Swimming With Grandpa
I am in the front room again, lying on the floor with my feet propped up on the stereo. It is the stereo my mom and dad had when they were still married, and now it lives in this stupid house with Nick like the rest of us. It's long and brown wood, and sized sort of like a low dresser. It is quite big. There is a stereo part that is under the top when you lift the top up, with big push buttons for stations, like the kind that were in car radios when I was smaller. There is also a record player in there, and two big storage areas for albums. A lot of my dad's old records are in there still. I don't know if he didn't want them anymore, or if he just doesn't have them. Whenever he finds out about stuff like that, he will ask about it and act kind of sad like it is his old stuff, but I don't know what to do about it. Like his Redd Foxx records; those are in there. I told him about it, but I thought I was just talking about these records I found in the stereo, and it turned out there were his a long time ago, when him and my mom were still married. There are dirty words on those records. They are comedy records of him telling jokes and stories and stuff. I can't tell if they are that funny, really, but my dad thinks they are hilarious.
He also has some Bill Cosby records like that, comedy ones, that I found in the stereo. Those are a little funnier to me, but still mostly boring. I listen to them anyway sometimes, because that is what my dad did when he lived in the same house as this stereo, and I try to picture what that felt like.
* * *
Okay, so this front room is very cold and drafty, especially because I am lying on the floor. But the lack of actual heat doesn't help much, etiher, especially when it is January and the heat registers in this room have been retardedly clogged by my stupid stepdad to save money. He is an idiot. Why doesn't he just actually work, is probably what my dad would say. My dad says Nick is laid off way more than he works. I never did the math, but he is laid off most of the time, it seems like. Especially all winter. Is it always going to be like this? I really can't think of the future, which is weird, because I used to. But now that we live here with him and everything, I just can't think of the future without feeling like I am going crazy. It feels like my brain is exploding and dying and imploding and all that right at the same time. Because the thing is, there is no sufficient direction to think future-wise in. What will happen? Do I move with my dad one day? I would be away from Nick, but also with June then (my stepmom), and also away from my mom. I don't think I could ever leave my mom. What would she do? Plus, it just seems too unthinkable. I can't even picture it. She is also the connection, sort of, to my actual life of living at my Grandpa's.
Which then there is that question, of can I ever get back to my grandpa's. Can I move back there? I have asked, and so far the answer is no. It is bothering my mom when I bring it up. She is starting to get mad. In the beginning, she would sort of be nice and try to explain that no, this is our family now, etc. etc. and all that. But her explanations aren't doing me any good, because if this is the way I have to live for the rest of my life, no thanks. It is horrible. And I want to go back to my Grandpa's. Mostly, I go back every weekend and stay there, but my mom is starting to cut that down, too. I can't imagine going forward into a future where this is honestly my whole life. So you see, I can't think ahead very much.
Even when I try to think past it all, like when I'm a grown up or something, things don't really work out in my brain. Even, like, Heaven. I mean, how can Heaven work for me? If Heaven is a place where everybody is totally, completely, 100% happy, then what will it be like with my mom and and dad both there? How can it be happy if they are married to different people? How can Heaven be heaven for me and heaven for my dad and heaven for my mom all at the same time? It is impossible. And with all due respect to God and how he can do things that are impossible and all that, I really can't see anyway even he could make that work out. So, another avenue of future-thought that has been roadblocked for me in the last few months.
They got married over the summer, and we all moved in here a few months ago. We are living in Royal Oak, which is like a ten minute drive from my grandpa's. My mom and stepdad, I guess, bought this house from my grandpa for cheap. I used to come to this house before there ever was such a thing as a Nick (my stepdad). This old lady named Ida Fisher used to live here. Her husband was Otto Fisher, and when he died, my grandpa started taking care of Ida. She was really old, and mostly blind, and he would come over here to bring her dinner and stuff. If he wasn't careful about her, he would find her eating Mighty Dog. That is the canned dog food she had for her dog. Can you believe that? She actually was eating Mighty Dog. I do'nt know if her mind was going along with her eyes, or if the Mighty Dog actually tastes good enough to pass for human food. I admit that I am pretty curious about that one, but haven't solved the mystery yet.
