(This guest essay comes from Jill.)
How do we amuse ourselves ahead of a storm?
Shop, apparently. Since Jeff and Ned are in a bar watching the Redskins tank, Alex and I go to an area rich with possiblity: Michael’s, Whole Foods, Duane Reade, TJ Maxx, Modells and more and more and more. Everything we want -- steel-cut oatmeal, liquid hand soap, detailed resin animals -- awaits.
The city is anxious and everyone is scanning the skies while everything shuts down both quickly and slowly. Shelves empty, signs are posted. One store has spaghetti, but only whole wheat, and Barilla wildly overpriced at $2.89 a box. A man in his 20s is fixated on canned soup. At Home Goods (discounted throw pillows, Le Creuset and maple syrup in maple-leaf-shaped jars) there are no lines.
We wait on line to get into Whole Foods (a line! to get into a New York City grocery store!) and since Alex isn’t that great about waiting, I ask the woman in front of us to hold our place. Sizing up Alex as disabled, she says sweetly and immediately that of course she’ll hold our place for us, and we go over to ask how long the wait will be. We’re told two to three minutes, so we go back, tell the nice woman (who even before she hears two to three minutes says we can go in front of her, an offer I wave away, with thanks). We only (or I only) wanted oatmeal. And some Japanese lanterns (those orange autumny flower things) I thought would be nice and bring some festive feeling to our storm home.
They had the oatmeal.We waited on another little line to weigh it and mark it after large New York guy (message: the most important thing in the world is me and this plastic container of pitted dates, and if there’s some woman with a disabled kid, who cares?) and re-tag it because he doesn’t have the right code for his dried pitted dates (yes, I have plenty of time to read what he’s buying) and that takes a few minutes, and Alex is getting restless. All around me I see watchful faces - a little tense, a little excited, a little hopeful. The storm! It’s only October - not even Halloween yet - and yet we are gearing up for a homebound day.
I thought it would be nice to get a storm day treat for Alex. When I went to a grocery store with Ned the day before, he chose Reese’s Puffs cereal (chocolate peanut butter cereal! It’s the fall of Rome, my mother would have said), orange juice, rice cakes, Little Debby s’mores, strawberries and Edy’s limited edition pumpkin ice cream. We got the cereal and the ice cream. I didn’t tell Alex, but I started looking around for the Cape Cod oyster crackers.
The parents are tense, scanning: where’s the orange juice? They are on what a friend of a friend calls the french toast alert: eggs, bread, milk! We’ll hole up, we’ll have a storm day at home with french toast. The kids look excited but a little alarmed. They know there’s no school tomorrow, but they also know their parents are crabby, worried, filled with tension. They’re not used to just hanging. getting drunk and listening to rock and roll is not what these people -- adults -- do.
To make a long and probably boring story short, we don’t buy our oatmeal and Japanese lanterns. We get on the back of the line (the express line) and realize it’s going to take so long that it will just be a misery to wait on. While I keep saying "we" and I tell Alex things I’m thinking and things I’m observing and what I think we should do, it is not a mutual decision. It is my decision for the two of us.
Alex has a bad asthma-induced cough that we can’t seem to control. We have an inhaler with us, but since you’re really not supposed to use it more than every few hours I’m with a coughing boy who people are eyeing with alarm. Finally I hit on the brilliant idea of putting the inhaler in his mouth, not pressing the button, and patting him, while saying loudly, ‘Here, this should help your asthma!”
While we’re waiting for a cab because I cannot face getting on a bus with him and the cough, he’s doubled over, coughing. From across the intersection, I can see available cabs, but I’m afraid they’re looking at Alex and thinking he’s going to spill germs all over their cabs, or vomit. Whatever. I’m thinking they won’t stop for us.
A cab starts to turn, then stops in front of us. And the driver turns around and -- I figure he’s going to demand to know Alex’s health status, but he says to Alex - his face lit with happiness and light and love - "How are you, my brother? How are you, how are you this beautiful day?" I can’t tell what his home country is, but it’s probably usually hot and sunny like his mood.
He declares how happy he is to be alive, and he says over and over how joyful life is, and how even if he has one minute to live, he will be thankful and glad for that minute.
I’m reasonably happy at the moment -- emotionally stable -- so instead of making me burst into tears or even making my lip tremble and eyes smart, these declarations make me feel glad to be alive, sitting in a cab with this very happy young man who is so filled with joy and maybe a tiny bit unstrung.
When he tells me he was very ill for a long time - he has been through many things, a lot of bad things, I nod sympathetically. I had been waiting for him to talk about the flip side. I’m not surprised. “Someone did black magic on me,” he tells us, and I ask where this happened and he says; Africa. So this is fairly unsurprising and I express sympathy and hope that his troubles are over and he takes us home, tells us about his three children (two boys, one girl) and he gets out of the cab (after expressing amazement and joy at the $1.50 tip I give him) and says goodbye to Alex, calling him brother again and me sister. And he shakes my hand. And one of my neighbors is watching, the rich one with the summer house in Rhode Island and the blond son in the private school blazer with a little crest.
Jeff S. says later, "Did you ever think he’s probably some actor from Flatbush just doing it for the tips or his own amusement?" And I consider this but think no, that black magic thing for 12 years and the nonstop ramble did it for me. I wish I’d given him a bigger tip. He shook my hand, called me "sister" and high-fived my autistic son.
Posted by Jeff Stimpson
at 4:46 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 31 October 2012 8:12 PM EDT
