The Inglewood New Year Dispatch

Dearest Cecilia,

A good story alters the reader. A great story alters the author as well. There’s nothing mystical about it. The clockwork of our daily lives slowly alters each of us. Eventually we become the leathery sprites born of our younger selves. We are being dragged all to hell and gone by the earth and her physics. I promise that I haven’t taken up astrology. This is just how I tend to get around the new year. We’re all in the mood for change. We want to alter our habits, our spending, our thoughts. The sun is out a little later each day and that gives us hope.

You always teased me for being set in my ways. I can change my ways, albeit reluctantly. I can change my mind. I can change my heart. The one thing I can’t change is you, Cecilia. You remain the same.

I know you expected to read about my petty agitations and smile at the dumb little turns of phrase that I employ. Yes, I suffered an ice skating kerfuffle at Opry Mills, an unspeakable dinner at that French place on Gallatin, an embarrassing slight at the hands of a televangelist, and worst of all, I had to pick my cousin up from the airport on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. You know me. Use your imagination. I had something to say about each of those things. I learned hard lessons against my will. I’d rather tell you about yesterday. New Year’s Eve.

Do you recall Mary? The lovely woman that I met at the dating event back in September? Mary moved in with me yesterday. Her lease ended and she was in a tight spot. It all seems fast when I put it that way. The days are long and the years are short, as my mother loves to say.

Mary’s arrival was quite the community event for Leopold Street. A moving truck is a beacon for certain people. Beauty-queen emeritus Susan Price would not leave us alone. She expected a neatly packaged account of our courtship. Mary had to send her on several circuitous errands to get breathing room. My friend Adam helped move several of the larger items to a storage unit. Heaven is a truck, as you know. My brother-in-law Hyde showed up just in time to not be helpful. He threw an empty can of Twisted Tea in my recycle bin and flitted off to whatever it is that he does instead of modeling good behavior for his children.

Addison, my id and anti-hero, was not present. He moved to Florida with his family in November. That is where turds and their turd-ilk belong, after all. Their house sold for six hundred thousand dollars. I no longer know if that’s expensive or not. I have resisted the vile urge to check my Zestimate. I will die on Leopold Street. How does one apply for a historic overlay? Could a promise of future eminence count? That’s how hopeful I am about all of this. One day there will be a big dumb metal sign in front of this stupid little house. I hope that it mentions the incredible maneuver that Mary performed when she kissed me in stride as we passed one another at the front door, four PM on the dot, 12/31/23.

Carly Shannon, my stage-right neighbor, also known as romance author “Candy Lane,” once known as the Frog Woman, watched from her window as Mary threw her arms around me when we were done unpacking the truck. Carly and I met eyes and she winked at me from across the alley. Surely she will produce an inspired straight-to-Kindle romance by the end of the week. Though it may be sweet, Candy Lane cannot correctly write this love story.

Mary suffered a brutal divorce last December. She’s only 33. She has spent a year in the wilderness. Things happened to her that serve to trivialize my recent problems. The main ingredient in cruelty is time, she told me. Kindness happens in an instant. The luckiest of men may only get a handful of nights spent in the kind of cathartic embrace that Mary and I have recently shared. I remember staying up all night with you, Cecilia. That one early Saturday morning, especially:

“Shouldn’t we smoke after something like that?” you asked.

“I don’t know, do you really want a cigarette?” I replied.

“I do. Fuck it.” you said.

“Fuck it.” I chuckled. I checked with your eyes to ensure that you were serious. To this day, above all things, I wish that I could see you again, just then, just like that. The moment is faded and choppy in my mind’s eye. I dressed and walked in the frosty air clear over to the gas station on Shelby and Tenth and bought cigarettes. Marlboro Lights. Dawn was breaking. We didn’t have a lighter so we had to use your electric stove. We pressed the tobacco to the coil, inhaled, held it, and ran to the window to blow the contraband smoke out into the morning air. We widened the world around us slowly. Thank you.

I told Mary that I still write letters to you. She wanted to read them, and I let her. Visualize me in the garage giving her the time and space to get caught up on all of this. I wasn’t really nervous. I’m always nervous. Everything turned out fine. She wanted me to sit behind her on the couch and rub her shoulders while we watched a true crime show. I did. She’s sleeping now as I write this letter to you. It’s probably the last one for a while.

My mother’s morbid ritual is to visit the graves of our dear and departed on Christmas. In my youth I considered it to be an especially grim task. My sister and I loathed being dragged across the state just to quietly visit the frozen headstones of what seemed like arbitrary people. Donna O’Rourke. Karl Metzger. I shiver at the memory of my mother and her cousin jamming silk flowers into little pewter cups in god-damned Smyrna, of all places, while they made us stand there and wait. I am now beginning to understand the significance.

The great monolithic bastard known as Walmart forced my mother to work not only on Christmas but on the 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th as well, so we were left with a frigid afternoon on the 30th to visit everyone. I drove her all over the place. Hohenwald, Smyrna, Hermitage, Woodlawn. Every good ghost deserves a brief visit from a haggard woman and her hungover son. This is what y’all are missing up here. Chapped lips and the fortieth season of reality TV. Leeann’s pregnant again.

We visited you last of all, Cecilia. “You,” I guess. Your little nameplate. I owed you a visit. My mother offered me a cigarette and I declined. I laughed, actually. I figured that she had quit a while ago. I dug my toe into the dead grass. If I squinted my eyes I could see the ever-thinning line in the clay produced by your burial. She pulled a worn blue lighter out of her coat pocket.

“It’s a new pack. You let me know.” she said. She undid the seal, peeled the foil, and kicked out a smoke. Just for a moment she caught my eye as she got the thing lit. I have her eyes, you once told me. My mother took the first drag and enjoyed a visible relief, the mirror image of the way that I relaxed when I walked down the driveway away from her house. Truths exist outside of language and our crude attempts to capture and convey them must be amusing to whomever it is that created us. The truth is that I felt a tremendous relief smelling smoke and remembering your birthday.

We didn’t linger long. Like I said before, I can’t change you. You can still change me.

Yours, forever,

Hector Fogg