I called in on Sunday, the day after I flew back, to ask Father if he needed help. But I was passive-aggressive about it: I called at around 2, kind of late to be helping out with loading and unloading stuff. I was kind of tired, I just wanted to putz around the house after flying the day before, and there was an article I wanted to file. But the main reason I called so late was because I didn't really want to go in. I could've called when I woke up around 10:30, but I knew that there was little chance he would want me to come in at 2.
I swore, I swear I swore, that I would make it up by coming in to help after my lab work at the U. Monday. But Sunday night Father asked me to go to this place I've never been to, never even heard of, and buy this coil for a stove. That was my ready-made excuse to not work at the store Monday. It was further buttressed Monday morning, when he called and asked if I've gotten the park yet, even though I was actually going to work. No chance I was doing anything but going to this place right after the U., and when I called him from the parking lot to say that I bought the part, he told me to just stay home. Of course, there was a little trickeration there, too: Even though I was let go early, I decided to walk to the campus bookstore to buy a discount ticket to the State Fair (my third one), and along the way I decided to stop and take a 15-minute study outside on campus grounds for a quick five bucks. It was 2:30 by the time I called; again, it was too late to load stuff.
Tuesday I wasn't going to come in at all. It's $2 popcorn Tuesdays at the local Regal. I felt a little guilty ... nah, I really didn't.
And that's why I hate myself. I still feel incredible shock when my parents decided to kill off the store. But if I really cared about it, I'd at the very least help bring it to a dignified end. I'm not. I'm staying away, as far away as possible. And even though I think I want to feel bad about it, I have to admit, I don't really feel that bad at all.
But I do feel bad about not genuinely feeling bad. Go beyond the fact that I'm not backing up my words and feelings with ironclad, substantial action. The store was (it's still viscerally very hard for me to think of the store in the past tense) our family's lifeblood. Giving to it led us to the lifestyle that we have -- solidly middle class, but not living check to check, and having very few problems in getting what we need. It is, like I've said before, the American Dream. If it's going to be brought to an end -- and even though business has been slow, I really think Father wants to retire, or at least do something else -- it should be sent off with as much support as possible.
So what I am doing running away from it? I've worked there on Saturdays and over summers when I was a kid, and I had been filling in for my parents when they vacationed in Vegas. But now when the rubber meets the road, where am I? Sitting in a movie theater, glad I'm not getting dirty and sweaty from hauling shit back and forth. I don't like it. But I am not happy with my attitude about it. It feels wrong. It is wrong.
But ... shit, I don't wanna do this!!! It's hard, it's boring, it takes too long. And ... yes, again it comes back to me. Visiting the store these days is like visiting a dying family member. I remember seeing both of my grandmothers in the hospital. Father's mom, I was not being solemn -- I was more interested in getting cups of pudding from the refrigerator down the hall. And I couldn't wait to get out of the room where Mother's mom was. My instinct is to avoid death at all costs. I think about my own mortality too often already; seeing someone so close to death's door is even more of an unescapable nightmare to me.
And that's how I consider the store these days. I'm going in tomorrow, if Father will let me. I don't like it, but it's been nine days since I last helped out. I know I am not going to like what is different since the last time I was there. What pallets have been removed? What boxes are no longer there? What else has he shut down? I have already seen the closed sign at the store's front door in the middle of the day. If it's shutting down, more pieces will follow. I am not going to take seeing things at the store change well, and if it looks radically different, I swear I think I am going to fucking lose it.
You know, these past few days I've been able to not totally think about the store. Worse, when I do think of it, I'm trying to think of it in the best possible light. For example, I keep breathing a sigh of relief because it hasn't closed yet. Father gave me $60 for the part I bought on Monday; to me, that means that he still has a lot of money coming in, so the store can't be closing. In fact, a part of me still think that the store will still be open -- that I somehow didn't understand Father when he told me the store would close, or maybe Mother changed her mind and decided she didn't want to work for anybody else.
I know -- wishful thinking. I'm lying to myself just so I can believe that everything is staying the same and that my little world is exactly what I think it is and should be. A part of me, the one that cannot change because he knows he would die because he can't adjust, is about to get a very, very rude awakening -- if not in a couple months, when all this is supposed to be over, then tomorrow.
And I, for one, can wait. Because this all sucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment