birdwood days (concluded)

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the story i'm about to tell was intended to be the penultimate installment of a multi-part series that started with this post.

problem was, my alcohol-addled brain couldn't conjure up sufficient detail about our other neighbors to flesh out their stories to my satisfaction, so i let the whole thing die--until tonight, anyway, when this song came up on shuffle.

btw, the picture of our old house which follows isn't quite right; the lawn was better and it was painted a pale olive green when we lived there.

and the left side, at the top of the driveway? that used to be the garage.


3.  our house



the only thing that still haunts me about that long-ago april day is how passive and mindlessly accepting of authority it would prove me to be.

sure, i was only ten, but you tell me: if you woke up in the wee, small hours with flashlights shining in your eyes and two hulking cops clomping around the darkened bedroom you shared with your little brother telling you, "it's ok, kid--go back to sleep," and you did, what would that say about you?

it's a question i've pondered more than once over the years.

* * * * *

i awoke on that sunny saturday morning as usual, wandered out to the kitchen and poured myself my usual bowl of cereal. it was only after settling down in front of the tv for my usual three hours of cartoons that i realized how quiet the house was, suddenly remembered the weird thing with the policemen and the flashlights the night before and wondered if it had just been a crazy dream.

getting up and looking around, i found my little sister's room empty, my parents' bedroom door open, their bed stripped of its bedspread but otherwise seemingly untouched [i never did figure that one out], and my still-sleeping brother the only other person in the house.

as unprecedented as all this was, i sat back down in front of the tv, figuring everybody'd show up sooner or later.

it was mrs. harberger from next door who finally came over and told me my father and sister were in the hospital and my mother was down at the ash's, but not to worry because everything would be ok.

i accepted this news without question and went outside to play with her son (and my best friend) davy.

when an hour or so later my normally affectionate and impeccably-groomed uncle huby unexpectedly screeched into the driveway from 200 miles away looking disheveled and unshaven and without even so much as a hello demanded to know where my mother was, i directed him to the house two doors down and went back to whatever davy and i were doing.

weirder and weirder, but everything was ok--the grownups had told me so, so it had to be true.

when later that day my brother and i were summoned into my mother's pale presence only to be told nothing more than, "your dad was very sick, and he died," i held her cold hands and accepted her words without question.

it was only years later, digging around in the silver metal box for my birth certificate so i could sign up for driver's ed, that i stumbled across the truth; my mother subsequently and reluctantly filled in the details that the official papers

and that cold, godawful handwritten note

left out.

turns out when he went out to the garage early on that saturday morning, cut a piece of garden hose of sufficient length to reach from the exhaust pipe to the backseat of the family car, started the engine, climbed in and lit his last lucky, my father neglected to notice that the window in the door that led from the garage to the kitchen was half-open [at least i hope to god that's the way it happened].

for whatever reason--probably because he hadn't come to bed yet--either the sound of the engine or the smell of the exhaust finally roused my mother from her uneasy sleep.

when she found him, he'd fallen out of the car and was crawling toward the kitchen door [or so she chooses to believe]. when her frantic efforts at mouth-to-mouth failed to revive him, she flew down the street to the ash's house and hammered on their door.

it was harsh, pragmatic laverne who saved my sister--while everybody else was focused on the lost cause sprawled on the garage floor, she was the one who noticed the open window and went in and dragged liz's blue and unconscious little body from her bed in the toxic bedroom nearest the garage and walked her around outside in the fresh air until she started to cough and breathe.

* * * * *

the last thing i remember about that long april day's journey into night is lying in bed next to davy harberger as he slept, radio playing softly in the background, twisting my dead father's too-big timex on its stretchy band around and around my slender, newly-orphaned wrist as i stared at the ceiling, listening to the #1 song of that week of april, 1967 as it came up twice an hour, every hour all night long, and wondering if anything would ever be usual again.

The Turtles - Happy Together