Jury Joy

David’s expression is one of sadistic glee as he hands me my little piece of mail.  It’s a summons to jury duty, a notice most people dread.

“Oh goodie!” I say.  “I love jury duty.”

“Right.”  Sardonic, disbelieving.

“Really,” I insist, because it’s true.  “Strangers with weird ideas and bizarre traits.”  Mumblers, scratchers, hair-chewers.  A writer’s dream.

The information card specifically says, “Appropriate clothing required.”  I wonder what that means in this part of the country.  Lately I’ve been noticing women scuffing around out in public in house shoes.  Will they show up for jury duty wearing shoes that look like pillows?  

Traffic is light and I arrive early.  I show my ID and the clerk sends me to a waiting area where about twenty people mill.  We’re asked to fill out a form that indicates whether we want to claim the ten-dollar stipend or donate it to charity.  We’re given a list of a dozen local organizations from which to choose.  I request that mine be given to the Family Crisis Center.  The man next to me puts a check in front of every charity.  I imagine an accountant hunched over a counter, dividing ten dollars twelve ways, allocating eighty-four cents to each. 

Within minutes the number of jurors has swollen.  We’re overflowing into the outer corridor.

“There’s going to be three hundred of us,” my charitable neighbor says, “which means something big’s going on.  Burnet’s the crack capital of the world.”

Really?  I had no idea.  Burnet, by the way is pronounced, “Burn it!”

I study my fellow jurors’ sartorial choices.  Men—jeans and plaid shirts, boots and big belt buckles.  Women, either dowdy or slutty, depending on what their bathroom scale advises; though some ignore what they know.  I’m surprised by the variety of ages; every stage of adulthood is represented, not just the retirees who dominate the hill country.  And not a brown face among us. 

“Two trials today,” the woman behind me chimes in.  “Theft and spousal abuse.” 

Oh boy; nasty and shocking, a side of life I only see on screens.  Witnesses will cry.  Defendants will stare out of hostile eyes.  The drama will be exceptional.  The contrasts, stunning. 

“How do you know this?” I ask.

“The docket’s online,” she tells me.  And now I’ve learned another new thing. 

We sign in at a table and are shown into a large comfortable courtroom.  I scan from wall to wall.  Wanting the best view of every detail, I aim toward a center seat.  The woman behind follows along and takes the seat next to me, which is too bad because she’s large and spills over, leaving me only a portion of my space. 

“Have you been called for jury duty before?” I ask.

“I get called pretty often, but am always dismissed right off.”

“Why?”

“Because I work at Walmart.”

This makes no sense to me.  Deciding she must be crazy, I let the conversation die and turn to the novel I’m reading, A Man Called Ove, a depressing selection which Amazon, based on the last several books I’ve bought, assumed I’d enjoy.  It’s about a suicidal widower, a rigid curmudgeon, who misses his wife.  While the story deserves to be told, there are simply too many wasted and meaningless words.  Every other sentence has “ . . . Ove is the sort of man who does . . .” or “ . . . Ove is not the sort of person who likes. . .” Why not just say, “Ove does,” or “Ove doesn’t like?”  I realize that this brief phrase, “the sort of,” is in support of a style, but once or twice was enough to relate the gist.  To do it every time the protagonist thinks or acts is grating.  I want to go through the thing with my finger on the delete key

The bailiff announces the arrival of the judge; and we all rise as The Man enters through a door behind the podium. 

I try to present a solemn demeanor—straight back, gaze attentive—and I paste a stern expression on my face.  In order to get chosen as a juror, I must stand out as someone who likes to judge other people. 

“Please be seated,” the judge says, sinking regally into his throne.  We sit.  “Thank you all for coming today, but one of the cases has pled out and the other defendant, who was out on bond, has skipped.  And believe me, when we recapture him, he’ll wish he hadn't done that.”

Sounds like Burnet County needs Stephanie Plum!

“And so I’m sorry for the waste of your time, and once again, we appreciate your service.  You’re dismissed.”  He rises, turns, and disappears through his special door. 

I should have given my positioning in the room more thought.  The man in the seat closest to the exit had the right idea.  I turn and watch as he zips through the door.  Mountains of flesh have me blocked on all sides.  We stand and move like packed hogs, pressing into the aisles, through the doorway, the hallway, the foyer; and we burst out into the scorching sunshine where a hundred and fifty cars and trucks are backed up all the way to the rear of the building.

The morning had so much potential, and then nothing happened.   

A lady passing by asked why I was taking a picture.  I told her it was because I was thrilled to be here for jury duty.  She laughed.  

This is the way I chose to dress for jury duty.  With proper sandals, of course, not flip-flops.  Appropriate?  

Tile Talk

“My mother-in-law broke her hip,” Amy, a Mahjong friend, tells us.

“That’s terrible.”  My response is without thought or sincerity.  My mind is on the tiles in my rack.  What started out as a lovely aroma has rapidly turned into a stink. 

“We’ve been expecting it,” Amy continues.  “She’s in her late eighties and she falls at least once a week.”

“My, my,” Lucille murmurs.  She plucks a tile, looks at it; it’s no use to her and she discards, identifying it—“three bam.”

“Every time it happens, Arnie has to call us to come help get her up.  She weighs three hundred pounds.”  Arnie, I assume, is the father-in-law.  Amy shakes her head despondently, takes the next tile in line, makes an adjustment in her rack as she adds it to her hand, and discards a wind.  “And then Arnie, ninety-one years old, hits a deer while he’s following after the ambulance.  His car was too damaged for him to continue on, and he’d forgotten to charge his phone, so he was stranded on the side of the road with a dead deer.”

“That’s terrible,” Kendra says, her eyes not moving from her rack as she takes a tile and barely glances at it before tossing it on the table, saying, “North wind.”

“So finally someone driving by figures out that here’s an old man in trouble,” Amy says.  “So they stop and offer their cell phone and he calls us and we go pick him up and take him to the hospital to be with Catherine, who, by this time is in a panic because she’s scared to death something happened to him.”

I pick up a one dot, view it sadly, discard it.  All I need is a pair of flowers.  There are eight of the stupid things.  I figured my chances were good.  But at this point, five have been discarded.  Pairs are tricky:  I can’t complete a pair from the discards unless it’s for Mahjong.  Amy picks a tile, discards a flower.  Damn!  Two left, and I need them both.  If I can just draw one, at least I’ll have a chance.  Kendra draws, discards a four dot.  My turn.  Be a flower, be a flower, I say in my mind.  It’s a two crack.

And still Amy talks.

“And then, while we’re in the emergency room waiting for someone to talk to us about her x-ray, Arnie starts making a fuss about how long it’s taking.”  Dismayed, she makes a smacking noise.  “Well, his wife is in pain, and he’s frustrated because there’s nothing he can do about it, so he goes out into the corridor and starts stopping random hospital workers, shouting in their faces and waving his arms until someone calls security.”

Kendra discards the seventh flower.  My hand is lost.  At this point all I can do is try to keep another player from getting what she needs.  Kendra and Lucille have enough of their hands exposed so that I know what to avoid discarding.  Amy hasn’t exposed anything except the details of her horrible weekend. 

“We took him outside and calmed him down, but then he just collapsed in tears.  There he was, in Bill’s arms, crying like a baby.  He hasn’t spent a night away from his wife for ages, maybe not since they got married over sixty years ago.”

Yes, Amy’s talkative.  But it’s not self-centered jabbering.  Even now, the story she relates is about someone else’s misery.  In our Mahjong group, she knows the names of everybody’s children, and the names of their children’s children.  She knows all the women’s health issues and their husbands’ health issues.  In fact, so overtly thoughtful is she that I, who, in the best of moods, can only be described as irascible, once asked her how she could be so nice all the time, and she answered, “I love everybody.”  And I believed her. 

Lucille takes a tile, discards. 

“They set her hip with screws and cable.  Cable.  I’ve never heard of such a thing.”  Amy takes her tile, immediately rejects it. 

Kendra grabs the next tile.  Her lashes flutter as she places it in her rack.  She got something she needs.  She discards an east wind. 

I pull a joker, and immediately thump it in the middle—as jokers can’t be part of a pair, I have no use for the thing—which causes Lucille to emit an unhappy grunt.  She could’ve used it. 

“And now Arnie’s staying with us,” Amy says.  “He’s so worried about Catherine that he can’t sleep or eat.  And when we got a call this morning that she’s going into a rehab facility, he started crying again.”

Lucille pulls her tile, discards it. 

“Is it really rehab, or is it a nursing home?” I ask.  Having witnessed my own mother-in-law’s long decline, I know all about the conveyor belt for elderlies.

“They’re calling it rehab.  But we all know she’s never going home again.”  She lifts her tile, looks at it, and, perking, announces, “Mahjong.”

My first reaction isn’t generous.  I wanted the win.  I wanted the tiles to be on my side.  Also, Mahjong takes concentration, and she was talking the whole time.  Does her mouth work separately from her brain?   

Mahjong players speak of "the winds of chance," and "the whimsy of the Mahjong gods."  In addition to being capricious, Mahjong is karmic.  Because Amy's had a tense few days, Mahjong will be kind.  Wiggling with joy and straightening in her chair, she's anxious to move on to her next win.  Expediently she collects her winnings and starts shuffling the tiles.  She makes Mahjong ten out of thirteen hands (unprecedented!), talking nonstop the whole time.  

