The Routine
By Tim Danial Anderson
Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved by the Author
Even when I had a job, Mondays were a bit of a downer. The free time you enjoyed with your wife and son during the weekend, bicycling along the Potomac trail, picnicking at Monticello, taking Ezra to the Smithsonian, were all erased when I clocked in at eight in the morning. As I shuffled geographic papers inside the Interior Department, determining whether rocks were sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic for oil drillers and highway builders, my mind would always drift to the past weekend. My memories are better than my dreams now.
The nice thing about a Honda Odyssey is the back seat folds down so it’s out of the way. The bucket seats are stored at my in-law’s house. I left them the seats as a way to say, we have a reason to come back, so don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. Really what I’m saying is, this is all that’s left of our relationship; every time you look at those chairs your memory of Janice will be jogged just like mine is every time I look at our son Ezra. With the seats out, I was able to put a queen size mattress for the both of us to sleep on now that our home is gone. I was able to use some plastic shelving to create a storage area for the shampoo, dry food, and other things that normally would have been found in a draw at our home.
Janice was thirty-eight years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn’t see that coming, just like I didn’t see being homeless, but those are the dead end’s life deals out. She did everything the doctors told her, lumpectomy first, withstood all the radiation “therapy”, took all the chemotherapy, and eventually the mastectomy. Any time I see a word that ends in “y”, I get queasy.
I think she tried to keep her breasts for me. When we had sex the first time, I think I stared at them more than her eyes. Even after breast feeding Ezra, they were spectacular. Every time I caught one of my male friends staring at them when Janice went braless during a summer cookout, it was like a badge of honor; I may not be a good athlete, or rich, or smarter than the financial guys at the Federal Reserve, but every one of them wanted to be me for one night.
She ran in every charity 5k, 10k, and half marathon she could in order to support those who were not as well off; food pantries, muscular dystrophy, clean water and a variety of diseases; and that was before breast cancer entered our vocabulary. She ate healthy, kept up her appearance with exercise and proper diet because of her job. She never did anything wrong, but she still died.
Janice was an interior designer; a calling to help someone else, like her charity runs. Georgetown had a steady supply of professors, and congressmen, and lobbyists who could afford to pay for her services. The firm she worked for and later became a partner had a party after the November elections every two years, applauding when an incumbent congressman was defeated because it meant a new client was coming to town. Of course, that never happened often enough. Taking a room with white walls and turning it into a home for someone got her on the inside pages of Architect Magazine three times. Congressman liked that…a lot...because a resume is always important.
Our combined income was 150,000 dollars a year, which helped pay off the Odyssey early. After eight years, our home was beginning to pay off on some principal and we both dreamed of paying it off early. She died one week after her fortieth birthday. Ezra and I ran in a 5k, both wearing t-shirts with her picture screen printed on the front. He wore the shirt for a week straight until I told him it had to be washed. He stood on a chair, top-loading washing machine open, watching the t-shirt spin around, shouting, “I see her” as her face bobbed up to the surface of the roiling water. “I see her.”
Her parents have graciously offered to take Ezra in, but I know where that will lead. I’ll be gone one day…then two…then it’ll be a week while I look for work. I haven’t told them I’m homeless and jobless. They know if they want to get in touch to call my cell phone. I pay the bill by traveling to the store and paying in cash which is what’s left of my savings and unemployment check. Ezra’s parents are in their seventies, so they won’t travel over to our old home four hours away without calling first. When we cancelled our land line, I could tell they were concerned, but I told them that no one uses a land line anymore. My son and I sleep in the back of our Odyssey and have developed a routine over the last four months.
On Monday’s, I take Ezra to the soup kitchen on F Street. For lunch, they serve a hearty vegetable soup or cream of broccoli and they give Ezra as many crackers as he can dunk. There’s usually some sort of cold cut sandwich with slices of Wonder Bread, mustard, lettuce, sometimes tomato, and a choice of ham, chicken or salami, all deli cut. I don’t look at it as a healthy alternative, but then again neither is starving.
