Today Will Be a Quiet Day – Amy Hempel

It’s nearly impossible for me not to bring something of my own life into a story when the characters consist of a father, a son and a daughter. To draw me in deeper, when some of the action…or most of the story takes place in a car, I find myself drawing far too many parallels with my life as it was between the ages of 8 and 18.

My sister and I crammed alone time with our father into 5 or six hour blocks speeding up and down the east coast. I think we tried our hardest to make those five hours equal in quality the time that other children spent in the car with their father going to school, the store, the movies, the gas station…

I have a hard time remembering exactly what we discussed and what I thought about at that time. I’m sure though that whatever it was, any subject that my sister or I brought up, it would have to be of appropriate to discuss in front of the other sibling.

I wonder what my father thought of us. For his life, was interrupted when we re-entered it.

He had to plan events not just for himself in mind – but he had to make arrangements for us too.

And as I read these stories, my mind drifts once again to my father’s past behavior after the divorce.

Again, I’m trying now to imagine my father’s mind... as I am of the same age now, that he was when I was 10-11 years old.

Unfortunately, rather than having a nice pocket of memories to draw upon…yes there are a few…my most vivid memories are sad.

And most of these memories are related to my father an his inability to unplug from his work – and now I’ll relate a memory that for my sister and I was - “A Quiet Day”.

Even when we visited, my father still found it necessary to work…and work at a level that is/was unnecessary.

And these memories transition my thoughts towards summer weekends in center city Philadelphia.

My father couldn’t leave us at home when he pulled several all-nighters down in center city.

Our weekends would start early Friday mornings. We would ride into the city from Chestnut Hill with the novelty of a train ride cushioning our fall.

Walking through the dirty, dust hazy morning city streets from the train station to his office on the 7^th floor we took a quick last look at the outside world.

Painted high gloss white cinderblock walls, polished linoleum floors and harsh florescent lighting. This would be our home for the next ? number of hours.

No windows.

During the day on Friday, there would be the normal activity of people moving through the hallways of an office building and they all looked the same to us in their green scrubs and white coats.

It was generally a safe building where we could go to the vending machines and grab a coke without his supervision as long as we told him that we were leaving the hall.

There was also a game room on the first floor that we spent some time in as well, but because we weren’t that skilled in video games, and my father had a limited amount of quarters he wanted to part with, the attraction and access soon faded.

As the day wore on, people left early for the weekend and the halls became even quieter than they normally were. Lights hummed, water swooshed through hidden pipes, vents blew cool breezes and strange echoes bounced through the halls.

During the day, we slunk around the halls, past curious eyes and found comfort in a spare office. We listened to the radio, drew pictures, wrote letters and read magazines. We typed on a typewriter and played with clay.

Sometimes lunch and dinner would allow us off the floor or a quick trip out into the loud smoggy city with dad.

Upon returning to the office, we’d find that my father’s floor was close to empty. Shoes and socks came off and the halls became our private race tracks.

Our bare feet would slap down on the hard polished floors with such a noise as we raced up and down the hallways causing an occasional visit by a security guard baffled by the strange sounds.

Time faded and we had no concept of the external world…day or night.

My father would emerge from his office and his fatherly duties would suddenly reappear and he would inform us that it was time to sleep.

We found our beds to be an industrial sofa and office carpet. We’d fall asleep to the whisper of cold (not cool) air conditioning passing through the vents above us.

Sleep was difficult as carpets are hard. We’d wake early in the morning and stumble into the hall –not knowing if we had slept 8 minutes or 8 hours.

Dad would be at his desk, kicked back papers all around…working.

We’d use the bathrooms – and have breakfast in the cafeteria. The day would be a replica of the previous day with the only difference being that there wouldn’t be the traffic of fellow office workers.

Saturdays were quiet and we had the hallways to ourselves once again…but to a child, the cold stale halls were…just not right.

We found relief mid afternoon or early evening as our dad felt that HE could go home.

Relief from our polished linoleum and white cinder world.

We’d squint at the headlights or at the last remaining rays of sun as we headed towards the train station bound for his little one room apartment.

