SUBURBAN MELTDOWN by Lynda Myles
This is the story of a meltdown – mine. Not the first or the last in a lifelong history of standing strong and indomitable in the face of calamity and falling apart over trivia. On an early spring day a couple of years ago, I woke up in my husband's sunny bedroom in his house in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, and I had a plan. I would spend the morning as usual. Bring Jim and me breakfast in bed, look over the morning newspapers, do some exercises, shower, dress, run out to do a brief errand, have lunch with Jim. And then, and then – the cherry on the sundae – make myself a cup of coffee and sit down at my computer to work on a short story I’d written that was almost ready to send out, but needed tweaking. There were some contest deadlines I wanted to meet. It was a good plan, all perfectly reasonable. The errand was to buy a new microwave oven. One of my husband’s endearing traits was holding on to appliances up to and beyond the point where they beg to be put out of their misery. As long as they sort of kept doing what they were supposed to do, he never really grasped why they should be replaced. Well, you don’t marry a man to change him, right? So for several years I’d used a microwave at least ten times a day with a broken glass tray. It was in three pieces that all slanted down to a gap in the middle where the skin of the oven bottom was exposed to the waves that had curdled it. He had tried to get a new tray, I tried, too, couldn’t find any, gave up. I had other things on my mind – like his two-slice toaster that only browned three sides out of four, but don’t get me started. For some reason, that morning, I’d decided enough was enough, and I would drive over to Lowe’s at Chesterfield Center and buy a new microwave. Period. No discussion.  When I put it that way, what could my Southern gentleman of a husband say, but -- whatever makes you happy, baby. I figured it should take me half an hour to 45 minutes, and I’d be home at my desk. Oh, I also wanted to stop by the tailor’s on the way back to pick up a pair of pants for Jim that had been altered. It was on the route, sort of, and it’d only take two minutes. Then nothing could keep me from that story. But gosh, while I was at Chesterfield Center – a giant complex of enormous, unlovely one-story buildings surrounded by acres and acres of parking lots – wouldn’t it make sense to pop into the Radio Shack and pick up a new battery for the bedroom cordless phone that had suddenly gone dead? It would've been a pain to be without a phone in the bedroom for the weekend. I tucked the receiver into my black canvas carry-all along with a bottle of water. Just before I left I asked Jim if there was anything he needed from outside. He said well, some more milk of magnesia, but you don’t have to get it today. I quickly calculated that there was no drug store or supermarket in the direction I was going, but I also knew I’d go to one and get it for him. I still believed that all this was perfectly doable while leaving me time for writing. Joan Didion wrote about how she suffered from Magical Thinking after her husband died. I believe I have a form of that malady. I convince myself regularly that no matter how many tasks I cram into an hour, the hour will somehow magically expand to include them all and still take up only 60 minutes. Doesn’t seem to matter that this belief constantly flies in the face of experience, I never seem to lose my faith in the magic of time expanding to meet need. So I climbed into our little gray Subaru and set off. Have I mentioned that I hate suburbs? I’ve known that since I lived and went to high school in one and felt a combination of anxiety mixed with desolation every time I went back. Later, when I used to visit my mother in Florida, as I drove endless miles on the long, flat, wide roads from one parking lot to another, I always congratulated myself that I had avoided this as a way of life. I lived in the City and for years had a country house where I rode a bike almost everywhere and only used the car for going back and forth to the station. I still had my New York apartment, but for love of this sweet man who was by then afflicted with a devastating and incurable neurological disease, I spent most of my time in the 'burbs of Richmond. When he'd bought his house 18 years before, it was in the country, with one little lane running through miles of woods right down to the James River. Not any more. He still had his two and three quarters acres of trees but all around it were creeping developments of McMansions, ever expanding new highways, manicured parks by the river, and of course, malls filled with big box stores. And you had to drive everywhere and never walk. You know. The suburbs. I started out cheerfully enough. I'd been in Lowe’s many times by then, so I ran around its cavernous, windowless interior quickly, gathering up switches to put on lamp cords, so Jim could turn them on and off more easily, strips of Velcro for all sorts of uses, batteries – stuff we needed, so why not pick it up, as long as I was there? I went over to the microwaves, checked them out, asked a few questions and chose one. The salesman loaded the huge heavy carton into a cart for me and I headed for the cashiers. On the way, I spotted toaster ovens and thought, if not now, when? I piled that carton on top of the other one and made it to the front where a young woman with a blank expression rang up the smaller items and gave me the receipt to sign, completely ignoring the cart full of cartons. When I pointed this out to her, she said, oh, they’re yours? Since I was the only one standing there, I said yes. She had to practically crawl over the cart trying to get at the bar codes under the cartons with her zapper. Then she rang up another receipt which I signed, and since there was no one available to help me, I trundled the cart out to the lot and managed to heave the boxes into the trunk. Next stop, Radio Shack. Round and round the winding roads I went, past the sprawling Macy’s and Dillards and Circuit City and Best Buy and steak houses. By the third time I passed Dillards, I was getting a little testy, but finally found the entrance to the indoor mall where Radio Shack resides. The tall, lanky salesman who waited on me was carrying on a conversation with a young woman, which he reluctantly interrupted to listen to my request. Without saying anything, he went over to a rack, returned, and without glancing at me, went on the computer and resumed his conversation. I stood by, feeling invisible, wondering if I should repeat my request, leave, or perhaps more satisfyingly, kick him in the shin. As I figured it out later, he had gone to see if the battery I wanted was in stock; it wasn't, so he was checking for it on the computer. Finally, he took another momentary break to actually look at me and tell me he could order the battery for me. I said okay, gave him the mailing info, paid for it, and hurried out. But while I was driving by Circuit City on the way out of the complex, I (naturally) thought why not run in and see if they had the phone battery in stock so we wouldn’t have to wait for it to come in the mail? It’d only take a minute. They had it, I got it, it took fifteen minutes. Final stop, the tailor’s. Just a short detour and I’d be on my way home. Problem is, when you leave the tailor’s you can’t make a left, you have to make a right and drive a quarter mile to the next stoplight where you can make a u-turn and head in the right direction. Okay, that’s what I did. All missions were apparently accomplished and I sped toward home. It was closer to three p. m. than two by now, but I could still get in a couple of hours of work before it was time to start on dinner. Not so fast, my dear, a little voice whispered to my addled brain, what about the over the counter stuff you said you'd pick up for Jim? Whoops. I veered off at the last minute onto the circular road that encompasses the Belgrade mall where I knew at the very end was a Rite Aid. I parked and ran into another cavernous, windowless chain store. I found the right aisle, then stopped, suddenly unsure which product I was supposed to get – Pepto Bismol or Milk of Magnesia. They stood side by side on the shelf. Shit. Which one had Jim asked for? I asked a young male clerk walking by – are these for the same thing? Yeah, he said. I don't know what made me put on my reading glasses to check, but when I did, I saw they were for opposite purposes. I grabbed the Milk of Magnesia, paid, ran out, got into the car and started home. I reached for the black canvas bag to take a swig out of my water bottle -- couldn’t find it. I pulled over and stopped the car to search. The bag wasn't there. I’d left it somewhere. And the phone receiver was in it. Where had I left it? I knew I'd had it at Lowe’s and when I went into Radio Shack. I called Radio Shack and the same laconic salesman seemed to take pleasure in telling me, yup, it was there, any time I wanted to pick it up. Drive all the way back to Chesterfield Center now? Oh no, no, no, no. Never mind that I had the new battery, but no phone to put it in, I had to get home, get my coffee and get to work! Now! Cursing and sweaty, I went 60 in the 45 mile zone and pulled up in front of the house shortly after. Why not leave the microwave and toaster oven in the car and run to my desk, I wondered, as I lugged them into the house and dumped them inside the front door. I put the M of M in Jim's bathroom, then looked around for my bag of sundries from Lowe’s – and couldn't find it anywhere. That’s when I went into official meltdown mode. Poor Jim watched while I stomped around the house, muttering, cursing, red-faced (as he told me later). I called Lowe’s, went through their phone menu, got a human being, described the items I’d left behind, and got put on hold. After five minutes I called back; by now puffs of steam were coming out of my ears. I reached someone else who knew about my call and she said to just bring in the receipt, which I had, and they’d let me replace all the items. What, I snarled, you couldn’t hold the bag for me? You put all the stuff back already, and I have to run around the store again for the same things? They’d do it for me, she said. Right. Jim tried to placate me, but I couldn’t stop ranting as I  dissolved into an angry blob of molten wax before his eyes. “I can’t do it all! ” I cried out. “I don’t want you to!” he cried back. It was 3:30 by now. Fuck writing, that’s what was causing the trouble, creating the tension, making me frantic. If I hadn't planned to work on that damn story, I could’ve had a pleasant day, and I wouldn’t have been leaving stuff all over the countryside in my anxiety to be someplace else. I announced I was going out to collect the residue of my shopping trip, got back into the car, and drove back to Lowe’s. At supersonic speed I raced up and down the aisles collecting the same items on my receipt. When I got to the cashier and saw the long lines, I made a decision – I had the stuff and I had the receipt for it. I was walking out of this store and just let them try to stop me. I heard some automatic announcement as I went through the doors, something like, please return to the register, but I kept going, triumphant that I’d regained some control over my life, defied and beaten the system. I got in the car and drove off to reclaim my belongings from Radio Shack. Round and round again past the boxes 'til I found the entrance. It was four o’clock, time to go home, apologize to Jim for my histrionics, fix some drinks for us and relax with him on the porch before dinner. Hell, there’d always be another writing contest. The End This piece is dedicated with love and appreciation to my husband, Jim Pendleton, who always forgave me and was always ready to laugh. He died on December 29, 2009.

