Living Up: The End

It was a still morning in the heart of Geriatric Paradise, but my stomach was anything but peaceful as I pulled my aged station wagon up to the sidewalk of my inevitable end.  The wheezing Buick came gratefully to a rest in front of the future home of its former owner.  I shared the irony with the old red, wagon, but it wasn’t as amused as it should have been.  Perhaps it knew how much of an asshole I really was.  Perhaps it knew the real irony of that morning: that I should begrudgingly welcome one who had freely given to me.

The lights were already on inside the house.  I was five minutes late.  I hate being late.

I quickly stepped up the concrete walk, formulating an airtight alibi for my tardiness along the way, (school bus, exceedingly vigilant red light, chatty cashier).  As I was about twenty feet from the door, the smoke alarms suddenly began blaring in an incessant, echoing rhythm throughout the empty cottage.  Through the door sidelights I caught glimpses of the gargantuan realtor heaving his over-sized frame from one side of the house to the other, wielding his clipboard as a makeshift fan.  He didn’t notice when I entered.

“Hello, sir,” I said in a stately tone with a slight nod.  I always called people sir, even before I had moved.  It used to be fun and overly formal.  But in the Low Country, it felt forced – a necessary addition to my introductions in a society steeped in feigned respect and empty courtesies.

“How are ya,” he shouted back, still frantically fanning the nearest smoke detector.  He was wearing a polo shirt.  It was black, tucked into his tailored khaki pants, but unbuttoned all the way to his chest.  The collar was wrinkled and appeared entirely too small on the neck of a man who was entirely too large.  A gold watch flashed upon his wrist as his arms flailed above his head.  Meanwhile a pair of sunglasses bounced upon his back, dangling about that sunburned neck by a camouflage-print strap.  His shoes were handsome – a fine, glossy brown pair of loafers that were worth more than the red wagon parked out front.  His apparel was altogether a dichotomy – a hapless display of wealth and folksiness that sublimely summed up my new state of residence.

At last the wailing ceased.  The giant put down his tree-trunk arms and heaved a heavy sigh of relief.

“I’m doing great,” I replied.  I’m usually “doing great.”  Or I’m “hanging in there.”  The knot in at the bottom of my gut wrenched tighter, but it was only seven in the morning, so I was doing great.

“That’s good,” he said with a smile.  As he spoke he shot his immense hand across the distance between us.  I reciprocated, allowing my human-sized hand to be swallowed alive by its counterpart.  It only served to make me feel that much smaller.  I had been feeling small for the past six months.  All the men here were large, and strong.  Their skin was dark, their voices deep and resonating, softened only by a lilting southern accent.  Their hair was chestnut, thick and full, more often than not, waving in defiant contrast to my bald, pale head.

“Sorry about the alarms, there.  When the dust gets stirred up, they get a little jumpy.”  His apology was sincere and overly kind.  But I was reluctant to be standing there in the first place, and I had reached my limit on southern hospitality about a month ago, so I just grinned and shook my head in acknowledgment.  “So how do ya like the place?” asked the gentleman.  He spread a great wing out and slowly moved it across a panoramic view of the brand new, one-story home, within which we stood centered.  Hardwood floors covered every square foot, save the two bedrooms.  There was a small patio out the back.  Steel appliances.  A jacuzzi tub.  It was a fine little house, comparable in size and shape to the three-hundred other cottages surrounding it in Del Vista, one of South Carolina’s premier elderly communities.

“It looks great,” I said.  The words echoed across the empty floors and against the dusty drywall and out through the open door of the vacant garage into a morning that was far warmer than any February morning should be.  And it did look great.  I would have loved to have lived their myself, if I were twenty years older.  Still, the sight of the place sickened me.  It was the end of the road.  It was the final door yet to be shut on my hopes of ever leaving this land of beautiful giants.

“You think she’ll like it?”

My stomach did a back flip.

Did it matter?  My grandmother was moving down in a matter of days.  She was leaving my mother behind to spend her last years with her great-grandchild.  Three-quarters of a century worth of knick-knacks, doilies, dolls, and Patsy Cline albums were packed into a tractor trailer pointed south on Route 95.  My parents would follow after it in a matter of months.  Then there would be no chance for return.  I was bound to the coastal plains by fate and obligation.

“I’m sure she’ll love it,” I said with a reassuring nod.  I was sure, at the least, that she would not hate it.  For Betsy Fields, life would carry on in this zip code as it had for the past fifty years in three other states – reclined in a La-z-boy, perpendicular to a television, deep in the smuttiest romance novel the grocery store counter could offer.  As long as the eighteen-wheeler, brimming with her possessions, made the nine-hundred mile journey to Summerville, South Carolina, my grandmother would have little objection to her new dwelling.

Having given the verbal ok, I signed some documents as my grandmother’s proxy, and my job there on that balmy winter morning was finished.

The giant man guided me back out to the driveway where we stood for a moment.  I was already late for work, so I didn’t mind chatting.  I admired his truck.  Guys down here love it when you admire their trucks.  Camouflage wraps, monster truck tires, vinyl print graphics – all fabulous conversation pieces that don’t change the fact that I’m staring at a DMV registered,   certified, pre-owned, rolling piece of shit.

At last my guilt-ridden, ailing stomach proclaimed that, late or not, it was time to get to work if not solely for the use of the facilities.  I craned my neck one last time to exchange a few words of insincere pleasantries with the goliath, before falling into my road weary wagon.

I started the car and slowly crept along the silent streets.  I considered how many times I would be passing by those charming, sleepy, indifferent homes – how they were novel and pleasant on that first trip through the quaint community.  I considered how in a matter of months I would come to loathe the sight of them, as their interchangeable, insipid facades passed by my car window on a conveyor belt.  Soon I would be smiling and waving, stifling my disdain as I inched my way through the twisted labyrinth of cul-de-sacs and tightly manicured front yards – a tedious maze of utter boredom, built to assuage the cantankerous temperaments of the soon-to-be-dead.  For here is where they would find their end.  And here is where I found mine.