The Northern Suburbs

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring. -Nelson Algren

Wilmette - cobblestone streets and stately elm and maple trees

It's been a wonderful opportunity for me to be here in the northern suburbs of Chicago at this time of the year as my book takes place. Worth returns home to these parts (he's been living in New Jersey) after his mom dies just before Halloween. Although I've probably soaked up enough sensory data in my decades of life here to complete the book, it doesn't hurt to be immersed in this sullen atmosphere just as I'm trying to finish my book. 

So what are my impressions? Primarily, I've noticed that outside of the tragedy of losing his mother, Worth would be inundated by the delightful melancholy of the season, the sense of loss and endings and bittersweet release. Sounds depressing, but with the shocking colors that nature provides as a sort of visual compensation and the macabre silliness of Halloween, it's really quite exquisite . . . in a sad sort of way. Sort of a death-as-a-part-of-the-circle-of-life thing, which is one of the reasons that it's perhaps my favorite time of the year (and, not surprisingly, Worth's).

Although not much of it takes place right on the lakefront, the shore of Lake Michigan in autumn has a singular feel. It's sort of an Uber-October habitat, where waves drown out the sobs and the mist rinses the tears off your cheeks. Okayyyyy, maybe I got carried away there. Suffice it to say that it's as enjoyable for me to be along the lakefront in fall as it is in summer.

A thick bed of leaves carpet the ground just as the gray clouds take up residency for the duration

If this sort of desolation doesn't make you weep openly, you have no heart my friend

Can't you just feel the sand in between your toes and cool October wind on your face

Just for shits and giggles, here's a few other pictures I've taken around the 'burbs:

A pier on the lake

Erin on that same pier on a chilly morning

(I had to fight the impulse to move the red chair in line with the others for this picture)

"Glorious Autumn, thy multi-hued leaves are a harbinger of my own impending demise . . . sweet, sweet bummer" (Longfellow?)

Under One Roof

I've been derelict on posting excerpts from my book, Under One Roof. Here, Worth (our protagonist who is back in Chicago after his mother has passed away) meets a few potential allies while on his way to meeting his estranged father.

I had forty minutes to kill before dad’s class let out, so I ducked into a nondescript diner called the Yreka Bakery that was on the same block. Stepping inside, the door nudged a tiny bell, announcing my arrival. There was a defiant lack of adornment in the cozy establishment, the sparse room containing four chrome stools at a simple linoleum counter and two small tables, with the chairs tidily tucked underneath. The room was dimly lit and so absent any sign of commerce that I wondered if it was open, not just for the day but at all. The only decorations were a smattering of homey pictures and several, handwritten notes thumb-tacked to the walls, “Harry’s Harrowing Hibiscus Tea,” “The Big Box of Yummy” and several cryptic messages, such as “Tuna nut,” “Too hot to hoot,” and “Step on no pets.” As I turned to leave, I noticed a tiny woman peeking over the top of a pair of short, spring-hinged doors behind the counter, the kind that are ubiquitous in saloons on old TV westerns.

“What can I do you for?” she asked, half stepping into the room, her tiny hands, all alabaster knuckles and long fake fingernails, parting the hinged doors. She looked to be about eighty and she was wearing what was obviously a black wig, lashed in place with a red bandana dotted with bright yellow peace signs. There was a slash of lipstick on her upper lip and lopsided daubs of rouge on her cheeks.

“What’s going on out there, sweetheart?” a man called from the next room. “We got a customer, or what?”

“There’s a fella out here, I’m not sure if he’s staying, though,” she said, still not committing herself fully to the front room. “He seems nice enough, tallish and kind of a looker, but I’m not sure what his dealie is yet.”

“A looker, eh?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Is there going to be a problem?

“Don’t think so –”        

And what’s this about his ‘dealie?’”

“I’m just saying that I’m unsure about his intentions,” she said, turning towards the back room as she spoke. “Capiche?” She looked back at me and shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

I started to speak, but the man said, “Well, ask him, Sweet Pea. In or out? It’s a simple question, really.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were open. It’s just . . . the door was open, is all.”