I think my grandpa used to work with Otto Fisher or something. It had something to do with Town Talk Donuts, which is also in Royal Oak, over on Eleven Mile. When my grandpa takes me over there, he can go behind the counter and everything, and I get donuts and a chocolate milk and sit on the stools at the counter. It's a good time in there. The coffee cups are neat, too. Anyway, it might be like Ray's Ice Cream. In that case, my grandpa built the building, so the owners always let any of us have all the free ice cream we want. I can just go in there and say that Dave Lobur is my grandpa, and they will give me whatever I want for free. So there is some kind of connection with Ida and Otto and Town Talk with my grandpa.
I don't remember Otto Fisher, but Ida, I do. Mostly, she was just this tiny old lady with white hair, and my grandpa would spend some time with her, heat up whatever dinner he brought over to her from our house, and stuff like that. I would usually play outside or something. In the backyard of her house, you could go on the other side of the fence and there was this alley of grass, kind of . It was weird, like a little street hidden between backyard fences and all the bushes along the fences, and it didn't go anywhere. It lasted for about three houses, then closed off at each end. Totally hidden, different world kind of place. And there were blueberry bushes along the fence back there. I would sit there in the grass in the quiet and eat blueberries. Nobody picked them anymore, so there would be tons when they were blooming. I guess Ida used to pick them and make jam and probably pies, but now she didn't get outside.
* * * * *
I never went swimming with my Grandpa. He didn't come when we starting going up north every summer. For at least two weeks, my grandma got a cottage on Houghton Lake every summer, and we stayed the whole time. But my grandpa never came. He was pack up the car for us and send us with food and stand in the driveway and wave when we left, wearing his army-green workpants and no shirt, but he never came up with us. I guess he liked to stay at home where he knew everything.
I loved going to Houghton Lake. The whole family went (except for Grandpa). People who had to work, they would come for just one week, or if they couldn't even get that much time off, they would come all the way up just for a weekend. Usually for both weekends. You hated to be away from everybody when we were all up there. It was such a good time. My grandma would go get donughts from Pinky's and there they'd be, a huge box of them on the little kitchen table in the cabin, waiting for us when we woke up. My grandma would already be up and dressed and drinking a cup of coffee, sitting at the table or out in a lawn chair in front, looking at the water or doing a crossword puzzle.
My grandma and grandpa both sang a lot. It is mostly songs from the 1940s, and now when I hear them, even just songs from that era, I think of my grandma and grandpa. It's weird, because I don't think I know any of those songs, I don't remember what they would sing, but when I hear them, I recognize them. They would sing all fancy and with loud energy and weren't at all embarassed. I wonder how that got lost down the family chain, because my mom would never do that. I learned from my family that "we couldn't sing," so I never did. Except for choir when that came along in junior high, but I always figured my own voice just got hidden by all the other voices, so it was okay.
My grandma would wear long nightgowns and robes. Her hair would be messy when she first woke up, and if you passed her in the night without her glasses on, moling her way along the wall to the bathroom, her eyes looked so small and helpless. Funny how that is. How you get used to people with glasses and then they look more normal with them than without them.
My uncle Larry wore glasses when he was in junior high and most of high school. But at some point, around sixteen I guess, he got contacts. Then he became all popular and also started going to the disco. Discos were a big deal around then, but I didn't really know it because I was too young. But Larry and his friend Larry (Freeman, who died on his honeymoon in Hawaii when his hanglider smashed into a cliff) would go to the Disco and practice dancing in the living room before they went. I am watching them, and thinking they are really living a different life than I am.
The carpet in our living room at my Grandpa's is the same color as my grandma's hair. I guess you would call it blonde, but it's more a darker, muted out color, really. Not blonde like my little sister's hair. How can I describe it? Like, golden, maybe, but not a shiny golden. Like the inside of a pear? I don't know. The carpet is what I think they call 'sculptured.' It has some parts that are higher than others, and you can follow little roads of lower areas of the carpet. I like our carpet. I love our house. I wish I didn't have to leave.
But I do. My mom is getting married in a couple of months, and then we will have to move out with her. We are going to live in Ida's house. With Nick, my mom's fiance'. I think he's alright, but it's hard to tell, I guess. It just seems weird, and the worst part of trying to picture what it will be like to not live here, at my Grandpa's. I really can't picture it at all. This is basically home, and I don't know what something else will be like.
