth of Richard’s chutzpa.

  Though as awkward as it was standing beside him during one of his negotiations, it still beat Freebirds World Burrito. Richard liked to dine here every now and then, which was fine with me because I enjoyed their food. However, Freebirds’ burritos were gigantic and perfect for unholy messes if we weren’t careful. I strapped on Richard’s biggest bib and used both hands to feed him each bite to prevent calamitous spills. It worked pretty well, except for one time when Richard forgot to do something critical to the operation’s success: bring me.

  I dropped Richard off for a meeting with an old friend, while I ran a few errands for him. Then I was going to pick him up and we’d head to nearby Freebirds for lunch. However, Richard’s friend was called away from their meeting and had to reschedule. Instead of letting me know he was finished early, Richard buzzed over to Freebirds alone. He was trying to make better use of time so I didn’t have to stop my errands to feed him. He’d eaten plenty of meals before I was hired. He was a big boy. This was another opportunity to exercise independence.

  But when he called me ten minutes into his meal because he was covered in food, independence looked highly overrated to me.

  I sped to Freebirds as fast as possible and flung open the door to find disaster. It was the lunch hour, so the restaurant was packed, and seated smack dab in the middle of everyone was Richard at a small table by himself. He had on a brown leather jacket, which I’d never seen him wear before. Even more visually stunning was the absence of his bib, either the smaller one for simple meals or the “fishing net” (as I called it) for sloppy dishes. Almost Richard’s entire torso was covered in burrito, not to mention his lap, wheelchair, table, and the floor beneath him. It looked like he’d been hosed down with food.

  For a moment, I stood in the doorway seriously contemplating leaving. Richard hadn’t spotted me yet. He probably couldn’t see through the fog of food. I could’ve raced to Big Blue and told Richard I was stuck in traffic or the van wouldn’t start or a street gang had knifed all four tires. Anything sounded better than mopping up a mess rivaling the BP oil spill.

  Yet I couldn’t go. This came with the territory of working with someone with CP. I had no choice but to enter the fray. I just wish he’d worn the fishing net.

  The roughly eighteen feet between Richard and me was the hardest part. Once I got to him, it was just a matter of enough paper towels. Working with him in public had taught me that it was impossible to tend to his needs while worrying about what others thought. I didn’t possess the multitasking capabilities to fix his problems while addressing my anxieties. He was all I could handle, which was a blessing. I probably would’ve become irritated and annoyed with him if I’d been able to stop and notice how embarrassed I was.

  A few paper towels weren’t enough for this mess. I asked the cashier for a whole roll, plus damp cloths, hand towels, rags, Wet Ones, a trash bag, sponge, and anything else she could spare before attacking Richard. I worked from his head down so all the food ended up on the floor. I washed his face until I could see it again, wiped off his neck and snazzy leather jacket, polished his hands, brushed and scooped off all the bits of burrito from his chair, scrubbed the stains on his gray dress pants with the damp cloths and Wet Ones, swept off his shoes, and then raked the food into a pile so I could dump it in the trash bag.

  The entire time I worked, Richard couldn’t stop apologizing. He knew this wasn’t an enjoyable process, and he hated me having to do it. He would’ve much rather eaten a pleasant meal with me than sit in the middle of a crowded restaurant being mopped. As awkward as it was for me, it was worse for him. I was merely the janitor—he was the mess at which everyone gawked. He hadn’t done it intentionally; he was just trying to eat lunch like the rest of them. But cerebral palsy rarely cooperated with Richard’s designs.

  It was this type of public fiasco that made me reevaluate the upside of our interminable, tedious school sessions, and pushed Richard to Julie’s. Julie’s Fresh Kitchen was a local diner/Mom and Pop restaurant that Richard began frequenting when his friend, Jody, opened it. Jody named it after his adopted daughter, and it quickly became our second home. This was the one place we went where Richard could be as loud and as messy as he wanted and neither one of us really cared because Jody and Amy, the waitress who always served Richard, were so gracious, hospitable, and thoughtful. Jody generously gave Richard one free meal a day for years, while also counseling him through the latest crises. He was more like a brother to Richard than another store proprietor.

  Amy was one of the nicest, friendliest people walking the planet. Despite juggling numerous tables and customers, ringing people up, training new staff, and darting back and forth to the kitchen (she should’ve worn a track suit), she continually smiled, didn’t complain, and took time to cut up Richard’s salads into tiny pieces so it was easier for him to eat with the soup spoon she made sure we had. She waited patiently listening to Richard’s slurred speech in the midst of a noisy restaurant with orders piling up because she knew he trusted her and confided in her and that these few moments with her and Jody were invaluable and irreplaceable.

  Amy became like a sister to me. We bonded over our love of tennis, and though she was a diehard Roger Federer fan and I a loyal supporter of Rafael Nadal (I tried in vain to sway her opinion), we stil
l managed to tease each other good-naturedly, which was a lot more than my three older brothers, dad, and I accomplished in the sports arena.

  Maybe Mom should’ve banned sports from our home, though we undoubtedly could’ve found other things to argue about.

  Amy was one of those rare people who saw the positive side to everything long before she noticed the drawbacks. She was more than an optimist, she was a possimist: Everything was possible, all plans doable, hope alive and well and thriving. She embodied the Pollyanna principle. Visiting her at Julie’s was like stepping into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, where wildest fantasies were realized and an after-dinner mint tasted like cherries jubilee.

  She remembered the small things, too: a test Richard had coming up, Michael’s birthday, Della’s new shift at Chick-fil-A. I had no idea how Amy filed it all away between her customers’ orders, her manager’s requests, and her own family’s lives, yet she balanced it perfectly like the three plates of food on her arm. She was a smiling, encouraging computer.

  The end of lunch at Julie’s was the saddest part of the day for Richard and me. It meant trekking home for more schoolwork, or haggling with store managers for deals, or potentially awkward, trying situations crouching just around the corner. Julie’s was a safe haven, like flying home for the holidays for an hour each day. We sat back in our recliners devouring bowls of buttered popcorn while watching A Christmas Carol, as the tree blinked over in the corner and the turkey roasted in the oven. All that was missing was the presents, though I wouldn’t have been surprised if Amy was in the back wrapping them.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Bottom of the Unknown

  One of the fiercest challenges facing any band was repetition. The willingness—much less the desire—to play the same songs over and over in rehearsals and gigs factored deeply into longevity. Two things broke up a band: egos and boredom.