The Groceryboy's Name was Andy: a story in many parts.

Part Four.

The first few days were a sweaty mess of sorting. We didn't see many people, we worked through the day, tearing up useless bills and shredding others, dusting and appraising and packing up antiques and souvenirs from trips around the world.

During one of our short breaks, a wizened Croation woman appeared at our doorstep holding a giant bag of tomatoes.

"I've hear you are here and I bring fruits!" she declared.

"Yes!" I stammered. She shoved the bag into my hands with a sweet smile.

"Svetta!" My mother flung herself past me and enveloped the tiny lady in her arms.

I was getting used to this sort of thing. It was sort of like dreaming: complete non-sequiturs folded into our routine with a smooth, strangely comforting ease.

It turned out Svetta had been the cleaning lady for the Steinkamps for nearly 40 years. She'd grown these tomatoes in her backyard.

After she'd heartily embraced both my Mother and I several times, she launched into an unintelligible report on life. I could have sworn she was not speaking English, but Mother appeared to be tracking, at least her 'ahs' and 'hmms' all seemed to fall in all the right places. After Svetta left we sat down in the middle of the living room floor, cross-legged, both intrigued by the giant scarlet goodness of these 'fruits'. I picked one up and bit it like an apple. An explosion of gorgeous salty splendor filled my mouth. The word "tomato" failed epically: these were, I swear on my life, the sweetest, plumpest, saltiest...absolutely the Platonic ideal of the tomato. We couldn't even speak at first, the juice dripping down onto our bare legs, we communed together, silently, marveling at their beauty.

The very fact that the tomatoes were a high point, a source of endless wonder, exposed the sudden simplicity our lives had taken on.

---

The piles deflated slowly. We worked with great care, examining each expired coupon and postcard. Without ever discussing it, we we haunted by the same curiosity: The Great Depression impressed incredible parsimony into my grandfather. He saved everything; often in strange places. He'd lost much of his reason. These facts combined seemed to point to the possibility that Something of Infinite Value had been buried in the mess.

The only verbal acknowledgment of this theory came in occasional joking, 'you sure that's not the family fortune in there...you double checked?' as we pitched out the bulging Hefty bags at the end of each evening. I knew it was nearly impossible, probably completely false. Still the idea appealed to me.

The Groceryboy's Name was Andy: a story in many parts.

Part Three.

I got the hide-a-bed. Really, I don't know why I was worried. We were the only two staying in the house, and even in my bitterness I didn't believe my mother would force me to sleep on the floor.

After the house was dark, I found my trusty spiral notebook, the first item I had packed. I expected to need nightly catharsis from the pain of cruel, untimely separation from my first-ever boyfriend. I placed my pen on the first empty page and waited.

I tapped aimlessly, trying to conjure something poetic, but reality pressed in: he was a boy who'd helped me carry a lemon cake to my car after it had failed to attracted many customers at a potluck dinner. On the way to the car he'd had about 10 fistfuls of cake, and the next day he asked my best friend (who he'd previously dated) if I'd go out with him. We'd been mini-golfing. We'd agreed to keep in touch.

I didn't feel sad about him. He wasn't dead, just back in Temple City. I didn't know him well enough to miss him. This was quite inconvenient.

In fact, I didn't miss anyone or anything. I just wanted to sleep.

But when I closed my eyes I was startled awake, dropped into a loneliness not unlike ice-water. I saw the blackberry seeds Mother had picked out of her pie and stirred on her white china plate, I heard Grandpa's diseased loop of repeated stories from the 1930s, I felt the silence of the strange, old street outside my window. The coils in my mattress celebrated their freedom after 15 years of folded storage, twinging and spiraling joyfully into my backbone. I thrashed the pillow, looking for a cool side. The sheets itched and smelled of mothballs. Everything here was rotting, stale, old. And then I knew what I missed: I missed normalcy, where the world, without question, centering on me and the excitement of my budding existence. I would rather have felt heartache or outrage, anything less selfish. I would much rather have felt my own bed, my clean, new, orange sheets, a mattress with less zealous springs.

Whether I closed my eyes or kept them open, I saw nonsensical piles of salvaged crap, their once-methodical system of organization lost in Grandpa's withering mind. And I saw my mother's face: her eyes misted over with a greifsoaked, overwhelmed haze. She hadn't shared any attack plan or timetable for our summer project. I wondered if she had one.

I did not want to think about it. I prayed, quite earnestly, for something to be larger than myself and this house, and for the springs in my mattress to stop jumping into my sternum. I found myself praying to the image of the gold and brown Yearbook Jesus...one of those terribly honest, easy prayers which left no record of words on my soul but still seemed heard.

