Me and Raoul
Sunday. I woke up to the cartoon neighbor mowing his dead lawn with his brand new riding lawnmower that, according to some sources has the capability of reaching up to 45 miles an hour. "It’s called the Whisperer," he said proudly to me as the huge blue delivery truck pulled out of his driveway eclipsing my view of what used to be James’ pie tin front door. James had lived in that house across the street since he was born. He doesn’t live there anymore though. I like the way the cartoon neighbor has a lawn mowing outfit he wears routinely composed of a Whisperer baseball cap that came with his treasure, a Happy New Year 2000 shirt that has grass stains all down the front of it and holes all along the shoulder seam, and his gray warm-up pants. I never thought I’d end up in a small town again after desperately escaping the clutches of Madera. I never thought I’d have a cartoon neighbor. I never thought that anyone would ever be willing to pay me over 10 dollars an hour to work for them with. But here I am.
It didn’t bother me to be jolted out of bed every Sunday by the sweet melody of the Whisperer. I actually kind of prefer it to the painful electronic pulse which is emitted from the side of my bed on every other day of the week. I dangled one leg off the side of the bed and bounced it up and down as I recited my list of errands out loud to the tune of a commercial for Big Tom’s Toyota Emporium. I felt the warm tongue of my fat little dog on my smallest toe but my bouncing foot accidentally bounced its way right onto Raoul’s little dog skull. "Oh no!" I squealed. I peeked over the edge of the bed to see Raoul’s unaffected obsidian eyes staring back at me, his little midget tail waving around with the expectation of attention. "Come up here you." I said as I patted the octopus checkered sheet, "you poor misunderstood little prisoner in my messy house. Come on up here you chicken dog!" He tried to lift his fat little barrel body off of the ground but gravity won. I heard the squeak of the mail jeep’s breaks as he staggered down suburban lane towards my mailbox. I swung my feet over the bed onto the cold tile floor and stiffly and mechanically hobbled down the hall.
On my 30th birthday I had come to the conclusion that aging is like becoming a robot. As each year goes by I become more and more of a cyborg, now at 45 wearing glasses to avoid having to read the dosage from across the room on my many medicine bottles. My mind seeming to become more and more permanently programmed. I remember when I was younger and my opinions would change faster than I could establish them. The world seemed so amazingly enigmatic then. I guess it still is but in a different way. Now I could tell by the squeak that the mailman had left whatever exciting things he had for me and was probably now being trapped by conversations about the Whisperer next door. This was my chance to sneak out and get the mail while cartoon neighbor was distracted. I hated it when he’d catch me in the vulnerable zone which exists between my front patio and my car or mailbox or whatever. Don’t get me wrong. I get my kicks from my occasional conversations with cartoon neighbor. It’s really difficult for me though because he always says, "Well if it isn’t Lori D. What does that D stand for again? Could it be, D for doesn’t take pride in the maintenance of her front yard foliage? Nah, I’m just kidding miss Lori, you know how much of a kidder I am. You know I’m kidding right?" That is the interesting part. The bad part is that I don’t know his name. I have a real problem with that. I’ll ask someone their name and then when they tell it to me I forget to listen. So I’m fairly embarrassed that I don’t know his name and I’ve lived next to him for 8 years. Or is it 7 years? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I’ll pretend it’s only been 3 years to make myself feel slightly less self-centered. I’ve hoped that the mailman would get confused and deliver some of the cartoon neighbor’s mail here so I could find out what his name is, but it just so happens that we have one of the Postmaster’s star employee as our mailman. I think he was mailman of the year for an entire decade. At least that’s what cartoon neighbor told me once when he trapped me in the danger zone one morning. I cracked the door and peered out into the brightness of the morning to see my prediction confirmed. Cartoon neighbor had indeed claimed his victim. Me and Raoul scurried out to the mailbox. I hopped sporadically down the sidewalk trying to avoid pill bugs and ants, to save their lives or to avoid getting insect guts on my bare feet? I wondered what was my true motive. As I pulled open the door on the front of my favorite porthole to the world I saw that which I hold in the highest of respect: that glorious form of a small cardboard box.
