Plugging Along

I'm thinking about starting a novel, so I looked to some old pieces for inspiration. Do you guys ever do that, read through your old stuff? I guess it's probably a form of procrastination (and narcissism), but you never know what might trigger an idea. This is an old piece I wrote when I was 18 that I still kind of like.


Plugging Along


I press my nose up against one of the narrow windows beside the front door. My vision blurs orange; the windows are decorated with smooth little pumpkin clings. Stickees, that’s what my mom called them. As a kid, it was always my job to arrange them, and I took pride in my creative responsibility. I carefully considered the pattern, the pumpkin-to-bat ratio. This was my domain. I pull back my skin from the cold glass and look at the patch of steam I’ve made. Pumpkins in the fog. In a moment my art disappears and all that’s left is someone else’s stickee arrangement.

I hear the whirr of a car motor and through the orange and black I see Alice pulling into the driveway. I shut the door behind me on my way across the porch, the soft soles of my blue Roos tapping down the concrete steps. I’m thankful that the afternoon’s crisp October air is still comfortably cool. Autumn is a short, delicate season in Buffalo; the trees bloom red and gold just before the winter snow wipes the canvas white. I remember trick-or-treating one snowy Halloween, my gypsy costume hidden under a scarf and coat.

“Deeeelia,” Alice says as I sink into the cushy maroon seat of Fred, her navy blue ’94 Buick LeSabre. She’s stretched out confidently, right fist pushed up against the steering wheel, left elbow propped against the window. She’s wearing her usual faded Gap jeans and popped-collar Ralph Lauren polo, clothes you might expect on an SUV driver, but Fred’s a close friend of hers; she wouldn’t go anywhere without him. He’s in decent shape considering the wood-paneled dash reads 110,269, and for the sake of Alice’s well being I hope Fred plans to make it at least another 100,000.

“What’s up?” I ask as her flip-flopped foot hits the gas and we wind our way out of my suburban subdivision. The sun is fading in and out of the clouds.

“Not much, not much,” she says.

“Glad it’s Fall Break?”

Her head jerks to my side and her blue eyes widen. “Uh, yeah!”

With Alice in Ohio and me in North Carolina, our contact has been limited to a few phone calls and emails. You try to keep in touch, but eventually it trickles off. It doesn’t worry me that much; there will always be time in Fred to catch up. “Me too,” I say as we turn left onto Main Street, but I’m not sure if glad is the word. The plazas and potholes are familiar but in a distant way, like an old t-shirt you haven’t worn in a while. You know you used to love it, but it just doesn’t seem to fit anymore.

“Oooh,” Alice says, turning up the volume on the CD player she has plugged into Fred’s cigarette lighter. “I love this song.” It’s “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Service. The bouncy electronic intro sounds a bit like video game music, and soon blends with a soft, mellow voice. I love it too; it’s the perfect combination of poetry and machinery.

Alice starts to sing along. I have to speculate that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes like puzzle pieces from afar. Her voice is light and raspy, and I have a feeling she doesn’t sing in front of just anybody.

“If you like the Postal Service you must love Death Cab,” I say.

“What? Who’s Death Cab?”

“Are you kidding me? You haven’t heard of Death Cab For Cutie?”

Alice shakes her head as we drive up the onramp of The 90. Elsewhere in the state it’s called I-90, but “the 90” is our own term of endearment. Most of our highways have names – The Scajacuada, The Youngman, The Skyway – and we like to put “the” in front of the numbered ones like The 90, The 190 and The 33. It gives them personality.

“The Postal Service is just the side project of the lead singer of Death Cab For Cutie,” I explain. “He’s from the East Coast and he collaborated with a guy on the West Coast. They sent each other tapes through the mail…hence the name.”

“Wow, that’s awesome.”

Everything looks perfect from far away…come down now, but we’ll stay

We come to my favorite spot on the 90, where there’s an old rail yard to the west. On a clear day, you can look past the rusty tracks overgrown with weeds and see the skyline of downtown Buffalo: a few tall silvery buildings, the HSBC tower, the dome atop the carved stone of City Hall. Usually I have to point it out to people, but Alice knows. Wordlessly, we both turn our heads to the right.

In a moment the skyline disappears behind a thick patch of pine trees. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“Umm…Amvets,” she decides as she answers.

“The one in South Buffalo?”

“Of course.” Alice has shopped extensively at all six Amvets thrift store locations in Western New York and concluded that the South Buffalo one has the best t-shirts. “So Delia,” she says.
“How was your semester? I mean, really?”

“Oh God, I don’t even know.”

“I remember an email or two about a boy…”

“Yeah.”

“Come on.” She runs her fingers through her cinnamon-colored hair; she’s said she doesn’t even know what her natural color is anymore. “I deserve more than a ‘yeah.’”

I pull at the seam of my jeans where it gapes around my left knee. “I loved the way he walked,” I say. “Like he was in a hurry, but he was happy about it.”

“And…”

“And it didn’t work out. I don’t know. I keep thinking about it, and I don’t really come up with anything. Now I just feel unhappy. How sad is that, that attention from a guy is what makes me happy? I’m an antifeminist or something.”

“You are not.”

“I’m not really anything.”

“Keep plugging along,” she says. “Don’t pretend to be happy, but keep plugging along.”

I take a deep breath and lean my head against the window. “That’s an important distinction.”

---

"There’s a lot of D.A.R.E. shirts,” I say, squeaking a hanger across a rack in the boys’ section of Amvets. Alice was right about their impressive selection.

“Yeah,” she says, not looking up. “I’ve got one of those. I wear it when I go out drinking.”

I smirk. I guess I should have kept all my old shirts since they’d be cool and “vintage” now. I had the classic black D.A.R.E. shirt, along with a medal from when I was chosen to read my essay at parents’ night. Drug Abuse Resistance Education…I wonder what I had written about. I hadn’t ever seen a drug back in fifth grade, but I’m sure that if Caleb Hart (freckles, blue eyes), the other essay winner, had offered me something, I would have taken it. Okay, maybe not. I think I had convictions then.

“Oooh, check this one out!” I exclaim. I pull out a purple t-shirt that says in cursive white letters, “You are Important…at East Aurora Middle School.”

Alice giggles with delight. “That’s amazing!”

“You can have it,” I say, handing her the hanger. I’m in one of those I-Know-I-Won’t-Like-Anything-I-Find moods.

Alice is about to go to the register and pay two bucks to be Important at East Aurora Middle School when we notice the display of ties. Most are striped but Alice picks up of a navy blue one with little red Buffaloes dotted across it.

“That’s adorable,” I say as she ties it around her hips. I’m beginning to have an appreciation for all things Buffalo, now that I don’t live here most of the year. There's something about this place; we all share this combination of regret and embarrassment and stubborn pride. Sure, our football team loses, our population decreases, and it snows a potential seven months out of the year. But it’s ours, and it’ll always be a part of us.

Alice nods in approval and gazes proudly across the racks of clothes and shelves of dirty appliances. “Today is a good day.”

---

Soon we’re back in Fred and cruising around the city. "Oh, I've missed these S-curves," Alice says wistfully as she maneuvers the boxy car around the turns beside Delaware Park.

“I miss the ocean,” I say.

“What?”

“I said, I miss the ocean. I’ve gotten used to being able to look over my shoulder and reassure myself that it’s there when I’m walking around campus.”

“Delia, we live next to one of the GREAT lakes.”

“Yeah, I know, but I never see it. I live a bunch of suburbs away. I might as well be in Oklahoma or something.”

“Psh. You don’t have to see it to know that it’s there.”

“Well, I do.”

“Well, fine. We’ll go visit good ol’ Erie."


Buffalo’s waterfront is a beautiful disappointment, the biggest unrealized potential in a city of unrealized potential. Alice and I walk along the edge, where the waves lap softly over the stones and seagulls caw overhead. It could be alive with people, lined with restaurants and quaint little shops, but there’s just an ice cream shack that’s closed for the winter. Cars rush behind us on The Skyway. We find a bench and stare into the endless grey-blue. “I also recall an email or two from you about a guy,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, biting her lip. “You remember my friend Rachel from school?”

“Mmhmm.”

“The ‘guy’ is Rachel.”

Damn. Just like that. I shift my eyes slowly to hers and try not to look shocked. “Wow,” I murmur. For some reason all I can think of is the N'sync poster on her bedroom wall, and how I always thought Justin Timberlake wasn't really her type.

She nods. “She’s just so amazing, Delia. I haven’t met anybody like her. She makes me feel…alive.”

No “I’m gay,” no “So I think I might be bi.” There’s a girl named Rachel who makes her feel alive. This is why I love Alice. She lives for her ideals, and she does it in her own way. “I’m really
happy for you,” I say.

“Thank you. Sadly, my mom is not. Or at least I don’t think she is, since she hasn’t spoken to me for a week.”

“You told her?” I’m scared of Alice’s very Catholic mom on a normal basis, so I can’t even imagine what she’d be like after finding out her only daughter is gay, or at least not straight. I wonder how many rosary beads have felt the distress in her fingers.

“I didn’t mean to," she says. "I was talking about relationships and then I was talking about Rachel and she kinda figured it out.”

“Oh, man. How are you and Catholicism doing?”

“You know what, actually, we’re good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I had a long talk with one of the chaplins at school. I’ll still me, and I’m still Catholic. If anything, having Rachel makes me feel even closer to God.”

“I’m jealous of you,” I say. I can’t help it. I’ve been brought up Catholic and all I feel is guilty and cynical. “It’s like, the more I learn, the more relationships I’m in, the less I can believe. I guess I’m starting to see religion as something historical to be studied rather than something spiritual to be felt.”

“But the whole idea of religion is that you can always feel it.” She looks out across the choppy waves. “When I don’t have the lake, and I don’t have my mom, and when I don’t have someone like Rachel, I’ll always have God.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”