Peachy Keen

I don’t know how it happened. Suddenly I’m 28. I know, that’s not old, but it’s like I just woke up from a dream. My long weekend is over. It’s time to work, and if I don’t there are severe consequences. I have a home. I have a wife. I have the ingredients for stressful conversations about planning and children. Now I want to be that guy I used to be but must be the guy I need to be. So I sleep a lot more and dream about high school and college.

And now I’m awake in Englewood. There’s something to living in Englewood. As a kid this city, this mass of humanity lumped together between Longmont, Castlerock, the mountains and the plains was all Denver. I didn’t know where Englewood or Littleton or Westminster was. Denver began with the cool castle hotel to the north and ended where the oil ponies began again, mechanically bucking fuel from the ground.

My wife and I are the second generation to move into our ranch-style home. We’re the punks, the kids who take over and torture the garden until we realize the importance of ownership. I think my wife already does. I’m too busy trying to figure out what happened to 22 through 27.

So I often lie in bed, anxious about wasting time but paralyzed by an insurmountable mountain of opportunity.

I turned my head and tried to peer through the crack in our makeshift denim curtains. Maybe the world was on fire. If our planet would just self-destruct then there would be no pressure to succeed.

The bedroom window looked as if it were wearing giant bell-bottoms. But wrinkled along the hem. You know how blue jeans wrinkle, not often, but when they do it’s serious. And right at the bottom from behind the denim emerged a nylon string with a bell. This bell wouldn’t ring. It was plastic, a bell for gripping to open and close a previous set of curtains. And it hung there, contrasted from the denim and the walls. They were peach. Not necessarily the fruit, for if you saw a peach this color you probably wouldn’t eat it.

Between the denim blue and the sick peach was this bell. It was from an early set of curtains. And the plastic curves that sloped into the nylon string suspended from the rod were coated with more dirt and grime than hand that ever held it. But it just hung there, conspicuous, like a reminder of times between the newer blue and the dying peach. You could see white spots from when it too was new and a young woman hung them in the mid-sixties. She thought they’d always be young. She’s gone now. And there’s still that dirty, plastic bell just hanging there. Almost like it’s waiting for her to come back.

I couldn’t stop looking at the contrast. The peach, the blue and that haunting bell--but thinking about what it was a part of pulled me out of the now and into a Woolworth’s thirty years ago. There I saw a young couple thinking less about the curtains they’re about to buy and more about the baby pressing against their youth. Automatically they bought things like curtains and soft, food-themed paint.

So I continued to think about the couple that had owned the house before us. They seemed so much more together than I could ever be. I never knew them, never even met them. But to be honest, anyone seemed more focused and successful than I’d ever be. I was laying in bed on a Monday. My wife had already gone to work. I had a part time job awaiting me.

Part time jobs are like being really hungry but only getting a salad for dinner. I was really hungry for some gravy. Instead I had five part time jobs, all very light courses that paid so little that I couldn’t shake the feeling that if my employers could pay me less they would.

And I’d probably let them. I was weak that way. I’d had good jobs but I’d never had great pay. I never knew how to ask for it. I would tell my wife that I was going to go get it. Usually in a triumphant tone I’d declare my intentions for getting what I was worth.

“That’s it Sarah. You’re exactly right, I need to make more for my work.”

She’d roll her head with her eyes. It was like her will had died and taken all of her strength. With her head flopped back in exasperation she’d say, “Then go do it and stop talking about it.”

Her pessimism would further reinforce my drive for negotiating.

“I’m just going to tell Tom that unless I start making 40 full time with benefits then I’m just going to have to leave.”

And the conversation would end with extremely loud silence. The anxious kind that seems to sit it’s big, fat butt on your shoulders and squeeze off an air of uncertainty.

The next day in Tom’s office would be much different then what I had outlined the evening before: “no, sir I don’t mind putting in more time on the weekends. Really, I agree with what you said. I need to be more productive.”

