Victoria's Window--Leaving Town

The next morning, Victoria decided to leave town.  She had lived in this little West Michigan mill town all of her life, but felt the need to say just  a few goodbyes.  She went over to the mill  as the third shift was ending to tell a few work friends that she was heading out for parts unknown. She had worked in the mill for over ten years, first in scheduling, and then in quality control.  She had turned the Q.C. Lab into a highly-efficient inspection and testing department--she enjoyed the chemistry of making paperboard, and became an expert on such things as basis weight, tensile strength, porosity, and moisture content. 

Victoria was not a fan of the fancy new slogan-based quality programs with big banners that said, “The One Right Way,” “Quality Means Working Together,” “Quality or Else.”  Her approach was to make sure that the paperboard manufacturing processes conformed to established standards and customer requirements, nothing more or less.  She methodically sampled production runs, and made sure that all the instruments in the lab were calibrated and maintained.  She hardly ever requested new equipment, because she liked to use the traditional instruments, many of them dating from the 1930’s when the mill was first built.  When she had worked in scheduling, she actually built a customized slide rule that trimmed the paperboard machine with different-sized orders, and this hand-made device still out-performed the best computer software in the industry.

Victoria had finally purchased a MacBook laptop a few years earlier, instead of taking a vacation.  She saw the computer more as a way of helping her organize her life, than as a form of social connection or entertainment.  With online banking, and her neat folders and files, she had a sense of control that was pleasing to her.  She did not own a TV.

The folks at the mill arranged an impromptu going away party for Victoria in the break room.  The mill manager came down, and presented her with one of her favorite vintage measurement devices--an early Rockwell Hardness Tester.  No one would have used it after her departure.  Someone passed around home-made cookies and lemonade that had been intended for someone else’s birthday, so all-in-all she had a nice sendoff.  The mill superintendent said, “Victoria, things won’t be the same here without you.  You were honest, reliable, and you never missed a day of work in ten years.”  So Victoria had served much the same role at the mill as she had as a family member:  she was steadfast, conscientious, and predictable, just like one of her lab instruments.

She drove out of the fenced-in parking lot, and turned back towards town for one last breakfast with Marge. When she told Marge of her plans to leave, Marge managed not to break down.  “I’m glad you checked in before you disappeared,” she said.  “Don’t just go to some other time zone and fall in love--remember, all men are pigs.”  Marge did not base her conclusion on any awful or dramatic personal experience, but rather on everyday observations.  It had become a favorite greeting and farewell between the two women, like “Ciao.”

“All men are pigs!” Victoria replied.  Marge then told Victoria that she would not fix her the usual feta omelet, but instead, serve her poached eggs over home-made corned beef hash with blueberry pancakes on the side, slathered with butter and maple syrup.  “Eat all of it--you need more meat on your bones, and God knows, when you’ll get a proper meal again.” After securing a promise from Victoria to return someday, Marge seemed okay.  She was used to people coming in and out of her life. Her departing words, “You might be a damned fool to leave this town, and probably won’t get everything you want by leaving, but you might find a place where you’re less disappointed.”  Victoria thought this to be a wonderful valedictory address, better than anything she had ever heard at a high school graduation.  Marge agreed to receive her meager stream of forwarded mail for awhile.

Last stop, the nursing home. The staff at the nursing home were truly sorry that they would be missing their “bright light” every day, but not sorry enough to offer her a full-time job. She said goodbye to Tom and Cal.  Tom reached for his wallet to give Victoria some cash, but he had no wallet and no money.  He asked Victoria to take him with her, but she simply gave him a kiss on the forehead.  Tom strained against the electronic tether around his waist, and whispered, “watch out for submarines.”  Cal smiled.

Since her lease was up the next day, she simply turned her keys in to the landlord, and arranged for Two Men and a Truck to move her few pieces of furniture into a local storage locker.  She left town with her burnt orange Honda Element, her carbon fiber bike, a pillow, a few family snapshots, some street art, a flat-head screwdriver, a tack hammer, a duffle bag of clothes, a folding camp chair, her books, her MacBook, a reading light with an extension cord attached, a cast iron frying pan, her North Face pup tent, a sleeping bag, her Rockwell Hardness Tester, and Gracie, her cat. She left a coffee cup on the kitchen shelf as a gift to any future renter, then latched down the factory windows.  She wore a navy blue hoodie over a red plaid shirt, jeans, and some old walking shoes.  Her hair was pulled back in a straggly bun.

At 31, her father was still the most important person in her life, and she thought that a visit to see him would help her figure out what to do next. Other than her older sister who lived on a cattle ranch two hours outside of Austin, he was her only family. Her mother had died of breast cancer when she was 18, and her younger brother had been killed by a rocket attack in Afghanistan.

Always methodical and disciplined about her personal affairs, she had saved $75 a week for ten years, so she received a cashier’s check for about $40,000 when she closed her bank account. Along with $500 in cash, she felt she had enough to fund her travels until she could settle somewhere.