---

In the morning, I found my mother transformed: wide-eyed, calm, and already sorting. She had plans, but no coffee, and I stood on the shag carpet blinking idiotically and watching her fingers fly through dust. I eyed the coffeemaker and exaggerated my yawns. When she realized she'd lost my attention, she paused.

"You don't drink coffee," she reminded me.

"I do sometimes. Just not at home. With friends...we go out for coffee."

"You get a milkshake with about 5000 calories crammed into it. That's not coffee. You don't like real coffee. We don't need it; it's not a good habit to start." She was, as usual, annoyingly spot-on and above any reproach : she herself never touched caffeine, let alone the Carmel Frappachinos she'd christened "Calories in a Cup."

"I think I'll go for a walk," I replied, secretly relieved. I hated the taste of pure coffee--it gave me the shakes.

"That's a good idea," she surprised me. "You need a little time for yourself. Come back around 8:30, and we'll start into the kitchen table."

The Groceryboy's Name was Andy: a story in many parts.

Part Two.

We arrived at dusk, which seemed to be the time we always arrived in Sacramento. We'd been making summer trips our entire lives, always in August. What we had come to count on during those trips was threefold: the air conditioner would overheat and die, we'd sleep in musty, ancient sleeping bags lined with a flannel pattern of stags and guns, and we'd play hours of Clue off a board from the early 50s--Clue games in which Jenny would scitter down intense notes of strategy and I would resort to desperate off-key humming in a lazy attempt to throw off her game.

Really, that was what Sacramento meant. That and a frightening hoard of relatives--cousins and second cousins, a breed who loved, from what I could ascertain, storytelling, eating and standing up. It was the strangest family trait--whereas my father's family gatherings involved pods of relatives in expensive velvet sweatsuits lounging (always lounging...we were always told, or rather admonished, to 'just be comfy,') my mother's family stood, solid, in circles and in lines, with nothing, not even a sideboard to lean on, shouting stories over one another. Chairs were for the weak, the boring and the quiet. If food was served, it was balanced in hands. Sturdy German legs, I supposed.

The summer would be different. There was no tottering Grandpa Kamp to meet us in the dusky driveway, there was no sea-creatureish Beverly beside him, and I was praying that perhaps, seeing as I was nearly 17, I would graduate from the vintage hunter's sleeping bag to the spare bedroom's hide-a-bed.

So there was nothing to greet us, just the intense peace of the Peter-Pan streetlights and the quiet sloped sidewalks that always give Land Park its dignity.

Mother went straight in the house, and the rest of us went and got some dinner. She appeared a bit overcome by the emotion of it all; selling her childhood home, cleaning it out alone (she kept saying alone, alone, and I knew better than to point out the reality of my presence.) We (Jenny, Dad and I) drove to Marie Calendar's, where we munched on nondescript dinners and watched an inordinate number of people order pies to go.

"Ten pies," Dad observed, "the does seem a bit odd."

"Bizarre," we agreed, watching a dark, scruffy man with a Raider's tat on his neck stagger out under his impressive load of pastries.

"Perhaps," he suggested after a few minutes of silent chewing, "perhaps they are not really pies at all."

The rest of dinner we constructed elaborate speculations as to the true contents of the pie boxes. We settled on drugs. As if to corroborate our theory, the pie line continued to swell with unsavory patrons, people who just could not possibly enjoy that much pie. When the waitress asked if we'd like to finish with some blueberry pie ala mode, we all found her tone ladened with double entendre. Dad, face razor-straight, told her we'd prefer one to go.

She replied, with a wink, "excellent choice."

----

We did bring a pie home, and everybody ate it, but nobody began convulsing or got the giggles or saw any dead people or anything at all exciting. It was, disappointingly, just pie, and we ate it in relative silence as the last light left the windows and the old, dusty 60 watt bulbs sputtered their glow. I looked around at my summer world--the stacks of junk mail, German trinkets, large-screen TV from the 70s, my grandmother's piano, a framed photo of the Steinkamps shaking Reagan's hand in front of the Capital, and a rather iconic 1920's circular mold of Jesus, just his face, in browns and golds, looking off into the distance as if posing for his senior yearbook photo.

Jenny and Dad would head back on a plane in the morning. Jenny, a college senior, had a summer job back in LA and Dad his post as manager of a DMH clinic. The only ones suspended in this time warp would be my mother and I. I eyed her warily in the dim light. She looked exhausted and alone, aimlessly swirling her fork on her plate, stirring the berry seeds she'd picked out of her pie. I moved my chair a bit closer to her, almost imperceptibly closer, and thumbed through a thick pile of bills. Each had been slit open with a sharp knife on the right side of the envelope, then neatly filed with rubber bands, compressed into dense packets. The table was littered with piles just like this one. An endless sea of pointlessly salvaged Thrifty's fliers and church bulletins.

