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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Aging / Maturity
- Published: 02/06/2015
A Day in the Life (Approx. 4,200 wds.)
A day in the life on an 80-year old. Paul Lerner found it hard to believe that he was actually that age. When he’d turned 75, he’d realized with a shock that he’d been around for three-quarters of a century; that was a long time. The changes that had occurred during his lifetime were almost as many, maybe even more, than those that had taken place during his father’s lifetime. Then, there’d been the radio, television, cars, airplanes, washers, dryers, air-conditioning, all the modern stuff we now take for granted. In Paul’s generation, there’d come cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, Notebooks, blogs, and of course the computer along with the Worldwide Web. And now, after another five years, which had seemed to go by in a flash, he was 80. Incredible!
Paul lined up his shot, chalked his cue stick and bent over the cue ball. It was his once-a-week pool match with a friend and neighbor, Mike Wilson. When had they started playing? Paul had stopped playing serious tennis at age 75 so it must have been five years ago. Once Paul had played tennis three or four times a week. Now he shot pool three mornings a week, once with Mike, once with a group of other old tennis players and once with two other friends. The pool room, which had six tables, was in a building called The Lodge, the activity center of his Northern California retirement community. Paul was fond of saying that pool was much easier on the knees than tennis. He still played an occasional set of what he thought of as recreational tennis, just to keep his hand in and because old habits die hard.
It was funny, Paul often thought, that, although both he and Mike knew their pool games didn’t matter a bit in the grand scheme of things they tried their hardest to win. Mike was, like most of their retirement community members, a golfer. He played pool only this one time a week. He still hated to lose, as did Paul. Why, knowing better, were they so competitive? Paul guessed that no matter how old and how much larger other things, such as sickness and death, loomed in their lives, the competitive fire never died. Maybe if it did you were ready to be carried away.
Paul straightened up, took a deep breath, his routine when facing an eight-ball shot, then bent over again, lined up his shot and brought his cue stick forward. The cue ball hit the eight at just the spot he’d aimed at; the eight ball went toward the side pocket, hesitated a second at the edge, then dropped in. Paul had won the game.
“Good shot,” said Mike.
“Thanks,” said Paul. “I guess that’s it.” He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. “I have to run some errands. I’ll see you next Monday, if not before.” Paul and his wife Sally usually met Mike and his wife Carol for lunch or dinner once a week..
* * *
Paul drove to the shopping center, only ten minutes away. His first errand was to deposit his monthly check from the senior newspaper that he wrote two columns for, one called Favorite Restaurants and one called Observations.. The bank never seemed to have enough tellers on hand at noon, the busiest time, and often had a long line of people waiting. This time there was miraculously no line; but each of the two tellers was dealing with a woman. Paul knew from prior experience not to be too optimistic. Sure enough, whatever the transactions, they seemed to go on forever. Finally, one of the women received her money and managed to get it into her pocketbook.
Paul stepped up to the window and gave the teller, a young man who looked barely out of high school, his check and a deposit slip. The young teller looked long and carefully at the two pieces of paper, as if he was trying to decipher some unintelligible code. Finally, he looked up and said, “How are you doing today, Paul?”
Paul? He was tempted to ask the teller if they’d met before, but Paul was from a polite generation, quite unlike the current one. “I’m doing fine,” he said.
“Do you want to deposit this check?”
That’s what I’m here for, Paul said, but, still polite, he said it to himself. The teller was one of those youngsters who treated senior citizens as if they were children. He was probably amazed that Paul could still dodder around. “Yes, that’s right,.” said Paul.
The teller punched what seemed to be a lot of numbers into his computer for such a simple matter. Finally, a piece of paper with the deposit amount came out and he handed it to Paul. “Is there anything else we can do for you today?”
Paul looked at the teller’s name tag. “No, thanks, Teddy,” he said. That took care of his banking business until the next month.
On to the supermarket. Somehow, probably because he liked fresh bread and rolls, Paul had taken over a lot of the shopping, going to the supermarket once a week. He got the usual milk and orange juice, some sodas, lunch meat and cheese for himself, potato chips, two bags of kitty litter (they were on sale), a box of strawberries and one of blueberries (supposed to be healthy) and the bread and rolls. For his wife Sally, he got a bag of salad, tomatoes and an avocado. Sally did the big shopping, the stuff for their dinners. He’d noticed that the cost of even his “little” shopping had been going up. Jessie, the checkout girl, who knew him by now, said, “How are you today, Mr. Lerner?” No “Paul” from her. . He told her he was fine. As usual, she asked if he wanted any help out, and as usual he answered, “Not yet.”
