Alabama for Beginners

by Jean Ryan

Receptionists, store clerks, civil servants—many people here call me Miss Jean. Surnames are largely ignored, as if they are only a nuisance, something that gets in the way. They also use “Ma’am” and “Sir” for punctuation, a habit I’ve already picked up, courtesy being contagious.

The women, old and young, employ all sorts of endearments: Hon, Baby, Sugar, Darlin. The first time I ordered a sandwich at the local Subway, the girl behind the counter buckled my knees with kindness. The fact that she was brutally overweight and not blessed with movie star beauty made her benevolence all the more touching. Courtesy seems reflexive here, a trait bequeathed at birth.

Four months ago, my wife and I moved from Napa Valley to coastal Alabama (we are originally from states in the east and traveled west for more breathing room). Many of our friends worried about how we would fare in a red state, particularly as a couple. I was apprehensive too, having lived forty years in the San Francisco bay area, haven to the LGBT community and epicenter of progressive politics. Hurricanes, humidity—these we knew we could weather. But censure, malice? How could we defend against being unwelcome?

Well, it appears that a pair of gray-haired lesbians is not sufficient cause for alarm, at least not in this neighborhood, a new development poised between rural and suburban. Folks greet us as we greet them, with smiles and handshakes. There could of course be more to it. Maybe my wife has gained standing by way of her new John Deere mower, the Ford Ranger she drives, or the shop she is having built. Maybe they like my plantings, the shutters we put up, the well we had dug. Our neighbors seem to respect these things, practicality being the benchmark of worth in the deep South.

You don’t see many Jaguars or BMWs here. You see a lot of trucks, tractors and ATVs. The men driving these vehicles know how to fix them; they know how to fix and build all sorts of things. This is such a DIY kind of place that it can be difficult to locate a handyman for hire (forget about Yelp or Angie’s List—folks here express themselves in person).

If you do find someone to hire, understand that the job might take a while. Workers move with deliberation, keeping pace with the temperature, lounging cross-legged through the frequent squalls. When weather is not a factor, scheduling often is, the union of subcontractors, equipment and supplies hinging on equal parts planning and luck. Being okay with delays, with weather, with whatever does or doesn’t occur, is a southern artform. Urgency can get no purchase in this soggy, sultry expanse.  

This easy-going approach is also evidenced in Alabama’s municipal buildings, where matters are considered on a case by case basis, and homeowners are not harassed by punitive deadbolt rubrics. Clerks are merciful and will often bend the rules to accommodate citizens in a bind. If you’re a California transplant, and especially one who owned a small business, this clemency when you first encounter it, will undo you.

Bending rules, looking the other way—these tactics are not always useful, particularly in relation to larger issues. Habituated to a part of the country where eco-concerns dominate the culture, I am stunned by the shrugging disregard encountered here: the mindless distribution of plastic bags, the absence of curbside recycling, the store shelves bulging with herbicides and pesticides. Construction sites are littered with cigarette butts, beverage bottles and fast food cartons that blow far and wide in the wind. This trash accumulates as the building progresses and not until the sod is about to be installed is the property cleared, typically by a single laborer with a tractor. I think of the casual defilement, the builders dropping rubbish as if it is their right, and dismay engulfs me.

Reconciling the south’s contradictions—lassitude on the one side, benevolence on the other—is a pointless pursuit and I am learning to dwell on the advantages instead. Most everything, for instance, is cheaper in Alabama—utilities, products, services. Gas is at least a dollar a gallon less than what I’m used to paying and homes prices, compared to Napa, are ridiculously low. I don’t know if this is because sellers don’t realize they can charge more or if they actually care more about people than profits. There is an expectation of fair dealing in the south, a collective innocence that keeps surprising me.

There are plenty of businesses I drive right past, things that don’t pertain to me, like churches, gun stores, pawn shops. There is no shortage of enterprise and no shame if these ventures fail. People just toss the dice again and hope for a win; maybe a roller- skating rink next time, a snow cone shop. You see a lot of emergency clinics (all the DIYers?) and commodious hospitals, but I have yet to spot a plastic surgery center—I guess the demand is low. Perhaps people are easier on each other here; or maybe beauty, having little use, doesn’t have much currency.

