Beyond Nostalgia

by Winton, Tom

  I don't recall exactly when, but somewhere along the way, my intellect (limited as it may be) matured somewhat. My reading interests finally transcended the sports pages. I got into books; the real stuff, writings that brought to light the big picture. I started reading fiction, non-fiction, bios, whatever. It was on the pages of novels, supposed fiction, that I found the most truth about what is most important: the human condition. The older I got, the more I read. The more I read, the harder it became to find another good book, one that would hold my attention for more than just a few pages. I started thinking, hey, I can do this, I can do better than this. What could be so difficult?

  Then I found out.

  For two years I stared at the same blank page of a Spiral notebook. Two years! I couldn't come up with word one. But I did read a lot about writing. Anything and everything I could get my hands on about the trade, I consumed with a passion. Passion? Me? Hrmmph! That was one long-lost emotion. This writing thing was something I thought I might really get into if only I could get started. But month after depressing month, I sat in my recliner, red notebook in lap, writing nothing. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why nothing would come. I know now. I simply wasn't ready. And deep inside my agonizing brain, just beyond my consciousness, something told me that. There were still basics to be learned before I could begin putting meaningful, interesting ideas on paper. Eventually, after feeling I had reasonably educated myself, I did put my well-chewed Bic to that curled and coffee-stained first page.

  Just three chapters into the first draft, I decided on a title for my novel - 'Look What They've Done to Our Dream'.

  As I continued to transfer the story from my head onto paper, I'd sometimes fantasized about the book becoming a tremendous success. Sure, I knew how minute my odds were in an industry as hyper-competitive as publishing. I knew my dreams were probably mental-masturbation. But still, I couldn't help musing that 'Look What They've Done To Our Dream' might actually sell, that my story might wake the sleeping masses, enlighten them, wake up the ninety-seven percent of Americans who were still asleep. Maybe even kick-start an eleventh-hour movement to save an America that had been all but trashed by the insatiable greed of the privileged few, the despicable ones, the handful that control big-business and politics, those 'profiticians'. I wanted everyday people to realize that 'The Dream' had become just that, and to see how close to the end of the 'Freedom Trail' we actually were.

  I would tell readers how my protagonist, Billy Soles, a forty-nine-year-old power company lineman, had been beat up by an increasingly corrupt and uncivil American system. On the first line of the very first page, Billy would grab readers by saying, "I might still live in the same house on the same street as I did twenty-five years ago, but I sure as hell don't live in the same country." That would get their attention right off the starting block. Then Billy would go on to tell how, " A rich man's heaven is a working man's hell." He'd point out how, beginning around 1970, he watched the American culture and lifestyle decline. How the price of milk had risen from twenty-three cents a quart for the first time in his memory. How the cost of a cheap car quintupled from three grand to fifteen thou in just twenty short years. How a half-empty box of breakfast cereal skyrocketed from thirty nine cents to as much as four and five bucks during the same period. Bobby Soles was going to tell all about synthetic corporate inflation and how Wall Street cashed in on it while he watched his buying power and benefits steadily dwindle. I hoped that 'Look What They've Done to Our Dream' would ever so graphically illustrate how big government and big business have ravaged the souls and lives of the entire working class, how millions and millions of women, children and men like Bobby Soles had been financially and, in turn, spiritually assassinated.

  Once I got the story going, my emotions and convictions spilled with the ink onto all those empty pages. For thirteen months, word by word, chapter after chapter, I plowed ahead. I wrote whenever I could, before and after work, on weekends, during lunch breaks. While driving in my van or scarfing down a meal, I'd compose scenes, watching them play out on my mind's screen. The story was coming effortlessly now because I was writing about the increasingly hard times Maddy Frances and I, along with all the other working beasts, had lived through for the past twenty years. Of course Billy Soles, my story's hero, was my own alter-ego.

  There were times when I thought the story was no less than great. Other times I'd figure, who the hell am I kidding, this is shit. But Maddy's unrelenting enthusiasm and encouragement always kept me moving ahead. Well, almost always.