This pair of flower tiles is taunting me.  

Isn't this a beautiful hand?  No jokers, and I pulled it all myself. didn't take a single discard from the center.  The white dragon and east wind don't belong, though.  Oh, for a pair of flowers.  

Ready to play?  I played with a woman in Singapore who believed that the ends of the walls need touch so the evil spirits can't get in.  

Politics: Two Rank Odors

I enjoy thoughtful political commentary and a dignified exchange of ideas, so it’s understandable that this last year of media coverage contrived to incite, and the insubstantial and childish yammering of the candidates, has left me disappointed.  I need to get away from the television for a while.  So David and I decide to rent jet skis and bounce around on Lake LBJ for a couple of hours. 

“I don’t like to be splashed,” I remind him as we swing our legs over and settle into the saddles.  A while back he did a dig-in hard turn and sent spray all over me; then he laughed like it was funny, but I didn’t think so.  “I like to stay close to the shore and contemplate the houses.” 

“When I want to have real fun,” he tells me agreeably, “I’ll go to the middle and not disturb you at all.”  I’m dubious. 

As I'm inching through the No Wake Zone, isolated with my thoughts, my mind goes exactly where I don’t want it to go—politics.  The closer the election gets, the more despondent and bewildered I become.  In a country rich with visionaries, philosophers, scientists, and elocutionists, it’s nonsensical that we must choose between an ambitious woman so dedicated to her legacy that she’ll say whatever it takes to get elected, and a divisive sociopath who has no clear plans and mouths his hyperbole in the grating idiom of a Valley Girl.  The man is an embarrassment before the world. 

And Hillary has been in the public eye for so long that the notion of seeing her and listening to her (recently she moderated her voice because polls told her she was “too strident”) for another four years is abhorrent.  Do I trust her to do what’s best for the country?  No.  I trust her to do what’s best for her.  Move aside, used-up woman.

Also, they’re both seventy; and yes, some people are sharp at seventy, but not as sharp as they used to be.  

So this is where my thoughts go as I dip and rise with the waves.  There is no wind, but the water’s choppy.  Herons are everywhere.  One skims over the foamy crest right in front of me.  It lengthens its neck, stretching toward the treetops, flapping its wings as it finds a perch.  Oh.  There are a couple of nests up there.  Sublime.

Crossing under the bridge, we’re on the Colorado River, a soothing band of blue with a wall of untamed greenery on the left and houses on the right—modern mansions adjacent to modest weekend rentals.  I expected it to be hot out here, but the misty breeze makes it pleasant.  Several people have arranged their chairs in a semi-circle on a sandbank.  Feet resting in the water, they drink from cans, tell stories, and tease each other.  I’m glad they’re having a good time. 

I’m acquainted with a woman, Vivvi, who thinks Trump is going to save us all. Trump declares that women love him, but I doubt the existence of these women.  Other than the few who are paid to speak for him (surrogates, an unexpected term in this arena), who are these devotees?  What kind of woman isn’t offended by his derisive remarks about menstruation and wrinkles on faces that are no longer youthful?  What woman isn’t bothered that his wife’s portfolio holds nude shots?  (I’ve heard they’re quite tasteful; but still, foreign leaders would have easy access to naked pictures of our first lady).  And so, when Vivvi came down on his side, I went to some trouble to question and observe.  Here’s Vivvi in a nutshell: 

She didn’t go to college.  She doesn’t like to read, but will flick through a fashion magazine if she’s stuck in a waiting room.  She enjoys reality TV.  Though she’s never owned or fired a gun, she’s against gun control—and don’t get me started on that; also, she thinks that Planned Parenthood is evil—again, don’t get me started.  She wears ankle bracelets, toe rings, low-cut tops.  She drips accessories—scarves, jewelry, belts, hair ornaments; and her accessories match her clothes.  Her husband insults her publicly.  I’ve witnessed it.  So, she’s a throwback.  Come on, Vivvi, even Edith Bunker evolved.  When I asked Vivvi why she liked Trump, she said, “Because he says what he thinks.”  Good Lord, if a president goes around saying what he thinks, we’ll all be lost!

Up ahead, David turns back, signals that he wants to return to the main portion of the lake.  I guess it’s time.  We can hardly follow the Colorado all the way to the Rockies.  With a shrug I make a tight turn.  I’m impressed with myself when I crank it up to forty—what a daredevil I am.  Under the bridge, back to the lake.  True to his word, David is doing his circling and splashing out in the center, far away from where I chug contentedly along.  First one direction, then the other.  When we get to the dam it’s time to head back in. 