In the parking lot, he backed out slowly. He’d become ultra-cautious in his driving. Some people drove like crazy in parking lots and he kept hearing stories of collisions. He also drove the short distance back to the retirement community slowly and cautiously. Once, when he’d drive up behind a car driven by an old guy wearing a cap, he’d go around it the first chance he got. Now, he reflected, he was the old guy in the cap.
When he arrived home, Sally put away the things he’d bought. She was having an early lunch. “What’s on your agenda this afternoon?” he asked.
“Canasta. I just told you this morning.”
“Right.” Sally played canasta with three neighboring women once a week. She also usually had lunch “with the girls” once a week and went to various club meetings. The retirement community had a club for just about every imaginable activity. He didn’t bother to keep up with her schedule; it was sufficient to be reminded every now and then.
“How’s your teeth?”
“They seem to be okay.”
Sally had taken a fall a month ago, resulting in a couple of loose teeth, which had to be pulled and so she had a new bridge. If advanced retirement was an occupation, then falling was an occupational hazard. Sally was five years younger than him. After the accident, everyone they’d talked to had a story about his or her own fall. Paul had taken Sally to their HMO’s emergency room; she had cut her lip and it required some stitches. He’d driven there much faster than he usually drove, putting aside his usual caution. They’d been at the ER the entire afternoon. The stitches required about 15 minutes; the rest of the time was spent waiting out in a hallway. That was about par for their HMO.
“Do you think we should call Ken?” asked Sally. Ken was their oldest son, age 45, which seemed impossible to Paul. How could he have a son that old? Ken had quit his job as a copywriter a few months ago and had been looking for employment since then, so far unsuccessfully. He’d quit because of a disagreement he’d had with a new supervisor, a woman, who’d started revising his work. Paul had strongly advised him to hold onto his old job until he could find a new one, but Ken had considered it a point of honor that he leave. He’d been scheduled for an interview at the beginning of the week, the third one with the same company, and had high hopes. Paul and Sally had been waiting for him to call with the result.
“Let’s give him to the end of the week,” said Paul. “Maybe he’s still waiting to hear.” He’d found that you never stopped worrying about your children, no matter how old you were and how old they were.
After Sally left, Paul went to his computer to check his e-mail. He had to admit he was at least a semi-computer junkie, checking for e-mails half a dozen times a day. He had an e-mail from Dave, the editor of an online magazine based in London which printed the short stories he sent them every month or so. The new issue, with his story, was up; the weather in London was the usual, wet. Paul regularly exchanged comments on the weather and sometimes on the political scene with Dave. The rest of his e-mail was the usual junk (or spam), which he deleted. It was time for lunch.
Paul made himself a sandwich with the fresh roll he’d bought, put it, with some potato chips and a soda, on a small tray and took it to the bedroom, where he put it on a lamp table next to his lazy-boy chair. He’d also taken the morning’s newspaper and the Wall Street Journal with him. He sat in the chair and put up the footrest, wondering how he’d ever gotten along without a lazy-boy, one of the great inventions of his time. Using the remote, he turned the bedroom TV on to a cable news show. The news, if there was any squeezed in between the usual pundit-noise, would serve as a background while he ate and read.
Paul was reading a story in the morning paper about the state’s budget deficit, up to $15 billion, when his big, black-and-white male cat Shandyman, jumped up into his lap, something he invariably did when Paul was trying to eat. Paul pushed his food out of Shandyman’s reach and tried to continue reading while the cat walked back and forth across his lap. He automatically stroked Shandyman, who, fortunately was not a lap cat, or not for long. In a few minutes Shandyman jumped off and went to find something more interesting to do.
After the morning paper came the Wall Street Journal. Paul had starting reading this when the airline miles he’d accumulated on one of his credit cards were about to run out and he was offered the option of subscribing to a number of publications. His original subscription had run out, but he’d decided to pamper himself and so had renewed it for a year. If you couldn’t afford a slight extravagance when you’re 80, when could you?
Having eaten and read, Paul leaned back in the lazy-boy chair; time for the afternoon nap. Paul’s father had taken a nap every afternoon when he was the same age and had lived to 98. Paul closed his eyes and in a few minutes nodded off. When he opened them, he looked at his watch and saw that half an hour had passed. Time to get back to the computer and do a little of what nowadays he called “work.”
Paul had started writing for the monthly senior newspaper that went to his retirement community a year or so after moving there. After retiring, at age 62, he’d begun, through a series of accidents, doing free-lance articles for what was called the Neighbors section of the morning newspaper he’d just been reading. The senior paper editor had done an article on Paul because he’d started a New Yorkers Club, its members being people from New York City. When she learned that Paul wrote for Neighbors she’d invited him to submit a piece, which he did, entitling it “Observations after a Year in Sun City.” She’d liked it and he’d been doing a monthly Observations ever since. The “Favorite Restaurants” column came shortly after, Paul having noticed that eating out was one of the retirees’ favorite topics of conversation. The idea was that Paul (and Sally) would report on any restaurant they liked, and he also asked readers to write, or e-mail, him about places they liked. He hadn’t expected to be still doing “Favorite Restaurants” but new places kept springing up in their area and so he kept writing about them.