  When I was about two-thirds finished with the first draft, I hit a wall. I didn't nudge it, I flat slammed into it. As if the jolt had knocked me unconscious, I just shut down. Literally overnight, my creative juices dried up. I already knew the ending but didn't know how to get to it. Nothing could help me advance it. I tried everything I could think of to get over, under, or around that wall. The harder I tried, the more confused I became. I was helpless. For a full two weeks, I failed to produce a thing. Another of my life's few passions had deserted me. I felt myself slipping deeper and deeper into a spirit-zapping black depression. My moods grew more and more foul. I actually became afraid, afraid of myself, and with good reason. Then, one ill-fated day, I hit bottom.

  Maddy Frances had already gone off to work, and the kids to school, when I decided I'd dial-a-day. Hoping that a freebie day off might help my creative slump and my funk, I called in sick to Searcy's Furniture World where I was under-employed at the time. But two cups of coffee and two cigarettes later, I could see nothing was going to change. Slouched in the recliner with my pen and notebook, and a bad case of the black ass once again, all I could do was stare out the glass sliders and daydream.

  After a while I started tracking a band of mean storm clouds that were quickly eating up the blue sky as they billowed high and ominous toward the house. Soon the dark clouds fused into one, and the entire sky was shrouded in a deep-purple blanket. It grew impossibly dark outside. The grumbling thunder grew louder. A fierce wind came up and began assaulting the big Poinciana in our little backyard. Birds fled as the tree's hulking limbs rocked and groaned. Smaller branches danced to a more frantic beat and the tiny leaves of the Poinciana shimmered in the sudden gale-force wind.

  I became mesmerized by this apocalyptical scene. Kind of like the way you get when you're in the dentist's waiting room. With nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, you just sit there resignedly, trying to concentrate on the calm, fifty-gallon world of aquarium fish.

  I sat like that in the living room for a long time, sulking. Just like the weather, my state of mind grew gloomier and gloomier. I began reflecting on my past life again. Since my fortieth birthday a few years prior, I'd been catching myself looking back more frequently. It seemed every time I got down I looked back for solace. But all I ever found there was that same old, heart-wrenching sense of loss. I also questioned everything in my life - my relationship with Maddy and the kids, the daily mundane and hopeless struggle for dollars, my own seemingly senseless, bland existence. Then I started playing that mortality numbers game again.

  Damn, I thought, I can't believe I'm older now than Dad was when he died. My life is more than half over unless, God forbid, I live to eighty-four. Could I really have been with Maddy almost nineteen years now? Jesus, where did they go?

  Each new dismal thought crowded out the last, two thoughts inside my head concurrently, till one eventually overshadowed and outlived the other. Fragments of unhealthy contemplation slipped in and out of my consciousness.

  What happened, I asked myself, to those sweet simple days of youth? Lord, how I ached for that period of my life when in every sense I was closest to being alive. I missed like a lover, like Theresa, how it was before entering this spirit-strangling state they call adulthood. I missed how it was before spontaneity seceded to villains such as judiciousness and responsibility, before the sweet, sweet music that Theresa and I had danced to died. How long had it been now? Twenty-something yea
rs? Nooo, it couldn't be!

  But it was.

  Christ, why is everything so complicated now? Nothing is easy. Everything is so burdened by that R-word, responsibility. I was beginning to understand how menopausal men sometimes just chuck it all and take off, leave everything behind, cross that proverbial fence, test those different grasses on the other side while they're still able to, go for the adventure before it's too late. And maybe, just possibly, recapture a glimmer of youth past.

  From my easy chair, I fought this cerebral battle for about three hours. Then I was worn. My mind drained, tainted now with sorrow, I admitted to myself this once again would be no day for writing. I'd squandered the whole morning, shot it in the ass, come up with nothing, nothing positive anyway, just debilitating sentiments about the glory days and a dreadful perception of what lay ahead for me. This depression had smothered me. It was more than just another of my bad moods. I'm talking wicked, vile, ain't now escapin' it, panic-inducing depression. I really needed help with this one. So I dragged myself into my van and headed for the Circle K. It was horrendous out but I absolutely needed a six pack. For the full six blocks, nose to the wheel, headlights beaming high, I pushed through the blinding, driving rain. Mean-assed zillion-volt bolts of lightning snapped all around me, lighting up this otherwise impossibly-dark daytime world.