----------------------------------------------------------------------     My Friend Pat        by Lynda Myles  

          The first time I laid eyes on Pat was in an astronomy class at Columbia University. I was 21 years old and she was 26. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to lay eyes on me because she was blind.

         Not that you'd know it at first glance -- her appearance was normal and she looked directly at you when she spoke. What gave it away was the standard-issue thin white Lighthouse cane she always had with her that was like her sixth sense, her antenna to check out her environment. She called the cane, Lancelot. We struck up a conversation that first  day. She said her name was Sylvia, but she liked to be called by her nickname, Pat.

         She was thin and wiry, with light olive skin and straight dyed blond hair that could have used a touch-up. Her voice was husky, with occasional traces of her Puerto Rican heritage. The better I got to know Pat, the more I thought of her as "coiled energy." She'd sit with legs crossed, one wrapped around the other, leaning in toward you, an elbow on a knee, one hand holding the wrist of the other hand, which usually held a cigarette. When she wasn't smoking, she'd be touching things around her, "seeing them" with her fingers. She was alert, friendly and curious, as well as interesting and smart.

           But it started as a friendship of convenience. I'd taken astronomy to fulfill my math requirement, hoping it would be mostly stars and very few numbers. That turned out to be purely wishful thinking. By the end of the first class I knew I needed help. Pat needed someone to read the class material and homework assignments to her. We were a match made in a starry heaven.  Professor Mott, the head of the department, who delivered the lectures, seemed comfortable with our arrangement, even charmed by our friendship when we ran into him in the cozy school lounge where afternoon tea and cookies were served.

             On the other hand, Miss Novotny, the young teacher who conducted the lab part of the course, was bothered by our collaboration. She didn't see how she could judge our work separately if we did it together. But we persevered, pointing out that we took our tests separately. In the end Miss Novotny gave in. Maybe she realized if she didn't, Pat would have to drop out of the course. It's not like the textbook was available in braille or books on tape. In fact, it's not like anything was available to her in the way of accommodation at Columbia. Even though a professor once told me she was the most brilliant math student at the university in 30 years, they cut her almost no slack. They simply weren't set up to deal with handicapped students and hadn't been forced yet by activists to give it any thought.

            Around that time, I met a woman at a party out in Queens who worked with the Jewish Guild For the Blind. She said if Pat could find out which books were going to be assigned the following semester in her English class, the Guild could have one of them translated into braille, but it would take six months. Pat spoke to the teacher, got the name of a book and the Guild people started working on it. Sure enough it was ready in six months, but by then Pat learned that the teacher had dropped that particular book from the list.

              She could take class notes in braille -- we didn't yet have small portable tape recorders in the 60's -- but her homework and term papers had to be handed in neatly typed and double-spaced on the same due dates as everyone else. She was a good typist, better than I was, but she couldn't always find someone to proofread her work. Nevertheless, her English teacher marked her down for every typo. When she took a test, she was allowed to have an assistant read her the questions out in the hall, but she had to do calculations in her head and finish up in the same amount of time, usually 45 minutes, as the rest of the class. The Lighthouse in Manhattan was her best resource.  She could have a volunteer read to her there, but she had several courses and limited access to readers, so there was always a crunch. And of course the Lighthouse is in another part of town altogether from where she lived and from the school, which meant constant traveling for her. Once, in a rush, she misjudged her path on a subway platform and fell off the edge down onto the tracks. Luckily no train was coming  just then.

                  A seeing  eye dog  dog would've helped, but she'd been told her balance wasn't good enough for her to qualify. Her inner ear had been damaged at the same time her optic nerve was destroyed. Both were the result of the heavy dose of a new medication she was given at age 17 when she fell deathly ill with meningitis. Five years earlier, without the medication, she would have died. Five years later, with a refined version of it, she wouldn't have been made blind.