The Groceryboy's Name was Andy: a story in many parts.

Part One.

The summer before my senior year, my mother hijacked my life. There I was, finally doing okay. I had friends, I had my first boyfriend, I was planning on spending most of the summer rehearsing for "Cinderella," the district's summer musical. Ever humble, I figured I was a shoe-in for the part. (No pun intended.)

Then my mother announced that my grandpa's home in Sacramento needed to be sold. She, and I, would be spending the summer preparing the house.

"All summer. To clean out and sell a house? How long could that possibly take?" I asked.

She did not dignify the question with a response. It was, in fact, a ridiculous question.

My grandfather, whom I referred to as "Grandpa Kamp," was born Alexander David Steinkamp, the son of German immigrant farmers. He'd worked his way up the banking system to become (wait for it) the Deputy State Treasure of California. A pretty big deal, no joke. He was an excellent investor and banker, a methodical, meticulous man who still managed to be warm, charming and downright debonair.

When he began to lose his memory, he was the last to notice. Or maybe, ever the successful and self-assured businessman, he was just the last to admit. Either way, his dementia-hazed exploits kept us all on our toes.

We'd encountered the largest exploit (pun intended) four years earlier. Her name was Beverly, a retired...retired...come to think of it, we never knew quite what she had retired from. She was a corpulent, dark haired, scarlet-lipsticked woman, at least 35 years his junior, who had first met us in his driveway with arms outstretched and a crackling announcement of, "Oh, the family! Welcome! I'm Beverly Peace, and I'll probably be the next Mrs. Steinkamp!" She wore a colbalt-blue pantsuit with long strips of fabric dangling down from the sleeves. As she wavered closer, my father, ever the understated observer, hummed an low-register rendition of "Poor Unfortunate Souls."

Beverly posed both practical and spiritual issues for my mother. Practically, she appeared galvanizingly close to cozening Grandpa, in his pathetic grasp at the straws of dignity and charm he'd once exuded, into a ruinous marriage. Spiritually, she was, well, difficult to love. My mother is not the type to admit her struggles to love the world. Ask her, and she will tell you that she loves everyone. She will believe herself whole-heartedly, which is, I believe, over half the battle. Still, the desire to love and witness love to all can complicate an otherwise simple situation.

That pesky love caused her to shake her head when her cousin spontaneously suggested a "ghastly chandelier accident" at Grandpa's 90th birthday. "It could drop," mused Jean, "quite naturally, just, you know, it's an old house," gesturing to Beverly, who, true to her name, was peacefully bestowing cake and punch as if the depression-glass ladle was already hers to wield.

Several years had passed since the dawn of Beverly Peace, and we'd managed, for the most part, to pry our sweet Grandfather out of her clutches. True to form, my mother loved her through the entire process. And sadly, it was not a strategic chandelier which severed her tentacles. It was the disease, coddling and curdling his mind deeper down into confusion. Dementia took him from his home in Sacramento, turned him from a charming storyteller to one who owned only one alarming loop of words, repeated every 10 minutes. He moved into the second home he'd wisely purchased next to ours. Round-the-clock caretakers moved in with him.

So it was clear, at this point, that he'd never return to Sacramento, and it was clear that he'd never be the one to sell his house. His impressive thrift, minted by the Great Depression, extended not only to his finances but into every corner of his world. As my question, "how long could that possibly take?" echoed against the silent wall of my mother, I pictured the packed closets, tables, garage and guesthouse of his Sacramento home. I knew we'd be lucky to finish such a task in one summer. I knew I'd be lucky if she didn't enroll me as a senior up in Sacramento. I watched my glass-slipper dreams crunch under the weight of 60 years' hoarded investment papers and table saws.

The summer began with a long car ride, on which I mentally composed a Guidepost Magazine essay about my martyrdom of a summer break. The theme revolved around Higher Ways: how miraculously, I had been placed in Sacramento for a reason no human being could have anticipated. (I saved a child from drowning in the Land Park pond...no, a whole schoolbus of children...no, I noticed a fire started by my grandfather's pot-head neighbors' carelessly lightin' up and I snuffed it out before it destroyed the entire Land Park and Downtown region...nay, the city. Maybe after the fire I met my husband--being 16, the though had no fear of actuality attached to it, simply romance.)

I spun out wild daydreams and watched the patterns in the crops as we wove up the grapevine.

the master of light...lit?

This is just so weird. Also kinda heartwrenching...? All I know is I definitely called my mom (who was having a particularly terrible day) and got she and my sister on speakerphone, and broke the news, and we howled for a good 10 minutes.