  Wanting to make the trip worthwhile, I bought a sixer of 'tall boys'. For sure that would anesthetize my hurting spirit.

  By the time I got back from the convenience store, the blinding rainstorm had moved on, the lightening had quit, and the thunder had reduced to a benign, distant rumble. I eased the van into the garage like I'd done countless times before when I was alone. You see, the only cassette player we owned was in the van's dash. All we had in the house was the old stereo Maddy and I bought when we were first married. Just a turntable. It only played records. That's why I had to sit in the van every time I wanted to reminisce with my Supreme's tape.

  Those old songs always brought Theresa back more vividly. They helped excavate memories buried in my psyche, forgotten places, happenings, and visions of Theresa Wayman. The sixer of 'Old Millwater' helped too. It helped me recapture her image by clearing all the shit from my mind.

  From inside the garage I closed the overhead door so we could be alone. This was mine and Theresa's time together, and I didn't want any neighbors detracting from it. Anyway, if they saw me, they'd think I was crazy sitting in a van inside a god-awful hot garage for a couple of hours. Even if they knew what I was doing, they'd never understand. For nobody, no matter how empathetic, can truly feel someone else's hurt. And that's just as well.

  I went into the house, put four beers in the refrigerator, turned the A/C setting down real low, and opened the kitchen-to-garage door. I stood our plastic floor fan in the threshold, carefully aiming it into the garage so it would send a cool breeze into the van's open door a few feet away.

  I mounted the worn, torn driver's seat, turned the key to accessory, switched on the tape player and filled the Caravan with music. I lowered the volume a hair, popped open the first half-quart and fired up a Carlton. I took a good long hit, let my tight shoulders fall against the seat's backrest, then exhaled the smoke with a sigh. I tried to relax, let my mind do its work. The lyrics of 'Someday We'll Be Together' stabbed at my soul and my eyes soon welled up. God, where can she be? I wondered for the thousandth time if I'd ever see her again. Lord, my heart felt so hollow.

  I had long ago disciplined myself to wait till after my second beer before retrieving my keepsakes. Yyyyup! I'd held onto them for all those years. The tiny snapshot. The fragile ankle bracelet I'd given Theresa. The sterling silver ID she'd given me. Over the years I'd stashed them together in various places in the four different houses and apartments Maddy Frances and I had lived in. She never found them. I hid them well, always in spots that were easily accessible, places that could at times be somewhat private, like a garage or our bedroom. Yeah, I know. You don't have to tell me. I'm not proud of it. But ever since we bought our third-hand van four years earlier, I'd been hiding them in it. It was safer than in the house. I'd buried them beneath the carpeting where it curled out from beneath the plastic molding by the driver's seat. Who'd ever look there?

  Sliding my arm underneath the carpet now, way back there, past my elbow, I retrieved them. I laid them out gently, neatly, on the passenger seat. I straightened them a little more, then went inside to get my reading glasses and two more cold ones.

  When I climbed back into the van, I popped one of the beers and took a long draw. Feeling like an adulterer once again, I put on my glasses. Lovingly I picked up the tiny black and white photo first. I could see us clearly now; Theresa and I, cheek-to-cheek, both of us wearing bubbly, youthful smiles, carefree loving smiles. I noticed my cracked front teeth that had long since been capped and the fresh gloss on Theresa's kissable young lips. Young … we sure were that. Smooth foreheads, me with lots of hair, both of us with bright eyes, eyes lit with hope for a future together that would never materialize. Theresa's perfectly symmetrical small face appeared even smaller amidst her flowing black hair. My own face beamed like it never has since.

  Diana and company's melodious lyrics filled the cement block, one-car garage, 'Some Dayyy ... we'll be tog-e, e-e-e-ther'.