The problem with the soup kitchen is the people eating there are drug addicts, the insane, the alcoholic and eternally homeless, not that we’re not homeless, but at least we still have the four-year-old Honda Odyssey to live in. Thank God it’s paid off. Ezra thinks of it as a sleep over or camping out like the times we went to the Smoky Mountains when Janice was still alive. I try not to drive the Odyssey near the mission because people will look at the van and at us and think we’re scamming the system.
I got laid off in April. My job search has lasted six months now. I always knew there was a chance I could lose my job with every changing administration. Smaller government sounds great on the campaign trail, but when they call you into the office and tell you the office is downsizing, and your previously important job is now worthless, the only thing you can hope for is the number for unemployment insurance doesn’t have a two hour wait on hold.
Losing my wife on the other hand was something I never imagined. Cutting the budget meant I was on the street with a five-year old boy, but as an administrator I knew how to keep a routine. Monday, we could eat and shower at the soup kitchen, which was only open on Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the summer months. They didn’t have enough money to keep it open all week and they know the homeless can sleep anywhere in the summer time. By winter, they will be open six days a week when there is a fear someone will freeze to death.
The only thing bothering us so far is the heat. Late July was near 100 degrees for two weeks, but August cooled to the upper 80’s. Labor Day warmed back to the mid-90’s again. When the sun hits the van windows it acts like a magnifying glass, so even though I’ve chosen to park under a large tree with Eastern exposure the night before, by eight o’clock in the morning the van starts to get hot. Those are the crazy things you think about when you’re struggling to survive; the orientation of your car so you can stay cool in the morning. I can’t afford to run the car’s air conditioning all day in the summer, so I have to think of things that don’t cost money, but will still keep Ezra cool.
The library is free, and the air conditioning wastefully cold…it feels great. For a couple hours in the afternoon, we hang out looking at children’s books. Ezra could already write some small sentences, and if our routine was sad in its isolation, it was also intense in its excitement for the printed word. Ezra would be ready for school in a year, and while I had a love for reading and science, I despised math so someone in the public education realm would have to teach him for me. I could teach him almost everything in life that he would need. His reading level is already two years above his age.
The library has a clean bathroom. Finding clean bathrooms was one of those things that most people don’t worry about as a daily concern. It was difficult if a government holiday closed the library, because then we’d have to find a Starbucks. The manager at the Starbucks near the library always gave us a dirty look if we didn’t buy something, so I got chocolate milk for Ezra and used an internet coupon for a large coffee I had printed out at the library. E
ventually they put a sign up, “No coffee, No restroom”. It certainly wasn’t my fault the owner decided to put a coffee shop so close to the park where people without homes could sleep on longer, flatter benches. The routine changed to Port-o-johns for bathroom breaks during holidays or when the Starbuck’s bathroom was busy. Ezra hated using Porto-o-johns, but you could find one at construction sites that are all over town.
“This is disgusting,” he said, peering into the mixture of white paper and brown poop.
“Just hold your nose and try not to look.”
“Is there anything in the blue water?”
“No. It’s a chemical solution they use to kill germs.”
“Why is it blue?”
“To make it look nice.”
“Why would anyone want to make poop look nice?”
“Do you have to go or not?” I start unbuttoning his pants, while he’s still gazing into the hole.
“What if something comes out of the blue water, like an alligator?”
“Alligators are huge, you couldn’t fit one in there.”
“What about baby alligators?”
“They can’t jump that high.”
“Oh…okay.”
Tuesdays were almost as bad as Mondays except the LaSalle Street homeless shelter’s kitchen had better food. Ezra liked the fried chicken with mashed potatoes, and there were other children to play with here. I found out later that the fried chicken was from the various grocery stores around town and day old, but the grease was able to make the chicken at least tender and moist when it was reheated. Potato salad, macaroni and cheese, and cookies were all older than I would like my child to eat…but better than starving.
