The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir Page 16

  Sometimes I wonder what we’d all be doing if we weren’t spending so much time hovering over our electronic gadgets, watching videos, playing games, confirming that our eyes do not fog up in the shower because they are warm and salty (a fact that I recently looked up on the Internet). Here’s what I have to remind myself of, what I have to tell myself when I’m pining to quickly grab a computer to see what time the sun rises in the morning: The Internet is dumb.

  The Internet, with all its access to brain research, anthropology journals, social studies networks, and biographies and autobiographies, can’t begin to map the complexity of our lives, or how we each affect others. Last week, a guy made my day by telling me he couldn’t believe I was forty-nine years old. Bless his soul.

  Similarly, despite all its millions of data points and access to academic journals, Animal Planet, and thousands of short videos showing pets doing funny things, the Internet can’t begin to articulate the confusion that comes with nature, how it is both stunning and brutal.

  A few years ago, I stepped out of my little house, reveling in the way the sky was so blue it looked fake, like a filtered photo doctored to make you feel an immense sense of optimism—and then, a few minutes later, a bit of horror. I found a cathead near my truck. It was just the head, lying there like a tennis ball. No arms or legs or tail or collar with a name tag. There was no explanation other than a guess that maybe a raccoon or a fox had gotten to it. It made me scream and then nearly cry, and then I put it in a shoe box and buried it in the woods. I would never have the courage to go looking for something so gruesome, although I still can’t explain why all these years later I still study “Cat Missing” signs posted on telephone poles or at the co-op, wondering if someone is missing the cat (head) I put in the shoe box.

  Nature is confounding in the way it pulls us apart and then puts us back together again. If you Google “cathead,” all you’ll find is references to ships and large hats.

  All that said, I’m a total sucker for Netflix, a website where you can watch movies and television shows instantly on your computer. I try not to mention this fetish or any of my absentminded dillydallying when people ask how I spend my free time now that I’m not working as much. Instead, I might mention that I recently helped someone tear down an old garage, and that I’ve been volunteering at the Salvation Army soup kitchen; and then I’ll talk about my other amazing volunteer activities like installing grip bars along the kitchen counter at Rita’s house. And all of that is true: I enjoy pitching in on various projects and hope that I’m being helpful, but I also spend an awful lot of time goofing off.

  I spent almost an hour trying to recondition an oscillating fan that I found in a junk pile. I’m not certain, but I think it was tossed out because it had a frightening wad of human hair wrapped around the spindle where the fan blades connect to the motor. It was disgusting and curious, and exactly the sort of thing you find on junk day in Olympia.

  I love junk day. Everyone puts out their rubbish—their busted-up washing machines and hot water heaters, dysfunctional blenders and vacuum cleaners—so everything can be hauled off to the dump. But before they go, passersby like me can walk around scanning for useful goods, occasionally lunging into the debris piles like pearl divers. Last year, I found a perfectly good electric lawn mower that I was able to rewire and repair with a couple rolls of duct tape; today I found this hairy fan.

  I took everything apart in the garage, cut the toupee out of the machinery, and repaired a break in the electric cord. I sprayed the fan with vinegar and swabbed the plastic, dabbing here and there, and flipping the unit like it was a newborn and I was a neonatal surgeon.

  I have a keen respect for fans. I grew up in the Midwest, where the summer heat can turn your car seat into a waffle iron, where people stroke out from sun poisoning and everyone owns a box fan even if they have air-conditioning. On hot days, my friend Chinn and I would pedal over to the 7-Eleven, where we’d sneak into the walk-in cooler and sit around on the beer cases until we shivered. At night, my siblings and I would fall asleep on top of our covers, listening to the chatter of a box fan drowning out the whip-poor-wills and cicadas, my father’s snoring, and the ten-o’clock news saying it would be just as hot tomorrow.