My mom and Nick have been working on fixing up Ida's house for a couple of months now. My grandpa is selling it to them really cheap. But it comes full of all of Ida's old stuff that is just there since when she died. It is a lot of stuff. No kidding. Like, when you walk in the front door, if you turn left there is just a sort of hallway to the kitchen, because the whole dining room there is filled to the ceiling with stuff. I never really paid much attention to what the stuff is before, so I can't remember now. But stuff. Piled all the way to the ceiling. It is dark in that house, and full of stuff. So my mom and Nick have to clean it out for us to live in it. She is making a big deal about our bedroom, me and my sister's. They are doing a lot of work in there to make it likable. I can tell she is trying really hard to have us be excited about it. I guess I am. Everyone says how lucky we are to get a room like this, all of our own. I think she is doing something special to it, because she has been hinting around. But I haven't seen it. I won't see it for a while, and that is fine with me. I am happy to just stay here with Grandpa and let them go over to that house that used to Ida's. I knew that house before Nick did, you know.
* * * * *
I am standing on the bank of the big river, holding a fishing pole. This other kid from the campground asked me yesterday if I wanted to go fishing this morning, and I said yes. He came by the tent just before dawn and poked on the spot where I told him my head would be, and we pulled it off. I got out of there without anyone waking up, including and especially Nick.
This kid doesn't really talk much. We didn't talk hardly at all yesterday when I met him, and we're not talking now. Something about him I like, though, and it might have to do with his not talking. Even though he is sort of annoying looking, and not really that cute or anything, I do like something about him. He seems grown-up in a way. Just like how he came up to me outside the bathrooms last night where the campground kids were sort of hanging out in various groups. Me and Angie and Nicky and Matt were sitting on the big propane tank behind the bathrooms. It was our ship, or sometimes a big horse. But mostly a ship kind of thing where we couldn't fall off or we would drown in the lava water. We had quite a thing going there, and invented a song we sang while we rowed with our hunting sticks. "Dum-da-dee dum, dum... that's what we are. Dum-da-dee dum, dum... that's what we are." Okay, so it sounds lame to you right now, but it is actually quite a catchy tune. Anyway, the Campground Kid just comes up to me around there and asks me if I want to go fishing with him in the morning. I said yeah, told him where our campsite was, and we hatched the plan. I didn't know if my mom would let me go alone with this boy, especially this early. He is also a little older than me; I'd say around 6th grade. I'm in 4th.
I was also glad in a way that he wanted to go fishing so early, because I would be kind of embarassed if people saw me with him. I don't know if he's the kind of guy I'd want for a boyfriend. Again, just something not very cute about his face. The kind of looks that grandparents would think are handsome because they can't tell the level of it, but the pieces seem right.
It is quiet down here. We aren't that far from my campsite, really. There's not a very good bank going; very brushy and I've already soaked through my tennis shoe once.
"I'm getting a bite." The Campground kid is about ten feet away from me. He is wearing a flannel shirt. It doesn't look like he is getting a bite. It looks like his bobber is just sitting out there. "Come here, I'll show you."
It is not that easy to just 'get over there' by him because of all the brush and sticks and shrub junk around here. I'm going to tangle my line up if I do. "I'll tangle my line." I have on my black Converse All Stars, the right one being very wet at the moment.
"Pull it in for a minute." He is pretty bossy. I don't want to pull it in. Why would I want to pull my line in just so I can go stand by him and watch him getting bites? I'm so sure. He acts like a grown up, and I should tell him that he's not. But I put down my pole and walk over to him.
The sun is making a thick shine over the top of the water. The water has no ripples or waves; very glass-like. It's starting to warm up a little, but the air is still pretty chilly, and over here he is standing in the shade. I stand next to him and he is taller than me. About a whole length of my head taller. I look out at his bobber, just sitting there on the water looking very happy being red and white and unbobbed. Then the Campground Kid puts his left arm around me.
I am not looking at him and he is not looking at me. We are very good about not looking at each other. I don't think I even know what he looks like from the front view. The side view has too much nose and kind of oily skin. His hair is kind of like Jeff's only blonde, thick and wavy, which should be good, but on this kid it really isn't. Where does he get the nerve to be such a rebel in life, I wonder? Is he here with parents? I can't picture it.