Their facility had multiple bedrooms and kitchens for mothers with children who were homeless or abused, but men aren’t allowed to stay in the rooms upstairs. The second and third floors have an electronic pass code on a keypad that is changed every week and no men are allowed up there at any time, for any reason. I witness a man dressed in cargo pants, an army camouflage shirt rolled up to the elbows, and tattoo’s over his forearms, neck and knuckles trying to talk his “wife” into punching in the code and letting him upstairs to see his kids. The police station is only a block away and as the shouting increases ever so slightly, the staff catch on as she starts to bring him upstairs. A brave woman dressed in a pantsuit and is an administrator sees what’s going on and yells across the room. “Hold on there.” She nods to the receptionist who dials 911 immediately, and goes to confront him.
“You can’t go up there.”
“Why can’t I go up and see my kids?” he asks, pulling out a cigarette. His “wife” is only looking at the floor, scared and from previous experience knowing this won’t end well for her.
“Sir, you can’t smoke in here either,” the pantsuit says. She slyly and expertly steps between the two of them. “No one is allowed upstairs for the safety of the women.”
“But I ain’t done nothin,” he says putting the cigarette back in the pack.
“I didn’t say you did anything,” she replies in a curt and reflective tone that turns the conversation away from the threat and back towards the policy. “No man under any circumstances is allowed upstairs…period.”
The man is visibly upset about his ability to lose control of what he thought was his dominance of his wife. He tried to look at her, to signal her to speak up on his behalf, as if that would change his ability to go upstairs. It wouldn’t. The administrator moves her head to keep his eye contact on her.
“If your wife wants to bring the kids downstairs, that’s up to her, but right now I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
He’s mulling over his options; he knows hitting a person at a homeless shelter will not go over well in court…he’s been there enough to know. The police show up ten seconds later, a squad car with two officers.
“I’ll be back. You can’t stop me from seeing my kids.” The officers lead him outside.
My biggest concern is someone saying I’m an unfit parent and calling the cops on us. If I lose Ezra to the justice system, with no job and therefore no lawyer, I wonder if I will get him back. The idea of some foster family taking him for even a night makes me sick to my stomach. I find myself routinely searching for the exits as I enter a soup kitchen or homeless shelter, kind of like Jason Bourne. If there’s a disturbance, a knife fight or someone having a psychotic episode, I tell Ezra that we have to leave and he quietly wraps his chicken and potato salad in cellophane for later.
Tuesdays is dollar movie night at the second run cinema. Hollywood has made a great effort to produce many cartoon kid’s movies over the last decade or so and with the air conditioning has made Ezra very happy. I think except for Fridays, Tuesday’s are Ezra’s favorite night of the week. He can laugh, something I can’t do, but I like to see him happy.
We find an upscale neighborhood in Arlington with large side streets and off-street parking to sleep for the night. I always park the van with my license plate blocked by the car behind me in case any police are wondering why there’s a Maryland license plate in a Virginia neighborhood. One night we tried to sleep in downtown D.C. and I heard the sound of someone jiggling the handle of our van to see if it was open. When I turned the dome light on, he ran away probably about as afraid as I was. Ezra never woke up.
Wednesdays the most expensive bakery in the area bags the stuff they couldn’t sell on Tuesday and throws it away. I guess Tuesdays are slow and they get stuck with more bread, croissants, and pastries than they can sell. I don’t like dumpster diving, and I don’t want Ezra to think seconds and hand-me-downs are his lot in life. I pretend we’re on the way to the park so that Ezra can play on the swings, and suggest we cut through the alley to the bakery as a short cut.