****And now a small scene from our polished linoleum and white cinder world …recently related to me by my sister.

Now before you entered my father’s office hall, there would be two service elevators. I don’t think it occurred to my father to steer us away from riding those elevators. It just never occurred to him.

One day, my sister was riding on one of the elevators and a worker pushed a cart onto the elevator that had a cage with a dog…a beagle. My sister, being a child was fascinated with the scene of a dog on an elevator in an office building, but because we were who we were, she quietly hid her excitement. I don’t even remember her telling me at the time that she saw a dog. And perhaps because of what later happened, she never felt the need.

A few hours later, my sister found herself on that same elevator…perhaps on her way to a vending machine.

The elevator stops a few floors down from the seventh, and the same worker from earlier in the day pushes his cart onto the elevator. This time, the cart has an empty cage on the top, and below it, a black plastic bag. It takes only a few seconds for my sister to do the math and realize what was in the black plastic bag because the texture of fur could easily be seen pressed against the walls of the bag.

I never knew my sister witnessed this.

Here we are decades later, and what does my sister remember of a summer visit to my father’s?

A beagle in a trash bag.

Bad Company - Tess Gallagher

Gallagher and Carver

I suppose, sometime in the future, I will frequent cemeteries.

God – what an awful thought.

I don’t like to even imagine the scene.

Why would I be there? Not sure.

It seems that going there will bring plenty of heartache – the memories of the person that I will visit. Things I will say in my head to them, our conversations all taking place in my head.

Will I bring flowers? Momentos? Will there be a grave to tend to?

I’m too busy living to think about the dead…and I wish to be busy living for a long time.

I remember as a teenager thinking about my loved ones and how I would feel after they were dead.

In those days, I remember thinking that it would be so much better if I died before they did…so that I would not have to feel the pain of their death, and absence.

Pure selfishness.

Death is a difficult part of life. I’m not sure how I will react when death is a presence that becomes familiar to me.

Will I grow from death as I have often heard people do? Or will I shrink into a tight ball of black mass?

New Yorker Fiction Database update

Not making as much progress as I would like.

Last entry – 7/7/2003 – John Updike - The Walk with Elizanne - Row 358. Of course, the entry will shift down as I add most recent to the top.

Roughly 8 years down, only 78 more years to enter.

Reading, writing, running and being a dad…are proving to be serious competition against getting work done on the project.

It’s O.K. though.

I’ll get there someday.

Communist – Richard Ford

Even before my son was born I thought about how my parents behaved in their life when I was an infant, a baby, a child and young boy.

In what I am beginning to realize now as what was the last true/honest lucid discussion between my father and I in a motel room back in 2003, – before Alzheimer’s kicked into a degree that we could all clearly recognize, I was able to get the last few details I needed to complete the picture of what my father’s life was like as a new father and husband.

It was enough detail to solidify the pissed-off disposition I carried towards him several years before the discussion, and continue to carry today.

I’m able to keep those feelings neatly compartmentalized and draw upon the emotions they stir when I need to…but I don’t see the necessity to live daily with them in my life.

I suppose that I’ll wrestle with the damage of the divorce for the rest of my life. I’ve accepted that…soooo I’ll deal with it.

During several of our long evening walks as M and I discussed the timing and possibilities of starting a family, I’d drag out into the conversation the almost disbelief I had at my father’s behavior when he was 33-38. Now I know there are two parties involved in a divorce, and in the past I’ve said pretty much nothing about the role that my mother played in that whole affair. She factors into the decision that they made…but if I were to break it out and assign percentages of blame, I’d say it was 90% him 10% her. That measly 10% is also probably why I hardly mention her in these posts…she of course was a huge influence in my upbringing but at this time is my writing…I cannot bring her into this space – not yet.

I like to think that M and I are making better decisions and have established a better relationship than my parents had when my sister and I were young.

The relationships that the main character has in this short with the adult characters drove me to think about the future with my son and wonder about our relationship. It caused me to wonder about the relationship he will have with his mother.

It made me think about what my mother felt as she worked hard to raise my sister and I as my father spent hours and hours away from home…working.

It made me think about my mother and I after the divorce – our relationship.

The weight she carried the responsibility to care for two young children – alone.