His arm is heavy on my shoulders. It feels really good, even though I am freaking out and frozen solid. I can feel vibrating of my molecules all the way down my inner core and back up, and I want to just get blown away again; vanish. It is so horrible, this feeling. Get off me, you creep! You do not own the campground and you do not own me! How do you even know if I like you or not? You have no idea! Maybe I don't want your stupid arm around me like we are some old couple standing at the edge of our own golden pond. You are not my boyfriend. I have a boyfriend (Jeff, of course), and you are not it. Jeff would never have the nerve to put his arm around me like this. Especially the not even looking at me part. Jeff breaks up with me about once a year since third grade because I won't kiss him. And he cried all through the movie after recess last year when Sandy chased him around and pinned him and kissed him. The Campground Kid is not like Jeff at all. My little fudgy, who I am really the boss of.
Maybe I like this bossiness being on the other side of the fence. Because I am just standing here, letting his arm be around me. It's like its heaviness weighs me down and the anchoring feels good in some way that also makes me want to punch his face out.
"Look," he says.
I follow his eyes out over the swampy shore, through some cattails, and to his bobber. There are, indeed, ripples moving out from it, a circular evidence of fishly snacking from below.
His fingers of the left hand are on my left shoulder, and I can see them from the corner of my eye. They are not even good-looking fingers for a boy. Jeff's are way better. My whole back feels warm from the weight of his arm and from being attached to him this way.
"Oh, yeah," I say about the ripples.
Then there are more. A small series of little jabbing bobs of the bobber. I feel him glance down and look at my face for a minute. It feels like I'm naked to have him see my face right now. Weird. This is all so weird. Warm, and weird.
"Really biting now," he says. "Could be one hooked already. Got to let it ride."
Whatever. If he's so into his stupid bobber action and getting a fish, why doesn't he use both hands? He might need to actually reel it in, a-doy.
The bobber skids now, then disappears under the surface of the water in a deep dive. Pops up, is still again, then dives deep. It's an impressive display.
"Tough one," Campground Kid says. "Must be big."
That's when I notice that he's got his line around a branch off to the right, and that he's jerking the pole to make the bobber jerk around and go under. Now I do turn my face and look at his. He actually thinks I'm so stupid that I won't notice this? Is this what grown up life will be like, trading in IQ points for a warm arm around my shoulder? My stomach just sunk to the bottom of my soggy tennis shoes.
* * * * *
Does you ever get overcome by the question: "What does it all mean?" I do. And I usually get around to the idea that the "mean" part is the flaw of the question. Nothing really "means" anything in and of itself, because we are the ones infusing something with meaning. There is no inherent meaning, only that which the observer feels. But I think that is so freaking out to us, the idea that no great scheme really exists, that the whole question just starts over again and the loop continues. I am so sadly lonely for the days of childhood when I assumed there was some great net of in-charge-ness over "it all," and I am continually freaked out by the realization that there isn't. I suspect that the closer I can get to adopting some kind of spirituality, the more safe and content I will feel. It's a ponderous one.
He also has some Bill Cosby records like that, comedy ones, that I found in the stereo. Those are a little funnier to me, but still mostly boring. I listen to them anyway sometimes, because that is what my dad did when he lived in the same house as this stereo, and I try to picture what that felt like.
* * *
Okay, so this front room is very cold and drafty, especially because I am lying on the floor. But the lack of actual heat doesn't help much, etiher, especially when it is January and the heat registers in this room have been retardedly clogged by my stupid stepdad to save money. He is an idiot. Why doesn't he just actually work, is probably what my dad would say. My dad says Nick is laid off way more than he works. I never did the math, but he is laid off most of the time, it seems like. Especially all winter. Is it always going to be like this? I really can't think of the future, which is weird, because I used to. But now that we live here with him and everything, I just can't think of the future without feeling like I am going crazy. It feels like my brain is exploding and dying and imploding and all that right at the same time. Because the thing is, there is no sufficient direction to think future-wise in. What will happen? Do I move with my dad one day? I would be away from Nick, but also with June then (my stepmom), and also away from my mom. I don't think I could ever leave my mom. What would she do? Plus, it just seems too unthinkable. I can't even picture it. She is also the connection, sort of, to my actual life of living at my Grandpa's.
Which then there is that question, of can I ever get back to my grandpa's. Can I move back there? I have asked, and so far the answer is no. It is bothering my mom when I bring it up. She is starting to get mad. In the beginning, she would sort of be nice and try to explain that no, this is our family now, etc. etc. and all that. But her explanations aren't doing me any good, because if this is the way I have to live for the rest of my life, no thanks. It is horrible. And I want to go back to my Grandpa's. Mostly, I go back every weekend and stay there, but my mom is starting to cut that down, too. I can't imagine going forward into a future where this is honestly my whole life. So you see, I can't think ahead very much.