  In the Pacific Northwest, fans are an afterthought. They move moisture and odors, and only serve to cool things down when you’re doing something weird like canning beans or drying fruit, or running your stove to full capacity in the middle of the summer. So it doesn’t surprise me that I’d find a perfectly good fan among a pile of old curled-up shoes and stained T-shirts. People here don’t understand how a fan can save your life.

  Usually, I’ll fix something and set it on a shelf in the garage, where it will sit, orphaned next to the half-empty paint cans and bicycle parts, until a few weeks later, when I’ll open the door and realize I don’t really need a light-up Santa, so I’ll take it to Goodwill or walk it over to the “Free” box near the food co-op, where I’ll have a moment of anxiety wondering if I really should keep the item because maybe, someday, I’ll decide I really do want a festive Santa, no matter how disfigured.

  I’m telling you this because I’ve found that even when you have your freedom—when you’ve liberated yourself from your debt, and are happy enough living like a polar bear in winter—even then, you’re still stuck with who you are.

  Fortunately, I’m also stuck with awesome friends.

  Earlier today, out of the blue, Hugh and Annie’s daughter, Keeva, set up a slack line (a flat strap similar to a tightrope wire but wider and friendlier) between her house and mine, and proceeded to walk heel to toe across the backyard without ever stepping foot on the grass. She was so good at this particular task that I decided to put a garden sprinkler in her path, wondering if she could maneuver past the wet strap even with water spraying up into her eyes like a blindfold, but she defied the odds and performed like a champion, and then gave me several lessons for bounding up on the line and taking a few steps. We were about to take things to a whole new level, whistling while we walked or juggling knives and chain saws, when we noticed that the anchoring post closest to Hugh and Annie’s house was starting to cleave forward. We both screamed and seemed to run in slow motion toward the post, laughing when we got there, and then quickly dismantled the contraption before either of us landed on our ear as the carport post dove forward into the backyard, quickly followed by the entire roof structure.

  Years ago, when I met Hugh and Annie, I never would have guessed that they would become two of my closest friends, let alone that their daughter would grow up before my eyes and turn into someone who would know how to engineer a slack line.

  When I first moved into the backyard, there weren’t any Internet signals infiltrating my house, and Hugh and Annie didn’t have the box with its fork accessory; instead, they had a thick cable that connected their computer to their phone line, which then connected to some massive tower that seemed to fail every week or so as it struggled to keep up with everyone’s desire to check their e-mail. Back then (in “ye old days,” eight years ago), if we wanted to watch a video we’d huddle together in their living room and watch a movie through a DVD player attached to a very small portable television, or we’d cram together around their kitchen table and watch something on their computer that sat on an adjacent desk. The whole experience was very similar to how people used to listen to the radio, where they’d gather up and some would knit or whittle while others would lean on their elbows and daydream themselves into whatever story was being told at the moment.

  In “ye old days,” we would occasionally pull the television and DVD player outside onto Rita’s patio, so we could watch a movie or an episode of Gilmore Girls while Rita got ready for bed. At those times, everything in the backyard seemed to pull together—the trees and bushes, the garage and the smell of raw, freshly turned dirt in the garden would step forward, lean in, and watch the movie with us. Cinema night on th
e patio was always a highlight for me.

  Game night was equally awesome.

  Occasionally, we’d have an impromptu steely-eyed game of Clue, where each of us would collect information like a detective as we moved our little pieces around the board, trying to determine who killed the subject with what weapon in what room. It was very challenging, and as a state investigator, I found myself personally challenged to be at my best, which most often looked like me sitting there with a squishy look on my face while Hugh, Annie, Keeva, and Kellen took copious notes.

  “Hummm,” they would mutter as, heads down, they would scribble something into their notepads to describe my latest play in the game.

  It was a level of intellectual competition I’d never experienced before, and I found myself feeling the need to cheat, to suddenly break everyone’s concentration by declaring a “tea break,” when I’d wander off to the kitchen to make a snack before Kellen (only nine, then ten, then thirteen years old) could beat me.