He usually waited until a few days before deadline, the 15th of the month, to do his pieces, but Paul’s cousin from New York had just called to tell him that Vic Herschkowitz, the reigning handball star of their youth, had died, at age 89, in Florida. That news had awakened a host of memories about growing up in the Bronx, going to the Crotona Park handball courts, then to the MacCombs Dam courts, where the top players were, riding the streetcar, taking a quarter to buy two hot dogs and a soda for lunch, actually seeing the great Herschkowitz play when one weekend he’d turned up at MacCombs Dam, something like Tiger Woods turning up at their golf course today.
He wanted to do an “Observations” on those handball days before the memories grew dim again. Besides, he and Sally were going on a trip the next week, to visit her brother in Seattle. He’d better get his columns done before the usual big packing began.
Paul ended his “Observations” by writing that in his last year of high school they’d started a handball team and that he’d been its captain for two seasons. He’d won a varsity letter, something he’d never have been able to do in any other sport. He wrote that he’d then gone on to college on a handball scholarship. This wasn’t strictly true, but the teacher who’d coached the team was a graduate of the college and he’d steered Paul to it with a great recommendation. This reminded Paul that he’d been looking for his high school letter; he wanted to show it to his grandson Logan, Ken’s son, who was ten years old. After finishing the article, which he called “Observations on a Minor Sport,” Paul looked through his desk and then through his dresser in the bedroom, trying to find the letter, but it wasn’t there.
Discouraged and annoyed, he knew he’d put the damned thing somewhere, Paul returned to his chair. He picked up the library book he’d been reading, but his mind was still on Vic Hershkowitz. He was glad that his old hero had lived to 89. In the last five years, Paul didn’t think a day went by that he didn’t reflect on mortality. Paul wasn’t a religious person; he thought he hadn’t been born with that particular gene. It had seemed clear to him from an early age that the world was as it seemed. The Earth was a minor planet in a vast universe billions of years old. Man had somehow evolved from earlier creatures. No supernatural force ruled over life or determined its outcomes. Look at all the twisting and turning used to explain the existence of suffering under God. The simple fact was that people, good and bad, suffered; there was no reason for it.
Eventually, Paul had given up trying to think about death. If there was something after, that would be fine, but that was unlikely. When he died, that would be the end. The consciousness which was his “I” couldn’t imagine of its being extinguished but, like a flame, it would be... He hoped he’d live to an old age, as his father had. For an 80-year old, there seemed to be nothing but to go on living, doing his writing, playing his pool, doing his best for Sally, his sons, his grandchildren, his friends, even a little bit for the world in general. What else could he do? Brooding about the impending end, which crept closer each day, wouldn’t help, or change anything.
Sally returned from her card game at around five. She always had a medical report to give after her sessions with the girls. One of their neighbors had found she had breast cancer. It sometimes seemed that half the women in their retirement community had this malady. Another neighbor, one he knew only vaguely, had died of a stroke in the past week. This too was not unusual. As the retirees grew older more and more of them were passing away. He’d gone to at least half a dozen memorial services in the past year. More reminders of mortality.
As Sally had just gotten back, she made a light supper, ham and eggs and a fruit salad. They were increasingly having these light suppers, thought Paul, as they didn’t seem to need to eat as much. Also, Sally was tired of cooking regular dinners, something that Paul couldn’t blame her for. In fact, many, if not most, of the women in their community were tired of cooking. He supposed this accounted for the popularity of his “Favorite Restaurants” column in the senior newspaper. Because of the column, a lot of people thought he and Sally ate out all the time. This wasn’t true. Most of the “favorite restaurants” came from e-mails sent by readers, something which Paul kept telling people, but to no avail. He and Sally did try to eat out once every few weeks, a treat that they’d been giving themselves ever since Paul had retired.
After supper, Paul went back to the computer and laid out his next month’s “Favorite Restaurants” column, two new eating places that he’d been e-mailed about and a Mexican restaurant he and Sally ate at every few months whose owner always brought them a special appetizer when she was there. Well, you had to get a perk every now and then when you wrote about restaurants.
When he was finished, Paul went into the living room, where Sally was reading. She looked up and said, “Be thinking about what you want to wear in Seattle.” Sally always prepared early for any trip, even if only for a weekend. They’d be staying in Seattle for eight days.
