Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

T  W  O

WHAT

HAPPENED

THAT DAY

“Never fucking make promises.”

-Olivia Keller

 

“The glass that’s half empty is always the glass that’s half full,” Myron Keller had once told him. “That’s the whole point of the phrase. But what they don’t tell you is how just one little thing can make your view change of that glass. Or, for that matter, how sad it is looking at half a glass when you can’t refill it.”

Myron knew just when to stop an allusion, just when wisdom turned into rambling. Myron had done shit right. He always did. And the thing was he didn’t have to. His family was loaded. He could fuck up forever, and he’d be okay. Dan Rawlinson, aged twenty-nine, did not have that option, and yet he had taken that option. He had fucked up. What he meant was he was a fuck up. It was officially time to stop trying to be an artist, to throw in that proverbial towel, to get real. If he said it enough times he would believe it, and he needed to believe it. He needed to be able to be an ordinary person because what they never told you was that the alternative to ordinary was not extraordinary, but pitiable. He ran the danger of being one of those who could just not fit into polite society, and that was too bad because Daniel Rawlinson felt himself too middle class, too used to nice things, too, yes, polite, not live in this world he fit into so poorly and could barely afford.

And you know, none of this would have mattered yesterday. Yesterday he was content to go on being poor, content to be the leader of the band who didn’t have another job, and he always had Myron, Myron who said, “Whenever you want, you can work with me. You don’t ever have to worry.”

But he’d had Eileen too. They’d get married next year. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure about kids either. She had just gotten around to wanting to plan their wedding, and he offered to help her, but she said she’d rather do it with her girlfriends. Sure, baby, anything you want baby.

Dan wanted to be married. He wanted to have something in common with his other friends who had settled down. Myron had settled down and become a Dad a long time ago. Jack, who was the last person in the world you’d expect to be married and have children told him, “Being a dad is the best thing in the world. It puts everything into perspective.”

And Nick, who had been in the band four years now, who believed in the band said, “The only reason I get up and do this is because of the kids. It’s like having those little bastards—I’m playing now—having them changed everything! I was this piece of shit, just some useless dude. And then the day Michael looked at me, and I held him in my arms…. It just told me everything. I was like, this is the only reason I’m in this world.”

And so Dan, who had the day off and was enjoying the late summer where the days shortened and the sky went golden for the last two hours of the day, spent his morning going through music stores, looking at guitars and listening to records now that records were a thing again, and he told himself he had to be in love with his craft like he used to be and not so anxious anymore, that if good stuff was going to come it was going to come through an open and childlike mind. He needed to shake his cares away.

He had shaken those cares away, and was whistling his way back to his loft, kind of wishing there was an elevator as he reached the fourth floor, and he’d gotten iced coffee and donuts for himself and Eileen. They could go out later. They should go out!—when he rolled open the great door on its castors, and entered the loft to see Eileen’s changed, face staring at him from the bed where she knelt on hands and knees while Nick, looking comically frightened, stopped fucking her.

When he ran it wasn’t rage, but embarassment that turned him around. Once, as a teenager, he’d walked in on Myron having sex, and been so embarrassed he ran out the house, and now he was embarrassed again even though he knew he was the last person who should be. He couldn’t face what he’d seen, not right now, and he ran down the stairs and to his car and sped down the road and out of Rawlston, Ohio. He drove west until he came to the northern outskirts of Lassador and headed south toward his friend, toward Germantown, eager to avoid traveling through the ragged mess that was downtown. His family lived out here, in the outskirts, the area that was almost country, and he took the roads that were almost country roads until he reached the river and came to the east side of town, and there he was stopped, by of all things, a fucking plain clothes cop who sure had better shit to do. He was in a brownish beigish outfit, khakis, beige jacket, red tie, floppy hair, and the fucker flashed his badge as he came toward him.

Dan rolled down the window, and the long nosed cop stuck his face in. It changed the moment Dan’s did.

“Dan? Dan Rawlinson?”

“Uh, yeah…”

Then he blinked.

“Dave Lawry?”

Dave had been a few years ahead of him. Even though he’d been a senior at Saint Ignatius when Dan was a freshman, they;d both gone to K through 8 at Saint Anne’s,

“Dan, what’s up, buddy? You’re driving pretty fast.”

Dave was always like that. If he was in plain clothes he must be a detective or at least that’s what Dan had learned from watching Law and Order.

“I’m going through some shit…stuff,” Dan said.

“Yeah,” Dave said, his face changing. “I get that. How about this? How about you stick to the speed limit and get wherever you’re headed safe, and we’ll just call this a meeting between school mates.”

“I appreciate that,” Dan said, though he hadn’t talked to Dave since school, and didn’t expect to even be remembered by him. “I’ll…uh, watch out on that road.”

“You gonna be alright?”

For some reason Dan said, “Will you? How are you?”

“Uh… I’ve honestly been a lot better.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “I mean, I know. Uh, let’s both be careful out there.”

“Right,” Dave said, giving him a little salute and heading back to his car.

