I like the dirty world after the holidays.
When the new year winter is grime/filth, I like to get off on the melancholia. Here, I spot the leftover signs of a magic season now gone. In the parking lot of the pharmacy, I see a battered fake wreath tapping against a light pole; it gives of a clinky metallic cadence/ twap-twap-twap; any good gust could rip it free.
A red ribbon attached to the green part reads Ho Ho Ho as sparse snowflakes move from left to right across my plain of vision.
Everything here is danky sad.
Each taxing breath I take is a hair wall towering over this garden of bronchitis. In my right hand I’ve got my fresh bag of drugs. Little kids exit the doors behind me with their parents. There’s a doctor’s office in there, too, and everybody’s sick now. Everybody’s sick after Christmas. Everyone’s spent holiday body is trying to kill them.
The lot is full of cars. Patients, I imagine. Or some are probably the cars of the doctors or nurses or people who look at the orders for the pills and the creams and the syrups, put them into their containers so people can pay their money and split. I’m in my car, engine running now, my drugs on the passenger seat. I sip from my travel mug and the coffee is long cold. It was from 5 am. It’s been hours since I dropped a kid off at school. I’ve been to Urgent Care. Now I’m here, to get my dope.
I see a kid in his mom’s arms coming out of the building.
I see him speaking words and she is smiling and messing with her key fob to unlock the car somewhere out in front of them. His clothes are nice and so are hers and so I peg them for well off. He has a floppy ear fur hat and a kind tired little face. I tell myself he’s been ill. He’s been ill with a pukey virus and the doctor just took care of him and his mom is all happy that he ought to be getting better now. At least that’s what the doctor told her as he sent in the prescriptions, scooted his chair back slowly/ deliberately/ a confident man with a serious job/ and smiled warmly, if a bit rehearsed, at the lady and the child as he took leave to go to the next room/ the next kid throwing up bile/ or the next kid sneezing his face off.
I stare at the two of them knowing they don’t clock me at all. In the slash of seconds between their exit from the heated building out into the blustery lot, I happen to zoom in on them with my eyes purely by accident. But then I don’t look away. A few seconds later the mom shifts her kid in her arms so she can open the back door of a white Lexus, driver’s side. He disappears from the scene then.
Beyond these strangers I can see someone’s backyard up there on the hill. It’s dead looking; there’s no dog tied to a leash/ no old man rattling trash cans; it’s only a patch of brown grass by a 1977 powder blue rancher. I picture porn being shot in there. Or maybe old people frying bacon and the air is thick from the powerful mist spilling off the burning meat. There are no signs of Christmas up there that I can spot. No window decals of angels or snowflakes on the sliding back doors. Nothing. I picture a brittle used Christmas tree being out by the sliding glass door before long. Maybe one will show up eventually. No one can say for sure.
The mom is kissing the kid’s forehead now and so I lean into that, try to remember what it was like. I know my mom must have kissed my forehead at least a couple of times when I was the same age as this kid, but nothing comes to me. It’s been so long now though. It’s been probably 45 years since I was anything like this kid, since any of this might have happened to me. I can’t remember anything about it if it did. It feels void and hollow. There’s always this urgency in my spirit to try and reconnect with something lost behind me. But I mostly never do. You chased a million rabbits, hound dog, but only ever caught me one.
The kid in his backseat, his mom clicks him in. I know what that looks like. I could click a kid into a five-point harness car seat in the dark with my hands tied behind my back. I’ve got the hours under my belt. Mom is still smiling at her dude and I can see it plain as day. She’s young, maybe 30 if that. I picture him over there perfectly contented/ glad to be out here in the world again. He’s probably good and happy to be away from the confines of the boring mid-morning play room back at the house. Even all those nice educational toys get boring as hell after a while. Or maybe he’s glad to be away from all those jelly-fingered nap time mats back at the daycare center. The smell of vomit and Pine-Sol and Play-Doh. The snappy brittle feel of a knockoff Lego in his tiny fingertips/ the pastor’s car slowly moving through the church lot/ the kid following with his eyes/ warm/ doing good/ missing home/ and always feeling just a little discontented. Always feeling like he might just walk out into that afternoon one of these days and not look back.
As she climbs into her front seat, I start wondering what she’s going to play in there. Music maybe? Train? Beyonce? Carrie Underwood? I don’t fucking know. Maybe a podcast? Or perhaps just the raw silver silence? Something tells me it’s something Christian. A book on tape/ something light and airy read gently by a woman with a spiritual buzz on. Whatever. There’s no way for me to know. This isn’t me in the world. This is me watching the world. There’s a difference and it’s a powerful one that extends far beyond the obvious fences.
Let them sit over there in that nice car in that perfect silence, I say to myself. The boy looking out the window at whatever comes his way. His mom up in the front, her eyes on the road ahead. She’s probably checking him out from time to time in the rearview, you know? Look at her/ still a kid herself and yet her heart is so steady and strong. Stronger than that kid could ever understand. If he needs it though/ when he needs it/ he will see.
They roll out. They head towards State College and that’s that. I’ll probably never see them again. Even if they walked in here right now I probably wouldn’t recognize them. That’s just the way things go. I don’t really care. It feels good to have spied on some people. It feels good to have just been invisible for a short stretch there. Looking through the walls/ seeing everything/ but never seen once.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