  As I looked at the picture, studying every detail, a tear splashed on the back of my hand. I watched it spread. With my glasses now on, I noticed the thousand hair-thin tiny creases on my skin. Shaking my head, I muttered to myself, "These sure as hell weren't there the night we took this picture!” Then my eyes returned to the picture. I saw many other changes, none of them good. My hair was much thicker then, and, of course, there was no gray around my temples. It swooped down over my forehead to my eyebrows where there was no sign of the two deep vertical frown lines embedded there now. Though my forehead was obscured in the picture, I knew the lines had not yet begun to set. I looked at them in the rearview mirror, three wide, horizontal fissures. Then I dropped my eyes and felt around the back of my head with my fingertips. All too easily I found that small, but malignant hairless spot.

  Finally finished beating myself up, I looked at Theresa's image a second time, caressed it with my eyes. She'd be forty-one now. Does she too have frown lines or crow's feet? Is she still beautiful or has she gotten sloppy and riddled with cellulite. Nah, not Theresa. She's gotta still be slim. She's not the type to let herself go. Too much pride for that. She's probably just like Maddy, in terrific shape if you don't count the few extra pounds on her hips and keister. There I was, after all this time, still measuring Maddy against Theresa. I wondered if, despite how we ended, she still treasured memories of me, like I did of her. I'm being an idiot, I thought. The whole thing was probably just a year-long learning experience as far as she's concerned, a mistake and nothing more.

  Ceremoniously, I laid the picture back on the seat then picked up the ID bracelet. It seemed much thicker and heavier when I was a skinny eighteen-year-old kid. I ran a finger pensively across the Florentine-finished face, then turned it over and read the inscription: To Dean, all my love always, Theresa – 5/5/67.

  I put it back on the seat and picked up the ankle bracelet. Holding the fragile gold chain in my palms as though it were sacred, I studied it for a moment. Then I brought it to my face. I held it there awhile and it became wet with my tears. I rolled my eyes up to the drooping headliner above, squeezed them shut and let out a long, weary moan.

  It was at this moment, that I made a long-overdue self-confession. I admitted that I could never again be truly happy, that all hope of even a semblance of a happy future was gone. All I had left was my memories, happy memories that now saddened me. I decided there was only one solution.

  The afternoon sun had intensified, making it a hell of a lot hotter in the garage, almost unbearable. I was sweating beer almost as fast as I could swallow it. But the music played on, 'You just have to wait … love don't come easy … it's a game of give and take … ' My lips qu
ivered and I broke into a hard cry. Eyes glazed, shoulders lurching, I picked up my ID again. After fumbling with the clasps, I eventually managed to fasten the bracelet around my sweaty wrist. I held my hand out, fingers spread in the stop position, to assess it. Through my tears I saw even more gray hairs on my wrist than were there the last time I'd done this, maybe two months before. I gulped down what was left of my fourth beer. That was when the situation took a sinister turn.

  I went back into the kitchen, grabbed the last two half-quarts, yanked the fan's plug from the outlet, moved it away from the threshold and slammed the door closed behind me. Back in the van, I wiped the sweat from my forehead, smeared the tears across my face and drew a deep breath. Then I started the engine.

  It wasn't long before I became drowsy. I didn't know if it was the beer kicking in, or the carbon monoxide, or both. I kept on drinking.

  In the past, even during my blackest depressions, when I'd had suicidal thoughts, I was usually able to shake them in their early stages. But a few times the thoughts lingered long enough for me to come to a conclusion if I ever did want to check out this would be the way I'd do it, fall asleep drunk and asphyxiate myself. And now I'd had it. I truly believed the best of my life was behind me, way behind me, with nothing worthwhile ahead. Yeah, I had Maddy, and she'd been wonderful, but our love had been sublime--deep and enduring, but slow and steady. I needed more. I needed rockets, fireworks, passion. But despite these voids, I was never able to up and leave her and the kids to search the country for someone I had loved before them. I might have been self-centered, hedonistic and over-impulsive, but I would never risk losing my family for somebody who, if I found her, would in all probability look at me like I was loony. Someone who, if she ever thought about it at all, most likely viewed our teenage romance as merely a crush, nothing more than puppy-love. Surely by now Theresa had a different last name, and a husband, and kids she loved deeply.