The Breakdown

I lost "it" yesterday, to use the jargon of yesteryear.  Everything seemed to be going wrong, much of it my own fault.  O.K.  So it goes.  Given everything, however, I could only hope to make a new start.  My day was interrupted, of course, by my need to get back to my mother's.  I had to stop at the grocers for two things, a pack of chicken and a bottle of wine.  Wouldn't take long.  

Walking through the store, I heard faintly as I was about to leave, Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly."  I was in the mood.  Sometimes a song just hits a right chord.  So when I got into the car, I asked Siri to play it.  Though traffic was what it always is at that time, I was madly singing along, bopping like a crazy teen.  

When I pulled into my mother's garage, she was sitting in her usual chair looking pained and grim per usual.  I rolled down the window and turned the stereo up, and when I jumped out of the car, I started singing and dancing.  She just stared at me, but undeterred, I continued, laughing.  Oh. . . if the neighbors were walking by.  

When I turned the music off, I took the groceries into the house, made a Negroni and brought out a light beer for my mother.  We sat without talking much, and when the Negroni was gone, I went in to start dinner.  BUT, and this is odd for me at my mother's house, I hooked up the portable speaker to my phone and put on Petty's Greatest Hits.  I liked his music fine when it came out, but I don't listen to it now unless it comes into a mix on my iTunes.  I was struck by how much that band was centered around the drumming.  The drums drive every tune.  And as I cooked, I was singing and dancing.  

At six, I plated dinner and put on the news.  At quarter to seven, it was time for my mother's shower.  I made sure she was all set, then went back to the kitchen to clean up--once again, to Tom Petty.  Feeling pretty good.  

When my mother finished her shower--and I checked on her three times--she said there was a pile of things that needed to be washed, so I put all her laundry into the washer.  I took the speaker into the garage, pulled some cameras out of the car, and stayed out in the pleasant evening.  I don't do such things at my mother's house.  I sit.  I watch t.v.  I don't have a guitar here nor a ukalele nor a harmonica (the last two gifts from Q), nor anything else.  At home, bored, I may pick up any of my stuff and amuse myself, but bereft of anything my own at my mother's. . . . 

I felt the most alive I'd felt since coming back to take care of mom.  Mania, yes.  It was surely an episode of reactionary mania.  And then. . . . 

"What?" 

"I can't find my phone.  I think it might be in the washer."

What the fuck.  I stopped the washer and fished around in the water with my hand.  No phone.  

"It has to be there.  Drain out the water."

"It's not in there." 

It broke me.  Now she was bent over the washer with her crippled body fishing around with her hand forever, mumbling indecipherably as the music played.  I turned it up and walked into the yard.  I could see her now with a stick poking around.  I paced the sidewalk to get out of eyesight.  My nerves were shot through.  Not a moment.  Not a single moment.  

When I calmed myself and went back to the garage, she was inside.  I walked in.  She was on the house phone.  

"I don't know how to call my phone."

"Huh."

"You don't help me."

That was the last of it.  I picked up my phone and called hers.  It was lying on the couch.  

I won't record what happened next, the tirade, the litany of things I said to her.  Then I walked outside.  The music was still playing.  I saw that the neighbors were taking their garbage to the curb, so I did the same.  A couple from down the street walked by.  

"Nice night," I said.  

"Yes.  How are you?"

I bobbed my head, the put my finger gun to my temple.  

"I think I'll get a gun and shoot both of us tonight.  Got any dynamite?  I'll just blow the whole place up."

They smiled weakly with bigger eyes.

"Well, like you said, it's a nice night. . . and the music is good."

"Yup."

The phone rang.  It was the tenant.  

"How are you doing?"

I went through my litany.  

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Shoot me."

It was over.  I was spent.  I turned off the music, walked into the house, and sat on the couch like I do every night.   

I'm still thinking about shooting myself, though.  The worst is yet to come.