THE GORGEOUS ORDINARY
Saw some t-shirts yesterday. One said: Wish you were beer. Another: I’m just here to bang. A third - boring! - just said Grateful.
Otherwise, it’s been a slim week for news. The usual old stuff: Numb tasks about the house, dumb ponderings on the same-shit-different-dayness of it all.
When last you heard from me, I was on my way to the car pound because Willy had fallen asleep at the wheel and blown out a tire on a curb. I got there, eventually, and that’s when a woman with kind eyes looked down at me from a hatch and said gently, “There’s a police hold on this vehicle.”
When I got home I called the number she’d given me. Homicide Detective Albert answered.
“Well, I’m a homicide detective,” he said. “But hang on while I look at the notes.”
There was a pause, the faint tap of keys. And then he said slowly, spacing out the words, “Well, what … exactly … did … your … son … tell … you?”
Were those the gongs of doom I heard? Or the cymbals of doom? A series of dongs or clangs which so fittingly ingressed catastrophe? Because quick as a blue flash on a light bar, I was all the way to orange scrubs. I was at oily Kevlar glass and a couple of crackly headsets. Ordinary life, in other words, was falling down around like blobs of porridge in a food fight.
Old Albert carried on reading, every so often mumbling words like flee, like scene, like hit, like pedestrian.
As sweat popped through the skin on my calves, I was wondering where the passports were. My forehead was on the table, and by all appearances, I was praying. Actually, I was praying; I – me! – was doubled over talking to God.
Hello Lord, it’s Alexa. I’ve heard a lot about you. And the thing is, the reason I’m calling now, is that me and my son – Willy with a ‘y’ – need help. I feel bad, Lord, because my mum always said you shouldn’t get in touch just because you want something. That’s what my mum said, Lord, and here I am doing just that! But I’ll come again. I’ll talk to you more. I promise I will!
“Hold, please.” Albert put down the phone. There was a cough, a little whistle, the scuff of slippers.
Meanwhile, I stayed staring at the floor listening as best I could to God whose first language (just sayin’!) clearly wasn’t English.
There were bunnies under the table and thick drifts of snowy dog hair. The bunnies drifted as well – puffing like cumulus on some tiny draft. Which made sense because, behind me, the back door was open. Autumn was on the air, and so was the man-next-door’s cigarette. A siren was wailing in my direction, but (praise you, Lord!) it went on by.
Silly old Albert was gone a while. He’d had to let the dog out. And ‘though he never said, I’d wager he was looking for his glasses.
Because, oh, the beauty of the word ‘nearly.’
AB - 10.10.23