Coming from a state where properties crowd each other, where the landscape is chronically imperiled by drought and fire, I am grateful for the abundance of coastal Alabama: the spacious yards, the endless lawns, the tangled woods, the unabating flow of creeks and bayous. Land and water for miles and miles, all you could ever want. Animals too. Creatures nearly mythic in my Vermont memories are popping up everywhere now: cardinals, blue butterflies, yellow-bellied turtles, tree frogs—fireflies! Those floating beacons of my youth. All is not lost, they assure me, each time I see them blinking in the woods.

While this area’s human population appears at ease, the flora and fauna are never at rest. Have you ever tried pulling a young saw palmetto out of a lawn? Don’t bother. All you can do is snip the savage thing at ground level and acknowledge its imminent return. It has no choice. All it knows is life. Greenbrier is another opportunist in the lawn. While this plant can be yanked out more readily than palmetto, doing so is like playing whack-a-mole. In the time it takes you to prize the long white root from your turf, another upstart appears. I still have a red scar on my ankle from an attack by one of these thorny vines, before I understood that in order to survive in this jungle, one must move slowly and focus on the ground.

Reaching for the hose faucet a few weeks ago, I glimpsed a flash of movement not two feet from me. I gaped, amazed to see a snake so close, and not an innocent garden variety, but something coiled and menacing. I could tell from the triangular head that it was venomous, but not until my spouse came out with the trusty Audubon guide did I learn that it was a young cottonmouth whose bite causes intense pain, bleeding, swelling, nausea and potential amputation.

Yesterday a katydid landed on my back door. I peered through the glass at the leggy green bug, gradually becoming aware that it was missing the lower portion of its body; then I noticed it was also missing one of its hind legs. I don’t imagine a katydid can live for long without these vital parts, and I realized the injuries were fresh, that somewhere in my big green yard there was a frog or toad or snake with half a meal in its mouth.

I am adjusting, wising up to the environment, making room for new hobbies and habits. Bringing my cans and bottles to a recycling center instead of the front curb is not that onerous, and the humidity is manageable now that I’ve squared off with it. Finding fresh lettuce is a challenge, but the veggie beds we’re building should solve that problem. My sister and brother-in-law are close by, which was a big factor in our decision to move here, and their company is a long-awaited comfort. I would of course like to unearth the gay community—there must be one, some brave little enclave waiting for reinforcements. On deeper reflection, maybe there is no enclave here, no separate community at all. Maybe these pockets are going the way of gay bars, no longer needed in this age of sexual fluidity, borders and labels all slipping away—now there’s a happy thought.

Which reminds me of a funny story. The day after we moved in, one of our neighbors came over with a welcoming smile and a basket of local jams. We exchanged pleasantries and then she asked if we had found our people. Wow, I thought, admiring her frankness; had we misjudged this place? “The Lillian fellowship is right down the road,” she continued, “but Mike and I go to the Presbyterian on 98.”

What I like most about the south is the simple, durable goodwill. I can feel it changing me, softening me. Each morning my wife and I have coffee on the back patio and watch the sun come up through the pines. As we often come out before dawn, I sweep a flashlight beam across the cement, making sure we don’t step on something that, like us, is not looking for any trouble, just a place to call home. The other day I saw a black wasp fly out of a small hole in the frame of my deck chair, reminding me of the swallows next door that made a nest in the open sewer pipe of the home under construction. You can find at least three wide-eyed frogs perched inside my hose reel box any time you lift the lid. Not for a minute does even the smallest crevice go to waste. There is panic in the air, the hum of a million creatures trying to stay alive.

I am just one of them, hoping my modest savings will last longer in Alabama than in California and that my new home will survive the storms I know are out there.

Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Lillian, Alabama. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners, her second story collection, was published in 2017. Her collection of nature essays, Strange Company, is available in digital form, paperback and audio.

