to collide and combine and re-collide and re-combine, creating the “I” that is me at this moment but not-me at the next. Mixed as my metaphors.
And my dirty little secret is that I like pinball. It’s what I’m used to. The bells and flashing lights and whirling scoreboard are what I’ve known. And now the noise and flash is muted, though not far away. Do I want them back? I can’t win the game with them, but do I even want to play the game without them? Should I put another quarter in the slot? Just one more turn? Like I said, what’s the advantage of silencing the voices if the result is simply . . . well . . . silence? If overly full is replaced by completely empty, how is that an improvement?
And what does any of this have to do with the fact that I’m supposed to be back at work tomorrow morning?
six
Life does not stop just because someone goes missing. Someone going missing, in fact, is the very stuff of life. It happens about 150,000 times a day. If it touches us personally, we sometimes call it tragedy, but that word means less and less in a world that does not believe there is anything to fall from or fall to. If everything just is, then “missing” is just another is.
(There I go trying to figure things out again and be clever at the same time. It’s a bad habit.)
Anyway, the Schedule says today, only a couple days after Abby’s disappearance, is a special day. Every day is a special day for some of our Specials, but no day is more special than Special Olympics day. It’s the day some Specials realize for the first time how entirely Special they are. It’s four hours of hugs, medals, high-fives, hugs, food, doing your best, everyone a winner, hugs, self-esteem, more medals, thumbs-ups, more food, laughter, hugs, and cheering. Did I mention hugs?
New Directions has a big field, and so the local Special Olympics folks have chosen it for a preliminary competition in preparation for the statewide competition next year. The nuns had used the field to raise vegetables for the dinner table, provide work for the residents, and raise a few cows. But New Directions plowed it all under and turned it into a big, grassy recreation field. Mens sana in corpore sano. Well, not exactly.
We have a number of Special Olympic immortals in our own group home. Jimmy is a bowling force—and bowling is part of the expanded field of Special Olympic events. He is more about style than pin count. He likes to dry his hand on the air blower for an inordinately long time—both hands in fact—holding the ball first in the crook of one arm and then the other, peering into the distance with chin held high, a look as resolute as Napoleon’s before Waterloo. He then finds his pre-established mark, a piece of tape on the floor, places both feet together as instructed, tosses his hair into place, puts the ball under his chin, and stares down the lane at the pins, his mortal enemies. Waiting patiently for the synapse to fire that says “bowl,” he sometimes holds this pose interminably, deaf to the occasional outburst from Bonita: “Bowl the damn ball, for Christ’s sake!”
He eventually shuffles purposefully toward the line and swings the ball gracefully, releasing it with an upward motion of his arm that he holds overhead, like a Greek statue frozen in time. He invariably releases the ball late, causing it to arc to the floor, bouncing once or twice on the lane before settling into a roll. About half the time, that roll leads to the gutter, sometimes immediately, but this is of no concern to Jimmy. He pivots back toward the onlookers—proud, solemn, regal—and returns to the bench, collecting high-fives and other tributes along the way.
There will be no bowling today. This is a field day—all running, jumping, and throwing, with some lifting and tossing along the way. The tossing is bocce ball (that famous Olympic sport) and Bonita and Judy are both competing—Judy in singles and Bonita in what they call a “unified” event that pairs her with a Normal.
One of those explosive words—normal. Seems innocent enough, but for some it reeks of elitism, condescension, insensitivity, Otherism, and who knows what. Start with the idea of norms—how things ought to be—and you end up with firing squads. Cassandra seems to think “as normal as possible” is the goal for our clients, but the whole concept calls out the “who are you to say?” types that reject all generalizations about anything so “totalizing” (or whatever the word of the day might be). And nothing, apparently, is more totalizing or generalizing—or abusive—than the notion of normal. (I thought I left this stuff behind when I fled the academy, but I’ve found that snow is general all over Ireland.)
But I have to say, I think the anti-Normalizing crowd has a point. I mean, if they themselves are normal, who would want to be like them? Or me? If normal is measured by Western, productivity-obsessed, make-money-don’t-cost-money, be successful or be gone, self-actualized individualism, then Lord make me a Special. As I guess he has.
Anyway, Judy is in the bocce ball singles division and Bonita is paired with, let’s just say, a non-Special. They should, of course, have had it the other way round. Bonita—irascible as a wild boar—should have been in the singles, and Judy—mender of the world—should have been someone’s partner. But perhaps pairing up was seen as a growth opportunity for Bonita, and so the die is cast.
I’ve been asked to keep an eye on my residents, especially Bonita, and so I watch as the bocce competition proceeds. Her partner is a quite large, middle-aged woman with a constant smile on her face. She is wearing tight stretch pants that no woman would inhabit in public who had a full, three-dimensional understanding of the consequences. Her name is Flo.
Bonita’s bocce style betrays something about her upbringing before she arrived at Good Shepherd as a teenager. She holds the ball in her hands, bends low, kisses it and says things like “talk to me baby” or “go fetch,” then snaps off a line-drive throw in the general direction of the object ball. She actually is pretty good, and on the occasions when the ball bounces off course, she has a ready explanation—“Damn gophers.” Or something equally exculpatory.
Bonita and Flo make it to the finals. That’s when the wheels come off. It looks like they’re about to pick up two points at a crucial moment in the championship match when one of their opponents—a Special from a facility in the next suburb—puts a toss within six inches of the object ball. He lets out a whoop of delight, which gets Bonita’s engine running.
“Keep it down, retard.”
There is a gasp from the onlookers, some of whom stare at me as though I had said it—or, just as bad, created an environment where she was allowed to demean herself by saying it. (Some folks are big on the “creating an environment” thesis.) This is Bonita’s second offense, which makes it my second offense. If this gets back to Cassandra, I’m cooked. We clearly have a situation on our hands—and I have a lifelong aversion to situations.
Flo tries to help. She shouldn’t have.
“Now Bonita. We ought not use that word.”
“What word?”
“Well, you know what word. It’s not appropriate and it’s mean.”
Bonita is not a woman to be lectured.
“No, mean would be calling you a lard ass. I’m not calling you a lard ass, even though you are one, so I’m being nice. But he is a retard. Just look at him. He’s like me. I know a retard when I see one.”
This is too much. The person running the competition, a slight man with a now deeply mournful expression, intervenes.
“I’m calling a time out here. Let’s take a break and we’ll resume the finals in fifteen minutes.”
Bonita isn’t