It’s been a relaxing break, helpful in that I’ve reached a peace of sorts:  whether we vote for the witch in the gingerbread house or Swift’s Yahoo, the country will be fine.  How much damage can one person do in so short a time? 

GW pops into my mind.  Stop it.  Shut it down right now. 

A nice view of Lake LBJ..

Facing the opposite direction, toward the Wirtz Dam.

David, after an afternoon on the lake.  

Reunion

I’ve been out of the country during every class reunion, though I’ve had no burning wish to attend.  What I remember about high school is that our graduating class was exceptional, and I never measured up.  Self-worth issues?  Absolutely.  During those years I was so busy figuring out who I was, trying to juggle a job and school work, band and family (bi-polar father, meek mother, rebellious sister—always drama on the home front), that I was overwhelmed, definitely not comfortable, not successful, not smart.  All I had to offer was mediocre flute-playing; some would’ve said I was good, but these encouragers didn’t know what good was, and I definitely wasn’t that. 

By exceptional I mean that a major portion of my classmates became not only professionals like doctors and lawyers, but Ivy League professors and internationally renowned musicians.  Hell, we even had an astronaut, Rick Husband, who died in the Columbia tragedy in 2003.  I never knew him.  The Amarillo High School Class of 1976 was amazing. 

And, now that I’m traceable to an address in the US, I’ve received notice that the fortieth reunion is rolling around.  Some gung-ho person has organized it and put out an agenda.  And I think—why not?  I’ve raised two brilliant and well-adjusted sons.  I’ve lived in seven different countries and am intimately familiar with the customs of people throughout the world.  I’ve logged over a hundred dives in the Red Sea, shared a meal with the Masai, slipped around on glaciers in New Zealand, explored Petra; and I know the aromas of the backstreets of every major European city.  I’m married to the same man I started out with.  I have an MFA, and I’m a published novelist with actual fans.  Why not attend the reunion, hold my head high, and take my place among the winners?

Because, though I was that shallow once, I'm not that shallow now.  Why would my high school inadequacies matter in the context of my present?  Shamefully, I was well into my thirties before I realized that we all feel out of place at times.  For every instance I felt inadequate, someone else felt equally ugly or foolish or in pain.  I was too lacking in empathy to realize it. 

The names of the people who plan to attend are listed on the reunion website.  There are more names I don’t recognize than names I do.  Some names pop up, and I remember the person, the face, the teacher who taught the class we shared.  For the most part the memories aren’t pleasant.  I remember this brown-haired girl, her face, her attitude.  She didn’t like me and I don’t recall why; but most likely it was because I offended her in some way.  I remember this no-chinned guy.  He had good reason not to like me—I was unkind toward him, sharp-tongued.   

And the horrible memories flood my psyche.  I was mean.  I was a mean girl.  I was impatient and I made fun of others and I felt superior for no reason and I was harshly judgmental and unforgiving.  Compassion wasn’t in my vocabulary.  I cried for myself, but no one else.  At the same time, I was intimidated by the intelligent, the talented, the gorgeous, the rich, the confident.  In short, I was a mess.  I’m happy with who I am now, but who I was then is someone I don’t want to become reacquainted with.  Would seeing those people and returning to that place cause me to revert?  I fear so. 

Also, inexplicably, as part of the re-union prep, we’ve been instructed to carry a Sandy (school mascot) with us on vacation and take pictures of it in all the interesting places we visit.  We’ve been asked to send in a copy of our senior picture.  I have no idea where mine is.  We’ve been asked to send in pictures of our grandkids—I have none of those at this point.  This sounds like a lot of work when I thought all that would be required would be showing up and wearing a nametag.  Also, it seems that, just like so many times in high school, a lot of pointless activity is required for an event that should be pretty straightforward.  See, I say I’ve changed, but on a very basic level, I haven’t.  I still don’t want to put forth the effort it takes to conform. 

“But don’t you find that you keep up with the people you care about?”  This from my high school friend, Diana, when we discuss attending the reunion.

“Yes, I guess I do,” I tell her.  Because of Facebook and responses to my blog, I know where my friends are, what they’re up to. 

“And the wind blows constantly up there,” she reminds.  We both shudder at the memory of the relentless biting wind, and how a trip from the car to the door plants grit in your hair, the inside of your nose, the creases in your upper eyelids.  

Amarillo.  I write about it.  Most of my novels are set there.  I know the flat countryside, the gnarled mesquite, the crackle of winter grass beneath my boots, the pirouettes of the tumbleweeds, the brick churches on every corner, the overcrowded happy hours, the smell of the feedlots.  Don’t think I’ll be getting back there any time soon. 

Here is an AHS Sandie, which represents the dust devils found in the panhandle.  Though its expression is fierce, I always thought it look like a lump of butterscotch pudding: