Michael Anderson

giraffe

Riceville, Pennsylvania, 1978 

My mother sold laurel and apples out of the worn wooden stand in the front yard from ages sixteen to twenty-five, and her mother did the same before her from age sixteen to fifty. My mother went off to New York and her younger sister took over the stand and expanded the stock to include peaches from the peach tree that my grandfather planted for her. Eventually she got sick and went away with her husband to Connecticut. The marriage wouldn’t survive this move. My mother returned seven years later to a sick father, pregnant, and my grandmother helped deliver me. A storm landed one afternoon when I was eight years old, blew the back deck mesh window in and rained all over the interior. The following morning I followed my mother out to the yard and we discovered that her sister’s peach tree had been snapped in half by the wind, a pile of peaches lay strewn about the yard in different stages of trauma, a beautiful doe stood straight-legged before her half-eaten peach, and upon our leave she continued with her meal. Also damaged in the storm was the sideboard of the stand in the front yard, the warped plank had pocketed some wind and forced itself over. My grandfather, somewhat distraught by the displacement of the board, got up sick and went out and fixed the board. All the while, while I watched, he explained how his wife used to stand out here while my mother was a baby and sell enough laurel to buy my mother new baby clothes. The final nail in the top right of the board split it slightly from the head and my grandfather, albeit satisfied with the repair, retired back inside with a disgruntled groan. 

Remaining outside, I stood behind the stand and gazed out upon the quiet road wishing someone new would pass by. But, like most days of my childhood, not a soul but the blurred rush of a car. Not a face to place it. It wouldn’t be long until my grandfather’s condition worsened. I was around twelve when the livened bits of himself began to sag in at a mortal degree deep into his chair. My grandmother used to see him begin to slump, and through tears say, “chin up old-timer.” He would usually respond with huff and look out the window. “What game are we playing,” he’d sometimes yell to my grandmother on the porch. No game of chase could win back what he wanted, and eventually he succumbed to the quiet country air, and on a damp Thursday morning in 1984, when I was fourteen, we buried him next to my aunt’s peach tree that we had successfully hoisted back up. 

December 1996, now twenty-six

A bad round-up for flu swept through the fields of Pennsylvania and my aunt, who returned home for the holiday season, ended up staying past the holiday’s conclusion, and by the time February of 1997 rolled around she was all but completely bed-ridden, and had been for months. It was around the two and half month mark when my mother took her to the hospital, and it was shortly after that in which she was first prescribed oxycontin.

There was a doctor on TV who held a small pill bottle to his face, and you could see the fire in his eyes when he went from professional to salesman. It was supposed to fix everything, so when the doctor prescribed my aunt oxycontin there was even an air of excitement amidst the people that were immediately informed. 

“That's the one from the TV, isn’t it?” My grandmother asked over the phone to my mother who sitting at the hospital bedside with my aunt, arm slumped weakly over the side of the hospital bed. The color had long left her face, and you could see her veins pump with stress when you caught her at a bad moment. The hospital bed was a heavenly white, and sometimes when she would cough you could see that change in the sheet she lay under. They hid that from us, hoping we wouldn’t notice, but we did. We saw it every time. She would wake up, in the midst of everything, and be shocked to sadness that the next day had come. She would sleep twenty hours. My mother would take me home during the nights and pick me up the next afternoon, and at night the house was empty. I promised my mother that I would be fine sleeping in the hospital with them but she declined vehemently. I spent the nights alone in the house sweeping and rifling through TV channels, thinking about going back to work. 

My boss called me in the afternoon on the first day of March. “How are things going for you?” .. some tenderness bit the hissing static of the line. “They’ve been better, they’re saying my aunt can return home in about a week.” I bit my tongue and spoke again, “she’s lost about forty pounds.” Very clearly I could hear him inhale sharply. “How much more time do you think you need before you can come back?” He asks. I have been out since January. “Just give me until my aunt comes home, that way everyone will be back at the house and they won’t need me to keep a hand on everything. Is that okay?” .. “That’s fine- family comes first, I know that. Just take a few days after she gets back.” .. “Thank you,” and the line clicks with a ring. The phone cord dangles like an arm. Turning out to the empty house I am greeted with the wind whistling through a crack in the sun room glass. 

