Joyous Johnson #4

Why is it so fucking hot up here?

She wiped a river of sweat off of her forehead as she ascended from the last step of the ladder into the attic. She doubted that she had been up there since she moved into the house ten years ago. Now that she was moving again, she had to return. That’s life, I guess.

Light shined through a dusty window on dustier boxes. At least it was early. She shuddered to think how hot it would be by noon.

Sighing, she pulled the first box away from the wall, dusted it off, and cut it open. Inside was a stack of brown fake leather albums. This was the problem with moving. Now that she saw the albums, she had to know what was inside – not that she’d throw them away either way – not that it was productive at all – but she just had to know.

The first one was typical – baby pictures, the first day of school, high school prom and graduation. C’mon, she thought, I know it’s in here somewhere… and there it was. As she opened the second album, loose pictures flew everywhere. She had gone through a scrapbooking phase, but, like all of her phases, it was brief. True to form, the first five pages of the scrapbook were neatly decorated with different colored construction paper (still bright, even after fifteen years – I guess that’s one thing to be said for not unpacking between moves), crisp cut letters spelling out various words (“Hollywood”, “California, here we come!”, “Tinseltown”, etc.), and knick-knacks, and after that, she had become too lazy to even glue the pictures to the soft cotton paper. She flipped through the first few pages without really even looking, but then something caught her eye.

She had been a gawky eighteen-year old, fresh out of high school, in California for a month for the first time in her life because her first goal as an emancipated adult was to see the ocean. The first thing she did was go to the pier. She stood amidst all the coin binocular machines, staring out into the seemingly endless blueish gray waves, snapping endless pictures, thinking of nothing, when she suddenly realized there was someone right behind her. “You can see the mountains from here, you know,” he said in a low and gravely voice.

She didn’t even turn around. “Why on earth would you want to see the mountains? You can see mountains anywhere. Why would you even look at the mountains when something so beautiful is right here?”

“Got a dime?” he asked. For the first time since he walked up, she could smell the whiskey on his breath. Great. She had been in California for, at most, three hours, and already here she was, alone on the pier, being hassled for change by some drunk.

“Look, I don’t have much more money than you, ok? I’m certainly not going to waste MY money to buy YOUR booze,” she spoke with the unfounded confidence that only someone who is eighteen can evince.

He laughed. “Honey, I don’t need your money for booze. I just wanted to show you the mountains.” She stood up taller, squared her shoulders, and turned. “I’m going to go down the pier. Please don’t follow me.” As she walked away, all she could hear was a gravely belly laugh. She didn’t turn back.

Two years later, she had lost the boyfriend who convinced her to stay in California, the job she had found there, and the idealism that she came with. She had gained 10 pounds, $15,000 in credit card debt, and hostility toward the general public.
The last evening before she drove back East, she returned to the pier. It didn’t look the same. She didn’t even see the ocean. She was too busy examining the mold on the old wood, scoffing at the tourists, and clutching her purse to her side to avoid being mugged. She stood there, thinking it was too humid to be March, thinking it was too late to keep standing here, when she suddenly realized that someone was behind her. “You know, from here, you can see the mountains.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Don’t get me wrong – the ocean’s nice – but there’s just something refreshing about seeing something new, about being the only person in a crowd of people to notice something. All these people,” he gestured around, “they all came out here to see the ocean. To be famous. To fall in love.” He shook his head. “We’re not those people. I came out here because Kansas was too quiet, and I think too much when it’s quiet. And you – well, whatever reason you came out here for, from the look on your face, I’m guessing it hasn’t worked out. So why not do something new?”

She paused and fumbled through her pockets. “You got a dime?”

He gave her two. “Here – one for today, and one for if you ever see someone who needs to see the mountains.”

She left the next morning. She moved to Atlanta, traded her flipflops for power suits, her love of solitude for the constant companionship of a Blackberry, and her view of the ocean for a concrete jungle.

And after fifteen years, there she sat – thirty-five, cross-legged on a hot dusty attic floor, 2,000 miles away, staring at a half-empty scrapbook with nothing but a dime taped to the page – and all she wanted was to see the mountains.