My Mother, From a Distance

by Jean Ryan

I used to open my lunchbox and find notes from my mother. “Don’t swap this for a flutter-nutter,” she’d write, or “Snoopy says eat the apple last.” At that point she was making lunches for three of us—my younger sister came later—and she gave each meal the same consideration: a Wonder Bread sandwich, a package of chips, fresh cut fruit, and a couple of Oreos or Vanilla Wafers. Sometimes there’d be celery sticks filled with peanut butter, sometimes a cupcake instead of cookies.

This is the mother I recall most often now, the one I’d find at the ironing board when I came home from school, her face flushed from the steam created by a water-filled coke bottle with a metal sprinkler top. Always she would be humming, happy for reasons I cannot guess. Or maybe the humming had nothing to do with happiness; maybe it was involuntary, a sort of self-soothing. I will never know—my mother has moved too far from that question, too far from so many of the questions I want to ask.

My mother is eighty-three. For the last several months she has not been able to walk, her legs thwarted by poor circulation and recalcitrant shin wounds, for which she receives daily and painful dressing changes. She is further hampered by macular degeneration, lupus flares, shoulder impingement, and limited dexterity—remnants of the surgery she had a few years ago when she broke her hip and hand. Despite all this, she still lives in her home, with the help of four aides who are there, on a revolving basis, twenty-one out of twenty-four hours each day.

If I did not work full-time, if my mother lived closer to me—she is two plane trips and one long drive away—I could manage much of her care myself; the fact that I cannot do this for her distresses me more than she will ever know or believe. I could cook for her and take care of the chores and shopping. I could handle her bill pay and other business matters. I could help with her personal hygiene.

I could not lift her out of her wheelchair, not with my lower back issues, nor do I have the training, or sufficient fortitude, to attend to her wounds, either present or emergent.

All this is beside the point as my mother insists on staying in her house. Considering the cost of home health care, a nursing facility might be cheaper, but my mother will not consider this option, and I can’t say I blame her—I’ve heard the stories, too. These places are where you go to die, where you will die, and it’s no use pretending otherwise. Living with one of her children is also off the table, for various reasons, particularly now that my mother’s needs have outpaced our abilities.

But beyond all the practical considerations, there is this. My mother, who used to give funny voices to our pets, who once put underwear on the cocker spaniel for our amusement, is no longer pleasant to be around. Disappointment, I assume, has depleted her, washed away the soil of charity. At least once a year I make the journey to see her, and the only gratification I feel is knowing I was of some help.

How many of us wind up with the mother we had in mind? How many mothers give birth to the children they envisioned? It’s a draw.

A common language. That’s what we lack at the time we need it most. The frailer my mother becomes, the more I want to connect with her, to learn what will soon be gone forever. 

Frightened by a recent hospitalization, my sisters and I visited her in April, intent on sharing our feelings and hearing something tender and revelatory from her. This didn’t happen. Instead of basking in the glow of togetherness, I was hurt and miserable, stunned by a revelation I had not counted on, one that only widened the chasm between us. In typical family fashion, this information came secondhand: my younger sister, observing our pact of transparency, reluctantly divulged my mother’s meanness.

As usual, I didn’t confront her. I lowered my standards another notch and counted down the hours until my departure. In her waning, pain-soaked years, I pardon my mother everything. She’d clam up anyway, refuse to explain herself. Even if I did get an apology from her, I wouldn’t trust it. My sisters and I have caught my mother in so many lies that we are no longer sure she knows fact from fiction or cares about the difference. The secrets of her life are slipping away.

I have not lived near my mother since college, and so I am familiar with only the bare facts of her life after that. She was married three times, divorced twice, and finally widowed. I know she worked as a medical transcriber and lived in a stylish condo in La Jolla before relinquishing that stability for her last husband, who led her from one godawful place to the next. I recall that she favored biographies and history books, especially accounts of World War II, that she loathed Red Skelton and loved Johnathan Winters, that she was frugal and tidy.

