I could vaguely remember how hectic my days had been, my first week on this job two years before. But as soon as I began to throw boxes, I was back in the groove. The job wasn’t pleasant, exactly – too much noise, too much dust, too many echoes of last time – but within minutes I had reduced it to repetitive motion and petty decision-making, and my mind was free to roam.
Seeing dad’s house through Dave’s eyes was quite a revelation. We had driven into the driveway, that weekday morning, and I had gone in by the side door, and had been disappointed to find nobody home.
“Doesn’t your family lock the door when they go out?”
“This isn’t D.C., Dave.”
“I guess not. Well, let’s get your stuff out of the car so I can get on my way.” He had helped carry my trunk into the living room, and I had seen him glance around, and suddenly I saw it as he saw it: an old house, kind of dark, with old furniture, not stylish or modern. Not very middle class.
He had been gone within 10 minutes, as soon as I sketched out the easiest way back to the Turnpike. Probably he’d have left immediately, no matter what the house looked like, unless my mother had been there to offer him a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. He was anxious to get to his aunt’s in North Jersey, where he would leave the car before flying off to Iowa for the summer. He didn’t want to stay, he wanted to get home, nothing more.
But still—
I stacked the last box up above my head, and got one of the eight-foot sheets of corrugated cardboard off the stack. I bent it to wrap around one side and two corners of the stack, and leaned it there. I pulled off four double armlengths of strapping tape from the spool. I fixed the wire clip to one end of the tape, hooked it onto one end of the cardboard, and carried the tape around the stack, back to the clip. I pulled the clip off the cardboard, fed the free end of the tape through the clip and tightened it just enough to hold the cardboard loosely in place at the top.
Dave had been looking out the window at the Maryland countryside as I took my turn driving. “You might think about how you dress,” he’d said finally. “That kind of thing is important to girls.”
Doing 75 on the interstate didn’t require any particular attention, with mid-morning traffic so sparce. I had glanced over and seen his half-apologetic expression. “You think that would do it?”
A year of living in the same house had showed us that we spoke the same language, that differences between us were superficial rather than essential. Still, Dave seemed to hesitate, his voice came out very soft. “Of course it won’t do it, but it would help.” When I asked what would do it, and had repeated the question,, he’d said I dressed too old and acted too old. I had thought about it as we drove along, trying to get the sense of it.
I got the second cardboard, placed it against the stack’s opposite side, bent it into place. I slipped the top under the tape I’d left loose, then pulled the tape taut, snapping it twice to tighten it. I measured off another length of tape, cut it, hooked the clip to the bottom of the cardboard, walked the tape around, fixed the clip and tightened it, leaving the stack ready for pickup. Then I moved quickly to the next lehr, which was beginning to stack up.
I’d known what he meant, all right. From the very first days of Freshman year, I had realized that I was different from those round me. I wasn’t much given to introspection – in fact, painful high school years had taught me not to consider how others might react to me. I had learned to live within myself, in my own mind, my own room. But surely I’d gone beyond all that? Yet here was Dave, whose judgment I trusted, telling me I was still different.
“But Dave,” I had said, “what am I suppose to do? I am who I am. I can’t change that. Is it going to do any good to pretend I’m something I’m not?”
Dave was always reasonable. “Look, DeMarco, you asked the question. I can’t help it if you don’t like the answer.”