As she drove down Main Street, she passed a woman sitting on a stoop with three children playing at her feet, passed the local bar with its neon light flickering, passed the masonic lodge, a weathered building with white peeling paint, where her father and grandfather had attended their secret meetings once a month.  “What did they measure with the compass and square placed over the entrance?” she wondered. Three young boys sat on a park bench with their tawny legs dangling, their bikes leaning on trees behind them.   She passed some old brick buildings as she came to the edge of town.  She saw the black smokestack of the mill in her rearview mirror.  A freight train, full from the mill, made its way through the switches on its way out of town.  A flock of fast food wrappers flapped across the road.  Her childhood had been painted on this gritty canvas.  “I want to go somewhere pretty, where it’s easier to live,” she said to herself.  

It was midsummer in Michigan, and the highway was full of weekenders and vacationers driving cars, motorhomes, trucks with campers, trailers with boats, inflatables, personal watercraft, and ATV’s.  Occasionally, there would be a pickup truck or trailer with mattresses, sofas, and other household goods on there way Up North, perhaps some laid off people like herself aiming to find seasonal work or a new home.

Victoria listed to the Juno Soundtrack on her CD player, and sang along with her favorite lyrics:  

I am a vampire

I am a vampire

I am a vampire

I have lost my fangs

So I’m sad and I feel lonely...

Driving north on Route 131, she thought about all the advantages of turning around, and went through a complete rainbow of feelings--from reddish pink elation to dark violet anger, and the darker fear behind her anger--venturous, resentful, homeless at the same time.  She stopped the car when she came to the Muskegon River, and looked down into its black, rapid current, and at that moment, she took a deep breath, and softly said, “I lost the feeling of home when my mother died.”  She let herself sink in to this thought until Gracie meowed her back to the car.

South of Cadillac, she decided to take Route 115 over towards Lake Michigan.  It wasn’t the most direct route to her father’s place, but she wanted to see the colossal shoreline, shorebirds, and perhaps an eagle or two.  Gracie was in a funk for having been unceremoniously removed from her kingdom. She curled up tightly in the passenger seat like a hair ball.

Victoria's Window--Visit to the Memory Unit

“Two o’clock,” Victoria said to herself, feeling a bit weary, but knowing  this was the usual time to begin her second job:  nurse assistant trainee at Providence, the local nursing home.  Inside, she pressed the red button to the memory unit, and the double doors opened, and there in the dining room sat Tom and Calvin carrying on their daily after-lunch banter--words, soft and murmurous, running together or disconnected, in tune with their advancing dementia.  The uninflected tones were soothing to Victoria; in fact, the whole ambiance of the memory unit was soothing--it was a charmed space.  Here there was no fear of disaster, because disaster had already happened, and the memory of disaster had been erased, and replaced with a world of imagination.  The two retired school administrators commiserated with each other, “Too many meetings, Cal, too many meetings,” Tom said, “all we do is go to meetings around here.”  Cal gave his familiar reply: no words, but a rigid smile.

Tom turned to Victoria, “Where is my departure gate? I have a three o’clock to Chicago.”  

Victoria lowered her face even with his and ran her hand through his white halo of hair, and said with a sweet smile, “No more flights today.”  Tom turned to silent Cal, and said, “Looks like I’m going to miss a Board meeting.”  Cal still smiled, like a gentle piece of carved granite.  Through the cafeteria window, you could see dark clouds coming in from the West, and the wind was shaking the chain-linked fence that both prevented the patients from wandering off, and gave them asylum from the madhouse world.

Victoria completed her usual chores, and then helped with the afternoon fill-in-the-blank word games and balloon volleyball.  At five o’clock, her normal quitting time, it was raining hard so she decided to take a different exit than normal.  She entered a dimly-lit garage space that would take her closer to her car without going outside. As she approached the opposite wall, a ten-foot pile of discarded aluminum walkers loomed near the trash bins like a pile of bleached bones.  She stopped and began to cry.

Here she was confronted with all the cruelty, confusion, and general misery of her world  in this heap.  She felt like a jumbled heap of walkers in a dying world.  LIke Tom, she was also looking for her departure gate.  Her old world was dying, and a new one was struggling to be born.  She felt the same way in grade school when she had let go of one rung of the monkey bars and the next one was not quite in reach.  She folded her slender frame into a pose that resembled a folded-up lawn chair, kneeling down and hugging her shins.  She cried rocking gently to the rhythm of the rain.

After a good sob, she stood up, looked one more time at the pile of walkers, and exited the parking garage into a driving rainstorm.  Little pellets of hail were scattering across the asphalt.  Her jet black hair hung in hanks like serpents, the salt tears rinsing out of her large brown eyes by the cleansing downpour.  She fell into her Honda Element, and drove back to the flat.  She was dead tired by now, and sunk into a benevolent sleep, divinely solitaire, curved like a sliver of moon snuggling her small, stuffed bear.  As she slept, the sky cleared and bathed her in moonlight splashing through her austere factory windows.

