#oh yea. been in mt little kitchen today

[yuridemon]

some various designs

[karmablackout-blog]

North Woods

The last time I saw Ann, I was still living on Stratton Pond. She came to see me with a friend of hers… an older, mystic sort of man, likely left-over from the back-to-the-land movement in the sixties. He was emaciated and wore tight fighting jean shorts and no shirt. He had a homemade necklace that hung down onto his bare chest. It looked like it may have been made from squirrel bones. He talked passionately about buying grains in bulk, and I don’t remember much else. Ann looked tired… like she couldn’t concentrate on anything. I don’t remember her ever looking so tired before.

We had known each other before, in Philadelphia. She was a hanger-on with the music scene. There was one night—after much drinking and debating whether it was Saturn or Jupiter near the moon—that we stumbled back to her house…. We tried to date afterwards, but it did not work out.

The two of them, Ann and her mystic, sat on the edge of the pond all afternoon, while she lamented some boy, Eamon, she had met in Vermont. He was a controversial figure, I gathered…. He had spent some time in jail for having a relationship with an underage girl. He started doing heroin when he got out. I guess there weren’t many opportunities for ex-cons in Vermont…. There weren’t really opportunities for anyone.

He was in trouble again, now, it seemed…. Drugs, or something. His background meant they were looking to put him away for 15 years. Ann had tried to convince him to move with her to South America… promised him that her parents would pay. That was how she was…. It was not a rational or realistic proposition, but she loved him. Hers was an immediate love. She did not have the will, as a person, to wait out a prison sentence. She wanted everything now or not at all…. He, apparently, disappeared.

The old mystic kept trying to jump into the conversation…. He tried to rationalize some things, but mostly just said that Eamon was a confused and lost person. Ann immediately defended him.

“He isn’t lost, maybe confused, but not lost!” She argued. “Anyways, he is a good person, with a big heart. I just don’t think he knows how to handle what he’s facing.”

“Would anyone?” I put dryly. Certainly I could not imagine facing 15 years in prison, but I also couldn’t exactly imagine putting myself in that kind of position. I also knew she had a penchant for deadbeats–and I don’t disclude myself.

What Ann could not understand–the part that didn’t fit with all the others–was the fact that he had stopped returning her calls. Nothing would get under her skin like being ignored. If he didn’t want her anymore, she wanted him to tell her. Then they could at least have a fight, and fights were at least satisfying.

“I’m going to the bar tonight. He’s playing a show. I’ll find him at the show,” she told us.

“I don’t know how good an idea that is,” the mystic said. “You should let him come to you.” While I found the mystic’s faux-eastern way of saying it grating, I generally agreed. But, I had known Ann very well at one point. I knew she would not leave the situation alone. She would force his hand and probably make it worse.

“It’s on the way home from here,” she told the mystic, who I guess was her ride. It became clear now why she even visited. That had been part of the plan all along. It didn’t bother me any. I had no plan to get involved.

The afternoon progressed, and they stayed just long enough to see the first rays of golden hour light across the pond, spreading that drowsy warm light through the spruce boughs. Before they left, Ann asked me to visit her in the evening. She left me her address in Pawlet, told me she couldn’t bear to be alone when she was so upset. Some part of me felt pity for her. I sent them off and watched them meander down the winding mountain path.

  When the dark came, I packed my pack and walked down the trail, by headlamp, to where my car was parked…. It was a route I knew well. I drove along the southern Greens, to where there was a pass through the mountains above Manchester. Manchester was a resort town nestled between the Greens and the Taconics… Mt. Equinox and Dorset Peak looming tall over the outlets and hotels. After Manchester the road to Pawlet wound through farm fields, with the darkened outlines of the mountains, faintly perceptible on the horizon… the line delineated only by the spectacularly bright night sky, and the moon, and Saturn.

Pawlet was a small town, with a bar and a general store. Ann lived on the right side of the road, on the second floor of a house with a two story porch. She could see the Mettawee flowing through the rolling hills, forested all around by sugar maple and paper birch. She was alone on the porch when I parked. She did not wave or call out. I thought of making a joke about her clearly not present boyfriend, but decided to leave it alone.

“This is a nice spot,” I said.

“Come inside. He has friends here. I don’t want them to think anything.”

  These are things you have to worry about in Vermont. I remember a time when Ann and I were still dating, back when we first moved from Philadelphia. We had a fight, and it was pretty bad. After a while we made up, but it took a lot out of me. I went to the bar, and we planned to meet there later on. I saved a seat for her next to me. After a while the bar got full and there was a couple looking for a seat. The bartender offered the seat next to me. I thought she would have assumed I was saving it. After all, she had seen me in there plenty of times, and always with Ann. I stopped the couple from sitting down.

“I’m saving it,” I said, so both the couple and bartender could hear.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think Ann would be joining you tonight.”

I guess things like that make you realize how small these towns are. I used to like Philadelphia because I felt invisible. It was nice. Getting to choose who you know, at least to some degree… or at least who you didn’t know. There were so many people and so few of them mattered. But, it is not like that in Vermont.

  The inside of the apartment was small and cluttered. It smelled like cigarette smoke and mold. Ann went to the kitchen and got me a beer without my asking. I caught a look at her in the light when she came back in. She had aged so much from when I had known her. Certain things were the same… the straight dirty blonde hair, her vintage summer dress—red with white polka dots. Her eyes seemed to have changed from bright blue to ashen gray, and her skin was so tanned it almost looked dirty. It made the whites of her eyes stand out. Her face was drawn, and I could tell she had been crying.