  The last time we played Clue was in the middle of a snowstorm, huddled in Rita’s house, which was slowly dropping in temperature because the power was out. Hugh, Annie, Keeva, Kellen, and I sat around the game board with our headlamps, holding our cards and trying to navigate our playing pieces, while Rita sat nearby, bundled in a stocking cap, a down coat, and two blankets. It was 69 degrees in her house. A heat wave compared with mine, but Rita sat in her arctic outerwear. She nearly froze to death as we sat around in light sweaters, enjoying the 67-degree then 62-degree temperatures while taking notes (or not). It was a bit sad when the electricity came back on; we all liked the ad-libbed slumber party that was developing in Rita’s living room.

  At holidays and birthdays, we’d coordinate our schedules for dinner and gift-giving. A few months after I moved into the backyard, I started shopping for Rita, wandering back and forth down the aisles, looking for everything on her list: the largest, most obnoxiously massive box of Rice Krispies ever produced, frozen mac and cheese, Kleenex, milk. Everything was very specific; I wasn’t supposed to get any sort of toilet paper but the Charmin “mega soft,” and I couldn’t just get the denture powder on sale but only the Top Care brand of tablets. It was awkward at first, making me eye-roll when Rita would bristle at my choice of an alternative brand of frozen lasagna, but then, over time, I realized I too was extra-picky about what type of bread I ate, the kind of toothpaste, coffee, half-and-half, and beer I wanted—it was all very personal and, depending on the item, brought varying degrees of excited anticipation, which registered by me humming or whistling while I unloaded groceries, sticking the perishables in my blue ice chest, the canned goods above the dinner dishes, and the dry goods in the drawer to the left of the kitchen sink.

  On occasion, I became Rita’s chauffeur, taking her to Kellen’s baseball games, to graduation ceremonies, her hairdresser’s wedding, and the occasional doctor’s appointment. I liked doing this stuff, parking in a restricted space close to the front door of the optometrist’s office, unloading the wheelchair, helping Rita stand and then shuffle into the chair. I liked learning how to buckle her into the car seat, reaching across her the way I used to do with my four-year-old niece, and coming to understand the physics of supporting her as she teetered forward out of the car from a seated position to standing, trying to perfect the subtle art of providing dignity and grace in a moment of awkwardness.

  Similarly, Hugh and Annie became my advocates, taking me to the emergency room or to the hospital when I had surgery. I’ll never forget Annie sitting with me after I’d had a heart procedure that hadn’t gone so well. The doctor had tried to use a laser to burn away a bit of the interior of my heart’s left ventricle, flash-frying it so it wouldn’t conduct an electrical current that would in turn reduce the number of extra, misfired heartbeats. It hadn’t gone as planned, and he had given up before placing me in any greater harm; and I had started crying when I learned that nothing had changed. My heart was still broken, and that broke my heart even more. I curled into a small ball in my hospital bed as Annie sat with me, crying nearly as much as me. After a few minutes, she asked if I wanted to see how she sometimes handled her disappointment.

  “Ya,” I answered, thinking she’d pick up the nearby bowl of Jell-O and jab it with a fork.

  Instead, she stood up, closed her eyes, and started tap-dancing. She had studied dancing in New York, and she knew what she was doing, stuttering her feet and keeping her arms near her sides, tense, like she was reliving a moment when she’d been caught up short by a grade-school bully. She danced in one spot like that for a minute or so, moving her feet so methodically I could feel the heel strikes and toe-taps pass across the hospital floor into the bed, the mattress, my body, my toes. I could feel what she felt, and then her body changed. Her feet moved even faster and kicked higher, and her chest expanded so she could windmill her arms as she slowly turned in a circle, tapping away until a smile peeked out below her closed eyes, and then a bigger smile, like a balloon lifting off the floor, bigger and bigger until she threw open her eyes and excitedly looked at me, spun around, and closed with a loud “Ta-daaaa!”

  It was so fantastic, it made me laugh even as I lay there disoriented and confused.