At five years old, I don’t think he remembers what happened or where or how we got here. I figure if I can find a job and get a house by the time he’s six, he won’t remember any of this. Each thing we find or each meal we eat is like an adventure; sometimes we get corned beef hash, sometimes we get rainbow sprinkles on a doughnut. My biggest hope now is that I can somehow find a job that doesn’t put him in a foster care or with my ex-wife’s parents. They’ve already blamed me for her death from breast cancer, saying it was my fault she didn’t have the mastectomy right away. I know if they saw us living like this they’d take Ezra away from me in a heartbeat.
I walk real slowly, hoping it’s Ezra’s idea to look in the white plastic bags. There are two of them, tied loosely at the top and no one is smoking a cigarette out back. I can’t stand that look they give you that says you’re a loser, a poor parent, and a vagrant all in one long eye roll/sneer.
“Look dad. I think that’s pink frosting.”
“Oh really,” I say, slow and surprised. “I can’t believe they’re throwing that away. Maybe we should grab one of those and take it to the park.”
“Yea. We don’t want it to go to waste.” Inside the bag is a jumbled mess of chocolate, maple, strawberry, and sprinkled doughnuts. Ezra’s eyes are as big as Christmas.
I see his eyes get big, the kind of big his mother and I used to see at Christmas in our old house. My parents never set the decorations up until Christmas Eve. They’d tuck us in, read the “Twas the Night Before Christmas” until we were asleep then tiptoe down the stairs, and let the process begin. In our house, Santa Claus really did do it all in one night.
First, my dad would drag a six-foot tall pine tree into the house, after it had been hidden behind our tool shed. He’d set the Douglas fir in a forty-year-old iron stand painted red that was used by his father, screwing the flat bolts until they held the tree straight and firm. My mother was there to guide him, whispering, “a little to the left, a little to the right, a little more on the “Y” axis.” Inside the garage attic there were nine banana boxes filled with ornaments and lights. My mother’s family was from Germany and came over at the turn of the 20th century. They brought with them a lot of Venetian and
Austrian glass; faux icicles that were so real only a touch perjured their true identity; glass and metal balls, a light and airy ornament that had a whole nativity scene carved out of balsa wood. There was even a hundred year old snow globe that had Norwegians skiing down a hill with a Star of Bethlehem painted on the top. The workmanship was so amazing, and the people looked so cold, that I got a chill sometimes if I stared at it too long.
My father had a routine to decorate the whole tree quickly. First the tin-foil Angel on top, next, the old pear-shaped red, blue, yellow and green lights from the 1950’s that got hot and probably burned down a thousand trees and homes over the decades. With my mother’s help they would plug in the first bulb, always blue, into the Angel’s stomach. The Angel had blonde hair, her body clad all in silver tin foil, and in her right hand she held a wand as if casting a spell on whoever looked at her eyes. At three years old, I wondered if real angels or elves assembled her.
Next came the red and blue and silver balls, carefully chosen for weight and branch size. If the branches wouldn’t accommodate, then my father took reinforcing wire and made them hold the largest balls, which were as large as baseballs. I always loved our family tree, but the huge balls on the bottom branches always gave it the look of a Santa circus come to town.
My father’s job was done, and he would go to the fridge and open a beer. My mother began unfolding each ornament, carefully wrapped in white crepe paper. They were delicate, handcrafted trinkets most made in Germany. Little toy nutcrackers in blue and red with yellow buttons on their uniforms stared straight ahead at the Wise men dragging a camel laden with gifts for the baby Jesus. My favorite ornament was a three dimensional gold star that was about six inches long and hollow on the inside. Like a Faberge egg, the craftsman had created and glued a whole cityscape with each church, each shop decorated for the holiday…tiny presents in the shop windows, children sledding, people even walking their dogs.
My mother didn’t hang every ornament, there just wasn’t enough space, but she would delegate a certain pecking order, trying to fit in any ornaments that had not seen the light of Christmas for a few years. The runt of the ornaments usually was the old leather shoe that had been hand stitched to look like a stocking stuffed with presents. I believe my grandmother made it in 1901. I liked the fact that my mother always felt sorry for an ornament.
The final step