A Hole in the Sidewalk, Avoided
by Sam Gridley

For a new-style American workaholic putting in 75 hours a week, most days are indistinguishable from one another. Today I happen to know it’s Friday because the morning paper had a weekend entertainment section for readers who take weekends. As for months and dates, I often forget my own birthday until the people in the office call me into the conference room for a brief session of cake and cards. I believe that on my last birthday I turned 43, but I would have to pause and do the math to confirm that number.

But it’s my mother’s birthday I set out to journal about. (According to numerous documents that cross my desk in this educational media corporation, journal is indeed a verb. It is something “reflective” teachers do to improve their “practice,” and for this purpose we provide special software with “prompts” and “meditations” for each date, along with inspirational artwork. The meditations—quotes from famous educators—are at least 40 percent inane, enlivened mainly by typos. I am not using our software to type this; thank god, that wasn’t my project. Rather, I am indulging in plain old word processing, with my favorite font, as I play hooky from this morning’s deadline imposed at the last minute by our inept vice president. Occasionally these rebellious impulses spring themselves on me.)

So, my mother’s birthday: that is the topic. Today is her 70th, as I happened to notice because the v.p.’s e-mail emphasized the date in bold red numerals. That is, it would have been her 70th if she had lived beyond her 38th. I did the math. There would be no consequences, of course, if I failed to remember the date. Living alone as I do now, there are few consequences for anything, and it’s surprising that a few pixels on the screen jogged my memory.

There’s something I read in a book about the past rising even after you’ve smashed it underfoot. But rather than having the past lift up, I think it’s more a sensation of falling suddenly into it. Like a section of sidewalk with a trap door. You’re walking innocently back from lunch, and when your foot hits a certain spot, the door gives way and you plunge into the hole. Your body continues back to the office—there’s no physical disturbance—but your soul is left clawing at the walls of the abyss.

Luckily, our pharmaceutical industry and thriving self-help community provide multiple means of escape. Antidepressants, yoga, a vegan diet, etc. You pick the chemical or behavioral ladder you need to climb out, you mount the steps, and your spiritual stride resumes as predictably as your business day. And work itself is the consummate upper, is it not? That must be why Americans obsess on work even more than sex, cars and football.

For myself, I understand all too well why I overwork. Typical appalling childhood resulting in a constant need to confirm my self-worth, as the psychobabblers would say. And I am very good at my job, smart, efficient, the go-to guy and problem-solver, with the result that, even in a corporate world that values the commonplace and distrusts the intelligent, I achieve frequent positive feedback. (Positive feedback being one of our software’s strong points. As an institution we truly honor the term, and sometimes the concept as well.)

Typical childhood, I said. Not quite. Divorce, that’s normal, but the mother doesn’t usually end her misery where the elder child will find her in the morning. Curled on the couch with a teddy bear, a crucifix and a stomach full of—but the details don’t matter. What remains is a disembodied face, vaguely accusatory, floating around in dreams. Or fragments of questions from police officers and other probing adults: did you notice... was there anything different about... Or the way, for years afterward, a siren in the distance would turn into an echo of the little sister’s scream. Combine these bits and pieces with an aloof father subject to rages and you have abundant material for psychiatrists, if you can find one these days who uses more than a prescription pad.

What, then, is the point of remembering her 70th birthday? None, really. Especially since I’ve grown older than she and accustomed to the ways in which people traumatize themselves. “Relationships” fail, children suffer, etc. Whatever stage she was at when her life stopped, I’ve gone half a decade past it, without strong temptation to suicide except at the end of a major project, when I confront the monumental gap between effort and reward. Then the next task begins. Life, as they say, goes on, which is to say there is always more work. Suicide doesn’t fit the schedule.

She would have been a wizened, bitter old woman. In photographs you see the downturn at the right side of her mouth, so chronic (in my memory) that it suggests the after-effect of a stroke. Half-paralyzed by her mid-30s. The eyes, too, though a hint bashful, have a frozen quality about them, not bothering to evade the camera. The expression is cruel in a way, because it suggests that nothing (no event, emotion, mate or child) could overcome her distaste for the world. This is the face that still appears, now and then, in dreams.

Living with my father could do that to a person. Having a solitary brooder like myself and a brat like my sister wouldn’t help. Which is not to assign blame, only to note the complexity of interrelationships.

I may remember where those family photos are stored. I could look for them tonight, but I’m long past thinking there’s revelation to be gained. No “prompt” I find there will encourage productive “meditation.” Besides, by the time my rear hits the couch I’ll be dead tired, as always, and ready for TV, which soothes as it numbs.

So this little break in the sidewalk will be forgotten by tomorrow. And I think that’s the way we’re all evolving. The holes occur less and less often, or perhaps we develop a sixth sense for avoiding them. Only the emotional novices, the pharmaceutically naive, fall in. That is my theory anyway. We are a resilient, advanced society.

The work beckons me now. It has more enticements than the young bodies in beer commercials. Those bold red numerals in the e-mail, throbbing with life! But sarcasm aside, I made a personal promise to comment on the project schedule, which is open in another window on my screen. For a bit of novelty, I can use green highlighting.

So let’s get on with it. Today is, whatever I said, Friday? with the weather outside so hot (reportedly) that I will phone to have lunch delivered to my desk. With iced coffee, a trusty chemical tool. No need to take chances with an actual sidewalk.

Sam Gridley's fiction and satire have appeared in more than two dozen magazines and anthologies, including Other Voices, Cottonwood, American Short Fiction, Cimarron Review, Juked, and Amarillo Bay. Downloads of his work are available at Gridleyville.com, where he serves as the mayor, fire chief, and animal control officer.

© 2008 prickofthespindle.com