I retrieved my cherished arrival along with it’s less celebrated friends, bills and coupons and made my escape into the house. I carried the box into my yellow saturated kitchen. My psychiatrist had suggested that I fill the entire kitchen with the color yellow; paint, dishes, faucet, curtains, refrigerator and all. She said that it would make me feel nautious and that I wouldn’t binge as much but instead it just makes me depressed and because of how much time I spend in the kitchen grazing the food supply, yellow has become my favorite color. I looked around among the clutter for my lucky yellow scissors. There was no return address on the outside but the wandering style of handwriting in which my name was written offered me two ideas of who it could be from. I recognized a distant yelp and suddenly realized that I had forgotten Raoul outside. Rushing to the door I stubbed my toe on the rod iron coffee table that I had been using as a base for a mosaic I was making and had stupidly left pulled halfway into the entry way after vacuuming yesterday. As I hopped to the door and pulled it open I tried to whistle really loud with my fingers in my mouth like a high school PE coach but I ended up just blowing spit all over my hand. "Raaaaouuul!" I yelled as my eyes searched up and down the street. I saw his little gray body 4 houses down peeing on a soccer ball in their front yard. "Don’t do that Raoul. Come here." I shouted. He came trotting back, rejuvenated from his rare contact with the outside world. Luckily cartoon neighbor had put the Whisperer to rest and was no longer lurking outside.
Back in the yellow sea of appliances and products from the generic isle, I punctured the packaging tape and sliced open the heart of my curiosity. There was a cylindrical object inside wrapped in pages from a Japanese newspaper. As I peeled away the layers, I started to see typewritten words in English. It was a jar! I tore the remaining newspaper from the cylinder to reveal a glass jar with cut out words glued to it. On the lid of the jar was painted, "Dear Lori D." with an arrow pointing to the beginning of the spiral of cutout words. A smile instantly formed on my face as I realized it was from James. It had been so long since I’d heard from James! My stomach tightened with nervousness and anticipation as my eyes began to explore the text. It started with, "I know I’m a bastard for not writing you in so long, but it’s not because I haven’t been thinking about you." I wasn’t sure why but my eyes filled with tears and my hands trembled slightly as I slowly rotated the jar. "When we spent that time together before I left, I realized how much I needed you and how dependent I’d become on being able to cross the street and find you so willing to laugh at my ridiculous ideas about the world. That day that I got on the plane, I realized how much I loved you and how stupid I was for not recognizing it sooner. I know how you feel about relationships because of Eric and I didn’t want to pressure you, or lose you as a best friend so I think I just pretended my interest in you was purely as a friend, just one of the guys." Now the tears were streaming down my face and my eyes were suddenly jerked away from the mild curve of the spiral to the one word that I was praying wouldn’t be glued to the jar. The word was in a bigger font size than most of the other words on the jar and it was in red ink. "Married." Married?" I gasped as I scrambled to rotate the jar backwards to find the context of the dreaded word, but in my frenzy the jar slipped out of my hands and began to shrink out of my sight as the yellow tiles enveloped it. "Shit" I blurted out as my clumsy hands desperately plunged towards the jar to save it. My eyes closed tight and my hands clenched as I tried to block out the loud shattering noise that simultaneously struck me with the realization of my shattered hopes.
A grunting pig-like sob escaped from my throat somewhere as my fingertips began to ache with that pre-hysteria sensation that I knew all too well. I dropped to my knees and began sifting through the pieces, searching for the red ink that meant my world was about to come crashing down on me. "Wait!" I thought to myself, there’s still hope. Maybe the sentence said, "Let’s get married." I began spreading out the pieces and examining each of them trying to find the word "let’s" or "get" or most importantly, the word "married." There it was, "married." It had slid across the floor towards the table. I lunged for it but when I examined it I realized that somehow it had conveniently broken so that the words on either side of it were gone. The word below it said "will" but that didn’t tell me anything. I went back to searching for the word "Let’s" because I decided that was key. I found a "lots" and a "you" and a "got." I slid the "lots" and the "got" in front of the "married." I sat there staring at that for a while, I don’t remember how long, When the phone rang. I put my hand down to push myself off of the ground when I felt a sharp puncturing sensation in my hand. I quickly stood up and turned my hand over to see a piece of the jar hanging from my palm. I pulled it out and held it at arms length because I didn’t have my glasses on. I squinted to decipher the tiny word, slightly concealed by my blood. It said, "Alison." The sound of the phone ringing faded into a dull drone and all I could hear was the sound of my mucus being sucked back into my system as my back slid down the cupboard door and I collapsed into a slouch on the floor. Raoul came trotting over, climbed into my lap and began licking my nose. "I never thought I would be here," I thought to myself. "Here we are Raoul," I said as I held him tightly, "Just you and me."
Email: villavillacola@mindspring.com
