Off the Tracks

Reed, your story about your mother doesn’t make sense. How could someone be smart and sophisticated but let a con man scam her out of fifty thousand dollars?

“He’s an actor. He lives in Hollywood but he’s here visiting family,” my mother told me over the phone. “He’s good-looking. Italian.” She clicked her tongue. Middletown was thick with Italians. Many had worked for my father in the feldspar mill he ran. Lovely people.

Now, years later, Girlfriend has taken up with a smooth-talking, unemployed, seedy-looking guy ten years younger than she. He has no job and no fixed address. Not only that, she met him at a dumpster. And not any dumpster, a Goodwill dumpster. Girlfriend hasn’t had a boyfriend for a long, long time. So I told her my mother’s tale. Might be a useful lesson.

Yes, Sally Stevens appeared to be sophisticated and worldly. She taught me makeup and to choose tasteful clothes and pick the right men. Snagging a guy who could take you places was the mission.

I was too involved in my own life to see that beneath Mom’s domineering, maternal role, she was passionate woman who longed for masculine attention. When she met Rudi she was a widow in her fifties, like Girlfriend. And like Girlfriend, Mom may have hoped for another steady relationship, this time with SEX. Yes, great sex! To make up for the years of pretty lousy sex or none.

I measure how was hungry she was for a last crack at a big affair by how easily she persuaded herself that this unemployed actor, Rudi Campisi of Middletown, Connecticut, was a candidate for romance.

“He ruins the King’s English,” she said gaily. Slumming, what fun. “Just because he’s from Middletown doesn’t mean he’s small-time. And Italians are good people.” She meant Rudi was uneducated and uncultured. “Simple people. He’s very nice. A smoothie,” she ended in a sultry voice.

This was a woman who did the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in ink and read every book in the local library, probably six or seven a week: literature, biography, mystery, gardening. Drove miles to arty films. Admired tough, sassy women of her day: Eleanor Roosevelt, Katie Hepburn. Glamor, money, the high life.

Her passion for Rudi, born of her loneliness and horniness, simply overwhelmed her usual skepticism. Rudi knew a middle-aged sucker when he saw one. As she fell he simply held out his arms.

A few things began to bother her. “Rudi loves my house,” she gushed. Who wouldn’t? She designed houses, she collected art and antiques. “He looked around at the paintings and said, ‘If only they were originals they’d be worth a fortune.’ 'They ARE originals,' I said. How amusing!”

Originals, yes, but not worth a fortune. She only looked rich.

Original art, authenticity, honest genius, these were Mom’s highest standards. Yes, she was a snob to the extent she could be on her limited income. Dad had left her a hundred thousand in 1961 but no cash flow. She had to sell real estate.

She chose to ignore the warning flags. Weeks passed and he never got that casting call. Yet he was good company during those long, dark nights and he raved about her cooking. He did all he could to stave off her growing impatience with his Middletown gossip and his lack of money.

I stayed clear of my mother in those days but I did meet him once. Rudi was tall but not as tall as my father. He was probably very photogenic with his glossy black hair swept back from a sharp-jawed profile. He could play an Indian. Or a Mafioso.

Her friends rolled their eyes. “That Sally, she’s a wild one. Her husband would roll in his grave.”

“Running off the tracks, just like a woman,” old bachelor Lloyd growled into his scotch. “They get like that.”

Sensing Mom’s ardor was cooling, Rudi turned up the heat.

She must know, he said, the movies were all run by the Mob. He was into them for fifty thousand and if he didn’t pay up they would throw acid in his daughter’s face. He wept when he told her this. If my mother would give him fifty thousand, exactly half of what she had in untraceable cash, his daughter would be safe.

Lust may subside but a woman’s rescue impulses last a lifetime. She got the untraceable money and gave it to him. Rudi thanked her and disappeared.

She was so chagrined at her mistake—to put it mildly—that she told me this story. Sure, she tried to get it back, hired a dectective, tried to prove she had withdrawn the money but he had instructed her too well. Years later when she ran across him, he laughed at her.

