July 1995
When I was twelve, my mother met my step-father, Jim. They stayed together for seven years, at the end of which I was over him. In the Bible, debt is forgiven after seven years. That’s in the Old Testament anyway. In the New Testament your sins are forgiven by Jesus so now we can have a Wall Street and debt that will never forget you or let you forget it. For him and me, step-father and step-daughter, we stopped as easily as we started. The seven year contract was over.
When I was twelve, my mother met my step-father, Jim. They stayed together for seven years, at the end of which I was over him. In the Bible, debt is forgiven after seven years. That’s in the Old Testament anyway. In the New Testament your sins are forgiven by Jesus so now we can have a Wall Street and debt that will never forget you or let you forget it. For him and me, step-father and step-daughter, we stopped as easily as we started. The seven year contract was over.
He was a good man, mostly gentle
and kinder than earlier candidates for the role had been. He played his guitar
and sang nights in bars around the Southern Oregon region, smoked weed and
slept during the day. He had few ambitions beyond what he already had. In my
adolescent eyes he had very few redeeming features, except one. He was the
landscaper for Ginger Rogers.
The summer after the two met we
moved to his dusty property in White City, Oregon. We rode with him around the
small town in his green pickup with no key for the ignition, just a screwdriver
left on the seat to turn the starter. Ginger Rogers had just died the year
prior and the estate was in the process of being settled. He was still
occasionally going up to her property in the foothills to maintain the land.
Often he would teach me about how to do small landscaping tasks. He taught me
how to plant flowers and I filled the flowerbed in front of the trailer with
riotous marigolds, so tight they would jostle in the smallest breeze.
One afternoon, as the time he
spent caretaking for her property came to an end, he took us with him. Jim, my
mom, my brother Daniel and I packed into my mom’s Camaro and rolled through the
hot sun. Picking up Snapples along the way, we wound along mountain roads that
I would spend my early driving years trying to remember. We took a turn up an
unmarked drive and approached a closed, wrought iron fence. Jim, with his long
grey hair falling out from under his safari hat, punched in the code and the
gate swung slowly back.
The silent house did not feel
empty, but abandoned. We tip-toed through and spoke in hoarse whispers. Jim told
stories about how Ginger would refuse to be seen without her makeup on.
Night fell and we stripped down
to the bathing suits we wore under our clothes. Slipping into the pool in her
backyard, Daniel and I played, mom and Jim talked companionably. Soon the stars
rose and shone brilliantly in the mountain darkness. The smell of burnt grass
cooled and turned sweet like oatmeal cookies. I leaned my head back against the
concrete edge and let my body float up to rest on the surface. Watching the
stars, I imagined aliens and UFO’s hovering out of sight in the solar system,
but watching. A bright star, in the center of the dark sky, smoldered and
winked, fluttered and sighed through the evening.