Even when I try to think past it all, like when I'm a grown up or something, things don't really work out in my brain. Even, like, Heaven. I mean, how can Heaven work for me? If Heaven is a place where everybody is totally, completely, 100% happy, then what will it be like with my mom and and dad both there? How can it be happy if they are married to different people? How can Heaven be heaven for me and heaven for my dad and heaven for my mom all at the same time? It is impossible. And with all due respect to God and how he can do things that are impossible and all that, I really can't see anyway even he could make that work out. So, another avenue of future-thought that has been roadblocked for me in the last few months.
They got married over the summer, and we all moved in here a few months ago. We are living in Royal Oak, which is like a ten minute drive from my grandpa's. My mom and stepdad, I guess, bought this house from my grandpa for cheap. I used to come to this house before there ever was such a thing as a Nick (my stepdad). This old lady named Ida Fisher used to live here. Her husband was Otto Fisher, and when he died, my grandpa started taking care of Ida. She was really old, and mostly blind, and he would come over here to bring her dinner and stuff. If he wasn't careful about her, he would find her eating Mighty Dog. That is the canned dog food she had for her dog. Can you believe that? She actually was eating Mighty Dog. I do'nt know if her mind was going along with her eyes, or if the Mighty Dog actually tastes good enough to pass for human food. I admit that I am pretty curious about that one, but haven't solved the mystery yet.
I think my grandpa used to work with Otto Fisher or something. It had something to do with Town Talk Donuts, which is also in Royal Oak, over on Eleven Mile. When my grandpa takes me over there, he can go behind the counter and everything, and I get donuts and a chocolate milk and sit on the stools at the counter. It's a good time in there. The coffee cups are neat, too. Anyway, it might be like Ray's Ice Cream. In that case, my grandpa built the building, so the owners always let any of us have all the free ice cream we want. I can just go in there and say that Dave Lobur is my grandpa, and they will give me whatever I want for free. So there is some kind of connection with Ida and Otto and Town Talk with my grandpa.
I don't remember Otto Fisher, but Ida, I do. Mostly, she was just this tiny old lady with white hair, and my grandpa would spend some time with her, heat up whatever dinner he brought over to her from our house, and stuff like that. I would usually play outside or something. In the backyard of her house, you could go on the other side of the fence and there was this alley of grass, kind of . It was weird, like a little street hidden between backyard fences and all the bushes along the fences, and it didn't go anywhere. It lasted for about three houses, then closed off at each end. Totally hidden, different world kind of place. And there were blueberry bushes along the fence back there. I would sit there in the grass in the quiet and eat blueberries. Nobody picked them anymore, so there would be tons when they were blooming. I guess Ida used to pick them and make jam and probably pies, but now she didn't get outside.
* * * * *
I never went swimming with my Grandpa. He didn't come when we starting going up north every summer. For at least two weeks, my grandma got a cottage on Houghton Lake every summer, and we stayed the whole time. But my grandpa never came. He was pack up the car for us and send us with food and stand in the driveway and wave when we left, wearing his army-green workpants and no shirt, but he never came up with us. I guess he liked to stay at home where he knew everything.
I loved going to Houghton Lake. The whole family went (except for Grandpa). People who had to work, they would come for just one week, or if they couldn't even get that much time off, they would come all the way up just for a weekend. Usually for both weekends. You hated to be away from everybody when we were all up there. It was such a good time. My grandma would go get donughts from Pinky's and there they'd be, a huge box of them on the little kitchen table in the cabin, waiting for us when we woke up. My grandma would already be up and dressed and drinking a cup of coffee, sitting at the table or out in a lawn chair in front, looking at the water or doing a crossword puzzle.
My grandma and grandpa both sang a lot. It is mostly songs from the 1940s, and now when I hear them, even just songs from that era, I think of my grandma and grandpa. It's weird, because I don't think I know any of those songs, I don't remember what they would sing, but when I hear them, I recognize them. They would sing all fancy and with loud energy and weren't at all embarassed. I wonder how that got lost down the family chain, because my mom would never do that. I learned from my family that "we couldn't sing," so I never did. Except for choir when that came along in junior high, but I always figured my own voice just got hidden by all the other voices, so it was okay.
