My cousin, Emma, wrote that Sacramento in June was too damn hot for her, and that she wanted to come back to Portland and live with me because if it were this hot in June, she could just imagine what July and August would be like, and if I didn't come through with a place for her to stay, she would lose her job because of heat exhaustion and probably become a streetwalker in one of the valley towns south of Sacramento like Mantica or Stockton or Modesto, and if business wasn't good she'd have to wait until after dark and sneak into the fields which line the I-5 and steal watermelon for dinner.
Emma has always been overly dramatic, but Addie, our grandmother, said she had a right. "After all," she'd remind me, "Emma's start in life was special." Emma entered this world in the back-seat of Addie's 1962 Pontiac which stalled in a neighbor's driveway. The neighborhood kids stood around watching and laughing while Addie delivered Emma. She pulled the telephone out the front window and stretched the cord out to the car so that she could follow a nurse's instruction on the telephone on how to deliver a baby.
At three, Emma's parents were killed in that same 1992 Pontiac. Patricia and Henry, not really wild, just young people who liked to have a good time. They died in that dark hour just before dawn on the way home from a New Year's party. During the night, rain turned to a thin sheet of ice and the car skidded fifty yards, jumped an metal embankment, and rolled 150 feet down a ravine before coming to a stop under two fir trees. The car was totaled and they were DOA.
Addie brought Emma back to Longview to live with us. I was four and Josie was almost two. We had lived with Addie since our mom disappeared one day after Josie was born. We never knew our dad. I can't remember when we lived any where else. Emma fit in neatly between us. I remember the first day Addie brought her home. Addie put me on one knee and Emma on the other and told me, "Sonny, you have two sisters now and you're the man of this family." Emma reached over and pinched my arm so hard it left a bruise. That night, she screamed and ran up and down the stairs. Emma's letter said that she knew I must be lonely since my wife left me and I had moved to Portland where I didn't know anyone and how hard it was for me to make friends and that she knew a lot of people in Portland and besides she heard that they were hiring women at the woolen mills.
I was lonely too, at first. Portland existed in a time warp separated from the rest of the country. Most of the people who lived there act as though it was still a frontier town. Rivers criss-cross through the town and draw bridges connect the isolated sections of the town to each other. (And, in every section of the town, bars, filled with men wearing dust covered snakeskin boots and worn Pendleton shirts, filled with men coming into town from the Dalles or the John Day Country, filled with men ready to drink and gamble and fight. ) Emma was right; I didn't fit in and I was lonely. But, Cybertech paid me a lot of money, and I could link up with anyone, any place, any time. I worked overtime and stayed on the thirteenth floor of the Cybertech building way past quitting time. I accessed the net and stayed away from the bars and high above everyone.
I lived in Portland two months before they transferred me El Paso, Texas. I was lucky. I stepped off the plane and knew that I had, at last, arrived home. The company found a two bedroom apartment for me out on Edgewood Drive next to the Rio Grande River and the days were filled with cloudless Turquoise skies. I set up an office in the spare bedroom and commute on the electronic superhighway via my computer. I only go into work on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Wendall, my boss, says that a telecommunication network can survive anything: earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. The other day he leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles resting them on the desk. I think he was drinking Calistoga, and he said, "I've never been to California, but the super-highway is the wave of the future, and you and I are like Malibu surfers riding its crest." He's never been anyplace outside of El Paso, but he wants to take his wife and three kids to Disneyland next year and maybe visit the Pacific Ocean.
I was lonely, but was I lonely enough to want Emma as a roommate. I thought not. I told her that my apartment was small, noisy, and worst yet that it didn't have air conditioning. She wrote back that it couldn't be any worst than Modesto in August. I told her that I was on probation at work and the company would probably fire me by the end of the month. She wrote back that she learned all about computers when she worked for the telephone company. I told her that El Paso had been invaded by killer bees. She wrote that she had never been stung by a bee in her life and thought that swarming bees were connected with God's mysteries. I told her that the health department posted warnings about drinking the water because there was a possibility of a Cholera epidemic. She wrote that she had all of her shots. I told her that no one in my neighborhood spoke English. She wrote that she had two years of Spanish in high school. I told her that Josie would love to have her visit stay in LA. Emma moved to LA. I never regretted stretching the truth.
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