“Of course it was open, because we’re open, darling” she said. I wished I could duck back outside without hurting her feelings. “If you’re hungry, we’re open,” she said, stepping fully into the room. “That’s the general idea with these kinds of establishments. Food and such. Now come, come and sit down if you’d like.” She indicated a spot at the counter. “Don’t be shy. I won’t bite – though he might,” she said, stabbing her thumb at the back room.

I sat on a stool at the counter. She flicked a switch and a long fluorescent fixture sputtered to life above me. She walked over to me and threw a rag onto the countertop. Reaching under the counter, she produced a large spray bottle. She gave the linoleum counter at my elbows a few good squirts, sending a vinegar mist in my direction. I sneezed and then the man in the back room said, “Gesundheit” and then started to cough loudly, capping it off with several loud, mucusy, throat-clearings.

“How’s about some Muesli with dates and berries?” the woman said, concentrating more on a dark blotch on the linoleum than me. She gave the counter another enveloping spritz.

“I . . . I haven’t thought about it. Do you have a menu?”

“Is your gentleman caller still with us?” the man in the back room asked.

“He’s sitting right here in front of me, Harry,” she said. “And, by the by, he can hear everything you say. If you gotta know.” An old man, roughly the same age as the woman, peeked over the swinging doors. He had a gaunt face with a three-day stubble and more hair tufting out of his ears and eyebrows than the top his head. A toothpick was wedged in the corner of his mouth. “Oh. Okay. Just curious.” He regarded me with impish curiosity. “How’re you doing this morning, young fella?”

“Fine,” I said, smiling. “Yourself?”

“Don’t ask,” he said, stepping half-way into the front room. He wore a frayed button-down shirt with a broad collar and a tie as wide as a pancake. He began to speak and then became distracted by one of the swinging doors, fiddling with the hinge as he swung the door back and forth. “Can I get you some Muesli with soy milk, dates and berries?” he asked, as he continued to noodle with the door hardware. 

Under One Roof

 [This is the next installation of my book. In this short section, Worth, who has just returned to the family home after news of his mother's passing, wakes up the next morning.]

I woke up dreaming about the death of a duck named Paddlefoot. This is a familiar scene to me. I’ve returned to it countless times in my life, so many times that it feels as real to me as the events of the previous day or my toes wiggling at the bottom of my bed. I’m in my old bed, so close to the ceiling I can reach right up and touch it. I run my hand along the cool, elephant-hide plaster, following a hairline crack with the tip of my index finger as far as I can reach. My bed here is a triple-decker bunk bed, a crazy idea Had and I came up with when we were eight, which unexpectedly reached fruition when Reggie, our step-dad (new to the house and keen to please) championed the cause. So when the crew of three carpenters were finishing trimming out the third floor of our house – which is where I’m currently residing – they built the bed as a Saturday side-job, allowing me to help, holding pieces in place, straightening nails, pre-drilling holes, and so on. It was my first construction project and the first time I worked side-by-side with Walter, the carpenter in charge and a man who would have the greatest impact on my life of anyone I’ve ever known, short of my mom and, maybe, my grandfather.

Lying here in my twin-sized bed with my eyes closed, I can see my family gathered about me as we sing the praises of the recently departed Paddlefoot. I’m seven years old and we’ve been living in the suburbs for two seasons now; fall and winter have passed, and it’s springtime. The smell of the lilac bushes is so overwhelming that it leaches into the present, triggering a sneeze as I caress the ceiling above. Snow is already a distant memory and the trees are insane with birds, mostly robins and finches, all vying for a spot at mom’s hodge-podge assortment of bird feeders. It’s as chaotic as kindergarten recess. The birds swoop, they dive, and they screech in a riotous and shameless display, their pecking order at the feeders not defined by species as much as by their gluttony, their vernal audacity. Crows ca-caw in the distance and squirrels dash madly around and around the large oak trees that rim our property. In the warped perception of time within which a young child resides, it already seems like I’ve lived in this house for eternity, that these trees and shrubs here and the exuberant fauna that flourish within have been our family backdrop since the dawn of time, our previous life in the city already a fading memory, as unreal as a book I’d read over the winter or a bedtime story told to me in the indefinite past.