“I hope it’s going to be a lot cooler there,” said Paul. He had mixed feelings about going anywhere nowadays. He knew it was always good to have a little break from their retirement community routine. But it was also true that the older he’d become, the less he wanted to get away from that routine. Travel could be an ordeal, especially having to go by air. The flight would be short, but you had to get to the airport hours ahead of time, then there was the long security line when he’d have to empty his pockets and take off his shoes to insure he wasn’t an 80-year old terrorist. “That reminds me, I better call Supershuttle tomorrow, and the newspaper.” I’d better make a note of it, he thought, or I might forget. He went to his desk and jotted it down in his all-important date book. Then he thought of the little notebook he always took on trips; it had names and addresses and he put their airline schedules in it. He looked in his bottom desk drawer and there was the notebook, and under it was his high school handball letter.
He returned to the living room, holding up the letter for Sally to see. They talked some more about their upcoming trip. Sally’s brother Jeff was ten years younger than she was. He and his wife Greta had moved from Orlando to the Seattle area about a year ago. Jeff was a retired veterinarian. He was an easygoing guy, a great sports fan. Paul had always considered Greta to be a little crazy. They’d already been told they’d have to take their shoes off when entering Jeff and Greta’s new condo. Paul knew that Greta would have planned their visit down to the last minute. Well, that was okay. He’d just relax, with his shoes off, and leave everything to her.
Paul and Sally usually watched television from nine to eleven. They’d been catching up with old episodes of The Sopranos. Paul didn’t agree with the critics that this was the greatest TV drama of all time. Basically, he thought, it was the same old glorification of gangsters that movies and television had been doing for years. The only difference was that the head mobster had panic attacks and saw a psychiatrist, who, in Paul’s opinion, hadn’t done him a lot of good. What made the show interesting was the good acting and trying to guess what gangster, or innocent civilian, would be “whacked” next.
They were in the middle of a “Sopranos” episode when the phone rang. Sally picked it up. “It’s Ken,” she said. Paul quickly went to his desk and picked up the other phone.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” said Ken. “I got the job.”
Paul exhaled a sigh of relief. Ken then went to tell them that he’d been at his new employer’s until late, then he’d taken Carol and the kids out to a pizza place to celebrate and this was the first chance he’d had to call them. Paul asked him some questions about the new job, then Sally asked if could come see their grandsons as she and Paul were leaving on their trip the next Monday. It was arranged that they would go over to Ken’s house, which was not too far away, that Saturday. Paul told himself that he should remember to take his high school letter to show Logan.
When they were in bed, Paul kissed Sally and they both said, “I love you.” It was a ritual they’d been doing for years. If he didn’t wake up in the morning, thought Paul, his last words to Sally would be that he loved her. He closed his eyes, but he never went to sleep at once. He reviewed the day. The highlight of course had been his son’s news that he’d gotten the job. Paul realized that he’d been getting increasingly anxious as Ken’s period of unemployment stretched out. No, you never stopped worrying about your kids.
Then he’d gotten a start on his two articles. He’d look at the “Observations” and see what revisions had to be made. He’d write the “Favorite Restaurants.” He’d print out both and show them to Sally, his unpaid editor. Tomorrow he’d also make his trip calls. Maybe he’d go to the library in the afternoon to get some books to read during the trip, if Greta allowed any time for this.
He thought about Vic Hershkowitz. He wondered how many of the other great handball players of his youth were still around. Maybe none. He wondered how long he himself would still be around. Just because he’d decided there was no point in thinking about mortality didn’t mean he could stop himself from doing so, especially late at night. He had self-published three collections of his short stories in the last three years. Just to see if he could do it, he’d written a longer piece this year called “A Year in Retirement.” It was a fictionalized memoir, in which he’d tried to put all of the things he’d learned in retirement. It came to 130 pages. All of the things he learned really hadn’t amounted to very much. After this, maybe he’d put out a collection of his “Observations.” Somehow, he felt, although he never articulated it to himself, that if he had a goal for the next year and the year after that he’d survive until then.
He’d never be able to believe that life was anything other than a series of random events. Still, maybe in the natural order of things, there were some currents or patterns, like ripples in the ocean, that gave some meaning or at least some order to life. Like his finding that old high school handball letter of his. It had been his cousin’s telling him of Vic Hershkowitz, his memories of his handball days, the trip to Seattle, all combining so that the letter came to light.
Then there were the accidental events that had led him to become a writer. After his retirement lunch, he and Sally had gone to a store downtown where a teacher Sally had worked for was having a close-out sale. The teacher had told them she might be doing something for an alternative weekly newspaper published downtown and had asked Paul if he might be interested. This had led to his first free-lance writing job, unpaid, then he’d started writing for Neighbors, then for the senior newspaper. Maybe it wasn’t all accidental; maybe it was meant to be. It would be nice to think so. At this point, Paul’s thoughts began to break up, like images on a defective DVD. He turned on his side and was asleep. Another day was over.
