The Dearly Departed Wash Up

Rusty was dead. He was quite thoroughly and completely dead, and his passage to the hereafter appeared to have been marred by a certain amount of thrashing about and the loss of many unpleasant bodily fluids. He was the first thing that I noticed upon my arrival to work that morning.

Ugh.

After a year at the family kennel I had dropped out of high school in order to concentrate on building the premier pet care establishment in the tri-state area.  That didn’t take very long, and so I briefly tried college, driving home on weekends to work in the kennel.  Romantic disaster derailed my academic plan by the middle of spring semester, and from the depths of my heartbreak rose a vision.  Sparkling water, dramatic gorges, beautiful hippies frolicking on the lakeshore, brilliant intellectuals waving from the ivory towers of Cornell.  Ithaca!  I disappeared from college, hitched a trailer to my rusty green pickup truck, and went to seek my fortune.

The job market in Utopia was a little tight, and, strangely, the demand for double-dropouts-hoping-to-reinvent-themselves was not great.  Nevertheless I managed to land a job in a veterinary hospital not far from my lakeshore cabin apartment.  I worked from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 PM, which left plenty of time to sit on a discarded sofa outside the cabin with my dog, Amiga, contemplating the sunset and counting the pennies I had left after buying groceries and cheap beer.

Certain facets of my job as a veterinary kennelhand and technician were not very glamorous. Okay, maybe none of them were glamorous, but I enjoyed my work most of the time. This particular morning, not so much. I took care of the furry residents who were still in possession of their heartbeats, keeping busy until the vet could arrive and check out the Rusty situation. Cats purred, rambunctious terriers barked, and the ancient German Shepherd hobbled on three legs to the exercise run.

I had finished the basics and was getting ready to give the first water-therapy session to a spinal surgery patient when the vet stuck his head into the therapy room. “Ummmm…” he said, seeming to be searching for the right words.

That was unlike him, so I stopped what I was doing. “Yes?”

 “Ummm…Rusty needs a bath.”

I gave him a minute to see the error of his ways. He was young. Perhaps he’d ingested some recreational substance a bit too late last night. Seconds ticked by, and he wasn’t taking it back. “Alan,” I said, my voice calm and patient, “Rusty is dead.”

He shuffled more fully into the room and looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, I know. His owner wants to pick him up so that they can bury him in the back yard. We can’t send him out like this.”

No, of course not. I knew that. I could not imagine how to begin such a grisly task, though, so I just stared at him. I could see Rusty’s tail and left hind leg from there, deathly still, drenched in vomit, feces, and blood. I thought about the idea that there is a parallel universe for each person, and somewhere perhaps another version of me was lounging on the deck of a cruise ship headed for Havana. Was there a way to choose that reality, like a switch on a railroad track?  I didn’t know how not to imagine how Rusty’s last minutes had felt, and how it would be to be alone when everything is so horribly wrong.

“I’ll help you get him into the tub,” Alan said, and slipped on a rubber apron. We wrestled Rusty, blessedly not terribly stiff, yet, out of his stainless steel cage and onto a metal rack in the tub. Alan disappeared at that point, and I set about bathing the ex-dog.

I talked to Rusty as I worked, at first, trying to keep my revulsion under control. “There are advantages to this method, you know,” I said. “When you were alive, you were pretty much of a handful. Manners were not your long suit. Now, you’re a dream! Left paw up! There, see? It’s up! No resistance at all. Left paw down! Good dog. The only thing I can’t get you to do is roll over. Ready?” I flipped him over on the rack, the unnatural flaccidness simultaneously nauseating and amusing. “Next, leaping through flaming hoops! The Amazing Rusty and his world-famous handler will be touring Europe this spring. Get your tickets early, before the star begins to smell!”

“Umm…how’s it going?” asked Alan, who had reappeared while I was goofing around with the decedent. “Shall I bring you the dryer?”

The dryer? I not only had to wash the thing, I had to dry it? Can I interest you in a cut-‘n-curl? A permanent wave? A manicure? I bit my tongue, lest Alan get any new ideas. “Sure, that would be great.”

Drying him was actually easier than drying the average living dog. I wondered briefly whether there were canine funeral homes, and whether I might consider working in one. I’d never get bitten, never be barked at with the incessant fervor of a West Highland Terrier. It was something to think about. I directed the nozzle at his right ear, and the hair separated in a swirly pattern. “This is not so bad,” I admitted to Rusty, who still had no comment.

When I was finished, the dog was a work of art. No Springer Spaniel in the Westminster Dog Show had ever looked better. His expression was somewhat lackluster, and he was, overall, a tiny bit lethargic, but he looked like a million bucks.

Alan came in with a garbage bag. “Let’s bag him up; they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

I was indignant. “You had me slaving over a hot bathtub and a vomit-soaked dead dog, making him beautiful, and now we’re putting him in a trash bag?”

Alan shook his head and laughed, thinking that I was kidding. I was not kidding, but so be it. I helped to put my cosmetological masterpiece into a trash bag. When his owners arrived, tearful but resolute, Alan carried Rusty out to their car. I did wonder how he felt, the doctor in charge, telling a family that their beloved pet would never bound to greet them at the door again.  People hope that vets, like doctors, can work miracles, and it must be hard to be reminded that skill and knowledge aren’t always enough.

But my job required no miracles, just bleach. I looked over at the pen in which Rusty’s short life had ended, rolled up my sleeves, and got back to work.

Spinning Wheels

On a frigid afternoon in February, 2002, I walked into the new hardware store.  I needed to have some glass cut, and they waved me toward a door in the back of the room.  Joe’s back there; he’ll cut it for you. 

I stepped through the door and looked up.  Under the rafters, over the saws and the stacks of wood and supplies, I caught a flash of pink and yellow.  On the far wall, five feet above eye level, a once-lit sign was divided into sections:  “Couples Only; Ladies Only; Reverse Skate; Clear the Floor.”  A window opened into a dark and empty booth, a single microphone still visible through the glass. 

This wasn’t always a hardware store.  Once upon a time, it was Spinning Wheels, the best roller rink for miles around.  Long after other rinks had closed or moved to an all-recorded-music format, Spinning Wheels retained Bobby, king of the Wurlitzer organ.  Four nights a week, Bobby performed heart-stopping renditions of such classics as “Wildwood Nights,” “Peggy Sue,” “You’re sixteen,” and—his signature finale—“After the Lovin’.”  We laughed at him, but we skated, and I missed him on Friday and Saturday nights when a disc jockey spun records instead.  He was a dumpy, pudgy fellow with a Buster Brown haircut, but he could draw sounds from that old organ that brought everyone—teenagers and senior citizens alike—out onto the floor. 

I discovered Spinning Wheels in my early teens, and it instantly became my favorite haunt.  There’s no cure for social anxiety like full-tilt exercise, and I could whip around the turns like a Roller Derby pro.  I stomped in time to “Funkytown,” learned a tentative, lurching waltz to “Moon River,” and skated with my arm around whoever I could catch to Michael Jackson’s version of “I’ll Be There.”  When the sign over the organ booth proclaimed, “Ladies Only,” I joined the herd, willing a couldn’t-care-less expression onto my face as I wove in and out of the more hesitant girls.  Boys and men crowded around the perimeter, leaning on the yellow cinderblock wall that divided the skating floor from the area where the rest of life went on: skate rental, snack bar, rows of molded plastic chairs for those overcome with exhaustion, embarrassment, or boredom, and, of course, the arcade.  The men watched the women and girls fly by, admiring or ridiculing, lusting or shaking their heads.  I once asked why there was no “Gentlemen Only” skate, and the answer was, “Who wants to see that?”

One Saturday night, a little girl fell down right in front of me in a tight pack of fast-moving skaters.  I could have jumped over her, but parents tend to get cranky about that if they see it.  Hitting her didn’t seem like a good option, either, since my skates were hard and so were my knees, so I chose evasive action, taking a sharp turn into the retaining wall, which failed to retain me.  I flipped right over it into the chairs on the other side.  The chairs were bolted to a metal bar, so they didn’t move, and I ended up in a very undignified tangle of arms and legs and skates.  It was not so much painful as surprising and embarrassing, and as I gathered up all of my limbs, a smattering of applause rose from the cluster of non-skaters who occupied the next row of chairs. 