I cannot reconcile what I remember of my mother to what is visible now. Walking around her house I am mystified. When did she trade The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for How to Talk to a Liberal? What use does she have for eight bottles of shampoo, or the legions of canned goods exploding from (and occasionally in) her kitchen cabinets? Why do so many of her clothes still have price tags? How can she abide these stained carpets, this bleak town? What happened between here and La Jolla?

And what of her youth? The first three of her four children were born less than a year apart. How did she manage the diapers in those pre-Pampers days? When did she find the time to make our clothes? My mother was a consummate seamstress. I remember those trips to the fabric store, the long tables, the endless bolts of cloth, my nearly unbearable boredom. How, with stairstep children, did she accomplish the shopping and errands, the holiday preparations, the pristine home my father demanded? He was no help. That she bore his cruelty for fourteen years is yet another mystery.

If I were asked to account for my twenties, I could offer nothing more than a rough timeline. Why should I expect my mother to recall her own twenties with any clarity, especially now that her days are simply something to survive, when memories are of no use to her?

A few years ago I asked her if I smiled easily when I was a child. She squinted through her cigarette smoke and said, “I don’t think so. I’m not sure. Jane did. I think.” Then she laughed. “Hell there were four of you.”

These are some of the questions I want to ask my mother: Was I happy? Did I smile a lot? Was I quick to hug? What scared me?

They are the same things I want to know to about her. Were you happy? Did you smile a lot? Were you quick to hug? What scared you? And later, after we all moved away, what happened then?

Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Napa, California. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals. Nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published in April 2013 by Ashland Creek Press and was short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. “Greyhound,” one of the stories in this collection, also appears in the anthology Among Animals. Her story “Manatee Gardens” appears in the anthology Outer Voices/Inner Lives. Please visit her website.

Kitchen Elegy

by Jean Ryan

I need to write a cook book, a friend has told me. By this she does not mean recipes, she means secrets. The kind only cooks know.

We worked for the same catering company, this woman and I, and she wants me to tell our story, to tell the story of all cooks. She wants me to lay bare the work we did so that someone might acknowledge it.

I understand this. I spent sixteen years as a line cook and four years as a caterer, and when I finally left the cooking profession, scarred and exhausted, no one noticed. After two decades of hard labor, I wanted to see some mention of it: a note in the local paper, a plaque with my name newly etched. All those thousands of mouths I fed—didn’t they add up to anything? They did not. Like a plate of food, I was there and gone.

Line cooking is a sort of magic act. Before you are eight sauté pans, smoking and bubbling, and a grill loaded with meat and fish in various stages of readiness, and somehow, amid the firing of orders, you are delivering every one of these dishes in the right combination at the right time. You have no idea how you’re doing this; you’re moving too fast for thought. Suddenly a cowering server appears. He has dropped a plate and needs a re-fire. For a second you look at him without comprehension, and then a murderous rage floods your body. Your tickets have turned into a blizzard. You will not find your way back.

I still have cooking nightmares, endless dreams in which I can’t get my food from the stove to the warming lamps. There is a white scar across my knuckles, a wound from the blade of a food processor. My forearms are blemished with old burns, most of them from oven racks. I can point to each one and tell you which kitchen it came from.

And then there were the other accidents. Walk-ins gone warm. Hours lost replacing a ruined soup or looking for Band-Aids swallowed in bread dough. Never a lax moment in the cooking arena. I recall the day I pulled on one of those giant oven mitts and felt something fast and urgent streak down my arm. I screamed and flung the mitt across the kitchen, and the mouse it had harbored scurried under the sink. I couldn’t blame the little guy—it had been a cold night.