  There were a lot of logistical questions when I first moved into the backyard: Where should I set the house, park my car, get mail, and stash my ever-changing array of “found” items: wood scraps, a light-up Santa, and other riprap that seemed to easily float in and out of the garage? These things were easy to sort out, like figuring out how to engineer a little house to drag it down the highway. You sort through the options, collaborate, and make a decision.

  Other issues were more nuanced, and even though I don’t want to beat you up with my comparisons, those sticky wickets were very similar to learning that a rafter tail will split if you don’t drill a hole before screwing it into the wall. Some things you learn through trial and error, or by repeatedly using your body until it grows its own muscle memory and no longer needs your brainy guidance to know how best to hold a nail gun.

  When I first moved into the backyard, I was completely flummoxed by which was better: knocking and then opening Rita’s door with the house key she had given me, or knocking and waiting for her to rise out of her chair like an old ship being raised from the deep dark sea. She’d eventually get to a standing position, steady herself, and then reach for her tripod cane to begin the process of walking around the kitchen table to the front door—a journey no less epic than rounding Cape Horn. Meanwhile, I would stand on the other side of the door, worrying that I shouldn’t have bothered her in the first place.

  It became easier to knock, pause for a second, and then walk in saying, “Candy Gram!” I still do that, all these years later, whether Rita is listening or not.

  We discovered how to keep the peace: how I shouldn’t draw water from Rita’s tap before eight in the morning because the pipes would hum and wake her up, and how RooDee shouldn’t be out at four in the afternoon because, apparently, she liked to scare the mailman by behaving as if she wanted to rip the logo off his letter bag, shirt, hat, and back pants pocket.

  Hugh, Annie, Rita, and I saw each other nearly every day, but it didn’t feel like my house was an extension of theirs, like an outdoor bedroom or apartment. I was autonomous—a close neighbor, who also took showers at Rita’s, stored ice cream in her freezer, and watched Wheel of Fortune with her. Somehow we all found our place, and figured out how to share what we had.

  Just now, writing this, it sounds lovely (and it has been), but there have been weird moments. One time, when Kellen was about eight years old, I took him to baseball practice and ended up lounging around on the grass with him and his baseball buddies, waiting for the coach to show up. We were shooting the shit about how fast we could run if we had giant Slinkys strapped to our shoes, when one of the boys suddenly looked at me and suspiciously asked if I was Kellen’s aunt.

  “Well, no,” I sai
d calmly, smiling. “I just live in the backyard.”

  He pondered this for a minute and then belted out in shock, “Oh my God, you’re one of the homeless people!” He said it innocently and emphatically.

  Kellen and I simultaneously went to bat with explanations. “She has a house in the corner,” he said.

  “It’s really cute and nice,” I offered, using a schoolteacher tone, “and I live there with a Keebler Elf and several small woodland creatures. It’s actually quite lovely . . . well, except for the squirrels. They have terrible gas—perhaps a dietary issue. Their nuts give them gas.”

  The kids looked at me for a minute, and then all of us burst into laughter. I drove home later, pondering the kid’s comment about my being homeless. It stung, and made me feel that I needed to explain something about myself, like living in the backyard was a bad thing. But it didn’t feel that way, and in fact felt like one of the best living arrangements I’d ever had.

  In all these years, there haven’t been lingering hard feelings: no big arguments brewing, no power plays or hierarchy that need shuffling every once in a while. Instead, we all get along incredibly well for close-quartered neighbors, with the occasional disagreement about minor things.

  This is what Rita and I argued about: the sweetness of cinnamon (I know, a very big issue indeed). I swore cinnamon was savory not sweet, and Rita swore she knew better. I’ll never forget storming out of her house, seriously offended by her getting in the way of my baking, as an apple pie dotted with sugar and cinnamon baked away in her oven. She had screeched “Ack, ack, ack” like I was sprinkling acid on the pie, like she was personally being injured by my cinnamon. It bugged the shit out of me. It was my pie, and she didn’t get to say shit about it!