A Thursday Evening

Phoenix traffic. Difficult.
Downtown Phoenix traffic. At rush hour. More difficult. Exhausting. Claustrophobic.

I'm hungry. Baked in the windshield sun. My mind is racing with what needs to get done at home. The CD is playing the last of 12 songs.

3 blocks from home. In my mind I have already pulled into the carport, gotten the mail from the box, unlocked the door, glanced at the light on the answering machine, dropped the pile of mail on the kitchen counter, taken the strap of my leather bag from my shoulder, kicked off my clogs, pulled off my jeans, walked to Hankie's favorite sleeping location. I'm just reaching down to scratch his ears---


Red and blue flashing lights. A long row of them. Cop cars barricading all 6 lanes of the very end of my drive home.

I turn on the radio and find some news. There is a standoff, not quite 2 blocks from our house, between a platoon of policemen and a man who is sitting in a truck, wielding a high-powered rifle. He may have threatened people around him; he may be suicidal. Some family members have been brought to the scene to try to talk to him. It is 5:20 p.m. The standoff began at 1:30. I must find another way home.


If our human moods were measured, accurately, by using a spectrum of children's board games, with a system something like this:

Ecstatic, euphoric: Twister

Extremely happy: Mousetrap

Very happy: Chutes & Ladders

Happy: Candyland

Content: Life

Thoughtful: Scrabble

Bored: Chinese Checkers

Apprehensive: Boobytrap

Frightened: Trouble

Perplexed: Mystery Date

Angry: Hands Down

Enraged: Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots

Sorrowful: Operation

...and so on, then my mood would have just that second plummeted to a very dangerous broken-in-half Ouija Board that has been set aflame and shit on by a thousand angry scorpions.

Which, translated from BoardGamese into English is: "Let me out of this f*cking car and I'll kill him myself."

I start the zigzagging and backtracking necessary to actually get home, and am dizzyingly tired when I finally pull into the driveway.

Inside, I try to recalibrate, catch my breath. I turn on the TV news. The man has just shot himself in the head. The standoff is over.

I go and email Scott to tell him what's happened, then I need some contact with good old Mom. So I email her. And since I crave the mental equivalent of a stiff drink, I toss my sense of decency out on its ass and I type "He blew his head off. Good. One less dumb f*ck to ruin my day tomorrow."

I see her reply pop up a couple of minutes later. I imagine her clicking the mouse on the other end. It is Thursday. And Thursday is "Hair Day" for my mom. It has been Hair Day for as long as I can remember. Thursdays at 3:30 she goes to see Marcia, her "beauty operator" and gets her hair done. Washed, put in curlers, sat under a dryer, teased, sprayed. My dad, who can no longer drive or be comfortably left alone for an hour, goes with her and sits in a chair waiting during the whole process. It takes 50 minutes. Then they pick up styrofoam containers of broccoli and cheese soup 3 doors down and take it home and eat it for dinner.

Her message:

"Well, it is everywhere, even here. Two guys in a black van shot a window out of the
school gym, and the janitor got glass in his eye. He had to go to the hospital. All the schools were on code yellow. I don't know what it is all coming to.

It was cold out today. Our soup was good."