Even in her old age she seemed amazed that she ever believed his story. Me, too. How could this happen to smart, sophisticated Sally Stevens? How could my own mother be such a dope?

I tell you how. She had fallen under the spell of her own dream, that he really would get an role and invite her to visit him in Hollywood.

I know she had dreamed of a big life for herself because that’s what she dreamed for me. Didn’t Katherine Hepburn live just down river from her? Not that they'd ever cross paths, Mom knew that.

I wish I had known her then. Of course I knew her as a daughter but I was a very different me those long-ago times. I was surprised that she fell for such a hoodie guy in the first place. And then for his extortion scam. Two mistakes. Yet she never admitted to the first because she really did not recognize her own yearnings.

So, Girlfriends, when you go dumpster diving you're likely to find some trash.

Dreamed Life:Two

In the beginning, monster dreams come at me in the night.

“Wake up, honey, it’s only a dream,” Momma says.

Only a dream. As if it weren’t real but what’s could be more real than the awful creature who lives under my bed and reaches its long, clammy fingers up the sides of my mattress so I must lie perfectly still in the absolute center as far out of reach as I can get. Hold my breath. It will wrap its long, cold arms around me and carry me away.

This is not the dream I wanted. When I turn on the light it vanishes.

Here is the dream I made for myself: the white, white room. There’s my black Nikon on the floor, the neck loop open, ready for my hand. The beauty of the camera's mechanism, the elegant slap of the mirror lifting and falling exactly so. Like cocking a well-oiled rifle. Frame, focus and squeeze the trigger.

Light on the delicate emulsion. I can almost hear the molecules laughing as they rearrange themselves. What took you so long, they shout joyfully as they form precise shapes on the film. When I pull the photograph out of the fixing solution the image belongs to me. I dreamt I would make pictures and I do. I make beautiful pictues. I exist.

With the camera I can go anywhere in the world. No one asks why I am there because they can see the camera, my trophy tool. Show me your face, I command. Let me count your eyelashes. Now I have you forever.

I still have that two-eyed Kodak Brownie Dad gave me for my twelfth birthday. Two wide rolls of 620 film, twelve exposures each. The Brownie cracks open like a coconut to reveal the spindly spools, the scratched plastic lens, the simple lever that snapped open the shutter. I took pictures of my old hound, left, right, sitting on his haunches, innocently oblivious to his boy stuff jutting forward.

As a girl I never imagined I would become a photographer. Because developing the film cost money, girls grow up to be writers. We sit quietly in a room pecking out words on somebody’s old typewriter. The ‘e’ arm is bent. Write on both sides of the paper to conserve it. Rewinding the thin ribbon, then reversing it. Scrubbing ink off the elite type with a toothbrush dipped in nail polish remover, wet, inky, stinky fingers.

But that Nikon on the floor, the shutter sound as deluxe as a Mercedes door closing with a rich thunk. Those blindingly white domes, palms over rooftops, that journey to Morocco with my aunt Edith. She carries her paint box and small rolls of canvas, a folding easel. She sets up at the gate of a souk where donkeys hurry by. She paints the shadows deep blue and purple. I open the aperture wide to increase the contrast because I want those shadows for myself.

Edith died ten years before I was born but she left me those arched blue and rose shadows and the white, white domes. In my dream I go back alone, find the room, set my camera down and wait for her.

Dreamed Life

I never had an agenda for my life, not one I could articulate. No path to my shining star. All I had were wishes and hopes and disappointed people who had other plans for me.

Dream number one: I live in a white room with a white floor and a tall window that looks out over blinding white domes against a deep blue sky. My bed coverlet is white and there is nothing else in the room except my camera. Deep blue shadows stripe the white, white floor.

Dream number two: I work at my keyboard looking into a garden whose walls burn with thick pink and red bougainvillea. A Mexican in a long-sleeved shirt splashes water on the stones. His face is dark in the shade of his wide hat.

Dream number three: two armchairs by the fire. My feet on the fender, his feet on the fender as we consider the remains of the day.