###
A Day in the Life(Martin Green)
A Day in the Life (Approx. 4,200 wds.)
A day in the life on an 80-year old. Paul Lerner found it hard to believe that he was actually that age. When he’d turned 75, he’d realized with a shock that he’d been around for three-quarters of a century; that was a long time. The changes that had occurred during his lifetime were almost as many, maybe even more, than those that had taken place during his father’s lifetime. Then, there’d been the radio, television, cars, airplanes, washers, dryers, air-conditioning, all the modern stuff we now take for granted. In Paul’s generation, there’d come cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, Notebooks, blogs, and of course the computer along with the Worldwide Web. And now, after another five years, which had seemed to go by in a flash, he was 80. Incredible!
Paul lined up his shot, chalked his cue stick and bent over the cue ball. It was his once-a-week pool match with a friend and neighbor, Mike Wilson. When had they started playing? Paul had stopped playing serious tennis at age 75 so it must have been five years ago. Once Paul had played tennis three or four times a week. Now he shot pool three mornings a week, once with Mike, once with a group of other old tennis players and once with two other friends. The pool room, which had six tables, was in a building called The Lodge, the activity center of his Northern California retirement community. Paul was fond of saying that pool was much easier on the knees than tennis. He still played an occasional set of what he thought of as recreational tennis, just to keep his hand in and because old habits die hard.
It was funny, Paul often thought, that, although both he and Mike knew their pool games didn’t matter a bit in the grand scheme of things they tried their hardest to win. Mike was, like most of their retirement community members, a golfer. He played pool only this one time a week. He still hated to lose, as did Paul. Why, knowing better, were they so competitive? Paul guessed that no matter how old and how much larger other things, such as sickness and death, loomed in their lives, the competitive fire never died. Maybe if it did you were ready to be carried away.
Paul straightened up, took a deep breath, his routine when facing an eight-ball shot, then bent over again, lined up his shot and brought his cue stick forward. The cue ball hit the eight at just the spot he’d aimed at; the eight ball went toward the side pocket, hesitated a second at the edge, then dropped in. Paul had won the game.
“Good shot,” said Mike.
“Thanks,” said Paul. “I guess that’s it.” He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. “I have to run some errands. I’ll see you next Monday, if not before.” Paul and his wife Sally usually met Mike and his wife Carol for lunch or dinner once a week..
* * *
Paul drove to the shopping center, only ten minutes away. His first errand was to deposit his monthly check from the senior newspaper that he wrote two columns for, one called Favorite Restaurants and one called Observations.. The bank never seemed to have enough tellers on hand at noon, the busiest time, and often had a long line of people waiting. This time there was miraculously no line; but each of the two tellers was dealing with a woman. Paul knew from prior experience not to be too optimistic. Sure enough, whatever the transactions, they seemed to go on forever. Finally, one of the women received her money and managed to get it into her pocketbook.
Paul stepped up to the window and gave the teller, a young man who looked barely out of high school, his check and a deposit slip. The young teller looked long and carefully at the two pieces of paper, as if he was trying to decipher some unintelligible code. Finally, he looked up and said, “How are you doing today, Paul?”
Paul? He was tempted to ask the teller if they’d met before, but Paul was from a polite generation, quite unlike the current one. “I’m doing fine,” he said.
“Do you want to deposit this check?”
That’s what I’m here for, Paul said, but, still polite, he said it to himself. The teller was one of those youngsters who treated senior citizens as if they were children. He was probably amazed that Paul could still dodder around. “Yes, that’s right,.” said Paul.
The teller punched what seemed to be a lot of numbers into his computer for such a simple matter. Finally, a piece of paper with the deposit amount came out and he handed it to Paul. “Is there anything else we can do for you today?”
Paul looked at the teller’s name tag. “No, thanks, Teddy,” he said. That took care of his banking business until the next month.
On to the supermarket. Somehow, probably because he liked fresh bread and rolls, Paul had taken over a lot of the shopping, going to the supermarket once a week. He got the usual milk and orange juice, some sodas, lunch meat and cheese for himself, potato chips, two bags of kitty litter (they were on sale), a box of strawberries and one of blueberries (supposed to be healthy) and the bread and rolls. For his wife Sally, he got a bag of salad, tomatoes and an avocado. Sally did the big shopping, the stuff for their dinners. He’d noticed that the cost of even his “little” shopping had been going up. Jessie, the checkout girl, who knew him by now, said, “How are you today, Mr. Lerner?” No “Paul” from her. . He told her he was fine. As usual, she asked if he wanted any help out, and as usual he answered, “Not yet.”