               Until that illness, she had a bright future. She was attending Hunter High School for super smart kids and would have had scholarships offered to her for college. But once she lost her sight she had to leave Hunter and go to a  school where they could teach her how to be a blind person in the world.  She did that, but had a bigger obstacle to overcome - her mother, a woman who was strong-willed, angry, capricious and extremely superstitious. She believed her daughter's affliction was a punishment from God for her sins -- for Pat's sins, that is, not hers. She was ashamed of her daughter's  condition and wanted to hide her from the world.

                  Pat eventually escaped her dismal surroundings by marrying a young guy from her Bronx neighborhood who'd always had a crush on her. He'd become a baker in the U.S. army and traveled around a lot. She became an army wife and went with him. It worked out pretty well, even though she wasn't madly in love with him. She was able to get her high school degree while living on an army base and even took some college-level courses.

                But after a few years her husband was shipped overseas to Japan and she wasn't able to go with him. So she came back to New York, moved in with her family again in the Bronx -- her mother, her gentle, ineffectual father, her pretty, savvy younger sister and brilliant younger brother. She was receiving part of her husband's army pay, so she enrolled at Columbia. She wanted to become a math teacher, although she was told by those who said they knew that schools simply didn't hire blind teachers, so it would be close to impossible for her to get a job, no matter how smart she was.

               We got through astronomy, I managed to pass, she aced it. She hung in for another couple of semesters, doing  well in all her courses, but the struggle was wearing her down. Finally, she dropped out and disappeared for a while.  I'd taken a day job and was finishing my degree at night, so I was busy -- I guess too busy to try to track her down. When she surfaced again, a few months later, I found out what she'd been up to.

                She'd stopped hearing from her husband after the first year. He didn't respond to her letters and she couldn't reach him by phone, so she got herself on a flight to Japan, made it to his army base and confronted him. He was living with a Japanese woman and had a baby, and he didn't want to come back to Pat. So she left and flew back to the States. I was astonished by this story, since I hadn't even guessed that Pat missed her husband. She'd never let on. But after that, things really got weird.   She began to hang out at the Peppermint Lounge, a bar on West 45th Street. I don't know how it began, but she knew people there and they knew her and that's where she spent her time. I never went there, but she told me all about it. I wonder,  did I ever ask her what she thought she was doing with her life? Probably not. I probably tried to be open-minded and non-judgmental.

                I was pursuing an acting career, and at one point went on the road playing a meaty role in a Greek tragedy. It was a rough tour, one-night stands, physically hard and sometimes contentious.  I didn't have a clue then, but some of the actresses were lesbians, and they thought I was making fun of them when I joked around, so they decided  I was anathema.  I didn't know that either. I learned it all from my friend Pat months after  the tour. She had somehow become attached to a gay crowd by now and knew lots of actresses and actors. Why did she tell me about their animosity?  I'm not sure. It's probably something I could have lived happily without knowing. She also met a gay actor I had once worked with and told me graphic anecdotes about his sex life. We'd come a long way from astronomy class, Toto.

                The letter continued,  "What is news is that I am really making money. Everything in the world is scientific. One must know the science of whatever one does. I cannot here write the science of seeking alms, because it would take too long. I will simply allow it to suffice to tell you that when I began, I made possibly twenty dollars a week for three days, eight hours a day. Now, with an adequate knowledge of seeking alms, I made this last week (in three days, eight hours a day), one hundred and eighteen dollars. On one day alone, I made fourty(sic)-six dollars, and I didn't receive any money piece larger than a quarter. The average is still eight cents a collection. Only rarely does it go to nine or ten cents a collection, but never more. Soon, I expect to hit downtown, and I will make a second mathematical analysis there."

              But the most extraordinary twist was yet to come. In June, 1963, Pat  wrote me a long typed letter, saying she was sorry she'd been so out of touch, that "you must understand that when I don't write or call, it is because I want only to spare you.  I am simply going to have to learn to live with the heartache. Either that, or I'll just have to battle it until the end. However, I'll have to do that alone."  She didn't explain what the heartache was. But she was hoping to move soon into an apartment she called "Patril-la," and she wrote a ditty about it --"It's a shack among many shacks, On the wrong side of the tracks. But for you it's a merry stop, To my room on the very top. Forget Tara and Shangri-la, Come to my dear, dear Patril-la."  She was saving money to make this move.