We’re huddled together in a small clearing, just within a stand of juvenile birch and maple trees on the edge of the half-acre lawn in our back yard. There are seven of us mourners gathered around a fresh excavation in the moist, peaty earth. This is suburban soil here, loamy and as pure as a breeze off Lake Michigan, not the gritty, sandy clay you find in the city, tainted with shards of broken glass, bottle caps, and bits of rusty metal. I dug the hole myself. Because I’m already addicted to tools of any variety, I’m the family's designated gravedigger. It’s a job I always volunteer for, for the simple reason that I like piercing the earth and visiting a place that I suspect has never been seen by another human. Transported by the delicious earth, I’ve already dug the grave too deep, laboring in a hole up to my thighs. Then mom arrives.

“Ease off, Worth. You’re already half-way to China.” She laid her hand on the top of my shovel.

“But if it’s too shallow, won’t the wolves dig up Paddlefoot?” To a former city kid with an active imagination, the northern suburbs of Chicago are a vast and untamed wilderness, where, unlike the streetlamp lit city, nighttime is actually dark and wild creatures roam free under the protective cloak of the night. Mom smiled and lightly and gently touched the tip of my nose with her forefinger, her signature gesture.

“I don’t think a bulldozer could dig it up at this depth, sweetie.”

Standing there, our heads bowed, we each bear a fistful of wilted dandelions, plucked from the lawn minutes before. We each wear black armbands that my mom has made out of crepe paper, left over from last Halloween. Mom and grandpa stand at the head of the procession. Her arm is looped around his, and he holds a cane in his other hand. There’s a cigarette in his mouth, which he doesn’t even seem to notice is there, the two-inch ash cantilevered off the end. Bridge, the youngest of us kids, is just an infant in mom’s other arm, wide-eyed, fidgety and curious as hell about this wonderful new thing called springtime. Had and I, or “The Twins,” as we’re often called, are seven and, unconsciously, we’re both dressed in identical outfits as we often are: blue jeans, button-down shirts with the tails hanging out and black Keds high-tops. To a stranger, perhaps the only distinguishing feature is a scar that bisects my left eyebrow, which I got jumping off the garage roof just days after we moved in.

Jules, my older sister, who has a tendency to take charge, has organized this entire event and seems to spend more time fussing and directing the proceedings than focusing on the actual funeral. She’s already taken me to task about the depth of the grave and she stands opposite me, glowering with disapproval.

Mason, the oldest, who grandpa has been calling “little preacher man” all day, has been tasked with delivering the eulogy. Although he’s a trouble-maker and perhaps the most mischievous of us kids, he takes matters of the heart seriously. He speaks, his voice measured and flat, a caricature of what a twelve-year old believes graveside sermonizing should sound like. I’ve heard this all before and I’m trying to remember where. A TV show, no doubt. Gunsmoke? Westerns are chock-full of death and funerals, the predictable consequences of reckless heroism and one of their great appeals to a young boy like me.

 “Paddlefoot, we hardly knew thee,” Mason says, I believe for the tenth time.

“Amen,” we all dutifully respond, a tic we’ve acquired from church.

“You are in a better place now, your place is now with . . .” – Mason pauses for emphasis and looks up expansively into the sky – “God.” He pronounces “God” with two syllables like the Reverend Masters at our church – Gee-ODD – which I notice makes mom smile. She sees me watching her and winks. I wink back and this unexceptional exchange we share, literally a wink of an eye, enters the mental catalog of favorite moment I’ve shared with my mother in my lifetime. I glance next to her and see that Grandpa, who is so immobile that his cigarette ash is three inches long, is weeping.

“Amen,” he says a moment later, causing his ashes to tumble into the grave.

After several minutes, Mason starts to ramble, his sermon disintegrating into a string of pauses, half-completed observations and spurious remembrances of Paddlefoot. As internecine quarrels and chatter have grown too widespread to contain amongst us kids, mom decides that the service is over and, with her prompting, we ceremoniously toss our dandelions on top of the shoebox, which lies at the bottom of the grave. Grandpa goes last and he says, “I love you,” a little louder than expected, which makes me smile. Mason slugs my shoulder. Then it’s over. As I fill the hole, back there in the woods, life goes on around me. Mason and Had throw a baseball back and forth in the grass and Jules is playing with Bridge in the sandbox as mom patiently maneuvers grandpa back into the house.