In the parking lot, he backed out slowly. He’d become ultra-cautious in his driving. Some people drove like crazy in parking lots and he kept hearing stories of collisions. He also drove the short distance back to the retirement community slowly and cautiously. Once, when he’d drive up behind a car driven by an old guy wearing a cap, he’d go around it the first chance he got. Now, he reflected, he was the old guy in the cap.
When he arrived home, Sally put away the things he’d bought. She was having an early lunch. “What’s on your agenda this afternoon?” he asked.
“Canasta. I just told you this morning.”
“Right.” Sally played canasta with three neighboring women once a week. She also usually had lunch “with the girls” once a week and went to various club meetings. The retirement community had a club for just about every imaginable activity. He didn’t bother to keep up with her schedule; it was sufficient to be reminded every now and then.
“How’s your teeth?”
“They seem to be okay.”
Sally had taken a fall a month ago, resulting in a couple of loose teeth, which had to be pulled and so she had a new bridge. If advanced retirement was an occupation, then falling was an occupational hazard. Sally was five years younger than him. After the accident, everyone they’d talked to had a story about his or her own fall. Paul had taken Sally to their HMO’s emergency room; she had cut her lip and it required some stitches. He’d driven there much faster than he usually drove, putting aside his usual caution. They’d been at the ER the entire afternoon. The stitches required about 15 minutes; the rest of the time was spent waiting out in a hallway. That was about par for their HMO.
“Do you think we should call Ken?” asked Sally. Ken was their oldest son, age 45, which seemed impossible to Paul. How could he have a son that old? Ken had quit his job as a copywriter a few months ago and had been looking for employment since then, so far unsuccessfully. He’d quit because of a disagreement he’d had with a new supervisor, a woman, who’d started revising his work. Paul had strongly advised him to hold onto his old job until he could find a new one, but Ken had considered it a point of honor that he leave. He’d been scheduled for an interview at the beginning of the week, the third one with the same company, and had high hopes. Paul and Sally had been waiting for him to call with the result.
“Let’s give him to the end of the week,” said Paul. “Maybe he’s still waiting to hear.” He’d found that you never stopped worrying about your children, no matter how old you were and how old they were.
After Sally left, Paul went to his computer to check his e-mail. He had to admit he was at least a semi-computer junkie, checking for e-mails half a dozen times a day. He had an e-mail from Dave, the editor of an online magazine based in London which printed the short stories he sent them every month or so. The new issue, with his story, was up; the weather in London was the usual, wet. Paul regularly exchanged comments on the weather and sometimes on the political scene with Dave. The rest of his e-mail was the usual junk (or spam), which he deleted. It was time for lunch.
Paul made himself a sandwich with the fresh roll he’d bought, put it, with some potato chips and a soda, on a small tray and took it to the bedroom, where he put it on a lamp table next to his lazy-boy chair. He’d also taken the morning’s newspaper and the Wall Street Journal with him. He sat in the chair and put up the footrest, wondering how he’d ever gotten along without a lazy-boy, one of the great inventions of his time. Using the remote, he turned the bedroom TV on to a cable news show. The news, if there was any squeezed in between the usual pundit-noise, would serve as a background while he ate and read.
Paul was reading a story in the morning paper about the state’s budget deficit, up to $15 billion, when his big, black-and-white male cat Shandyman, jumped up into his lap, something he invariably did when Paul was trying to eat. Paul pushed his food out of Shandyman’s reach and tried to continue reading while the cat walked back and forth across his lap. He automatically stroked Shandyman, who, fortunately was not a lap cat, or not for long. In a few minutes Shandyman jumped off and went to find something more interesting to do.
After the morning paper came the Wall Street Journal. Paul had starting reading this when the airline miles he’d accumulated on one of his credit cards were about to run out and he was offered the option of subscribing to a number of publications. His original subscription had run out, but he’d decided to pamper himself and so had renewed it for a year. If you couldn’t afford a slight extravagance when you’re 80, when could you?
Having eaten and read, Paul leaned back in the lazy-boy chair; time for the afternoon nap. Paul’s father had taken a nap every afternoon when he was the same age and had lived to 98. Paul closed his eyes and in a few minutes nodded off. When he opened them, he looked at his watch and saw that half an hour had passed. Time to get back to the computer and do a little of what nowadays he called “work.”
Paul had started writing for the monthly senior newspaper that went to his retirement community a year or so after moving there. After retiring, at age 62, he’d begun, through a series of accidents, doing free-lance articles for what was called the Neighbors section of the morning newspaper he’d just been reading. The senior paper editor had done an article on Paul because he’d started a New Yorkers Club, its members being people from New York City. When she learned that Paul wrote for Neighbors she’d invited him to submit a piece, which he did, entitling it “Observations after a Year in Sun City.” She’d liked it and he’d been doing a monthly Observations ever since. The “Favorite Restaurants” column came shortly after, Paul having noticed that eating out was one of the retirees’ favorite topics of conversation. The idea was that Paul (and Sally) would report on any restaurant they liked, and he also asked readers to write, or e-mail, him about places they liked. He hadn’t expected to be still doing “Favorite Restaurants” but new places kept springing up in their area and so he kept writing about them.
