(a
quarantine log)
From my kitchen window I watch Pete
give his lover Wayne a haircut. Wayne is wearing a champagne-colored sheet that
he clutches near his heart. Pete trims. Their two dogs, Kiley and Odin, weave
around their feet. They leap and bark and Pete bats them away with his left
elbow. Wayne’s hair falls down the sheet to the grass, blows around in tufts. I
like watching all the pieces of this scene. I’m a floor above them, in the
house to the north, leaning on my stove. Pete’s turn in the chair now, and
Wayne takes the clippers. I say to Iris that we should cut each other’s hair.
She says no, she’ll grow it—and she is. It’s long.
*
In the last year, I have taken precut
broccoli, yes, and scorched it in a cast iron pot. I have called it dinner and served
it on a plate next to rice. This pandemic affords the leisurely dinner. The
curated meal. Carbonara from Jeff Smith. Black-bean chili. The dishes that
punctuated my thirties and fed my children. Pasta e fagioli, I take my time
with you. I drizzle you with olive oil before serving.
*
From my perch on my deck where I’m
trying to learn to finger pick my old Yamaha guitar, I hear thud/thud/thud. I
peer over and find the other Pete in my backyard. I live between two Petes. The
Pete I’ve been flirting with for a year is here, where I’ve lately been digging
out grass that chokes my rosebushes. He’s throwing over the fence we share, back
toward his fourteen-year-old son who catches, throws, thud. He says they were
planning to ask for forgiveness. He yells up that, when I sing, I sound like
someone famous but he can’t remember who. It’s a compliment, he says. It took a
pandemic for me to get crush-Pete where I want him.
*
Like travel brochures for places we
might visit in the future, the dating apps show me what might be. It’s hard to
build momentum. I’ve been in quarantine long enough for several potential
romances to kindle, burn, and die. They have their own rhythms. In this 2-D
life, I’m an image projected on his scrim; he (John, Dan, Allen) is an image on
mine. The rubber never meets the road.
*
I can’t have another April day without
pansies. Pansies are essential. On our first eighty-degree day, I pay by phone
for a flat. Curbside at the garden center, I’m masked and gloved; so are they. I
find my potting soil, dust off ceramic pots. Now I have yellow pansies, hopeful
citizens, in my planters. They are immune. I leave one for crush-Pete at his
back door. Thundershowers douse it all night.
*
When I was sick, there were no swab
tests. Now that I’m better, there are no finger-prick antibody tests. My doctor
says, Check back with me. I check and she says, Check back.
*
It turns out we don’t dress for
ourselves. Preen, admire, strut: it’s for others. Without others, I would never
wear heels again. I can’t imagine a quarantine day where I would put on my on-trend
black jumpsuit, all the Spanx underneath it, earrings, my red wedges, to sit on
my turquoise couch and write or edit a document, only to take it off at
bedtime. If you think you dress for yourself, let’s rumble.
*
Quarantine is so long that it’s divided
into chapters. In early quarantine, I paid Iris to assemble a cabinet I had
ordered. I used Goo-Gone grout cleaner on my bathroom floor. We admired the
“new” bathroom. When I look at that cabinet now—beaded and white with its
polished nickel pulls—I would swear it has been there for years.
*
The dogs and I loop and return through
the streets of my childhood-turned-adulthood home. I could still tell you where
my mother and I were walking—she pregnant with my brother—that July day when
her water broke, and where my third grade friend Beth Ann lived (corner of
Elmwood and Ontario). I can show you where I went over my bike’s handlebars and
egged my forehead with the fall. The dogs sniff the whole world with focus.
It’s spring in Chicago, and Chicagoans must stay at home.
*
If my daughter in California falls ill,
I will board a plane. If Iris falls ill, I will nurse her. If they fall ill at
the same time, span two thousand miles, I don’t know what I will do. I will
atomize.
*
My weekly therapy sessions have moved
to FaceTime. I take the call and, for privacy, walk the neighborhood for an
hour. I ask Garry about James, the 32-year-old I met on Tinder whom I seem to
be “dating” even though we can’t meet in person. I walk south to the expressway,
where cars should dazzle the pavement. I say, what about this age gap? It’s
quiet here today. Garry wants to know what I want out of the experience with
baby James. “It has no future, but I like him,” I say, and then, “He’s real.”
*
Zillow tells me that Nikki has
requested to view my property. I give her a virtual tour of the third-floor
apartment. We finish on the back patio, looking past Pete and Wayne’s yard,
past Eddie’s and beyond. The little yards are silent, hopeful, turning green. “Come
tour in person,” I tell her, “I have a mask for you and for me.” We have fear; we
have a plan. “See you Wednesday,” I say, and I mean: not pixels.
