Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (37 page)

I do not know how to sleep with a dead body, but I am determined to do so. The sun falls. I shape the sand beside you, beneath you. I feel the hot but cooling grit between my fingers.

My radio cackles. I ignore it. At least it's still working, functioning, alive. I banish the thought.

Darkness drops. I crawl up beside you. We talk.

I believe we will talk all night, but at the outset, I am surprised by how little I have to say.

All cued up I have profound things to say to you—about the endurance of love, about morality and ethics, about sacrifice and beautiful suffering, about natural law and various theories of just war, about us.

We both were churchgoers.

I say none of this of course.

“Do you remember when I first cut your hair? … you know how I fumble with things … I still can't believe that eggs made you gag … ” I confuse my tenses.

The darkness deepens and the wind picks up. I cuddle your corpse. Like a sodden bag of Earl Grey, you are steeped in liquid, but yours is blood. Holding death so close, so tightly, the deep shit seems like mere pretense now. In the end, after the end, it is the quotidian that counts.

I see your socks and shoes.

Once again, I take out my radio, or whatever it is I am supposed to call it now, this sophisticated communications device, my MBITR. I think of smashing it, of stomping it into the sand. Instead I stick it—still croaking with static—back inside my jacket, and I hold you, and I wait for morning.

Summer Brenner

Next best to moving in with my kids (no invite forthcoming) was Pine Lodge, a local retirement home and pleasant three-story brick building on a quiet woodsy street close to public transportation. I leased two unfurnished rooms with large casement windows on the south side of the
unassisted
section—one for sleeping, the other napping.

Two acquaintances already lived at the Lodge. “Comrades,” I called them. Over the years, we'd encountered each other's comradely presence at marches and protests where we waved and smiled. Or hooked arms and sang “The Internationale.” Or went for beers after a long, hot day glaring at the high security gates of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the country's petri dish for WMDs.

Judith Tanner was a tall Bostonian, entitlement written over her face and wrapped around her French twist. She'd been introduced to the civil rights movement by a patrician grandmother who went on the Freedom Rides. However, it was only after retirement and moving to Pine Lodge that Judith began to devote herself full-time to causes, drafting petitions, collecting signatures, visiting government offices, and standing on street corners holding signs and shouting at cars. Wherever, she distributed booklets of the Declaration of Human Rights to waitresses, custodians, clerks, and other service employees. She started a blog—
Tanner Times and Tidings—to
opine on military spending, Wall Street bonuses, Gaia, drones, and bowel movements. In other words, she was a pain in the ass but worthy of respect.

My other comrade, Beverly Brown, had been an activist and union organizer spanning five decades with Ban the Bomb, White Panthers, Greenpeace, Clearwater, Gray Panthers, Code Pink, and Women in Black—a full-color spectrum. Everyone's complaint about Beverly was personal hygiene. As a young social worker, she decided to bond with the underclass by appearing as poor and needy as possible. She wore ugly secondhand clothes. She never combed her hair or cleaned her fingernails. Welfare clients complained about her BO—and concluded if a college-educated government employee couldn't earn enough money to bathe and dress decently, they might as well stay on the dole. Beverly was also a pain in the ass with lots of street cred.

A week after I arrived, Judith organized a bowl-in. Six members of the PL affinity group (Pine Lodge, not Progressive Labor) marched to the nearby bowling green with homemade signs that championed “Bowling for All.” I marched too.

The pretty green was a fenced park owned and groomed by the city and kept under lock and key for bowlers to use during restricted hours. If the green were open to the general public, the benches and smooth putting-green grass would attract lovers, vagrants, dogs, and detritus of all of the above. During hours of operation, the green was occupied by men. An occasional woman might join them, but males dominated.

When we arrived, we demanded certain hours be set aside exclusively for us. “BFA united!” we shouted a few times.

“Help yourself!” an obovoid-shaped octogenarian with one eye doffed a baseball cap and mumbled “libbers” under his sour breath.

The bowl-in wavered between protest and tantrum as we challenged male hegemony on the green. They capitulated. Then, we got down to bowling business and commenced to roll, throw, and pitch. There wasn't a natural among us except Judith who was well-coordinated and something of a showoff. It was obvious she enjoyed competition—especially with men. She berated and belittled us to try harder, reiterating our rights to enjoy outdoor exercise in a well-tended park without interference from frisbees, dog poop, dopers, and homeless campers.

From the sidelines, the men looked on, typically smug and amused—short on compliments, long on critique.

After a quarter-hour of effort, a couple of us complained. “What's the big deal about lawn bowling?” I asked, speaking for the majority. We were exhausted. We wanted to go home.

Back at Pine Lodge after victory was unanimously declared, we trundled giddily off to lunch.

“What are ya'll up to?” Sonya asked, thrusting her lumpy face between Judith and Gwen.

Gwen O'Donnell was Judith's best friend. They were inseparable.

Male residents indulged in lesbian gossip and lesbian jokes about them. No doubt a pathetic disguise for their craving to try Viagra. They'd been obsessed with Viagra since TV ads began warning viewers of erections lasting more than four hours.

“Spill the beans,” Sonya pleaded. She'd missed the bowl-in because of an emergency root canal.

Sonya was a retired high-school librarian. Usually loaded on diet pills, her bright side was dazzling. Last month, she went to Rio, plastic surgery capital
del mondo.
She returned with less pleats and more tucks but unfortunately the overall impression remained the same—oatmeal raisin.

“Revolution,” Judith whispered, leaning away from the fruity smell of Sonya's powder and perfume.

“Judith is trying to save the world! Again!” Gwen explained. She herself was too timorous to be a revolutionary but at least could count one as a close friend.