As expected my aunt returned home six days later with a sunken grin draping across her frail face. You’d never expect she was in her fifties. It was disturbing to me, and as I kissed her cheek and welcomed her home, it felt like tissue paper against my lips. That night while my aunt slept upstairs, around the dinner table my mother set a small bottle of pills in the middle. “One every twelve hours,” she said. “I was reading about them, and I asked the doctor, and he said every twelve hours.” .. With a nod I lay my chin on the table and admit that I was returning to work. I was planning on traveling back to work in three days. My grandmother began to grab the edge of the table with her weak hands, and something unexpected welled in the pits of my mother’s tired eyes. A jumping mouse slinked its way around the bend of the porch, staying close to the wall to avoid the gaze of a lurking black snake. Despite the jumping mouse’s attempts, the snake had seen it a long time ago, and shortly after fully rounding the corner, the snake quickly and tenderly killed the mouse, and as time went on, not even a minute later, it was as if the mouse never even existed. The tall grass in the clearing across from the wooden stand danced in the breeze of the night, and tiny flies peppered the tips of swaying reeds. “You’re leaving?” she says with damp palms down to the table. “I need to get back to work, I can’t lose my job.” .. “Your aunt just got home?” .. Sitting up straight, I admit a truth, “and I’m very happy about that. The nurse said she can stop by for weekly check-ins. I’ve been out of work for two months, I can’t support anyone if I can’t support myself. I need to get back to work. I can come back on weekends. I’m not far. I’m two hours south in Pittsburgh.” .. My mother looks to my grandmother and the chirp of the crickets pierce the room. The room falls completely silent, and as the night turns to day, the sun catches the dew and the yard shines with an overgrown hint. Face to the road, I lean against the rear of my car and cry to a sleeve damp already with the hint of the morning. The drive is incredibly long. 

May 1998, now twenty-eight 

I received a call around three weeks after my birthday from my mother letting me know that my grandmother had died as a result of a sudden heart attack following an argument with my aunt. She was old, and my aunt aged her even faster. When I would visit my aunt would grow more and more demanding of my family, and would often burst into fits of rage when she was denied even the most mundane and pointless things. Heat, food, and most importantly, her prescription. The nurse eventually stopped coming when my aunt threw the word ‘bitch’ into the room. Since then, it has been incredibly and increasingly difficult. There was a point along the way in which my aunt was weened off the oxycontin after it was deemed she was no longer in need of the medicine. So when I returned home for the funeral, you could see the shrinking bits of my aunt recede deeper into her body. She walked in a hunch, but she was walking and I was grateful. She was ungrateful, however, that I arrived and immediately turned to my mother. There was admittedly some guilt over my continued absence, but there is little that I could realistically do. 

I spent the day and a half leading up to the funeral running my fingers along the trunks of the trees in the back yard of the family home, and eventually decided to place a chair at the now sunbleached wooden stand in the front yard. The wood had become stringy and weak. A rogue poke of the finger would displace some of the balance. Ants had worked their way through the stand and made it their home, weaving around the posts and through holes that once cradled the nails harshly pounded in by the feeble hands of love. At some point over the past decade, something, now undiscernible, had nested itself in the shady underside of the stand. Whatever it was had withered to bone under there and, hopefully, closed its eyes peacefully for there were no signs of struggle. But really, there was no way to tell, for at this point the decay had been reduced almost completely to dust. 

“That’s been down there a while,” my mother said coming up behind me. She was about five yards behind walking forward, she stopped about six feet behind me. “Its hot out,” she said. “Yeah” .. “Have you made any new friends at your job?” She asked, still keeping her tender distance. She shifted a bit to her right. I heard it. 

