Walking Backwards - Episode 15
The cracks in Drew are getting harder to ignore and to mend.
This is the fifteenth episode of Walking Backwards, the third collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Previous collections are:
The Cold Days of Summer - If you are new to these tales and the type who likes to know how things started I would recommend starting here.
The Hollow Men - the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas.
New episodes are posted (almost) every Sunday. You can move easily between episodes via links to the previous and next episode.
If you are new to these not quite true tales of Texas but are the type who likes to dive right in you could start with the prologue to Walking Backwards. The prologue provides a summary of the first two collections and descriptions of the major characters you will be reading about in Walking backwards.
In our last episode, episode 14 of Walking Backwards, several months have passed since Mark’s death. Drew, Ann and Rae travel to Odessa. Drew learns again about the power of forgiveness from his Mom. Mark begins to see the light.
The Crack-up
It don’t take long to spend the night. Long on remembering, short on forgiving.
A lot of what's happening lately doesn't make sense, but I'm wondering if anything ever made sense.
I've never been a man of faith, but at least I had hope. Now I've lost that.
What do you say when a friend or a complete stranger says “How are you doing?” If you're like me, you keep it short. I say “Good” or “Fine” and on a rare occasion “Great” but that's all I say, I keep the response to a single syllable. I've never thought people really want to know any more than that. Think about it. Do you really think they want anything more than single word of response? Do they really want to know your dog died, that your best friend has cancer, that you were laid off, that you don't know what the fuck is wrong, but you know something is? No, no, they don't. They just want a short, positive response so they can say, “That's good” or something as meaningless and non-committal. All we want are sound bites, positive sound bites.
I could go into great detail of the last few years, but what's the point? I don't want to waste your time so I will say it as quickly as I can.
I walk in darkness. It is January 1992 and since October 1989 I've been walking in darkness.
On the outside all seems well. I've plenty of work. I'm making decent cash. I have a lovely wife, a wonderful daughter, two good dogs and a nice home. All looks good. The last few years have been good, from the outside looking in. From the inside looking out, it's a different story. I'm hollowed out, an empty shell.
Rae will be three this year and she's grown like a weed. Full of life, smart, funny, she's the light of my life, when I take the time to see her, to really see her. It's not like I'm not around. I don't travel much anymore but I'm not connected to what's real very often. It's getting harder and harder to know what is real. Is it the world in which I am married? Is it the world where I see the dead? I don't know anymore.
I'm just not connected. I'm going through the motions. I pay the bills, show up where I'm supposed to, say the right things, but I'm not engaged. Some people are starting to notice and that's getting on my nerves.
I have a lot of polite conversations, with everybody, even those I love. I think I've lost the ability to understand what love is. I smile, I say something clever, but I never get too deep, never say anything deep, never let anything in. I keep everything, everyone on the surface, no one, no one gets in anymore. I am alone.
Losing both Rick and Mark in 1989 took a chunk out of me. It's like a part of me died with them.
I've drifted away from the long term beneficial things and towards the short term beneficial things. There's a problem with that, too many things that have what seems to be short term benefits have long term detriments.
Drinking has short term benefits for me, as long as I don't cross too many lines, too many thresholds. Up to a point, alcohol keeps me from dreaming, keeps me from seeing the field, it even keeps me from hearing the voices as much. The voices are still there but I try not to listen to them. Yeah, drinking has its benefits, but if I drink too much I lose all control and the dreams and the voices change and the worlds become too strange for me.
I stay up an extra hour or two after Rae and Ann are asleep. That's when I drink to forget the day and to keep the voices and dreams away. Most times I don't drink too much, just enough to take the edge of the day off.
As Sam and I get older we've stopped running, not because she wanted to. She still loves to get out and see the neighborhood. I'm the one who stopped. She plays with Buster and Rae, but Buster is getting old, he's close to 15 years old. His vision is getting weak and he sleeps most of the day and night. Sometimes I feel like him. I don't see things as well as I used to and there are more days than not that I would be glad to close my eyes and shut out the world.