While restaurants are riddled with trouble, catering can be even more dicey: the terrain is unfamiliar and access can be difficult. Once inside these grand homes, you have to figure out how all the high-tech kitchen gadgets work; it’s no good asking the trophy wife—she’s never spent time in that room. The most dreaded disaster is food shortage: one of your ten fruit tarts gets crushed on the journey, or a waiter breaks a wine glass near your mashed potatoes and destroys the entire dish. I don’t think people appreciate the scope of catering: how you have to prepare the food, then load it into a van, then unload and cook it and serve it, and then wash all the dishes, all the pots and pans, all the forks and plates, every water goblet, wine glass, coffee cup and brandy snifter. And god forbid you should break anything.

While I was still working in restaurants, I often escaped into the walk-in, the only place a cook can scream. Sometimes I went outside, sat on an overturned bucket and just let my body tremble. One evening a rat emerged from a dumpster a few feet away and paused to study me, his black eyes bright and questioning. Comrade, I thought, looking back at him with tenderness.

Oh, there were high times, too—I wouldn’t have lasted without them. Magnificent victories. Indulgence. Hilarity. Cooks play as hard as they work. This is the bargain, the immutable law.

In the end, it wasn’t the cuts and burns that made me hang up my apron. Nor was it the work—I figure my body could have lasted another ten years at least. It was the incidentals that finally undid me, the avocado under my fingernails, the veal stock that wafted from my clothes and hair. I was sick of the whole soggy mess: the bloody bar towels, the greasy stove vents, the mountains of innocent carcasses. That’s what began to bother me most, the doomed innocent.

Very early one morning I was in a kitchen fileting salmon when I heard the unmistakable cheeping of a mouse in distress. My heart sinking, I went on a search and found the poor thing under the stove, stuck to one of those horrible glue traps. I tried to pull him off, but it was no use. Drowning, I thought, would be the least violent way to go, so I filled a bucket with warm water—it seemed kinder than cold—and slid the creature in. I turned away, unable to watch, and when I looked back a few seconds later, he was freed of the trap and swimming circles at the surface—the warm water had dissolved the glue! I cupped him in my hands and carried him out to the garden. Not long after that, I freed myself.

I’m employed at a plant nursery now, a gentle job that leaves no blood on my hands. Having traded my chef’s knife for a pair of bypass pruners, I’m happy trimming shrubs instead of meat, deadheading flowers as opposed to fish. Even if I wanted to return to those trenches, I no longer have what it takes.

Before enlisting in a cooking career, one might first consider the lexicon. Cooks work at stations “on the line” and orders are “fired.” Microwaved foods are “nuked,” well-done dishes are “killed,” food picked up late is “dead.” “Buried” is probably the most evocative term. This is what happens when a cook loses track of her orders, when the long row of tickets in front of her face no longer makes any sense. This affliction can strike at any time and there is nothing a cook fears more. Response is swift. The stunned soldier is shoved off the line and someone more fit for duty takes over.

