Though Mountains Fall

There’d been a bit of an emergency downtown, because the  derelict building behind a row of storefronts collapsed.

On Easter Monday, the owner of the bookstore came to check on his shop, and realized that the whole edifice behind it was leaning and about to go. The internal structure of the abandoned building had crumpled, leaving the clapboard walls sagging like a half-baked cake. The bookshop was unharmed, but would be flattened if that building sagged in the wrong direction and fell on it. The little farm-to-table grocery store on the other side was less lucky: they were right in the path of the slump.

For a week, neither shop could open for business while they waited for the City to arrange the demolition. This was bad for the bookstore. The owners could unlock the shop and run in to grab some inventory for their online store, but they didn’t have their revenue from people who came in to browse and make an impulse purchase. It was much worse for the grocery store. Books remain sellable indefinitely if they’re kept clean and dry. Food expires. And this wasn’t a single franchise in a wealthy chain of businesses: it was an independent little family-owned shop with no financial wiggle room. On Saturday, the grocery shop announced they were holding a sidewalk sale to sell off their inventory before it all spoiled.

This was how I ended up downtown on a Saturday morning, buying groceries outdoors.

I could see the leaning building as I made my way down Washington Street. It was one of those things you don’t notice unless it suddenly changes: a white clapboard rectangle in a row of white, brown and gray rectangles that had always been there. I have lived in Steubenville for going on twenty years. The antique buildings on Fourth Street are landmarks, like the mountains, and now one of the mountains had moved.

in the parking lot of the place where The Friendship Room had first set up a table to pass out water and Popsicles to homeless people in the summer, more than ten years ago. I, personally, hadn’t been homeless, but very poor and in danger of getting my utilities shut off. I’d been walking from one charity to another, looking for help with the shutoff notice, when I got overwhelmed by the heat and sat down on the pavement in the shadow of that same derelict. I remember staring out at the traffic, watching all the drivers who either didn’t see me or pretended not to look, fantasizing about cold drinks. It seemed like part of my fantasy when the Friendship Room volunteer brought me a bottle of water. No one had been kind to us for the longest time.

I certainly don’t like to remember that day.

The sale was taking place a little further on, in a little green space where another derelict building had been demolished, and there were already a few customers milling around. I greeted the lady who owns the bookshop and we chatted about how lucky it was that her husband had happened to check when he did. Then I turned to the food, which was all laid out on card tables. I couldn’t help but think that I liked the outdoor card table way of shopping better than shopping in the tiny store front– both because I prefer being outdoors in general, and because the grocery shop has a very large generic plaster statue of a Caucasian Jesus in the front. Sometimes I love that store, but I don’t like to look at that statue. He makes me nervous. When I see him, I’m afraid I’m going to get into trouble.

Sifting through the food, I found a carton of eggs, the excellent kind, all different shades of mottled brown and in a variety of sizes. These were the kind of egg that would have an orange yolk and really taste like eggs instead of nothing. Just looking at the eggs made me miss Holly the Witch who I haven’t been able to visit in over a year. I had a whole trip planned last year, just when my car broke down, and I haven’t been able to afford to travel since. Missing Holly the Witch made me miss Columbus where I grew up.

Missing Columbus, made me miss the person I used to be. It made me miss the person I was supposed to become: the pleasant housewife with her perfect little homestead and seven children, or the nun who taught Kindergarten, or the world renowned Catholic bioethicist with a clever answer for every question. Most of all, I missed the hope that I would one day grow out of being Mary Pezzulo, and grow into one of those people. I think I’ve finally buried that hope now. I think I’m going to have to be myself.

I took the carton of eggs, a bag of scallions, and a plastic clamshell of cherry tomatoes. I brought them all to the card table where the shopkeeper was trying to get his phone to read credit cards. He gave me the scallions for free, because there were nearly too ripe to sell.

As he rang me up, I looked around at the people in line.

I noticed that one of the women buying groceries was a woman I knew. She was in the same spiritually abusive, cultlike “faith household” that I had tried to be a part of, and we had been friends for awhile, and then we weren’t anymore. She had even been a bridesmaid in my wedding, at that ridiculous Baroque Catholic church with the Communion rail with the priest who turned out to be a sexual predator giving the sermon. I lost track of her soon after. I don’t know anything about her life now, except that she married a boy whose family had been part of the Sword of the Spirit cult Father Michael Scanlan led in my neighborhood. I think she managed to remain a devout rule-following Charismatic Catholic, not at all like me, but perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps she is a failure like me. I have no way of knowing.

She was middle aged.

She had crow’s feet around her eyes.

When did she get old?

Am I that old?

I couldn’t possibly be old. I haven’t done anything yet. I must be the same age as I was when I first came here.  I was a graduate student who wanted to change the world, and then everything went wrong. Next thing I knew I was a poor young mother in a terrible neighborhood, living my life from day to day, not surviving very well, making a mess of everything, trying to hold onto and be a part of any good I could find in the world, and then suddenly I was downtown in a vacant lot, buying eggs. That wasn’t enough time to get old.

I took my eggs back to the car, feeling as if that plaster Jesus was  everywhere around me, judging me again.

The collapsing clapboard building was leaning over the parking lot where I’d once collapsed myself.

The sun was high in the firmament.

Above the firmament was God: not the plaster statue, but the real one. Not the idol you conform to by making yourself into a generic graven image, but the one you encounter while you’re busy living your life. The one who cannot deceive nor be deceived. The Ancient of Days, who does not age or change or disappear, even though the mountains fall.

It hurts to live. But somehow, just then, I didn’t mind.