davidbdale's Open Salon Blog

Sisters

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:01:54 -0500

They could be sisters, Rachel and Ayat, 18 and 17, dark and doomed. Now departed they are photographs, not girls; they are headshots looking forward, side by side on newsstands and on TV screens, never meeting. They never met. Where Ayat felt safe, Rachel would never have ventured, even if she could have scored a visa, but both girls died where Rachel felt safe, in a grocery store to which Ayat brought death in a bookbag on a Tuesday afternoon. The grocery clerk who also died in the blast is not a photograph; he is a grocery clerk. That is his story. The story of the girls is one that no one wants to hear but no one can forget. Much is made of their having lived four mere miles apart and of their mothers’ yearnings to cross that distance and others in the years since their girls’ deaths. They will no more bridge those gaps than swap husbands or faiths or nationalities. Nothing in the evidence from the scene suggests that the girls spoke, nor certainly that Rachel helped Ayat out of her pack, shouldered it briefly herself and remarked about its weight while the other girl found her phone and placed a call. They might have spared one another if that had happened, but their mothers can’t know that it did or whether Ayat had a moment of doubt and placed the call to steel her will or whether Rachel asked for an explanation when Ayat opened her hand to show her the detonator button. We know from the shrapnel the clerk was facing the blast. We know the girls’ names and the names of the grievance they stand for. Their mothers still have never met. Four miles they could manage, except for the last few inches.

Pre-Crash Checklist

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:01:39 -0500

Slip the flat metal end into the buckle and pull the loose end to secure the belt around your hips. Get and remain comfortable. Passenger attitude is an essential component of airworthiness, which is not to say we could cause a crash by thinking about one, but why risk it. This aircraft is equipped with floor level lighting which will guide you toward the exit when the cabin fills with noxious smoke so thick you won’t see the wall of flame approaching row by row. Or at least it was designed to be so equipped and was once certified to have been so equipped, but the failure of a simple thermal switch never tested by the team subcontracted by this airline to conduct routine inspections will prevent even that laughably inadequate safety feature from providing you any life-sustainment. Sudden loss of cabin pressure, an event so unlikely it happens to fewer than one million passengers a year, will trigger trap doors in the overhead bin, spilling oxygen masks to some passengers. Yours will be functional. The thin plastic supply hose won’t kink as so many do in testing nor melt in the intense heat of the advancing inferno, but you’ll have swallowed so much smoke you’ll merely cough into the mask and, heaving forward, tear it from the pump. If only you had kept your belt secured around your hips. Blown backward by the blast from the baggage compartment, several seats from Row 8 will be wedged incongruously between the cabin ceiling and lucky Row 13, sealing off the exit door nearest you. Small comfort your seat cushion is a flotation device! Thank you for choosing to violate gravity with us today and if there is anything we can do to make you more uncomfortable, please hesitate to ask.

Love is Like

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:01:23 -0500

The light I saw flickering in my wife’s eyes as we sat at the little table we use for dinners that don’t involve watching reruns and the radiant golds that shimmered behind her, framing the face I love best after my own, may have sprung from my devotion or may have been reflected flames from the house fire down the street, but the smell of smoke was no metaphor. Fire filled every window and the heat we felt from the sidewalk was peeling the faux stone façade from the front of the home, one of the finest on the street pre-catastrophe and for the time being standing on an exquisite lot. Where are the fire trucks?, we asked our neighbors, the charming young couple whose home would soon be a smoldering blight on the avenue. We didn’t call them, he replied. She looked at him and smiled without showing her teeth, as if they shared a secret joke. She hooked her arm around his waist; he pulled her shoulders close and together they gazed at the inferno. Were you home when it happened?, my wife was asking at the same time I asked, How did it start? She showed us a book of matches and smiled. Other couples, worried about sparks, wondered what was keeping the fire company. We’re alive and healthy and we have each other, she said. Still, I said. She wouldn’t let me take anything, he told me. I knew it!, she shouted. I knew your stupid stuff would come between us! Several cell phones sprang to life and frantically called 911. We casually strolled home in silence, deeply breathing the soft air spiced with others’ misfortune. Our fingers touched by accident, then interlaced like cards from two stacks in the hands of an expert dealer.

Reasonable Suspicion

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:01:51 -0500

Doorbell. Door opens.
—There’s been a report of abuse at this address.
—Somebody’s already reported that you’re about to get hurt?
—There’s no need to threaten me.
—Good.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—I know why you’re upset.
—No you don’t.
—All right, maybe not, but I’m obligated to investigate.
—By what authority?
—Child Protective Services.
—Wouldn’t that be me?
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—May I speak to the child?
—We haven’t established I have a child.
—Who’s that, Dad?
—Not for you, Chris.
—May I speak to your daughter?
—Chris is a boy.
—My report says a girl.
—Exactly.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—May I start again?
—I think you should. Next door.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—Why? Was there abuse next door?
—I would imagine so.
—Do you have a reasonable suspicion?
—I do. I suspect there’s some sort of abuse or neglect in every home, don’t you?
—Why would you say that?
—I grew up in one.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—May I ask you one question?
—If you answer one first. Who reported me?
—I can’t say. He wasn’t a mandated reporter.
—He volunteered? And what was his reasonable suspicion?
—Your child is too compliant.
—Compliant.
—Too compliant, too eager to please.
—I see. You had a question?
—Do you abuse your child?
—I imagine he would say so. If he thought you wanted him to.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—Do you have anything to say?
—In my defense? I have a theory.
—I’ll take it.
—I have reason to believe my accuser, who thought my boy was a girl, did not find him compliant enough.
—In what regard?
—In some regard. And not having gotten what he wanted, filed a complaint.
—That’s an outrageous and reckless allegation.
Door closes.

Déjà Vécu

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 11:01:29 -0500

Every shelf is stacked with books I’ve read and reread, or so it seems. This depleted room, these spine-cracked volumes rubbed of their wishes, cannot detain me long. If only the wider world offered something new instead of cheap diversions and bloodless familiars. I need a future. I would settle for a present. In the parking lot, the woman on her cell phone, the cop, the two nuns pushing carts are the same nuns, same cop, same woman I know from the last time, the same shopping carts, the same wobbly wheel. You say I’ve never been here but I remember it all and this argument. This is not the first time we’ve talked about coincidence and memory in this parking lot. Things recur, I understand. Weekends follow workweeks; people order the usual; we do the same thing every New Year’s fucking Eve, for Christ’s sake, I get it. Why don’t you admit that this is more than the seasons repeating and my subconscious? Everything has happened already. Pork loin is on sale again. This song is on the radio just like last time and you want to argue. Why do you keep asking me what will happen next? Whatever happened last time! You give me that look? The nuns roll by loaded with pork? The cop knocks on the window and asks if I’m all right. I back out into the nuns. Take your pick. You snatch the keys from the ignition. Like last time. I leave the car and stride halfway across that busy highway and wake up in the hospital again to your helpless fucking face. Don’t touch me. Don’t pity me. Don’t try to talk me down. You’re no help at all. I’ve never been hit by a car, you say? We’ll see about that.