The angel of my dreams has guided all my wanderings. Only now do I see that they all came true.

Mopsy's First Cat

Update to Bonnie Pratt, Mopsy’s breeder:

Why would Mopsy suddenly not go down the block on her leash? She’d learned to sniff and piddle but one day last week she just sat down on the sidewalk and looked at me with those big, brown Shih Tzu eyes. No cookies or enthusiastic thigh slapping, no pulling or jerking would budge her. I couldn't drag my twelve pound dog down the street so I gave up and we came home.

But then she would go with me, off leash. Very dangerous! Other dogs on leash terrify her, God knows why. But she would not go down the block with Jim, even off leash so he carried her to the end of the block, put her down but then carried her back past a friendly, sniffy dog. He doesn't mind. It's his first dog. But I imagine myself an experienced dog trainer. Hmm.

Now she may go down the block off leash and let me put it on before we cross the road. But she’s bored with that part of the walk where we might meet other dogs. Any size. Yesterday a Chihuahua charmed her so much little Mopsy leaned over to sniff, waggling eagerly. But the wretch suddenly snapped at her. Thank God she's fast!

She had never even noticed, let alone met, a cat until I happened to toss a bowl of water into the jasmise vines beside our back deck where Mopsy lay deep in her afternoon snooze. The wet and surprised cat, hunting birds in this exotic jungle, leaped out onto the deck. The big, fluffy fellow landed i right beside Mopsy with a thud and woke her up.

In a flash the cat flew off the deck with Mopper right behind it. Down the path, out through the gate--note to self, keep the gate closed— and down the long driveway as fast as a big cat and a short-legged dog can run. Barely ahead, the cat turned right onto the sidewalk with yapping Mopsy on his tail, her long ears twirling like two propellers. Satisfied, the Mop stopped a few feet down the walk at the property line, her pretty head and ears up. She snorted importantly and circled twice to be sure her territory was clear. Then she then trotted back into the yard, sneezing, extremely pleased with herself.

First cat, ever. And bigger than she. Four houses down, that rascal sat in the middle of the sidewalk, his sidewalk, watching us.

Claiming Lucky

My friend Martin loved to tell us how Lucky came into his life. Because I'm a writer, I made it a short story. Here's the end which became part of Martin's eulogy.

HOW MARTIN CLAIMED LUCKY AS HIS OWN:

Damn near seventy, Martin thought as he drove home that winter night. Wasn’t he too old to have a dog? Total responsibility, that scared him.

When he unlocked his front door, Lucky followed him inside, panting nervously. Martin headed straight to the kitchen to fill a water bowl.

As he reached down a dish, he realized how delightful it was to select just the right one for Lucky’s water. Gosh, it was also delightful to think of going to the pet store tomorrow to select a real dog bowl. Two bowls in fact, one for water, one for food.

Then he remembered the Alpo Liz had given him.

“Take him, I already have a dog,” she’s said. Pissed off. The can was still in the car.


He had to knee the dog back from following him outside. As he fumbled around the upholstery he heard a whine from inside his house, light as a bow on a violin string. Martin paused. It was a new sound in his life, the beginning of something. Maybe, too, the end of something.


He would miss Liz’s kitchen. She would be tidying up now and in his mind he saw her wide rump as she bent to add a glass to the dishwasher. What had repelled him now seemed endearing because it belonged to a woman he had loved. Yes, he loved her but not enough. Women were needy, it was their nature. As it was his nature to avoid it.

The Alpo can was already very cold. He’d nuke up a few spoonfuls right away, just to make Lucky feel at home. The dog—his very own dog, his first—might like that leftover salami. And then he thought, no no, too fattening, he’d throw that out right now. Tomorrow he’d buy proper dog food and go on a real diet himself. Take Lucky to the dog park. The exercise would be good for both of them.


He twisted the handle of the can opener while the dog sat at his feet. Lucky’s bright eyes followed every movement of Martin’s hands.


“So, you love me already, huh? How about a little taste of Alpo, Lucky?”