She sat me down in the front room and put on bluegrass music. The whole scene felt strangely familiar.

“I’m thinking of staying in Vermont this year,” she told me.

“Is the farm keeping you on?”

“No, it’s a long story. You know Bill, from the pond today? He told me that when something is supposed to happen it does…”

“That sounds like something he would say,” I said, smirking, but trying to hold it back.

“Yea,” she drawled and squinted her eyes. I guess she had caught my sarcasm and didn’t appreciate it. “So, I was up in Poultney,” she started, “There is a new coffee shop there. This woman always comes in with her kids…. They are the cutest kids, and super smart. All the kids in Vermont are so, so smart… so well behaved. She told me her kids’ school, the Mettawee School, is hiring…. Do you know of the Mettawee School?” She squinted again, and asked the question with a hint of condescension.

“No. I mean, I assume it’s near the Mettawee….”

“You would think it’s great. You bring the kids on walks in the woods, and that is how they learn science. They learn it by experiencing it.”

“I would’ve loved a school like that as a kid…. Instead, I got New York City schools,” I said.

“I’m going to apply tomorrow. You have to go there to apply, and they interview you right then. I’ve been teaching in Philly for so long, and teaching kids about social justice is super important to me, but I just feel it’s right to move on.”

“What’s the story with Eamon? Did you work things out?” I asked.

“We didn’t go to his show. Bill wouldn’t go.”

“Maybe that is best.”

“Bill doesn’t think much of Eamon, but he is a good person. Everyone around here judges him because he made mistakes when he was young…. And the whole thing about him sleeping with an underage girl… he was 18 and she was 17. Her parents didn’t like him so they pressed charges.” She said all this viciously, almost… squinting with each word she emphasized. By now the story felt a little over-rehearsed… like I wasn’t the first person she had to say it all to.

“That’s one of those difficult situations,” I said, a little disinterested.

“You were a year older than me,” she reminded me.

“I still am.”

“You know what I mean. He isn’t a pedophile like they call him. I met him at one of Steve’s parties, now Steve is going around calling him a pervert to everyone…. And the whole drugs thing, he smokes weed, that’s all. He got caught while driving, and they saw his record. He doesn’t deserve it.”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar story in the north woods. People tend to make trouble out of boredom, or whatever else. It’s not like I hadn’t had friends like that throughout my life…. At the same time, the way she defended him felt off… like she was trying to anticipate any criticisms I might have. I never met Eamon. How could I really pass judgment one way or the other? I couldn’t be the one to vindicate how she felt about it.

I did feel bad. It seemed like the stress had completely worn her down. Now… with planning to stay, and teach, and live in Vermont…. It’s not an easy life. She would find some things out about the way people are, too. Vermont may be the first state to have abolished slavery, but it wasn’t exactly a diverse community…. All the prejudices of rural America exist in various pockets.

  In 2009, the owner of one of the cheesesteak joints in Philly put a sign out that read, “Order in English.” Ann was so incensed that, every time she passed the place she would yell, “racist cheesesteaks!” at the crowd gathered in front. How would someone like that handle the deeper and more malignant views that find safe harbor in the hearts of the rural poor? When Eamon finally went to jail, that would leave her isolated in a culture she didn’t really understand.

  I started to feel tired. It was a long way back, and I felt that I had a lot to think about… a lot that needed time to process. It wasn’t my affair, but it made me feel bad about a lot of things that seemed to be just beyond it… things that bled over into my Vermont. Had I also idealized this place? Was there really anything for me here? I told Ann I needed to go.

“Don’t go. I can’t be alone tonight. I’m too upset,” she told me.

“I don’t want Eamon or his friends to think anything, and I really am very tired. I’m sorry.”

“Just stay and watch a movie with me,” she pleaded. It was a familiar tactic. It reminded me of all the times I had tried to leave. All the times I had caved in. I knew if I did stay I’d fall asleep and stay the whole night.

“If it means that much to you I’ll stay,” I said.

There really was nowhere for me to stay. There was only her bed, which she assured me was okay to lie down in. I had no intentions, and it wouldn’t have been the right way even if I had…. Still, it felt overly familiar to lay in her bed. It seemed like the sort of thing that could make the wrong impression.

  For a long time after Ann and I had dated, she still relied on me as an emotional support. I never really appreciated it. I wanted a clean break… but, there were things she had trouble letting go of. She would call me out of loneliness, the way you call a significant other. This felt a bit too much like that. Back then, it had taken a lot to break that pattern, and I think it hurt both of us to some degree.

  I got into bed and she put on the movie. I felt nervous, the way you do with a new lover. I didn’t want to touch her at all. I started to doze, and when I woke the movie was over and it was quiet. It had become cold in the room and I dozed off again. In the night I woke again, this time she was pressed against me, with her head resting on my shoulder. It was a position that she used to lay in. I surrendered to it, even though it didn’t feel quite right.

In the morning, I woke before her. I got up and left, trying not to wake her. It was the last time I ever saw her. Two weeks after, she called me in the late afternoon to tell me Eamon had shot himself. I packed my car and drove south.