Dan was still sitting on the side of the road when Dave Lawry drove off, and for some reason he just kept thinking, “Poor guy. Wonder what’s eating him?”

On this road he was fifteen minutes from Germantown, which he came to via Riverhaven, the neighborhood he wished he could afford. He crossed the river that took its winding path to Lake Erie, that same river than, miles further was the northern border to downtown. Coming into Germantown from the east, Lassador didn’t feel like such an evil place, and off the river he drove around large old houses surrounded by trees with big yards that didn’t look much like the Germantown with which he was familiar, the part facing downtown. But when he parked in front of Myron’s modern new houses, he could see the steeple of Saint Ursula rising in the west, and another two other steeples, Saint Mary’s and Saint Agatha’s. To his right, before he had turned into the house on Marcus Street, he could see, in the distance, the old towers of the defunct beer factory, and the tops of the buildings of downtown, and this depressed him.

He didn’t know how long he’d sat in the car until there was a knock on the window and he looked up to see Myron. Before he could make an excuse, Myron climbed in the car and sat in the passenger’s seat.

Like a friend, he didn’t say anything, just waited for Dan to speak, and at last, Dan said, “Eileen is cheating on me.”

Myron made a low noise of sympathy that Dan noted wasn’t a noise of surprise.

“I was coming back with donuts and iced coffee—”

“I never understood that. I mean, donuts and hot coffee or iced coffee with biscotti, but I never understood the donuts and iced coffee.”

“Not the point.”

“No, of course not.”

“I was coming back, and I opened the door and there they were.”

“You caught them fucking?”

“She likes it on her knees.”

“Fuck.”

“When we tried it that way she said she hated it.”

Myron said nothing.

“I just… I just turned around and ran, and got in the car and drove till I got here.”

“I noticed,” Myron said, looking down, “that you didn’t drop the coffee.”

“Uh?” Dan looked down and said, “Oh.”

“In the movies they’d drop the donuts and the coffee and run off in terror, but you held right onto your food. You’ve always known priorities.”

At this, Dan burst out laughing, and when Myron had made his friend laugh, then the red faced, long nosed man with an odd soup bowl of a haircut, grinned a little, and the decided, “Well, I’ll just take this. She won’t need it now.”

And with that Myron took a noisy sip from one of the coffees and said, “You’re staying here with us tonight, right?”

“I—”

“You didn’t drive all this way just to tell me how upset you were. You are staying with us.”

“You’re a good friend.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you for the last fifteen years!”

“Oh, that bitch!” Olivia exclaimed, heedless of the children who were putting dinner plates out as she walked around the large kitchen. “I knew she wasn’t any good. Come here, Danny.”

Dan came to Myron’s lioness of a wife, and the small, dark haired woman in glasses, grabbed his chin and kissed him quickly.

“You deserve better than that slut, Danny. Peter!” she shouted, “Set up a room for your godfather! Danny, you stay as long as you want.”

“It’ll just be the night, I promise.”

“Never fucking make promises. You stay as long as you like. You’re the only one of Myre’s friends I like. Just promise to drop your towel on the way to the bathroom. You’ve always been a looker.”

 

“Did you hear about that family on the West Side of Stickney?” Sara demanded as they were finishing dinner. “Everyone thinks the West Side is full of poor black people and they talk shit about it—”

“Sarah!” Olivia mother warned.

“It’s just that not all Black people are poor and not all the poor people over there are black. Stephanie’s black and she’s loaded. She lives across the river. We were just talking about it today. Anyway, these folks were white as my butt—”

“That’s her new phrase,” Myron whispered to Dan.

“It’s sounds better if you say ‘white as my ass,’” Sarah said.

“Sarah!”

“But,” Sarah continued, “Mom and Dad don’t like swearing—at least they don’t like it for me. Mom does it all the time.. Anyway, the West Side is full of white people, and they are kind of trailer trash. Except with no trailer. Anyway, on Stickney, this man is high as anything, and he kills all three of his kids and his wife, and then I heard he killed himself, but Maristelle Fuestel said the police shot him. Anyway, whole family dead cause the dad was on some drugs.”

“That’s awful,” Olivia said, and Sarah looked disappointed because, Dan realized, she’d been going for ghoulishness more than pity.

“An officer commited suicide too. That was on the news. He was part of the neighborhood,” Myron said. “I mean, he grew up here. He lived with his brother on the South Side. But I think his funeral’s going to be at Saint Ursula’s.”

“That reminds me,” Dan said, “Of all the people in the world, I ran into—well, I was stopped for driving too fast—by Dave Lawry.”

“He’s a cop.”

“How’d you know?”

“I can’t really remember,” Myron said.

“But anyway, he seemed to be having a rough time. I bet this had something to do with it.”

“Life is so awful sometimes,” Myron said.

The children had become silent, realizing they were privy to grown up world talk.

“It puts things into perspective,” Dan said. “Me, pitying myself because of Eileen, and meanwhile all of this is going on.”

“Well, it’s sad that man shot his family,” Olivia said, “and it’s even more sad that a boy killed himself. But you still got a raw deal, Danny. And Eileen Pritchett is still a worthless slut.”