My grandma would wear long nightgowns and robes. Her hair would be messy when she first woke up, and if you passed her in the night without her glasses on, moling her way along the wall to the bathroom, her eyes looked so small and helpless. Funny how that is. How you get used to people with glasses and then they look more normal with them than without them.
My uncle Larry wore glasses when he was in junior high and most of high school. But at some point, around sixteen I guess, he got contacts. Then he became all popular and also started going to the disco. Discos were a big deal around then, but I didn't really know it because I was too young. But Larry and his friend Larry (Freeman, who died on his honeymoon in Hawaii when his hanglider smashed into a cliff) would go to the Disco and practice dancing in the living room before they went. I am watching them, and thinking they are really living a different life than I am.
The carpet in our living room at my Grandpa's is the same color as my grandma's hair. I guess you would call it blonde, but it's more a darker, muted out color, really. Not blonde like my little sister's hair. How can I describe it? Like, golden, maybe, but not a shiny golden. Like the inside of a pear? I don't know. The carpet is what I think they call 'sculptured.' It has some parts that are higher than others, and you can follow little roads of lower areas of the carpet. I like our carpet. I love our house. I wish I didn't have to leave.
But I do. My mom is getting married in a couple of months, and then we will have to move out with her. We are going to live in Ida's house. With Nick, my mom's fiance'. I think he's alright, but it's hard to tell, I guess. It just seems weird, and the worst part of trying to picture what it will be like to not live here, at my Grandpa's. I really can't picture it at all. This is basically home, and I don't know what something else will be like.
My mom and Nick have been working on fixing up Ida's house for a couple of months now. My grandpa is selling it to them really cheap. But it comes full of all of Ida's old stuff that is just there since when she died. It is a lot of stuff. No kidding. Like, when you walk in the front door, if you turn left there is just a sort of hallway to the kitchen, because the whole dining room there is filled to the ceiling with stuff. I never really paid much attention to what the stuff is before, so I can't remember now. But stuff. Piled all the way to the ceiling. It is dark in that house, and full of stuff. So my mom and Nick have to clean it out for us to live in it. She is making a big deal about our bedroom, me and my sister's. They are doing a lot of work in there to make it likable. I can tell she is trying really hard to have us be excited about it. I guess I am. Everyone says how lucky we are to get a room like this, all of our own. I think she is doing something special to it, because she has been hinting around. But I haven't seen it. I won't see it for a while, and that is fine with me. I am happy to just stay here with Grandpa and let them go over to that house that used to Ida's. I knew that house before Nick did, you know.
* * * * *
I am standing on the bank of the big river, holding a fishing pole. This other kid from the campground asked me yesterday if I wanted to go fishing this morning, and I said yes. He came by the tent just before dawn and poked on the spot where I told him my head would be, and we pulled it off. I got out of there without anyone waking up, including and especially Nick.
This kid doesn't really talk much. We didn't talk hardly at all yesterday when I met him, and we're not talking now. Something about him I like, though, and it might have to do with his not talking. Even though he is sort of annoying looking, and not really that cute or anything, I do like something about him. He seems grown-up in a way. Just like how he came up to me outside the bathrooms last night where the campground kids were sort of hanging out in various groups. Me and Angie and Nicky and Matt were sitting on the big propane tank behind the bathrooms. It was our ship, or sometimes a big horse. But mostly a ship kind of thing where we couldn't fall off or we would drown in the lava water. We had quite a thing going there, and invented a song we sang while we rowed with our hunting sticks. "Dum-da-dee dum, dum... that's what we are. Dum-da-dee dum, dum... that's what we are." Okay, so it sounds lame to you right now, but it is actually quite a catchy tune. Anyway, the Campground Kid just comes up to me around there and asks me if I want to go fishing with him in the morning. I said yeah, told him where our campsite was, and we hatched the plan. I didn't know if my mom would let me go alone with this boy, especially this early. He is also a little older than me; I'd say around 6th grade. I'm in 4th.
I was also glad in a way that he wanted to go fishing so early, because I would be kind of embarassed if people saw me with him. I don't know if he's the kind of guy I'd want for a boyfriend. Again, just something not very cute about his face. The kind of looks that grandparents would think are handsome because they can't tell the level of it, but the pieces seem right.
It is quiet down here. We aren't that far from my campsite, really. There's not a very good bank going; very brushy and I've already soaked through my tennis shoe once.