“It’s been difficult. I work alone a lot of the time, so not really. I don’t really like to go out. I met a guy at the post-office a few weeks ago when I was sending you a letter. He was kind, he worked for the state department, or something like that. We went out for a drink but really there wasn’t much to it. We didn’t have much in common. He had always lived in the city. I tried to connect with him but it didn’t really happen. I couldn’t tell if he was simple or if I was. But, whichever or whatever it was, we didn’t see each other again so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” I said. Once finished, I turned back to look fully at my mother who had shifted to be completely seated in the grass. She wasn’t really looking at me. She hesitated for a moment to speak. Really I had not made any friends my whole life, my life was work and family and neither of those things really prepare you for finding or talking to friends. They each require a structure that is so much different from something friendly. The closest thing I had to a friend was a girl that used to live next door to us when I was eight. One day when going over to see her I was greeted with a vacant kitchen and the stomach turning news that the family had suddenly moved after the passing of the father in a work related accident. It was through moments like that, that I learned of life’s unwavering cruelties. My mother spoke, “it does matter, why don’t you think it does?” 

“Because it wasn’t really ‘friendly’, was it? I mean he wasn’t honestly looking for a friend, I think. He was leaning into me even when there was no reason to or when there was nothing else to say on a subject. A subject we had no common feelings or experiences with. I told him about the cement plant and the sounds we would hear it sometimes make on those nights in the summer, and when I told him about that he only said, “I want to live somewhere quiet.” That’s not friendly, that's not anything! It was ridiculous. I tried talking to my coworkers but they always clock out before talking.” .. I turned forward again to the road as a car, sea-blue, brushed past carrying the wind with it. Continuing, I say, “I grew up with you, and grandma and grandpa, and aunt Pam, and I loved it so dearly, but that's going away now, and I feel so dim on this island I’ve swam to. Who would want to join me here? Why would I invite someone to a place so filled with-” and here I hesitate. My mother and I lock eyes. 

The grass dances between us, sweat flies click across my brow and return with some disorientation to the ground. Continuing to look at me, my mother says, “Do you know what I do all day while you’re off working? Not much really, talking with your aunt is not very easy. It was at one point, but not really anymore. I was friendly with the nurse that was helping your aunt, but your aunt drove her away and I was really only an afterthought. I know you don’t really think of me like this, but in a lot of ways you and I are very similar..” There was a long pause, and she went on, “I was thinking I could move up to the city with you?” .. There it is. It began to grow dark. 

The funeral was quiet and small. Some of the people from the town came to visit and pay their rather unceremonious respects. My grandmother kept to herself her whole life, just like those before and after her. Her only life-long friend was my grandfather, and that and been stirred to destruction, so maybe now this fixes something. Despite the solitary nature of her life, she was well liked and respected by those around her, so those that did have stories about her were very kind and flattering. People, like passing winds, told me how much I resembled and acted like her. I couldn’t quite define their intentions so I chose to act flattered. One of the older men that came into the funeral stopped in front of me. He was old and fragile, really setting into the end of the line. Despite that he carried with a smile, head forward, and he turned his aged head to me. “Her granddaughter?” he asked sincerely. I nodded yes and he took the opportunity to speak briefly, saying, “I lived in Riceville as long as your grandmother had, yeah. Yeah- and I remember one time I was walking up the road she was on, and she was selling that laurel she grew, out her stand. And that day I had around twenty cents in my pocket from working with my old man, I must’ve been sixteen then. We’re the same age as her and I, still are, god-bless. But that day I went up and told her how pretty that laurel was, said it was the most wonderful bunch-a laurel I'd seen. She was so happy I liked her laurel that she gave me a stand of it for free. N’well it’s a simple thing. But your grandmother lived her whole life with that kindness. Something about that I sometimes think is lost. I was ready to pay for that laurel.” .. And he walked off with some absolution. 