Drinking more, running less doesn't help with weight maintenance and I've gained 20 pounds in the last two years. I feel it, the extra weight, on my knees and my backs. I feel myself slowing down. I feel myself fading into the background of life.
Rae loves Sam and Sam loves Rae so they don't need me for much of anything any more.
Ann is teaching again and she has her own friends at school. That combined with her long time friends who live nearby, she has plenty to do when Rae isn't occupying her time.
I'm disconnecting from everything. There's too much noise in the world and I try to avoid is as much as I can but sometimes I can't. I can't avoid the noise. So I drink until I don't hear anything.
I'm starting to wonder if anyone needs me.
There, I kept it short but I still rambled on too long, didn't I?
Yeah, I wonder if anyone needs me.
It isn't one thing. It isn't everything. It is just a bunch of things that when I add them all up I wonder if any of it is still worth it.
I've been thinking about how to die. There are a lot of ways and it all depends on the context of the situation which way is the right way.
So many ideas, so many problems. My mind gets filled up with it all. I need a way to empty it.
Rings
I've never been much of one for wearing jewelry, not rings, not watches, not bracelets, not necklaces. They just all seemed to get in the way and I never saw the practicality of any of them, even a watch. If I need to know what time it is, there's always someone with a watch around so I can just ask them.
There was a time when my jewelry collection consisted of three rings: my Dad's Navy Construction Battalion (CB) ring that my Mom gave me after my Dad's death, my college ring from UT and my wedding ring. The only one I ever wore regularly was my wedding ring. I only wore my Dad's CB ring when I knew I was going to see my Mom, it seemed to please her to see I was wearing it. I never wore my college ring and the last time I looked for it I couldn't find it. Maybe I lost it, maybe it is hidden away in some box or some drawer. I don't know.
Sometimes I take my wedding ring off when I'm working in the yard or in the garage. Sometimes I forget to put it back on. I've caught myself over the last few months not wearing it for days on end. Not intentionally, I'm not making a statement, least I don't think I am? Sometimes I just don't wear it. Not sure if that means anything but I'm wondering about it. I'm wondering about a lot of things. I'm losing things, I'm losing rings, who knows what else. I'm not sure if I will be around to notice what I've lost.
What’s happening, Bro?
I drove to Palestine, Texas the other day. That's where my parents are from, where they were married, where their life together began, where my brother Ed died in 1956 at the age of four, where my parents never returned once they left.
I left early in the morning after Ann went to work and I dropped Rae off at day care. I did have some work to do that day but I wasn't at all focused.
I wanted to see my brother's grave. I searched the registry of the Palestine City Cemetery for any Remingtons who died in 1956. I found one, Edward Stanley Remington. I wrote down the location of the grave and walked to the section of the cemetery. It took me a few minutes to find the correct row and spot but I found a small simple stone that read
Edward Stanley Remington
Born August 14, 1952
Died September 17, 1956Nothing else, no mention of why Edward died, no mention of his family, just the bare facts. There was no bench nearby so I sat on the ground. I didn't say anything, just sat there and wondered what Edward was like. I listened to the wind, I could hear cars driving up and down the nearby street but I felt nothing.
I'm not sure what I expected or hoped for. I hadn't thought that through. I guess maybe I was hoping for some kind of connection, but there wasn't anything to connect with.
I hadn't been sitting there for long when I heard a young voice say “You won't find any part of me here.” I looked around, there was no one nearby, no one I could see. I waited a few more minutes until the voice spoke again “You won't find any part of me here.” I don't know if it was Edward talking to me, but the voice was right, I didn't find any part of anything there.
I drove back home, arriving a little after 5:00 pm. Ann and Rae were home. Ann asked me about my day, I said it had been good and we had dinner as a family.
All is lost
When someone close to you dies, a part of you dies with them. After that happens, is there enough of you to keep living? Lately, more days than not, I don't think there is enough of me to keep living. I've lost too much.
Desperate, dissolution and depressed is how I feel right now. It seems like no matter what I do, it's not working out. And there's not one aspect of my life that seems to be working, that's moving in the right direction. I'm either stagnant or I'm going backwards so fast I don't know if I could stop. If just one piece of my life was working I could build on that. When everything's falling apart, hell, I don't know what I can do. I don't know if I can stop this. I don't know how I can turn things around, or maybe it's just too damn late.
I do enough to keep people off my back. I say enough, I do enough so people leave me alone. I can be a bastard, that's for sure and after a while people seem to have learned when I'm at the edge and about to bite. I've lost a few contracts, but I've kept more. Guess I'm good enough.
At home it is a little different. Ann knows something is wrong but when she asks me what it is I tell her everything is okay. No matter how many times she asks I say it is okay. Do that enough times she gets mad and walks off. Keep doing that over months and she quits asking and that's fine with me. We live in the same house but we aren't spending much time together. It's like we both do what we can to avoid the other. Ann is focused on Rae and most weekends the two of them go off and out of the house. Rae is a little harder, a little more persistent but even she has learned to stay away from me. This is making somethings easier, somethings harder.
The next couple of months didn't get any better. I knew something had to change. I had no one, no one to talk to. I was done. I was tired of living, tired of waking up each day not knowing what was ahead, tired of lying down at the end of the day wondering if that’s all there was. I was tired. I was ready for a change, any kind of change.
I hadn't been to Odessa in nearly three years. I hadn't seen from there since Mark's funeral. I had lost touch with them. I guess we all had our own lives and I knew in my case it hurt too much to see them because it only reminded me of the dead.
Speaking of the dead, I wasn't seeing them either. I hadn't seen Tommy, Mark, Rick or my Dad in my dreams since the last time I saw Mark after his death and said that I forgave him. That was somewhat by choice. I didn't want to see them and I had learned the right mixture of alcohol and OTC medications to blunt the dreams, to keep them from occurring. Of course, I really don't know if it was my magic concoctions that kept them from appearing or if they were avoiding me. No matter how you looked at it, we were doing a good job of avoiding each other.
In between work and drinking I was also managing to avoid seeing all that much of Ann and Rae. That is, I didn't see them very often in a clear state of mind. If I wasn't working I was often in a self-induced haze and a growing amount of work time was spent in a hazy state.
My head was getting full of memories, many of them I wanted to forget. So I drank and I forgot some of them, but new ones showed right up.
I hadn't heard a voice since I had been to my brother's grave in Palestine.
Then one night it all began again. I fell asleep on a Thursday night with enough beer in me to keep me asleep and hopefully not dream. I was wrong. I woke up in the field and walked towards a tree in the distance. I could see someone was standing there. I didn't know who it was but I figured they were waiting for me. I was right. It was Stan the Skeleton Man, he was waiting for me and he was pissed.
As I walked up to the tree I could see that Stan wasn't doing good. He had lost all form and was nothing but a skeleton. He waved and bones fell off of him. He leaned over to pick up the bones as he spoke to me.
“God damn, Drew, you’ve got to figure this out. You’re totally screwing it up. You couldn’t be more wrong right now. Just stop, just stop what you’re doing and look around you. You’ve gone completely fucking blind, completely blind to the things you need to see.”
I wasn't interested in a lecture and wasn't interested in the conversation so I didn't respond at all.
“Don't you see? This isn't part of the plan. You've taken big steps back. For awhile you were living, but now, you're not living at all, not at all and I don't like where this is headed. Look at me! I'm your reflection and there's hardly anything left of me. It's all I can do to hold myself together!”
He was right, it was all he could do to hold himself together. He was right, he was a reflection of me. It was all I could to hold myself together. I was damn tired of the effort.
Stan kept talking, lecturing to me, but I wasn't listening. I didn't hear much of what he said save for the last.
“Drew, are you listening? Shit, if you're not listening, what's the point? I'm done. Just one last thing: death is not the worst thing.”
The voices come back
Two weeks later the voices broke through my self-induced haze. Early in the morning, while I was driving to Houston to meet with a potential new customer I heard a loud bang. The truck shook and a voice firmly said “I'm not done with you yet.” The truck pulled sharply to the right and I had to fight it to keep from diving into the ditch and rolling. I had a blowout, right front tire was shredded. But I'm good at changing tires. I'm fast and fifteen minutes later, I was on the road again, a little sweaty, feeling alive from the effort. I made it to my meetings on time.
Halfway through the first meeting a new voice spoke up, right in the middle of my presentation.
“This is not your life.” The voice was firm, steady and unrelenting. It was determined to get its point across. Every five minutes for the next hour the voice spoke again “This is not your life.”
I somehow managed to keep things under control and closed the deal with a new customer. They wanted to update their employee orientation program and they thought I was the man to do it. A ten week contract for a ridiculously large, to me, amount of money. Sometimes people just want to spend money. I don't mind, as long as I can get a piece of it.
Life sometimes moves to a schedule, sometimes it is completely random. This was one of those times life moved to a schedule.
My new contract required me to work in the Galleria area five days a week for the next ten weeks. March passed and I learned the ins and outs of Houston traffic. I was driving over 500 miles a week, leaving the house at 5:20 in the morning to miss as much of the Houston traffic as I could and left the office around 6:00 in the evening in order to miss as much of the afternoon/evening traffic as I could. Most evenings I got home a little after 7:00. Ann and Rae would have already eaten dinner but would leave me a plate I could microwave. After I ate and after Ann and Rae went to bed I drank in order to avoid the dreams.
Every evening on the way home I bought a six pack of beer to put in the refrigerator so that it would always look like I hadn't drank anything. The beers I drank alone I would place in the outside garbage can and I made sure I was the one who rolled it out to the street every Monday and Thursday before I left for my drive to Houston. Maybe I wasn't fooling Ann, but at least I was making an effort.
Just like I was on a schedule, so were the voices. Every morning at 5:45 am I would hear “I'm not done with you yet.” Every morning at 10:15 and every afternoon at 2:30 I would hear “This is not your life.”
Sometimes it didn't matter how much I drank, Stan still showed up in my dreams. In early April I woke in a field, the fog was heavy. I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. The act of walking was disorienting, every step felt more foreign, every step I felt myself changing. I had been walking for some time when I tripped over something and fell to the ground.
There was a skull on the ground staring at me and it spoke.
“Good job, good job. Look what you've done. I've got no form. I can't pull myself together. I can't even pull myself together to show you what is possible! I'm done, done. You've done it, I can't help you, you can't help me, at least not in the state you're in. I tried, I really tried and look what it brought me.”
The fog lifted and I could see a skeleton, its bones strewn across the field. It was Stan, or what was left of Stan.
“Shit, Stan, what happened to you?”
“Have you not been listening? You, that's what happened to me. You! I tried to help, they said I could help and I tried but look at the results. Shit, you never wanted help, you had your own way, your own plan and you never had any intention of taking what I said seriously and this is the result. I've no form, no substance. All I am is a reflection of you. Something has to change, something has to change soon.”
He was right something had to change. Sometimes ideas, plans come to me from nowhere. I've always assumed my subconscious is what comes up with the idea but I really don't know.
I was going to fade away.
Author’s note: I’ve mentioned Fitzgerald’s The Crack-up more than once in these not quite true tales of Texas. Here’s a brief description from the back cover:
The Crack-Up tells the story of Fitzgerald's sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from glamorous success to empty despair, and his determined recovery. Compiled and edited by Edmund Wilson shortly after F. Scott Fitzgerald's death, this revealing collection of his essays—as well as letters to and from Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos—tells of a man with charm and talent to burn, whose gaiety and genius made him a living symbol of the Jazz Age, and whose recklessness brought him grief and loss. "Fitzgerald's physical and spiritual exhaustion is described brilliantly," noted The New York Review of Books: "the essays are amazing for the candor."
Drew’s reflection, Stan the Skeleton Man, can’t hold himself together. Neither can Drew. Next week in episode 16 of Walking Backwards Drew comes up with a plan to solve all of his problems.
Hard reading. Good work, just honest and lonely.
Thankful for this episode.