Under One Roof

[Throughout the book there are chapters dedicated to Worth's identical twin brother, Had (short for "Hadrian), who is on the last leg of a solo circumnavigation of the world on his sailboat, Orbital Matchbox. Although I'm not sure about the exact percentage of the book that will be dedicated to Had -- at this point in time, this is primarily Worth's story -- there are frequent interruptions in the narrative as he seems to vie for supremacy of the story.]

Seven days after the storm, I saw a boy sitting on the bow of my sailboat.

He sat slumped into the bow pulpit, his back to me, his bare feet stretching down to the water. He had small pebbles in his hand, which he dropped one-by-one into the water, each glistening stone meeting the surface with a tiny splash. From where I stood, I could see the stones sinking in the water, disappearing into the murkiness of the Pacific brine a few feet below the surface. I watched my visitor for a while, hypnotized by the steady rhythm of the dropping stones.

All about him was evidence of the damage the sea had inflicted on my boat five days ago in a punishing storm that almost pulled me under. My mast was gone. In its place was a jury-rigged spinnaker pole, standing just twelve feet proud of the deck – twenty-five feet shorter than my fugitive mast – and a handkerchief-sized storm jib, which propelled me slowly towards the weeping horizon. Gouges crisscrossed my fiberglass deck, one jagged scar leading to a hole that penetrated right through into the compartment below where the unseated mast had struck before flopping overboard.

I wasn’t alarmed by my visitor, just curious. I looked around to see if there was anything nearby – a ship, a raft, an uncharted island – that might explain his provenance, but there was nothing but water in every direction, as far as I could see. I spun completely around, confirming what I suspected: except for my visitor here, I was alone, as far from another human being as was possible on this planet.

His appearance wasn’t a complete anomaly. Others have visited me over the preceding eighteen months of my journey, especially at times when I’m severely sleep-deprived. It’s a fairly well documented occurrence, these sorts of spectral visions, particularly among solo-sailors. After weeks alone at sea, the rules that we all abide by in society begin to seem restrictive, even quaint, as our dreams and fantasies begin to slosh out into our daylight hours. Typically, the visitors hail from my past; family members with unfinished business, people I’ve wronged or, often, those who simply want to contribute to or be a part of this great adventure of mine. There were days in the Indian Ocean – earlier in my trip (over a year ago!) – when my voice grew hoarse from conversing with these visitors, each with a lesson to impart, a question to ask, a bone to pick, or just weary and looking for a reprieve from the vast emptiness of the desert sea. I realize that the hoarseness could also have come from the intense heat and scalding sun of the equator, combined with three weeks of ever-diminishing water rations, as I made my way slowly towards South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. It hasn’t escaped my notice that I’m usually visited at times when I’m in distress – physically, mentally or both – such as now when I’m operating on near-starvation rations and haven’t seen another human for over a month-and-a-half.

This afternoon was overcast and drizzling off and on, no surprise here deep down in the frigid and storm-tossed Southern Ocean, but the wind had abated a few hours before, which was unusual, leaving my boat, Orbital Matchbox, bobbing and clanking in the residual chop, as noisy as a packhorse hauling pots and pans down a rutted mountain trail, as Aeolus drew in a deep breath in preparation for the next torturous blow.

I watched my visitor for a while, curious if he would make the first move: a glance, a nod, a subtle wave of the hand or some other summoning gesture. But he attempted no connection, his body slumped over, staring down into the water, as fixed as my former mast (now on the ocean floor), except for his feet, which dangled loosely over the edge of the hull and the seemingly endless store of pebbles he plunked into the water. He wore a rain slicker, as I did, his hood pulled up over his head, his face obscured deep in its shadowy recess. It was late afternoon and, although in the twilight I couldn’t make out who he was, I guessed by his size that he was a child.

I decided to make the first move.