The Other Half Gold

On the last day of my thirties, I woke early.

I got into respectable clothes instead of my horrible gardening gear, and covered my PCOS thinning hair with a hat. I practiced not stimming or talking to myself as I preened and tried to look respectable. Then Jimmy came over in his mechanic’s coveralls, to take Michael and me car shopping.

He meant to drive the ill-fated Serendipity around to his place and park her behind the garage until we found someone who would pay to junk her. But the car wouldn’t start. The battery had drained to death in the nearly four months she’d been parked on the curb, immobile. Jimmy muttered that it was the same old electrical problem. Every single wire in that car was dry rotted.

We left the derelict car and went downtown in Jimmy’s jeep– past the trees that are changing so beautifully, still half green but the other half red and gold. I’ve missed the woods so much, it hurts. I’ve missed driving past the woods on country roads. I’ve longed for my favorite hiking trails so much that I would cry thinking about them. I can’t live unless I’m regularly hiking in the mountains. And I was terrified that we wouldn’t have enough money for a down payment after all my scrimping and pinching.

When we got to the tiny dealership, the proprietor wasn’t there– only the stern assistant I’d met before. I felt as if I was going to cry.

Jimmy hopped out of the jeep to introduce himself as a friend of the car dealer who’d bought six cars off of him– the last one had been a gift for his own mother. The stern assistant became less stern instantly. He shook the hand that was offered; he said the dealer would be back tomorrow, at about noon. Jimmy said to tell him that James So-and-So was coming with a friend, and such and such amount of cash money, and an old Nissan with a skip in the engine to trade. Now the stern assistant was smiling. He nodded. Yes, they could work with that easily. I could get a car for that.

My terror melted away instantly.

The worst thing about Appalachia is that you have to know someone. People here are suspicious of strangers and treat them accordingly–if they’re kind you might never find out, and if they’re unkind they might try to cheat you because you don’t know the way things work around here. The best thing about Appalachia is that, once you know someone, you have a loyal friend in every friend of theirs.  Adrienne has honorary cousins because of the Baker Street Irregulars. I have honorary grandchildren because Jimmy’s boy keeps bringing his friends to show them my garden. Now I was going to get treated well by the car dealership because I was a friend of Jimmy. I wasn’t even disappointed to be without a car for one more day, knowing I’d get one in the morning.

We went home the long way so I could renew my license at the BMV– I’ve not only lived four decades, but been a licensed driver for four years, and the card expires on my birthday. The road up behind the mall and around to Wintersville was glorious, shimmering as Autumn does on a bright day: the crick shiny on the shale rock, the sunshine overhead, one half of the trees still green, and the other half gold.

On the way back, we talked about everything. Jimmy has accomplished so many things I don’t know where to begin. He never boasts in a prideful way, but he likes to point out buildings on the way home and tell stories of the things he’s done. He had a construction business for a bit, and a car dealership once upon a time. He laid the bricks for the porch at that house over there, and was one of the men who painted the Market Street bridge. He once worked at a much bigger dealership selling brand new cars, so he knows how you get a car with zero miles on the odometer, something that’s always puzzled me. They don’t even drive the cars on and off the giant delivery trucks; they use a great big forklift.

He talked about our neighborhood, LaBelle– about our old stalking neighbor in the haunted house next door. We weren’t her only victims. She’d terrorized the lady who used to sunbathe in the front yard down the way, and the family who used to live across the street. Everyone in town was scared of her paranoid rages. We mentioned the things she’d told the judge about us, when she dragged us into court– the way she claimed that we were coming to her windows at four in the morning to call her obscene names, when in fact  she’d been doing that to us.

“Yes, she said the same thing about us. She said it about everybody. She hated everyone because she hated her life.”

He mentioned that he’d tried as hard as he could to be kind to her until she died. “That seemed to calm her down toward the end.”

I remembered the last few months of 2022, just before she went to the hospice, when I’d been so confused by the quiet because I was so accustomed to harassment. She kept to herself. She hid when she saw us coming. She stopped pacing back and forth between our houses, muttering horrible things to wake me up. It turns out that Jimmy was responsible for that mercy as well.

When we got home, I decided it was too pretty a day to stay in. Adrienne was not going to be home until hours later, because she was going to an after school program with the gang. Michael would be trying to fix the dryer. I wanted to go somewhere alone in nature for a few hours, even though I couldn’t drive to the state park. I walked to the grocery store the long way, through Union Cemetery– a short hike, too close to the shopping center for my tastes, but still beautiful. The trees were bright gleaming gold when I saw them from a distance across Washington Street, but still green on the underside of the canopy. Down in the emerald shade beneath the walnut trees, it might have been summer.

I saw a white tailed deer drinking from the crick– she started, but didn’t shy away. And then I looked again and saw another deer next to her, and another one further up the path. Three velvety gray-brown does, regarding me, cautious of a stranger as everyone is around here, but not afraid.

The sidewalk in front of the grocery store was piled high with bright brassy pumpkins and great big bales of hay. I thought of the heirloom squash I plan to grow next year to show off to the neighborhood children. And thinking of the children got me thinking of my birthday again. Maybe I could have an impromptu birthday party this weekend, with pumpkin cupcakes and cream cheese frosting for the neighbors.

I hopped on the bus with my great big heavy bags, and there was Pete who brought the beach,  who made me smile.

I’ve been smiling so much lately.

I am turning forty on the eleventh of October, having accomplished nothing at all, with no savings and no assets, no plans, no clue how I’ll live from month to month. I am a failure. I will never be anything I was supposed to be. I will never be able to follow rules or be good. I can’t be a self-loathing plaster saint like the culture around Franciscan University expected. I am not useful and resourceful like Jimmy. I am not a matriarch like Ms. B  and the grandmother of the Baker Street Irregulars. I am nobody but myself.

But I’m starting to have friends, and to learn how to be happy.

Forty is middle aged. That means that half my life is over, but it also means that the other half of my life is ahead of me. It won’t be anything anyone thought I was supposed to do, but it will be an adventure. Maybe I’ll even like it.

Maybe it will be beautiful.

I got off the bus and there was Michael, waiting to help carry grocery bags.

The vacant lots we walked by were still alive with asters and goldenrod.

The trees rustled in the evening breeze, a riot of color: one half green, the other half gold.