Please click on the link for the creepiest photo EVER.

Painter Thomas Kinkade arrested near Carmel on suspicion of DUI

another 'really?' moment, brought to you by 7th grade...

Kinda can't believe an email from a student started this way:

hullo ms. l :)

2day after skool, i had 2 go 2 smith's room so i

didn't hav time 2 turn in the paper.

Awesome.

idea density

Agatha Christie And Nuns Tell A Tale Of Alzheimer's

This article has been completely tripping me out. Whenever I write, I can't stop calculating the density of my thoughts, which according to this study directly reflects my eventual memory loss/retention. The tone of voice on the audio clip at 5:38/7:18 is so ridiculously vapid, so obviously headed for quick deterioration of the brain cells, and I can't seem to get it out of my head! :(

...Seriously, though, this article is fascinating. Don't let the completely old-ladyish title throw you.

a r t i c u l a t e (n.)

who me, tonguetied?

no sir. the mirror swells a bit with pride

at my eloquence (i can tell myself

most anything).

a r t i c u l a t e (n.)

...she says of me. a compliment

but i can't spell to save my life

still i complement myself just fine

me & my misspellings.

this year i swore, swore, swore

nobody, no sir not even God in his Glory

nobody could steal the solid

out from under me.

nobody.

not the disease

he flaunts & we sweep

to the back, back corners of the

souls of things.

not the updown look

of a puzzled world

deciding where to put me.

nobody, nosirnothing.

no, i diagramed

grand plans

to stand on trust

stand on joy, joy divine,

--just

climb, climb, climb.

yup. my long-suffering reflection

chews and strains over

every calculation/every

possible combination

of word's order, word's weight.

& the strangest thing--

i'll never breathe

a phrase or hint or word or gleam

of this, my beautiful

a r t i c u l a t e

philosophy.

Glen Davis: the most frightening dodgeball player in my subconscious mind.

I had especially bizarre dreams last night.

I was watching a dodgeball match. I thought, oh, dodgeball, this seems fun. But it wasn't fun, it was pure terror. Huge hulking men (inspired, I think, by last game...that one Celtic, the big guy with the crazy eyes who looks like he's going to eat the Lakers) rawred and impaled one another with dodgeballs.

Then I was told to join the game, and I found myself on the sidelines trying to explain that I would not be at all good at dodgeball. In response to this, I was handed me a pink balloon which was apparently going to be my one defense. I wasn't really sure how it would help me, but that didn't stop me from feeling more prepared as I held it in my hand.

Next, I was sitting at a train station. A family, obviously on vacation, walked up to me. The father wore a Hawaiian print shirt and a camera around his neck. He was excessively normal-looking. He handed me a kitten and asked me to hold on to it for a moment. He lay the kitten down so its tiny belly rested against my upturned forearm. This felt unsafe, but I couldn't shift my arms to get a better grip. Sure enough, a moment later the kitten bounded off my arm and into the train tracks, which quickly became the 110 freeway. Cars swerved and honked and the tiny, tiny little ball of fur got squished and rolled underneath. The family disappeared.

I was in my classroom next. I told my class to put everything away and give their full attention up front. One girl kept reading (a specific student in my first period, who in reality is very sweet) so I asked her quietly to stop reading her book, and she looked up at me and spit her gum in my face. Shocked, I told her to step outside with me, but when I tried to discipline her, she spit her gum in my face again and then she snapped her jaw at me rather like a piranha. I was beside myself with outrage at the disrespect she was showing (I didn't find her actions strange, just disrespectful.)

That was it. My subconscious is tired now.

throw away the telescope

In those earlier days he had been unable to see the great, the unfathomable and the infinite in anything. All he had was a sense that it must exist somewhere, and he had gone on looking for it. In anything close to and well understood he had seen nothing but limitation, workaday triviality and pointlessness. He had armed himself with a mental telescope and peered into the far distance, where that same workaday triviality, shrouded in the mists of remoteness, had seemed great and infinite, but only because it couldn't be clearly seen. This was how he had looked on European life, politics, freemasonry, philosophy and philanthropy. but even then, at times that he had mistaken for moments of weakness, his mind had penetrated the furthest distance and recognized the same workaday triviality and pointlessness.

Now he had learned to see the great, the eternal and the infinite in everything, and naturally enough, in order to see it and reveal in its contemplation, he had thrown away the telescope that he had been using to peer over men's heads and now took pleasure in observing the ever-changing, infinitely great and unfathomable life that surrounded him. And the more closely he watched, the more he felt himself to be happy and at peace.

-Tolstoy, War & Peace