The early weekend sessions also featured such perennial favorite family activities as the Mexican Hat Dance and the Hokey Pokey, all accomplished on wheels.  Bobby would stop the music, then try to talk everyone into standing in a big circle on the skating floor and following his disembodied instructions.  I tried each of these once, on a date with the caller of my cousin’s square dance club.  For the Mexican Hat Dance, the skate guards would scurry around and distribute brightly colored sombreros.  That one was a huge hit with seven- and eight-year-olds.  The Hokey Pokey, at least, required no props, but it is amazing how difficult it is to “shake it all about” when you are balanced on eight little rubber circles.

Boyfriends came and went, but my wheels kept turning.  I bought expensive skates with a jump bar between the axles, went through several corduroy newsboy caps—I was sure that these were the height of fashion—and tore the knees of several pairs of cream-colored Levi’s, but I kept coming back.  I had a stunning collection of striped girly t-shirts and, for cooler weather, groovy western shirts with pearl snaps down the front.  Unfortunately, it was never very cool once I’d been skating for half an hour, and the few snapshots taken of me at the rink show dark sweat stains under the arms of those much-loved shirts. 

Once every two weeks, at home, I would use the special wrench to take the wheels off my skates, clean the bearings, and rub mink oil into the white leather boots.  Sometimes a particularly scuffy skate would require a layer of shoe polish before the oil.  The smell of mink oil and leather still brings me back to that place, pulling my laces tight, tying a double bow, and tugging my tapered-leg jeans down over the tops of my skates. 

 “Why don’t you take lessons and try out for the dance team?” one of the regulars asked me.  I shrugged, but the real answer was that I was not about to be on display in one of the barely-covers-your-butt white pleated skirts that the dance team had to wear.  The skate guards had to wear them, too, with the addition of whistles on a lanyard.  The uniform prevented any serious consideration of getting a second job there as a guard.  I could skate backwards and point at people without breaking a sweat, but not in a getup like that.  My thighs were nobody’s business, thank you very much.

Sunday nights, the rink was quiet.  The diehard dance skaters, the older couples who had fallen in love here decades ago, and I were left to our own devices.  I practiced fancy moves, perfected the “shuffle” step, and stalked one shiftless guy in polyester pants after another. 

Whenever I could, I skated the couples’ numbers with Steve, a wild man who loved to show off and thrill the older ladies.  His antics on the floor and his studious avoidance of any substantive conversation didn’t get him far with the young women, so he concentrated on the women over 40.  What I loved about him was his energy.  He was out to have a good time, and would throw everything he had into his three hours on the polished wood floor.  As far as I could tell, he had no ambitions, no career plans—he’d been working as a janitor at Strawbridge’s Department Store since he left high school—and no car.  He would never answer a direct question about why he didn’t have a car, either.  He was who he was, but I was drawn to his complete lack of shyness or self-consciousness.  He was a big man, 6’ 2” and sturdily built, but he moved as though he were made of rubber and springs. 

When the lights went down and the “Couples Only” sign was lit, I looked around for Steve.  Once I found him, I either skated casually by or—if I was feeling brave—positioned myself in a visible location and practiced turns and stops, waiting for him to come to me.  He never said a word, just skated by with a hand held out behind him.  I’d take it, pulled onto the floor by his momentum.  I slipped into position at his side, feeling that satisfying solidity as he put his arm around me.  We skated with our sides pressed together, each with one arm around the other’s waist, smooth and easy.  It didn’t matter that he would never sing to me any of the love songs that Bobby played.  For those three or four minutes, everything was perfect.  We didn’t talk, didn’t stumble, didn’t have to do anything but move together in that familiar rhythm, let the colored lights in the darkness erase the harshness of that day, and the next.

It was 1980.  Punk rock, the beginnings of rap, Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” “Rapture.”  The world was hurtling forward to the 21^st century, but my fellow misfits and I clung to Bobby, his organ, and his 1950’s sensibilities.  I am sure that I was not alone in my sense that it wouldn’t last very much longer, that just like square dancing and drive-in theaters, roller rinks were becoming an occupation of the past, losing relevance to young and old alike.  They had enjoyed a resurgence with the 70’s roller disco fad, but had been losing steam ever since.  Even when the place was full of sweating, hormone-stirred young people on a Friday night, the Knack’s “My Sharona” reverberating from the rafters, I could feel the place sighing, settling, imagining the floor empty and still.  It made for a bittersweet mixture of elation and sadness every time I walked in the front door in my Puma sneakers, skate bag over my shoulder, the decal on my black Charlie Daniels Band t-shirt reflecting the light from the disco ball.

