pins and needles

Trev is back on waffles. Our recent dining disaster has probably set us back months. I can hardly blame him for not wanting to venture out into a world that refuses to cooperate. Pushing pins into a map is so much easier. We like to tell ourselves that we might someday actually make Livermore, California, our destination, for that is where we would find the world’s longest continuously burning lightbulb. Or maybe we’d keep driving south to Monrovia to see the Wizard of Bras. Or maybe we’d go for broke and head clear to Smithfield, Virginia, to see the World’s Oldest Cured Ham, which from all reports is quite impressive and looks like a petrified gunnysack.

It’s ninety-four degrees in Orlando. Seventy-one in Minneapolis. Today we learn how to make pineapple chutney. Today we learn how to upholster an ottoman. We learn more about Richie Sambora from E! Entertainment than we care to know. Once you surrender to this routine there are certain comforts. To wit, Rachael Ray is cute but not so cute that it’s impossible to imagine being with her, and the fact that her arms are a little chunky and she’s carrying a little pooch above the waistline makes her all the more real. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that the Ottoman Empire survives, if only to rest our feet on. With double Doppler and round-the-clock coverage, even the weather is predictable. And it’s good to know that Richie Sambora is still out there, because it means there’s hope for me. But where is the comfort for Trev? Sit Rachael Ray naked in his lap, and what could he do with her? Try giving a Bulgarian Gas Mask when you can’t even stand up. Maybe ten years ago he could’ve propped his legs on an ottoman. While Richie Sambora is pushing fifty and still banging Heather Locklear the last time I checked, Trev may not see twenty-five. Trev’s life is subtraction. At twenty, he’s aging in reverse. It’s only a matter of time before he’s helpless as an infant once more, and slicing his waffles into thirty-six pieces will no longer be enough. Eventually somebody will have to feed him the forkfuls. And yet what choice does he have but to mark the time?

Around two, our routine is interrupted by the ringing of Trev’s cell phone. Retrieving the phone from the nylon pouch near his arm rest is no simple task for Trev, and it’s frustrating as hell to watch. But watch I must, for nowhere is it outlined in our service plan that I should answer his phone. It is among those tasks, technically speaking, that he can still perform on his own. In this way, I am helping Trev help himself—simply by sitting on my ass.

For leverage, Trev is forced to arch his back and roll his head to one side and lean slightly forward before he can go fishing in his pouch with his inflexible right arm. Once he’s got a purchase on the phone, it dangles precariously in his clutches as he raises it to his ear like a human steam shovel. Trev hates talking on the phone. And watching the way he’s forced to bow his spine and loll his head to execute the task, it’s easy to see why. Everybody understands this implicitly, so nobody calls Trev unless it’s a logistical matter of some import. Nobody but his dad. The timing of his father’s calls adheres to no schedule or routine, which further irritates Trev. That his father does not know enough about Trev to accommodate his need for structure is irritating even to me. Trev could easily ignore these calls—he’s got caller ID. But he seems to savor these opportunities to make his father work. What’s more, he even seems to savor my audience.

“Hello?” he says, as though he doesn’t know who’s calling.

“Oh, it’s you,” he deadpans.

And from there it is a stilted and awkward dance, all the more so because I am witness to only one side of the conversation—and it’s the mostly silent side. I can only imagine—as the cat sleeps curled in my lap, and Hurricane Dean sweeps silently across the screen in satellite—that his father’s part consists of false starts and errant stabs at small talk, inquiries into whether Trev got this message or that, whether he ate turkey for Thanksgiving, whether it’s humid in western Washington. And when his inquiries attempt to delve deeper into Trev’s life—yielding nothing but the most cursory yes or no answers—he is forced to share the details of his own life in Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, Trev’s end of the conversation consists of little more than the occasional withering commentary on his father’s failures, jagged remarks along the lines of “Well, that figures” or “Hmph, that’s a first” or “What did you expect?” And who can blame him? How dare a father deign to engender intimacy from halfway across the country with a child he forsook. How dare he grope around in the dark years after the fact, grasping for forgiveness. How dare he wish to undo what can’t be undone.