And he’d wholeheartedly agree. Maybe compliment my work ethic. I’d continue to spill more unsolicited guarantees.

“Once again, I’m ready to take the time to prove that I’m worthy before I ask for more money. Thanks for the time and I’ll be here Sunday.”

So there’s one reason why I lay in bed. And the other is the handshake.

I had a shot at an actual full time job. But here’s an excerpt of what happened at that interview.

I felt fragile, like I was made out of crepe paper. And now I was streaming from my home where I wanted to be, to this place where I had to count on a handshake for balance. And this handshake wasn’t enough to make me feel really welcome. It was just one of those things that bigger people have to do sometimes to make little people feel important enough so they don’t get drunk and burn all the big people stuff to the ground. But I was so little. He grasped my hand but my fist and fingers never got a chance to wrap around his palm to give the proper, manly squeeze. It was a bad shake. I wanted a do-over, but I was stuck with a limp, not-so-reassuring greeting. Throwing my hand, like a limp sea creature, into his and then capitulating to his every physical command as I, rendered helpless, searched for the right eye-to-eye, mano-a-mano words to say to make my impression. My brain flailed and so did my arm—wet spaghetti. He might as well have been shaking the dust out of a windsock. He quickly left my hopeful glance and dropped my deflated arm.

The interview was short and ended with my falling into his grasp like an overwhelmed Neil Diamond fan.

In bed I thought of that handshake over and over.

My wife says I think too much. I do. I know, but this instant replay has burned itself on the front of my brain. It’s like a drive-in feature running over and over. I should go get some popcorn.

And then I returned to the previous thought engagement, the former homeowners clinging to the otherwise trivial curtain bell. I imagined sleepless nights waiting for their baby to come home from proms--a mother gently tugging the bell as to not waken the ire of the father. Pulling down the curtain cord would open a tender slice of adolescent awkwardness taking place on the front lawn. She’d tighten her grip.

Seemingly overnight they had become responsible.

But every time I felt like I was on their level, somehow related to the achievements of the hardworking generation before me, I would think of one more ridiculous event that would tarnish any shiny accomplishment trying to shuffle forefront of cranial theatre.

And those pitiful moments would roll like film on a Friday.

And sometimes, like now, I’d screen a preview of something I could tell my wife. Here’s how I thought I could explain my pathetic lack of ambition.

“What is wrong with you?” she might beg through tear-soaked eyes.

“I just don’t want to talk about it.”

I really had nothing to talk about. Fear, maybe sloth.

She wouldn’t break her misty stare. Drowning and sad it was still very piercing, interrogating.

“OK, if there’s nothing then there’s nothing. Nothing between us. Nothing at all.”

The ultimatum broke my silence.

“There is something.” I said knowing nothing. I dug through my brain like it was my mismatched sock drawer and I was late for work.

“God! Then what! What!” Her voiced increased in anger. I jumped.

“It’s something you don’t want to hear because it’s so cliché.” And in the process of being made up. So I broke out my indignant reply. “Crap, if you’ve got to know, if you’ve got to pry and open up this, this whole…big levee of pain.”

Levee of pain, good real good—I had something for her, a flippen’ big ol’load of repressed memories held fast behind the levee of pain. And now she’d gone and cracked it wide open. Watch out girl.

“What in the hell is a levee of pain? Tell me now, Jared. Please explain.” She continued with the sarcasm seeping through her anger. “I cannot wait to bathe in the flood unleashed by the levee of pain.”

Turning the hurt from her to me I moved forward.

“All right. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna break it open. Just hang on. You’re not ready.”

“No, I am very ready for this explanation.”

I wasn’t. I shot something and not until after it had flown from my mouth did I realize that I had said—

“I was locked in a dungeon as a kid.”

I had been hoping for silence, but not this kind. The kind where your self-doubt is kicking and screaming in the back of your head.