I was a strange kid in that way.  I had always felt as though had wandered into the world too late, just before the janitor was to sweep up and switch off the lights.  I grasped at things—and people—as if they were about to disappear.  Sometimes they were. 

The year I turned sixteen, I met a guy named Les at the rink.  He was short, scrawny, and sharp-featured, with discolored teeth from too much smoking and too little dental care.  He was gentlemanly but outgoing, and not afraid to ask a girl to skate.  He was 28, although he looked a whole lot older.  He could do a wicked spin in the middle of the floor, and drop into a full split with his wheels still rolling.  He couldn’t afford to be a dance skater, but he was an inspired free-stylist.

We skated together, talked on the phone, and even went on a picnic to the park.  Sitting on a blanket by the river, I kissed him, and immediately came to the realization that when they say kissing a smoker is like licking an ash tray, they’re right.  I felt sad for him, but I couldn’t even pretend that I could be his girlfriend.  We ate sandwiches on the bank of the stagnant Brandywine, and I listened while he told me about his time in the Army.  He’d received a medical (psychological) discharge after a year and a half, having experienced a breakdown in combat training.  Returning to life in Chester, Pennsylvania couldn’t have been much of an improvement, I thought as he spoke.  Chester’s skyline was dominated by oil refineries and abandoned factories from the days when Chester was an industrial center.  Now the awesome tankers still plied the turgid waters of the Delaware, dwarfing the dilapidated brick houses and trash-laced chain-link fences.  The bars were full, the banks were empty, and the schools looked and functioned like prisons.  Most of the traffic through town sped over the rooftops on the elevated Interstate 95, bound for somewhere else.

When all the food was gone, I drove my Mustang through the thick summer sweetness of the river valley back to Spinning Wheels, where we’d left his rust-bitten, two-tone Chevy Vega.  Before he got out of the Mustang, he kissed me on the cheek.  He didn’t need me to explain.

A few months later, he met a woman as skinny and hungry for escape as himself, and they decided to get married.  I thought she would need more than he had to give, but I had no better suggestions for him, so I kept my opinions to myself.  He was so earnestly in love with her.  I attended the wedding with his friend Bruce, a giant of a man whose biggest claim to fame was that he had chosen a stint in the army over jail time on a statutory rape charge.  I made sure he knew that I would be happy to drive him, but it was not in any way, shape, or form a date. 

We drove up to Les’s new mother-in-law’s house for the reception.  It was a dark, crowded row home, suffocated with artificial paneling and smelling faintly of gym socks and dog urine.  Les and his bride were grinning from ear to ear, surrounded by lunch meat, potato chips, and friends and relatives who all looked like they were on parole from the local prison.  I wished I had something better to give him than a coffeemaker. 

Les rarely showed himself at the rink any more, busy with fixing broken windows in their apartment and painting a hand-me-down crib for the baby who was soon on the way.  He couldn’t wait to be a father, is what he said, and I believed him.  Money was tight, and his wife wasn’t working. 

He called the day after the baby was born, to tell me how beautiful his son was.  They named him Lester Jr.  I was happy for him.  Still, a shadow seemed to hang over him, and always in the back of my mind was a nagging worry for him, a formless foreboding that might have mirrored his own. 

Six months later, his wife called me.  She told me that Les was dead.  She thought he hadn’t come home that night, but she’d found him in the morning, hanging by rope from the ceiling of the baby’s room.  I didn’t know what to say.  I was so sorry, of course.  All I knew about darkness was that reason couldn’t defeat it and that words couldn’t take it away. 

I couldn’t get my eighteen-year-old mind around why that, why the baby’s room.  I don’t think he blamed the baby, or even his wife for the pain that was consuming him.  Maybe he thought that his death was the best gift he could give his son.  Maybe it was true.  

In the arcade at Spinning Wheels, boys and men played Asteroid and Donkey Kong, Race Car Driver and Bally’s Las Vegas pinball, their skate wheels flattening the carpet in front of each machine.  Girls stood nearby, whispering, posturing, assessing each hunched back and set of lightning reflexes for potential usefulness, size of wallet, and make of car.  I didn’t care for the arcade.  Out on the narrow-plank floor, under the fluorescent lights, I tried each turn again and again, until it was smooth as glass.