He usually waited until a few days before deadline, the 15th of the month, to do his pieces, but Paul’s cousin from New York had just called to tell him that Vic Herschkowitz, the reigning handball star of their youth, had died, at age 89, in Florida. That news had awakened a host of memories about growing up in the Bronx, going to the Crotona Park handball courts, then to the MacCombs Dam courts, where the top players were, riding the streetcar, taking a quarter to buy two hot dogs and a soda for lunch, actually seeing the great Herschkowitz play when one weekend he’d turned up at MacCombs Dam, something like Tiger Woods turning up at their golf course today.
He wanted to do an “Observations” on those handball days before the memories grew dim again. Besides, he and Sally were going on a trip the next week, to visit her brother in Seattle. He’d better get his columns done before the usual big packing began.
Paul ended his “Observations” by writing that in his last year of high school they’d started a handball team and that he’d been its captain for two seasons. He’d won a varsity letter, something he’d never have been able to do in any other sport. He wrote that he’d then gone on to college on a handball scholarship. This wasn’t strictly true, but the teacher who’d coached the team was a graduate of the college and he’d steered Paul to it with a great recommendation. This reminded Paul that he’d been looking for his high school letter; he wanted to show it to his grandson Logan, Ken’s son, who was ten years old. After finishing the article, which he called “Observations on a Minor Sport,” Paul looked through his desk and then through his dresser in the bedroom, trying to find the letter, but it wasn’t there.
Discouraged and annoyed, he knew he’d put the damned thing somewhere, Paul returned to his chair. He picked up the library book he’d been reading, but his mind was still on Vic Hershkowitz. He was glad that his old hero had lived to 89. In the last five years, Paul didn’t think a day went by that he didn’t reflect on mortality. Paul wasn’t a religious person; he thought he hadn’t been born with that particular gene. It had seemed clear to him from an early age that the world was as it seemed. The Earth was a minor planet in a vast universe billions of years old. Man had somehow evolved from earlier creatures. No supernatural force ruled over life or determined its outcomes. Look at all the twisting and turning used to explain the existence of suffering under God. The simple fact was that people, good and bad, suffered; there was no reason for it.
Eventually, Paul had given up trying to think about death. If there was something after, that would be fine, but that was unlikely. When he died, that would be the end. The consciousness which was his “I” couldn’t imagine of its being extinguished but, like a flame, it would be... He hoped he’d live to an old age, as his father had. For an 80-year old, there seemed to be nothing but to go on living, doing his writing, playing his pool, doing his best for Sally, his sons, his grandchildren, his friends, even a little bit for the world in general. What else could he do? Brooding about the impending end, which crept closer each day, wouldn’t help, or change anything.
Sally returned from her card game at around five. She always had a medical report to give after her sessions with the girls. One of their neighbors had found she had breast cancer. It sometimes seemed that half the women in their retirement community had this malady. Another neighbor, one he knew only vaguely, had died of a stroke in the past week. This too was not unusual. As the retirees grew older more and more of them were passing away. He’d gone to at least half a dozen memorial services in the past year. More reminders of mortality.
As Sally had just gotten back, she made a light supper, ham and eggs and a fruit salad. They were increasingly having these light suppers, thought Paul, as they didn’t seem to need to eat as much. Also, Sally was tired of cooking regular dinners, something that Paul couldn’t blame her for. In fact, many, if not most, of the women in their community were tired of cooking. He supposed this accounted for the popularity of his “Favorite Restaurants” column in the senior newspaper. Because of the column, a lot of people thought he and Sally ate out all the time. This wasn’t true. Most of the “favorite restaurants” came from e-mails sent by readers, something which Paul kept telling people, but to no avail. He and Sally did try to eat out once every few weeks, a treat that they’d been giving themselves ever since Paul had retired.
After supper, Paul went back to the computer and laid out his next month’s “Favorite Restaurants” column, two new eating places that he’d been e-mailed about and a Mexican restaurant he and Sally ate at every few months whose owner always brought them a special appetizer when she was there. Well, you had to get a perk every now and then when you wrote about restaurants.
When he was finished, Paul went into the living room, where Sally was reading. She looked up and said, “Be thinking about what you want to wear in Seattle.” Sally always prepared early for any trip, even if only for a weekend. They’d be staying in Seattle for eight days.