"I'm getting a bite." The Campground kid is about ten feet away from me. He is wearing a flannel shirt. It doesn't look like he is getting a bite. It looks like his bobber is just sitting out there. "Come here, I'll show you."
It is not that easy to just 'get over there' by him because of all the brush and sticks and shrub junk around here. I'm going to tangle my line up if I do. "I'll tangle my line." I have on my black Converse All Stars, the right one being very wet at the moment.
"Pull it in for a minute." He is pretty bossy. I don't want to pull it in. Why would I want to pull my line in just so I can go stand by him and watch him getting bites? I'm so sure. He acts like a grown up, and I should tell him that he's not. But I put down my pole and walk over to him.
The sun is making a thick shine over the top of the water. The water has no ripples or waves; very glass-like. It's starting to warm up a little, but the air is still pretty chilly, and over here he is standing in the shade. I stand next to him and he is taller than me. About a whole length of my head taller. I look out at his bobber, just sitting there on the water looking very happy being red and white and unbobbed. Then the Campground Kid puts his left arm around me.
I am not looking at him and he is not looking at me. We are very good about not looking at each other. I don't think I even know what he looks like from the front view. The side view has too much nose and kind of oily skin. His hair is kind of like Jeff's only blonde, thick and wavy, which should be good, but on this kid it really isn't. Where does he get the nerve to be such a rebel in life, I wonder? Is he here with parents? I can't picture it.
His arm is heavy on my shoulders. It feels really good, even though I am freaking out and frozen solid. I can feel vibrating of my molecules all the way down my inner core and back up, and I want to just get blown away again; vanish. It is so horrible, this feeling. Get off me, you creep! You do not own the campground and you do not own me! How do you even know if I like you or not? You have no idea! Maybe I don't want your stupid arm around me like we are some old couple standing at the edge of our own golden pond. You are not my boyfriend. I have a boyfriend (Jeff, of course), and you are not it. Jeff would never have the nerve to put his arm around me like this. Especially the not even looking at me part. Jeff breaks up with me about once a year since third grade because I won't kiss him. And he cried all through the movie after recess last year when Sandy chased him around and pinned him and kissed him. The Campground Kid is not like Jeff at all. My little fudgy, who I am really the boss of.
Maybe I like this bossiness being on the other side of the fence. Because I am just standing here, letting his arm be around me. It's like its heaviness weighs me down and the anchoring feels good in some way that also makes me want to punch his face out.
"Look," he says.
I follow his eyes out over the swampy shore, through some cattails, and to his bobber. There are, indeed, ripples moving out from it, a circular evidence of fishly snacking from below.
His fingers of the left hand are on my left shoulder, and I can see them from the corner of my eye. They are not even good-looking fingers for a boy. Jeff's are way better. My whole back feels warm from the weight of his arm and from being attached to him this way.
"Oh, yeah," I say about the ripples.
Then there are more. A small series of little jabbing bobs of the bobber. I feel him glance down and look at my face for a minute. It feels like I'm naked to have him see my face right now. Weird. This is all so weird. Warm, and weird.
"Really biting now," he says. "Could be one hooked already. Got to let it ride."
Whatever. If he's so into his stupid bobber action and getting a fish, why doesn't he use both hands? He might need to actually reel it in, a-doy.
The bobber skids now, then disappears under the surface of the water in a deep dive. Pops up, is still again, then dives deep. It's an impressive display.
"Tough one," Campground Kid says. "Must be big."
That's when I notice that he's got his line around a branch off to the right, and that he's jerking the pole to make the bobber jerk around and go under. Now I do turn my face and look at his. He actually thinks I'm so stupid that I won't notice this? Is this what grown up life will be like, trading in IQ points for a warm arm around my shoulder? My stomach just sunk to the bottom of my soggy tennis shoes.
* * * * *
Does you ever get overcome by the question: "What does it all mean?" I do. And I usually get around to the idea that the "mean" part is the flaw of the question. Nothing really "means" anything in and of itself, because we are the ones infusing something with meaning. There is no inherent meaning, only that which the observer feels. But I think that is so freaking out to us, the idea that no great scheme really exists, that the whole question just starts over again and the loop continues. I am so sadly lonely for the days of childhood when I assumed there was some great net of in-charge-ness over "it all," and I am continually freaked out by the realization that there isn't. I suspect that the closer I can get to adopting some kind of spirituality, the more safe and content I will feel. It's a ponderous one.
<< Home