Last week I dined at a posh Napa valley restaurant with an exhibition kitchen. I eyed the cooks with sympathy, remembering when this trend began, how much we resented being on display. Watching my kin in their natural habitat, their heads down, their arms in constant motion, I felt a surge of solidarity. I wanted to make eye contact, to show my support, but I knew they couldn’t risk it.

~~~

Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Napa, California. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals, including Other Voices, Pleiades, The Summerset Review, The Massachusetts Review, and The Blue Lake Review. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published in April 2013 by Ashland Creek Press. Please visit her website at: http://jean-ryan.com.

Starting Out

by Jean Ryan

When I was twenty-two and just out of college, I left the green mountains of Vermont and moved to Boston. An English Literature major, I was looking for a job in publishing, which I saw as a gateway position to my true profession: renowned book critic. I pictured a tasteful apartment in Cambridge, witty, cultured friends. I knew this manifestation might take some time, but I was certain of my trajectory. This was the life I wanted: why would I sabotage it?

Fortunately, I had a friend living in a Boston suburb who offered to put me up while I searched for a job and an apartment. Each morning I boarded a commuter train, then fumbled my way through the city, often taking the wrong subway line and winding up far off course. Exhilarated by everything around me, sights and places I’d only heard about—Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall, Copley Plaza, the Swan Boats, the Common—I didn’t mind these accidental forays and saw them as part of the adventure. At that point, you see, I wasn’t afraid of anything.

Three weeks into my search, I received a call from one of the four employment agencies I had registered with. A small publishing company on Columbus Avenue needed a billing clerk—was I interested? Not the position I had in mind, but a foot in the door, right? I was running out of money and didn’t want to impose on my friend any longer. The apartment I found (a tiny studio off Beacon Street) was also a disappointment, but I signed the six-month lease anyway, figuring I’d be moving into something better by then. I slid my name into the mail slot and beamed. There I was: a voter, a tax payer, a citizen.

If anyone else had wanted me, I would never have taken the job at Benson Publishing. I might in fact have fled the interview, having seen enough.

Benson Publishing, I soon learned, was a vanity press, though we were not supposed to call it that. Housed in an old warehouse, it was dying by degrees, dying along with its owner, an 88-year-old Christian Scientist named Edward Fleese. To this day, I can recall his Dickensian scowl and the croak of his voice, and I can see the greasy brown suit coat he wore every day, the shoulders littered with dandruff. Every few seconds, if you were close enough, you could see the bits of skin falling off his waxen face and onto his desk pad. A few long strands of oily brown hair looped over the  spotted dome of his scalp. His yellowed fingernails, which I couldn’t bear to look at, were long and chipped.

Somehow Mr. Fleese managed to employ seven of us, though of course he paid very little. We all sat at what looked like military surplus desks, in a big room that was always too hot or too cold. Each of us comprised our own department. I was the billing department, and my desk was next to the room’s entrance. What I did each day was type up letters to our clients, requesting prompt payment for services rendered, and at the bottom of the page I’d stick on a Dunn and Bradstreet label for emphasis. These letters were sent to the same list of authors on a rolling basis; when I reached the end of the list, I would start back at A.

Sandra had the job I wanted. She was our editorial department and was responsible for evaluating and editing the occasional manuscripts that came her way. Because new authors equaled revenue, Sandra approved most everything before turning back to her real passion: her elaborate wedding plans. Sandra was a tall, soft-spoken woman, and nothing ruffled her, a knack that made me wistful. She had a habit of tilting her head to one side, probably to keep her long blonde hair out of her face, and so she appeared kind and attentive.

Sam, our funny man, was in charge of marketing. I’m not sure what exactly he did for Benson Publishing, but he was very skilled at marketing himself. We were all trying to get out of there, but Sam was especially energetic about it, each week coming up with ingenious new resumes—which he’d hand over to me for proof-reading (there was no automatic spellcheck back then; this was the era of noisy, balky typewriters). I adored Sam. He made me laugh, the way he mugged faces when Mr. Fleese walked past, and I loved the notes he used to drop on my desk on his way to the men’s room, quips that amused and sustained me.

Ida was the art department, in charge of designing book covers. Ida had a face like a fox and was nasty in a smiling, backhanded way. No one liked her. She was a lousy artist, which didn’t seem to matter to Mr. Fleece. Ida spent weeks laboring over a single awful cover, which she would then hold up for applause.