                So she'd become a beggar somewhere in the Bronx, and being who she was had turned it into a science. She learned through trial and error which tactics brought in the most money. At a later time she explained to me that, for example, she got a better response if she tapped her cane a certain way and used a certain tone of voice. Pat was doing very well at her new profession, but doing well is what did her in. It seems she'd horned in on territory that was already claimed. She was told either to give the powers-that-were a cut or they'd give her trouble. When she wouldn't play along, someone followed her to the place she was staying and grabbed her purse at the door. She hung on to it and got dragged down four flights of steps.  Once again, she survived, but she was shut out of her new profession.

            Meanwhile, I was renting and furnishing my first apartment, getting my degree, changing jobs, and hassling with a boyfriend, so sometimes when Pat was hard to find, I let it go for a while, but inevitably I'd try to contact her again with varying degrees of success.

            Time passed. I got married. Somehow, eventually, Pat did manage to get herself an apartment on West 123rd Street. She had a phone, but  as was her way,  sometimes didn't answer it for weeks or months at a time. Once when I reached her  she told me her husband had come home on leave, then returned to Japan. After  that, I lost touch with her for a few years. The next time I spoke to her, she stunned  me by announcing she had a daughter who'd been born nine months after her husband's visit and was a result of conjugal relations with him. The little girl,  Cindi, was perhaps four years old at this time. Pat explained that at first when she     felt something growing inside her, she was sure it was a tumor. She went to the doctor and discovered she was about five months pregnant. (I put that episode into  a play I wrote years later. My naive heroine believes she has a dreadful disease and is shocked and thrilled to find out she's having a baby.)

            I'll never know how Pat got through those first months of caring for an infant. Her sister helped sometimes, but mainly she was on her own. Again,  I'm sure she made a science of it, figured out the best ways to change a diaper, give a bath, make a bottle. And as the baby grew into a little person, the way Pat described it to me, she became her mother's eyes.

            Several years later I was putting together a birthday party for my own daughter. On a whim I sent an invitation to Pat and to my great surprise,she called and said she and Cindi would come. It was in December and I was taking the kids to a puppet theater in Central Park and then home for cake and presents. My child was  six or seven, Cindi was three or  four years older and was a very sweet little girl, as I recall.  But that was the only time I ever saw her.

            I did see Pat again a couple of years later when I decided I wanted to write her story as a teleplay. She agreed to come to my apartment and talk to me about her life. I cooked up a specialty of mine, a pot of unstuffed cabbage with sour kraut and caraway seeds among other ingredients, served over rice. She seemed to enjoy it, the word she used was "savory." I asked questions and took notes while she spoke and it seemed to go well.  I had no way of knowing it would be our last time together. When I tried to set up another session she told me her family had been horrified to hear she was exposing the facts of her life -- and theirs, too. They demanded she back out and she felt she had to.

               I had trouble reaching her again by phone. After that, I pretty much gave up on the friendship. She just wasn't available and obviously didn't want it. But one day when my daughter was around 14, I watched her tearing her hair out  over  a math problem she couldn't figure out, and I thought, she needs help -- and so  do I.  I found the last number I had for Pat and called it. After all, she was a math genius; if  she was there I'd say hi, how're you? and ask her to help my child.

               It was Cindi who answered the phone. She was 17 now and when I asked about her mother, she told me Pat had died a few months before. She'd gone to the hospital with an asthma attack and never came out. Her last gift to her daughter, as Cindi  described it, was to help her get into Harvard on a scholarship, and that's where she was headed in the fall. Cindi also told me that Pat had been active in local politics in recent years and had even run for some office, but didn't win.

               I was very touched and asked Cindi if I could take her out to dinner. She said yes. I was excited at the thought of seeing her and perhaps having a relationship. But when I called to confirm the date, someone told me she was away visiting relatives. I left a message, but she never returned my calls. So I sent her the necklace I'd bought her as a graduation gift.  She never acknowledged it.  Whenever I brought up the subject, my daughter advised me to forget about Cindi. Obviously she wasn't any more interested in a friendship than her mother had been.

              Some years later I went to an alumni party at Columbia and brought up Pat's  full name to a member of the administration, hoping he'd heard of her reputation as a math whiz. The man visibly recoiled -- we're not too fond of her around here, he said. She brought several lawsuits against the university and gave us a lot of trouble. That's my friend Pat, I thought, dead and gone and  still surprising me. I didn't mention that the university had given her a lot of trouble when she was a student, so maybe it was a little bit of payback. In some cockamamie way I felt we'd come full circle. From a Columbia classroom to a Columbia cocktail party three decades later,  and Pat was a strong presence on both occasions.

             That's the end of the story, except I have a feeling one of these days I'm going to  figure out how to find Cindi, or at least find out about her. Maybe I'll contact her, and maybe she'll want to see me and reminisce about her mother. Anything's possible.