Inland Waterway

Denise and I rented a house boat this weekend and traveled through the ancient Inland Waterway created when the last great ice sheet retreated from a large lake (Alconquin) 10,000 years ago.  We went through a lock and swing bridge on Crooked Lake near Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan, then connected through the Crooked River to Burt Lake, then through the Indian River to Mullett Lake, then through the Cheboygan River to the town of Cheboygan on Lake Huron--about 48 miles of woods and marshes across the "Tip of the Mitt" of Northern Michigan.  If it were not for Denise's great navigational skills and our hand held GPS, we would still be out there somewhere.

Old Boathouse

Our little boat on Cheboygan River

Channel Markers on Indian River

Crooked River

Little Traverse Bay

Victoria's Window--Bath and Breakfast

Her father used to lean forward as if speaking confidentially, and in his gruff, husky voice, say that she was the one in the family who had “both feet on the ground.”  She never knew exactly what that meant, except that he was happy that she had graduated from high school, stayed out of trouble, and could hold a steady job.   It was true, she was the steadfast one, offering the rest of the family a framework of easy-going dependability.  She provided a certain architectural appeal to their home life, providing the rest of them with light and ventilation like the sunshine and breeze that flows through an open window.  What would her father think now that she had been permanently laid off?  

Victoria took her work clothes off and threw them in a heap.  Her bed was still made from the day before, but she didn’t want to sleep.  She wanted to stay up all day, and go to bed at night like most of the rest of the world.  

She drew her bath water, and slipped into the tub letting the warm water surround her body with a filmy, soft membrane.  She was long-legged, and let her big feet stick out and rest on the edge of the tub.  She thought about how she had long-neglected her feet--they were calloused, and her toenails were untrimmed.  She slipped them back under the water, and closed her eyes.  When she re-opened them, she realized that she had nodded off.  The bath water was so still that it reflected the bare light bulb on the ceiling, and then rippled from the breeze through the open window.  At almost the same moment, Victoria sensed that she was cold and hungry.  She had always grabbed something in the canteen at work, so there was nothing in her refrigerator, nothing much of anything for that matter.  

About ten o’clock, Victoria bounced down her narrow wooden staircase to the street, and walked across to the local diner where she ordered a feta omelet and more coffee.  Marge was behind the counter, and proceeded to update Victoria on everything and anything going on with her, afraid that she might miss a detail.  After ten minutes of non-stop chatter, she asked Victoria how things were going.  “Okay, I guess,” Victoria replied.

Victoria was as private and close-mouthed as Marge was freely communicative, and Marge always assumed that Victoria didn’t have much to say, because she didn’t have a lot going on.  Privileged glimpses into Victoria’s mind and heart were not open to the excursions of casual friends and acquaintances.  The common ground they did share was a lively interest in the bits and fragments of life in their mutual territory--new people moving in and out of  the block, store foreclosures, arrests, arguments, lost dogs and cats, large and small eyesores, unusual street people, doors ajar or broken windows.

After exhausting their present supply of information, Marge said, “We’d be damned fools to live anywhere else.”  Victoria answered shortly, “True that.”

Spring in Northern Michigan

My garden is producing fantastic lettuce, and the tomatoes are beginning to flower.

Victoria's Window--A Novel by Randy Evans

Most towns have unsightly back streets, neglected in many different ways--old dilapidated buildings, upper-story empty lofts with dirty windows, repair and rental shops, barber shops and beauty salons, bars and restaurants for the locals signed with one-syllable names like “Don’s” or “Darlene’s,” pot-holed streets lined with broken-down cars and delivery trucks, sun-faded “men-at-work” signs on broken sidewalks that seem more permanent than temporary, like those loose, bent-over street signs that never quite fall down even in strong wind.  

Victoria looked out on one such street as the morning light filtered through the old factory windows of her third-floor rented apartment; her cat nuzzled against her legs.  She sipped strong, black coffee, and began to think about how this day would be so different from her usual routine.  For the first time since high school, she would no longer be working the night shift at the board mill in town.  She would miss some of the old-timers, all the petty confidences, and life dramas of her co-workers, all the old instruments in the quality control lab where she worked, and the emanating warmth of a freshly cut-to-size skid of paper on a cold winter morning.  What she would not miss was the predictability of it all--trapped in an endless cycle from the parking lot, to the locker room, to the shop floor, to the windowless break room, back and forth in days of nights and nights of days.

There were sixteen panes in her apartment window, each reflecting the light in a different way.  Each pane seemed to hide a quivering revelation of what her new life might be, a slurry of sky and clouds.  She unlatched the only two-paned casement that hinged open, and pushed it out as far as it would go until it reflected the sidewalk below--an image of concrete liquified in shadows. She noticed how the reflection turned the grease spots and urine stains into something that was entirely more pleasing to her eyes.

What would it be like to live without putting on her work face?  How would she feel if she could do what she wanted each hour of every day, instead of feigning interest when she was bored, containing her emotions when she wanted to cry or scream, reserving her judgments when she had the impulse to speak out?  What would it be like to sleep through a normal night, and wake refreshed?  What limits would she impose on her new freedom?  What promises would she make to herself?  Would she discover new dreams and let them be temporary and short-winded?  For a rare moment she stood still in readiness, then ran a restless finger across the dust on the window frame and watched dustballs form and float away.