So, I’m driving down this hill, late to pick up my daughter from ballet or something, and there’s this guy walking up the hill. It must have been trash pickup day, because he was just finishing up looking through one pile of boxes and stuff and was heading to the next. And, are you ready?, he’s talking on a cell phone. He’s hiking from house to house, looking through the trash, while talking on his cell phone.So what, you say? I know it’s the kind of story you want to turn on me and say, what’s your problem? Would I be happier if same guy is looking through trash without a cell phone? Do I think he shouldn’t have a cell phone? Do I think if he can afford a cell phone, then he shouldn’t be looking through trash? How do I know he’s going from house to house looking through trash? What if something just caught his eye?
Okay, so here’s my answer: this morning, when I took my daughter swimming (we’re down in Florida), the only other person at the pool because it’s kind of cloudy and cool but kids don’t care about that is this white guy wearing a wifebeater, friendly, says hi, in pretty good shape, not one of the retirees living down here full time, obviously on vacation too, and he’s sitting there by the pool, smoking and looking at his cell phone. He doesn’t look at us while we swim, though we’re splashing and slapping water noodles on the water; no, he’s looking at his cell phone, kind of pushing numbers experimentally, occasionally putting it up to his ear, once in a while seems to be talking to someone.
Eventually, he leaves.
Like I said, this is a retirement community, abandoned in the summer when they head back to Michigan and Canada, and the only people down here are in-laws like me who need a place to take their kids and can’t afford condos of their own. Very peaceful, too peaceful. I know I’m wandering, but we come back that night to swim. He’s there again, sitting in the same place, doing the same thing, not really talking but just pushing various buttons and sometimes listening while the cigarette burns.
****
There were big, sausage women on the golf course, women who had, through the lost negotiations with the years, swelled to meet the size of their husbands, and who had taken on the dispositions of meat-packers. To each other, of course, they were deferential. “When are you going to bring me that pie recipe, Shirley? The Fikas are flying in from Conshohocken next week and I want them to taste your divine pie. Oops, looks like one more putt for you, dear.”You saw them by the pools in the retirement communities, swim cops reciting the rules to the anonymous grandchildren who arrived inconveniently. Their husbands, whose sacred laps must be swum before dinner and in time to make the Early Bird Special, conducted their own quieter discussions in the water, of stocks, the day’s golf, and the new, trim widow who had come down alone this year after the funeral and had started attending the Saturday Socials.
The sun, having feasted, settled low in the sky.
****
To get to work, to take my kids to school, everything, I have to drive up over the ridge and back down. On Shallowford Road. The ridge is where the Civil War battle took place. When the Confederates retreated off the ridge, they took the Shallow Ford. Same road. It’s a funny road, one of the most dangerous road in the city with its twists and turns. They’ve renamed part of it now after a hip-hop singer who’s from here. Most every time it rains, you’ll find some part of it blocked off by police cars turned sideways, lights flashing, while they help out with some accident. People try to take it too fast.I only mention it because I had a weird run-in on it. There are parts of it that don’t really have a guard rail. Some places that need one. This one time I was coming down a part with a sharp curve left. It’s a place where I used to tease my girls that I didn’t have any brakes. Anyway, I’m going down pretty fast and this guy’s coming up and right as he’s about to drive past me, he jerks the wheel and his car toward me, then back, fast, and, by instinct, I swing away from him, on the shoulder, almost to the edge before I realize he isn’t coming at me. And he’s past me, gunning it up the hill, and I’m back in control, braking too much going down, heart racing, trying to understand what happened. It didn’t feel like he slipped or anything, or even like it was some kind of joke.
I think with just the two of us there, no one else to see, he wanted to see if I would go off the side.
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