Fitz was…here’s the thing: I never knew what Fitz was hired to do. Much older than the rest of us, Fitz was a corpulent alcoholic with flaming cheeks and a sweet nature. Stubbornly, oddly, Fitz dressed for success: black slacks, rumpled white shirt, striped tie (the rest of us wore casual clothes that reflected our opinion of our status). Fitz had positioned his department strategically, his desk being the only one that Mr. Fleese could not view from his office, and he could usually be seen with his head buried in his arms, peacefully sleeping the day away. We all liked Fitz, and on the days he didn’t make it into work, we lied for him, assuring our boss that he had indeed called in, with the flu, a funeral, whatever we could think of; we usually agreed on something before Mr. Fleese arrived.

Last was the shipping department: Eddie and Zach, two part-time college students who could rarely be depended on to ship a box of books without incident. Much of what they sent out came right back to us—insufficient postage or a bum address. At these times Mr. Fleese could be heard haranguing them—the shipping room was a dark cubby off to the side—and looking up from my desk I could see, beyond Mr. Fleese’s flying arms, the bored postures and hangdog faces of Eddie and Zach. Eddie, the more talkative of the two, would promise to do better, while Zach, who was constantly stoned, would just nod and smile. Then Mr. Fleese would shuffle back into his office, Eddie would try to look productive, and Zach would amble off to the stock room, where, in the towering stacks of books we would never sell, he had made a nest to nap in.

As you can imagine, booksellers were not exactly clamoring for our products, but we did have a few pearls—tabletop books with gorgeous photographs, slim volumes of surprisingly good poetry. Several of our authors were foreigners who did not understand the contracts they were signing; others simply trusted us, assuming we’d keep up our end of the bargain and get their beloved works out into the world. Sandra said that was the worst part of her job, calling those unwitting authors to give them “the good news.”

It was a job, as one would say, and after a short time I got used to the degradation. My tasks were not difficult: answering the mostly silent phone and typing up form letters. Easy as the work was, it seldom passed muster. My biggest challenge was trying to figure out what I did wrong. When Mr. Fleese found an error or disagreed with my wording, he’d crumple up the letter without a word and toss it on the floor. After he went back into his office, I’d get up from my chair, pick up the ball and smooth it out. Sometimes I spent an hour looking for where I went wrong, which did, on the upside, fill the time.

When you’re twenty-two, time is something you think you have a lot of. I stayed a year at Benson Publishing, rescued not by a better job but by the misguided notion that I needed to leave Boston and move to a place where my luck would change. Things had not worked out so well. No matter how many excursions I went on, the city held me at arm’s length, kept her pleasures to herself. Finding no way in, I gave up and stayed home. The red felt squares on my bathroom floor kept peeling up, and the plaster on the ceiling was falling into the bathtub. The failing motor in the half fridge woke me up at night, along with panic attacks that kept me wide-eyed from midnight to dawn. The man in the basement apartment below me had lost his job at Honeywell and was now agoraphobic. Sometimes his letters wound up in my mail slot, and when I went down to his apartment to deliver them, he would not open his door all the way: I never saw his whole face. I began to fear the same fate, that one night my panic would never leave.

Little things helped. Lacing my morning coffee with Jack Daniel’s. Watching TV before work, some mindless show from childhood. Checking my reflection in plate glass windows to make sure I was still there. Fortunately, I had made friends with a beautiful young woman down the hall who dated a succession of doctors and happily supplied me all the Valium I began to require. Panic attacks are common in the young, especially in women making the transition from college to career. You think you’re ready for the world and you’re not. There’s nothing to be done for it; you just have to heal as you go.

My plan to become a book critic had slipped a few notches; I was allowing modifications, leeway. I had no idea how or why this happened. It is said that everything occurs for a reason, and we all wind up where we should. I doubt it. I don’t think life has that sort of structure. I think youth is something we mostly bumble through, and usually squander, and that it can’t be and shouldn’t be any other way. We are old so much longer than we are young, and there is ample opportunity to be wise.

I live in Napa now, three thousand miles from my past. Napa is a lovely place, and one that suits me. But Boston will always be my favorite city because I was young there, and scared, and hopeful anyway.

I remember one particular afternoon at Benson Publishing, when dust motes floated above us, and the hands on the wall clock weren’t moving, and a mantle of submission had settled over the room. Sandra was filing her nails, Sam was crafting another resume, Fitz was sleeping, I was leafing through a travel magazine, when Ida said: “It’s snowing.” We all got up then—even Fitz roused himself—and gathered at the dirty windows and watched the first snow of the year fall between the red brick buildings. Who would have guessed that decades later, I would look back on this scene, would see each of us with such clarity and tenderness, would love even Mr. Fleese, who did not come out to see the snow.

Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Napa, California. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals, including Other Voices, Pleiades, The Summerset Review, The Massachusetts Review, and The Blue Lake Review. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published in April 2013 by Ashland Creek Press. Please visit her website at: http://jean-ryan.com