The open casket nature of the funeral was unnerving, and I largely avoided looking at my grandmother, and I felt guilty about it. But guilt wasn’t enough to break it, and I only really looked at her when I came in and when I left. My aunt couldn’t even bear to look at her once out of guilt, and the feeling of responsibility was completely crushing her. The wind howled through the open door, dog-like and savage, and as the night went on the sound’s frequency diminished as the new guest became fewer in number. The final rounds of thoughts and prayers came and went, and then it was just my aunt, mother, and I as the venue manager asked if we’d like to look at her one last time, my mother being the only one of us to say yes. From the seat near the center of the room, my aunt chirped out a rather unprompted ‘fuck you’ to my mother. Outside, a rusted blue Ford Ranger came to a screeching halt on the last fumes of gas it had, a man with stained overalls got out, feet in the dirt, sinking, and pushed the neutralized truck off the road into lot and began his long day of laying in the bed of it while waiting for what he would deem a ‘rescue’ .. nothing quite elegant about asking for help but I recognized my aunt’s outburst as just that. The church was growingly hot, the candles glowing along the outskirts of the room had become to grow weak at the base, and the weakest of them began to droop, for the sad reality of the end of the line is that it is not very elegant, and really, it's growingly humid. 

“What?” my mother said, pivoting to my aunt, who had already begun to recede into her chest. Her ribcage like weak foil, it gave way to shame so quickly that one could mistake her for passing branches. She was a small weak woman, and at this moment, she was barely a woman at all. She was a thing. A feeble sad thing, vicious in execution. Something that my mother, now at a peak of loss, was growing incredibly tired of. Heart exposed, folded in like a pocket, the kill appears so tender and vulnerable. My mother looks for it and says, “I remember when we were girls and we would stand in the front yard on shifts because we each liked being at the stand so much. Do you remember when dad would come out the front door at the end of the day to round us up? Or when we’d go out to our peach tree? Why the hell do you have to make me look back on those things and cry? Because I do. I cry- every single time I think about them” .. and it’s true because at this moment she started to grow weak .. “It’s a cruel thing you’ve done to us and yourself, and I am filled with pity. I’ve given up my life to tend to you and mom, and for what, to hear ‘fuck you?’ I can’t imagine a worse death.” .. And the chimney swift flying above the venue diverted paths and landed upon the man's truck, singing to him and him alone, searching for another swift to tether itself to. In response to this kindness the man, in frustration, ushers the bird away back to the thicket it started its day from. The man, alone again, lays back down without company. My aunt wept, spat, and left. The air grew idle as my mother walked over and shut the casket completely and we both attended the burial alone. We expected my aunt to come back at some point but she never appeared. As we walked to the car, the moon peaked its top over the hardwood and simply laughed at such a sad idea. 

They came in a bag, I found this out after the fact, it was small, weak and plastic. Not the clinical precision of an orange pill bottle. They become faster-acting when crushed. When we returned to the house there was residue of crushed pills peppering the kitchen counter and cups spilled from top to bottom of the home. She lay like a wilted flower with her head turned back towards the window. A glass of white tinted water, surfeit with the aforementioned, lay half drank in front of her on the glass-top side table. A second, empty, lay overturned to the chair’s right. It was nighttime, and the birds ceased their whistling, giving room for the more disposable bug. What are we to pick and choose what we so carelessly devote ourselves to, I could wish away all the crickets and grasshoppers, all the spiders and moorhens, but what good would that do? I offered that to my mother as some sort of ‘advice’ but it only extended the intensity of it all. I wouldn’t wish for anything. Blame is a fierce weapon, it has killed a million times whether justified or not. It precedes guilt, and insects would sneer at such a human error. What a filthy trick, my teeth over the coming days grew sensitive. My mother wept with that same ruthless guilt over my aunt. How cruel. 

June 1998, house sold 

We spent the final day on the property by the peach tree. It was healthy and bountiful, and we picked all the ripe peaches off of it completely. Stripped it naked. We sat under it and ate a few of them and tossed the remainder to the treeline and watched all the natural nervous things hesitantly approach from the shadows of the pine and take the peaches with some graceful quietness. Why would you sell these? The grief had done its worst and now things on the plain were quiet. The city would go on to treat us well, and within that we had each other, and that was enough. We were happy. We wished so hard for something rather incredible to happen, but the sad and somewhat calming reality of the situation is that most things don’t stay interesting for long, and defiance of expectation is more often than not disappointment.