*
In the second, but still early, phase
of quarantine, I spackle the kitchen door where one of my dogs destroyed the
paint in a fit of panic. He was new to us then, unable to be left. It took me
two and a half years, a pandemic, and ten minutes to repair that door.
*
There is the time when Simi is here,
and then the time when she flies to Arizona to be with her sister and son for
the duration. There is the time when Sarah is in Berkeley, then the time when
she flies here to be with us for the duration.
*
One day, in what I hope is the middle
of quarantine, a fancy literary magazine sends me a nice rejection and invites
me to submit again. I drop everything and spruce up another story, labor over
the words. Smithing.
*
I order a bra and panty set. It’s the
most optimistic thing I do in quarantine. Honestly, it’s the most hopeful thing
I can imagine. I go for black. Mrs. Robinson wore leopard print; I want to be
sure I’m different.
*
My mother’s gardens are legion. She
grows hydrangeas and trumpet vine, roses and black-eyed susan, hosta and sweet
alyssum. She labors with her plants and her weeds and devotes herself to their
beauty. If you’re looking for my mother, you will find her in the garden.
*
Like the golf pro from Tinder with whom
I got as far as a FaceTime call. The second I saw his recliner, the TV on in
front of it, I knew. I don’t do recliners. Nothing personal but I should have
swiped left.
*
The day my mother is admitted to the
hospital for an allergic reaction is also the day, it turns out, of the
COVID-19 peak in Chicago. Something bit her in her garden and her throat
closed. The EpiPen she jammed into her leg on the way to the hospital bought
her time so the ER doctors could save her life. There is a bed; they admit her
and give her a bed. My dad brings her books, a meal, fresh clothes, and a phone
charger. He can’t pass the threshold; he hands them to a nurse at the door.
*
In the mid-Pleistocene, we sort all the
photos in their albums. Instead of sprawling over two shelves in two rooms, the
photos are now corralled. They chronicle the lives we have lived: the girls
with their father when they were small, before our divorce. In the mid-Pleistocene,
I also frame five more prints and bang nails into the wall to hang them. The
plaster crumbles when the nail enters. I can hear it falling down inside the
wall.
*
When call-him-Sean tells me on Tinder
that he’s not staying home because he’s not a lemming, I unmatch with him
posthaste.
*
I read a story in the New York Times
about a family whose grandmother was taken to the hospital with COVID symptoms
and was lost to the system. They couldn’t find her or where she was admitted,
not after that ambulance ride. They tore out their hair with love and terror.
They cried for days, searching for their grandmother. They presumed she was
dead, and perhaps she was. Is. On another day, we might have lost my mother to
a ward, to death. I am saying, that family could have been our family and may
still be.
*
My sister writes from Berkeley to say
residents are leaving sourdough starter in trees for neighbors to take. It’s
nice to have it, if it’s something you want.
*
The gauzy, white curtains in the living
room window are where I left them. My office nook remains untouched. Here’s the
lava lamp, not plugged in. The kitchen stools: sentries. Over the days, guitar
sheet music travels on surfaces until, in small batches, it touches six spots: my
dresser, the ottoman, the bench, more. On Wednesday, I meet Mike virtually for
my guitar lesson. I have been “playing” guitar for decades. Today, Mike teaches
me how to hold a pick. Not too tightly and straighten my thumb, he says. He
shows me on the screen how to pick with my whole arm, not my fingers. Swing your
arm, he says.
*
I see my friend Dora in the park. She’s
stopped near the water fountain. We’ve been friends since we were ten. She
looks puzzled when I wave and doesn’t know me through the mask, sunglasses and
hat. I announce my name to her. In this apocalypse, even our closest will not
be known. My father stopped at the door to the hospital. “It’s Cameron!” “Oh!” We
keep walking past each other.
*
Zillow says someone else is interested
in my apartment for rent. She writes she is an “exec.” 1. No “exec’s” I know
use that word to describe themselves. 2. If you are an “exec,” why do you want
to rent my crappy apartment?
*
We invent games and play them.
Tonight’s game is How Fast Can Mommy Type? I turn to a page of Terry Tempest
Williams, fix my eyes there and go. After one minute, I have 84 words and one
error. So, 83 words. I amaze Iris. I dazzle her. I would make someone a great
secretary.
*
I don’t like the fear and I don’t
invite it in. But I strap my mask on—pink—and I cross the street when anyone
comes toward me. The fear is shaking me by the lapels and announcing, I’m here.
*
Friday, we drive to the loop to see it
empty. We think police will stop us on the way, turn us back home. They have
the highway staked out, but they don’t stop us. We exit at Franklin and drive
toward my office. All the crosswalks seem haunted. It’s not as funny as we
thought it would be. It’s sad and desperate. It’s the same day that COVID-19
cases balloon at Cook County Jail, where there’s no distancing, no ride home, where
everyone is trapped.
*
A second thirty-two-year-old
super-likes me on Tinder. Let’s call him Steve. He’s not being ironic, no more
than James is. Then two more in their early thirties. It’s not a mistake and
it’s not, apparently, a joke. It might be a trend. I make a note to ask my
therapist what the meaning of the trend is.
*
A distanced walk with a friend is all.
Crush-Pete leaving me two cans of tomato paste in my foyer is all. A family
Zoom call is all. A virtual lesson is all. A slow and simmering meal is all. Sun
on my face is all and everything. We don’t want much. We search out the good
and lovely. I fill my gratitude jar with the names of the people I miss.
*
On the night John Prine dies of
COVID-related causes, I break my Facebook fast to send him tribute. I find my
friends there, posting his songs and sad emoji face with a large tear creeping
down the cheek. I play three of his songs for Iris. They are small, musical
poems about people messing up, people loving hard. She is patient and I try to
grip the pick lightly, try to swing my arm.
*
I am out of mascara. I need mascara for
Zoom calls. Iris says it’s not essential. Mascara seems essential to me. It’s
starting to seem like a downright emergency as my roots grow out and I turn
back into a brunette.
*
I text my friend Mimi and ask her if
she’s ever dated someone eighteen years younger than she is. She writes back:
“I would date a grizzly bear right now.”
*
Iris attends a Zoom seminar-for-credit
at her future college. The topic is the COVID pandemic we are living through. I
try to tiptoe in the dining room, but Zack the dog throws up at her feet while
she’s introducing herself to her discussion group. I live in Chicago, I love
languages and politics, she says. Then she mutes herself to ask me to clean up
the mess.
*
I’m still revising a new submission for
the fancy magazine that invited me to resubmit. Out of self-respect, I should
wait six months. Holed up in my home during a pandemic, I wait two days. To
meet their length requirement, I have to add thirty two words to my story. 32. The
number vibrates with meaning.
*
Can you date someone solely by text? I
feel like I’m dating James. If he were away at war 80 years ago and I were his
girl, we would write letters full of longing. We would wait for each other, a
promise or a ring keeping us true. Good morning, I text him. Hey
beautiful, he texts me back. It seems important not to care, but I do.
*
On the day my mother is discharged from
the hospital, the nurses wheel her off the floor. They steer her into the
elevator and they push the L button with gloved hands, wheel her out through
the automatic doors where my dad is waiting for her. I text her that April is
beautiful, that she’s living, that we’re both still on this beautiful earth
together, and that Bernie dropped out of the race as a special gift to her. My
dad drives her to Walgreens to pick up her prescriptions. They return to their
contagion-free shelter by the lake. Waiting.
*
Open the windows. Close the windows.
Morning, night. Snow, sun. A day. Another day. Pearls on a string, but only for
the lucky.
*
I dream I meet James where skin occurs,
a place beyond screens/masks/fear. We’re on the Riverwalk downtown, a normal
year—visitors from California and Tokyo queue to board tourist boats. A crush
of people and no danger. Their faces and hands are bare. There it is, I say,
cupping his thick beard. Here you are, I say, taking his hand. On this
thirty-third day of quarantine, I wake and shake the dream off, brew coffee. I
don’t know who I will meet at the end of the story nor what his age will be.
(Rise/crest/fade as they do.) I don’t know if James will be there with me or
someone else. (Hi beautiful.) I know I will remember to wear my new,
hopeful lingerie. (Can you date someone solely by text?) I know I will be
embodied. 3-D. Blazing sun, James or his proxy, heat/sweat/teeth-bumping/teetering/light.
That’s how I will know it’s over. I will feel us holding on.
Cameron Gearen's full length collection, Some Perfect Year, came
out from Shearsman Press in 2016. Her essays and poems have appeared in The
Washington Post, Hippocampus, Dame Magazine, The Antioch
Review, Green Mountains Review, and many other journals. Cameron
wrote this piece in early spring, 2020, while riding out the quarantine in her
Chicago home.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