Then she started laughing. Oh, jeeso, not laughing, I need sympathy. I need understanding.

Despite being unsure of what I might say next, I still continued. “I was put in a box, not really a dungeon, but more like a lockbox and left in the basement of my crazy neighbors. It happened when I was three.”

She tried to speak through tears of sorrow turned spigots of laughter. “You. You were locked in a dungeon—“

“A box really. Metal with an air hole.” This was magnificent—a really good reason for my sloth.

She was unmoved. “You were not locked in a box.”

I had to add some dimension. The conversation was starting to sound like Dr. Suess.

But before I could--”You are the biggest liar I’ve ever met. Really, even if you were locked in a box, I don’t care.”

I couldn’t believe she didn’t care. “Crap, honey, I was locked in a box. Kind of like a dungeon. It hurt. It messed me up. It makes me daydream a lot because I had to, like the psychologists say, enter a different realm to survive the torture.” Ahhh, yes, much needed depth with a doctor reference.

“To Hell with you. And you can travel in a box. An open air basket if a closed box scares your inner child.”

I fought back. “You are so cruel. Really the meanest—listen—“

“No,” she interrupted with confidence, “You listen to me. People locked in boxes don’t waste their lives on the outside. They sit in their captive space and dream of making the most of everything once they get out. John McCain almost became President. And I’m sure there are hundreds of other people locked in proverbial boxes who break free and do more than just dream about working at a Radio Shack. They crawl out of their prison and build cities and make speeches and run marathons. You are still in your box. Get out.”

“So every locked up box case is the same? Is that what you’re saying? Yah, I think it—“

“Get out of your box!!!! Get of my house!!! Go! Bye.” She was yelling, crazed and yelling. The box story may not have worked.

“Oh, great, I’ll just go and…well hell maybe our neighbor has a box to lock me in because I don’t know where else to go.”

‘Go.”

“Go? That’s it. Just ‘go’, well great I’m gone. I’ll never share my pain again. My childhood hurt—“

I mean, crap, for all she knew I’d been locked in a box and she didn’t care.

And then I was outside. She hurried my exit with a panicked woman push. One of those big shoves of adrenaline and fear that you see women pull on their aggressive husbands in the movies. And she used it on me. The furthest thing from dangerous and she used a desperate battered wife move on me.

“Honey!” The affectionate interjection ripped me from my imagined exile.

She was just home from work. Her shoulder length hair was pulled back framing her face. It glowed. She wore a backpack instead of carrying a briefcase. Her delicate form leaned against the bedroom doorframe.

“What were you doing lying on the bed with your hands over your face?”

Her folded arms seemed to speak more of her disappointment then did her delicate question. Yet she smiled.

I felt pretty damn dumb. I wanted to console her concerns.

“Honey, I could be a lot worse.”

She knew what I had been doing: thinking way too much. With a childlike pounce she landed next to me on the bed.

“I know” She grinned with her words. Like she had been waiting the day I’d hit epiphany. Thankfully she continued.

“But you’re going to be a lot better. It’s who you are.”

I was amazed as I looked up at her looking down on me like I was the guy she’d always wanted, while I felt like a stain on the fabric of her life. I followed her outline against the corpse-of-peach colored ceiling. It was hard to believe she was real. But she was and so was that awful paint.

“Honey, I’m going to repaint the bedroom.”

I thought she’d hit me for talking about home improvement during such a tender moment. She just gently tapped me with another “I know.”

I had everything. Absolutely everything. I quickly jolted up and hugged her.

Sitting together on the bed, holding the woman of my dreams, I felt an approving nod from somewhere in the room, or possibly from within.

It felt good though. If it had a hand, I wanted to shake it.

The curtains let in a sliver of the setting Englewood sun.

Originally submitted to the Englewood, Colorado Centennial writing contest, April, 2003, where it won First Prize and got Jared enough money to finally take his wife out for a decent meal.