Sonya licked her thin well-glossed lips, curled her arthritic fingers around her thumb, and raised her fist. “Power to the People!” she giggled.

“It isn't funny,” Judith retorted.

“I wasn't laughing at
it,”
Sonya said. “I was laughing at myself. This morning, I was trying to save a thumbnail. Not as heroic as our Judith.” Sonya showed us her splayed purple thumb.
“Aubergine,”
she attempted with an accent acquired in a junior-year abroad program over a half-century ago.

We cringed at the sight of Sonya's mangled thumb.

“Earl accidentally slammed it in his car door.”

“Earl?” Judith spat.

“I will always love Earl.”

No matter what Earl said, Sonya believed him. Recently, he'd told her that humans were only nine meals away from murder, although we concurred that with Sonya's backside, she was more than nine meals.

“I thought Earl went back to his wife,” Judith remarked.

“He did” Sonya admitted sheepishly.

Gwen shrugged. She was mum on the subject of married men. She had had a decade-long affair with a judge who harbored political aspirations, meaning he'd never leave his wife. Gwen dissolved her second marriage for him and incurred the eternal resentment of her daughter, Jen. She hoped once Jen married, she'd understand what it meant to be a frustrated grownup. So far, that hadn't happened. Jen, a convert to Hasidic Judaism and mother of four, appeared extremely happy.

Gwen, however, took pride that a man elected to three terms of public office once loved her. When other women boasted about their affairs with famous men, at least Gwen could mention Harold Weber. I happened to know Judge Weber. He was a royal pain in the ass.

Sonya and Gwen didn't have a radical agenda. They hadn't read the nineteenth-century classics on property and production. They hadn't read Chomsky. They had decent humanitarian inclinations and despite chronic disappointment, championed electoral politics with renewed enthusiasm every two years. They faithfully believed the democratic experiment was working.

Like me, Annette was new to the PL coterie. She moved to Pine Lodge after a near fatal encounter with a parasite that attached itself to her duodenum in an ashram outside Mumbai. The bug had resisted western power drugs, holistic healing, homeopathy, acupuncture, and Chinese herbs. But through daily rituals of yoga and meditation, Annette managed calm detachment which she attributed to two perfect children, five
more perfect
grandchildren, and the teachings of a swami with an unpronounceable name. As for her remarkable complexion, she credited Crisco slathered on her cheeks, neck, and forehead every night for more than fifty years.

Judith Tanner envied Annette's calm demeanor. Balance, fatigue, diet, or disease? Whatever the source, Annette appeared to accept life's
slings and arrows.
Judith accepted almost nothing. As a political person, she was chronically discontent.

Annette's effect on Beverly Brown was paranoia. Bev associated tranquility with church and was fiercely adverse to God. Although Annette explained it wasn't necessary to believe in God to be a Buddhist or Hindu or good person, Beverly maintained that Hindus, Buddhists, and good people committed atrocities as adroitly as anyone else.

“So?” Beverly asked, swallowing a spoonful of lime Jell-O.

“We're plotting,” Gwen said.

“Tell the world!” Bev sneered.

“There's no plot yet,” Sonya assured her.

“So much effort and work, so little accomplished,” Judith lamented.

“Imagine how I feel,” Beverly said.

“Spare us, comrade,” Judith said.

“I don't mind hearing,” Annette chimed.

“You don't mind anything,” Sonya snapped.

“But I do mind,” Annette said meekly. “I mind suffering in all forms, but there is nothing to be done. Suffering is the human condition.”

“What should the plot be?” Gwen cried.

“A secret!” Beverly reprimanded.

“We could talk in code,” Sonya suggested.

“Odeca orfa lotpa eforeba ewa ieda,” I spouted.

“I can't possibly work that out,” Annette admitted.

“First, we need to choose a name,” Judith said.

Everyone agreed. A name was a good idea. Predictably, the next two hours were devoted to recommendations. Exasperated by inanities masquerading as concerns, Beverly was the first to lose patience.

“No Name!” she thundered. “After Ulysses.”

“I like that,” Judith confirmed. “No Name! No Nonsense!”

“I like it, too,” I seconded.

“Catchy bumper sticker,” Sonya said, trotting out her marketing skills.

“It's a secret! Not a bumper sticker!” Bev repeated.

“What now?” Gwen rubbed her sweaty palms.

We agreed the coup at the bowling green was kindergarten. A dress rehearsal long on rhetoric and short on impact. As to our next move, we were stymied.

“Let's sleep on it,” Judith said.

“Okay,” Beverly said.

We took a vote. Unanimous.

I had a terrible dream. Sleeping was bad, waking worse. The wisps of clouds, the fragrant pine sap, the penetrating warmth of sun were unwelcome reminders that earthly life was nearly done. Soon, I'd be carted off to the world of
assisted
living. And then?

I dragged myself from bed. Bathed, brushed, flossed, counted pills, and dressed. At the appointed hour, I met my comrades at our nearby café. They looked as awful as I did. Even Annette's demeanor was cracked.

“Good morning,” I grunted.

“Any brilliant ideas?” Judith raised an eyebrow.

Unwaveringly sincere, Annette broke the silence. “I dreamed I was in a nursing home,” she choked back a sob.

“Me, too,” Gwen whispered hoarsely.

“Quite a coinkidink!” Sonya said.

“Ditto,” Beverly coughed.

“And Judith?” I asked.

Judith Tanner slurped her
latté
and scanned our depressed faces. It wasn't the first time she had had such a dream. You're familiar with Carl Jung's theories? The
collective unconscious
had ensnared us.

“It's a sign,” Sonya said prone to superstition.

“It's no sign,” Bev sputtered. “It's perfectly trite. What other future would we dream in a society that discounts, ignores, dismisses, degrades, abuses, and warehouses its elders?”