“I hope it’s going to be a lot cooler there,” said Paul. He had mixed feelings about going anywhere nowadays. He knew it was always good to have a little break from their retirement community routine. But it was also true that the older he’d become, the less he wanted to get away from that routine. Travel could be an ordeal, especially having to go by air. The flight would be short, but you had to get to the airport hours ahead of time, then there was the long security line when he’d have to empty his pockets and take off his shoes to insure he wasn’t an 80-year old terrorist. “That reminds me, I better call Supershuttle tomorrow, and the newspaper.” I’d better make a note of it, he thought, or I might forget. He went to his desk and jotted it down in his all-important date book. Then he thought of the little notebook he always took on trips; it had names and addresses and he put their airline schedules in it. He looked in his bottom desk drawer and there was the notebook, and under it was his high school handball letter.
He returned to the living room, holding up the letter for Sally to see. They talked some more about their upcoming trip. Sally’s brother Jeff was ten years younger than she was. He and his wife Greta had moved from Orlando to the Seattle area about a year ago. Jeff was a retired veterinarian. He was an easygoing guy, a great sports fan. Paul had always considered Greta to be a little crazy. They’d already been told they’d have to take their shoes off when entering Jeff and Greta’s new condo. Paul knew that Greta would have planned their visit down to the last minute. Well, that was okay. He’d just relax, with his shoes off, and leave everything to her.
Paul and Sally usually watched television from nine to eleven. They’d been catching up with old episodes of The Sopranos. Paul didn’t agree with the critics that this was the greatest TV drama of all time. Basically, he thought, it was the same old glorification of gangsters that movies and television had been doing for years. The only difference was that the head mobster had panic attacks and saw a psychiatrist, who, in Paul’s opinion, hadn’t done him a lot of good. What made the show interesting was the good acting and trying to guess what gangster, or innocent civilian, would be “whacked” next.
They were in the middle of a “Sopranos” episode when the phone rang. Sally picked it up. “It’s Ken,” she said. Paul quickly went to his desk and picked up the other phone.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” said Ken. “I got the job.”
Paul exhaled a sigh of relief. Ken then went to tell them that he’d been at his new employer’s until late, then he’d taken Carol and the kids out to a pizza place to celebrate and this was the first chance he’d had to call them. Paul asked him some questions about the new job, then Sally asked if could come see their grandsons as she and Paul were leaving on their trip the next Monday. It was arranged that they would go over to Ken’s house, which was not too far away, that Saturday. Paul told himself that he should remember to take his high school letter to show Logan.
When they were in bed, Paul kissed Sally and they both said, “I love you.” It was a ritual they’d been doing for years. If he didn’t wake up in the morning, thought Paul, his last words to Sally would be that he loved her. He closed his eyes, but he never went to sleep at once. He reviewed the day. The highlight of course had been his son’s news that he’d gotten the job. Paul realized that he’d been getting increasingly anxious as Ken’s period of unemployment stretched out. No, you never stopped worrying about your kids.
Then he’d gotten a start on his two articles. He’d look at the “Observations” and see what revisions had to be made. He’d write the “Favorite Restaurants.” He’d print out both and show them to Sally, his unpaid editor. Tomorrow he’d also make his trip calls. Maybe he’d go to the library in the afternoon to get some books to read during the trip, if Greta allowed any time for this.
He thought about Vic Hershkowitz. He wondered how many of the other great handball players of his youth were still around. Maybe none. He wondered how long he himself would still be around. Just because he’d decided there was no point in thinking about mortality didn’t mean he could stop himself from doing so, especially late at night. He had self-published three collections of his short stories in the last three years. Just to see if he could do it, he’d written a longer piece this year called “A Year in Retirement.” It was a fictionalized memoir, in which he’d tried to put all of the things he’d learned in retirement. It came to 130 pages. All of the things he learned really hadn’t amounted to very much. After this, maybe he’d put out a collection of his “Observations.” Somehow, he felt, although he never articulated it to himself, that if he had a goal for the next year and the year after that he’d survive until then.
He’d never be able to believe that life was anything other than a series of random events. Still, maybe in the natural order of things, there were some currents or patterns, like ripples in the ocean, that gave some meaning or at least some order to life. Like his finding that old high school handball letter of his. It had been his cousin’s telling him of Vic Hershkowitz, his memories of his handball days, the trip to Seattle, all combining so that the letter came to light.
Then there were the accidental events that had led him to become a writer. After his retirement lunch, he and Sally had gone to a store downtown where a teacher Sally had worked for was having a close-out sale. The teacher had told them she might be doing something for an alternative weekly newspaper published downtown and had asked Paul if he might be interested. This had led to his first free-lance writing job, unpaid, then he’d started writing for Neighbors, then for the senior newspaper. Maybe it wasn’t all accidental; maybe it was meant to be. It would be nice to think so. At this point, Paul’s thoughts began to break up, like images on a defective DVD. He turned on his side and was asleep. Another day was over.
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