Tunnel Vision

            by Lana Robinson-Sum

 

They never really surprise me. Their problems are not especially unique, their expressions are not fresh, and no amount of piercings, jewelry, or clothing can hide the emotions I have seen day after day. But I love to watch them, like a bourgeois Parisian who idles away his day at a cafe, just looking at them walk, strut and push their way past. Except that I am not a bourgeois, I am not like my parents or like Carol. I watch from the bushes, I watch as they enter and exit the tunnel, winding its way through a hill, under houses, through lives. The walkers’ lives, mostly, are sad. I can see it in their eyes hung low to the cracked sidewalk, or fiercely staring down the street. From my vantage point seven feet above the walled walkway, laying low in the shiny ivy, above the dusty brown dirt and under the young oak trees, I watch.

I never thought that I would end up homeless. Even now after almost three years like this, I sometimes wake up and think it’s still 1975, and my mother is downstairs cooking blueberry pancakes, wearing the red and white apron that always reminded me of a picnic tablecloth. When I realize that my beard is graying, that my fingernails are black with grime, that I haven’t brushed my teeth in over a year, I try not to think about why. Mossy teeth in themselves are not unbearable, but when I remember life before sleeping bags, when I see Carol’s face and especially those pale blue eyes that bore into mine like searchlights, the guilt weighs down on my shoulders, and it strains me to get up. But I must get up, and walk down my hill, onto the narrow path, past the cracks in the sidewalk, across two streets, until I arrive at my spot in front of Zachary’s Pizza. I keep an empty Peet’s cup by my feet, and wait for spare change from understanding strangers.

“Whatever you can spare today, ma’am.” She shakes her head softly and walks by.

“Sir, whatever you can spare?” He is young and looks at me with hands turned up, shrugs, mumbles something that I can’t decipher. Then he walks away.

A woman with a stroller crosses the street before she reaches me, and I wish I could have seen the infant. I was always good with children.

“Sir, do you have any spare change today?” The man glances at me under his bushy eyebrows.

Under his breath as he passes, he murmurs, “Why don’t you get a job?”

“I...I tried,” I say back, but he doesn’t turn around. I did try. But not many businesses are looking to hire a convict, especially one who broke parole.

I return to my hill just before the sun sets, after the warmth has left the street and the pedestrians are no longer strolling, but hurrying to their last errands, hurrying back to their children and broken marriages, back to the dangerous privacy behind locked doors. I gnaw on bits of pizza crust and half-swallowed Cokes, nestled into my sleeping bag. So many people pass by, and most I never recognize twice. But some are regulars. The young Asian man, always wearing a button-down shirt and one-strap backpack, likely a Cal student returning to the room he rented from an older woman, worrying about the midterm too fast approaching, wondering what he said to upset his girlfriend. The plump bicyclist, I imagine a chemistry teacher who cannot wait to get home and check his fantasy baseball team. The blond woman who walks with a pedometer, breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth, not really seeing anything around her but her own breath.

There is also a girl who walks through the tunnel. She is 14, 15, maybe 16 years old, and she walks more slowly than all the others. I wonder if she has somewhere to go, or if her destination pains her. She is so small and her limp brown hair rests on her narrow shoulders, on the backpack straps that pull her down to the earth. Without them, I think she might float up into the cold air and escape. I like to watch her the most. When I do, I think about all the things I would say to make her happier. I would carry her backpack, take away its weight, and then maybe I would see her smile.

I can’t remember the last time I saw Carol smile. I have tried to search back through the moments, but I didn’t know then that it would be the last time. Does anyone ever know until it’s too late? We married too young to even know ourselves. I loved her, and I thought that was enough. Fresh out of high school, we moved to a small apartment in West Berkeley on our parents’ money, but I was also working as a bag boy at Safeway, and we were both going to night school at Vista. We had modest dreams of owning a house, of children playing in the yard, of all the things our parents taught us to want. But we were so young.

I wonder where she is now. 12 years in a six by ten cell doesn’t exactly keep one informed about the rest of the world. Of course she never visited me; she probably told herself I didn’t exist.

“Carol,” she would say to herself, “Carol, forget about Gary. Move on with your life. Gary was a bad man, Carol, forget about him. He was a bad man, a bad man, a bad man.”

And then this asshole Dustin Maloney would probably put his arms around Carol, my wife, and rock her to sleep, and she would rest her head on his chest just the way I found them together in our bed on April 20th, 1989. And he would stroke her hair, her golden brown hair that smells like eucalyptus, and look into her blue eyes with his blue eyes and there would be no room for any other colors. Twelve years thinking about her in my cell and never once did I regret what I did. My only regret was that I missed, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to forget me, not from her grave. I loved her and she betrayed me, and Carol, I will never forgive you for that. When you walk through my tunnel, one day, I will tell you what I think and I will touch you with my grimy fingers and make you remember me.

 

I wonder why the girl is so sad. Maybe her friends don’t understand her, or maybe it’s her parents who mistreat her. They weigh her down with pressures and realities and those books that I just want to rip up. The only subject I ever liked was biology. I wonder if she takes biology. She always looks so cold when she comes out of the tunnel. So cold and so breakable.

 

One day in January it is particularly cold. My breath is white and thick and the dew drips from the top of the tunnel, forming icy puddles on the concrete walkway. I stayed an extra hour or so on Solano under the awning of Pegasus Books to avoid the drizzle, and so by the time I make my way back to the hill it is dusk. But the drizzle started up again and the lines of water have begun to sting harder and harder on my face. I duck into the tunnel and lean against the yellowed, moldy wall to wait it out. And then I see her.

From a distance she is just a slender silhouette, but as she approaches I can make out her white raincoat, her wet JanSport backpack, her damp brown hair, and that slow timid gait that makes her seem so alone. She has her hands in her pockets and is wearing i-Pod headphones. I want to talk to her, to hear her voice. But what can I say? Soon she will pass me, like the strangers on the street, and not look back. I have to think of something to say.

“Uh, hello,” I stammer.

She smiles, mouth closed, and turns her eyes back down to the puddles.

“Excuse me, do you know what time it is?” I thought she might be wearing a watch. But instead she stops and takes the i-Pod out of her pocket, pulling one of the headphones out of her ear.

“It’s quarter to six,” she says softly, putting the headphone back on.

“Thank you,” I reply. Then, frantically, “What are you listening to?”

“The Beatles,” she says, glancing to the side uncomfortably.

“Oh, you like oldies? They’re great. Do you know that song, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’?”

“Uh, yeah,” she answers, making a step towards the tunnel’s exit.

“Just like you. You have beautiful brown eyes.” She does. They’re round and deep-set, the color of Godiva dark chocolate.

She smiles quickly and turns to walk away. Suddenly I don’t want her to leave, to go out into the cold air and back to her life.

“Wait!” I stammer, grabbing her shoulder. She turns her head stiffly. “Do you have an umbrella? It’s raining you know. Maybe you should wait in here until it stops raining. You might get sick.”

“No, no.” Her voice is unsteady and rough now, and she pulls away from my grasp, making a quick shuffle for the exit hole. I begin to follow her, shocked at her abrupt refusal. But she hears me move and glances back, and I see her eyes are even wider now and full of fear. She breaks into a run until she is out of sight.

I let her go. I don’t want it to be like that. I don’t want her to be afraid. Afraid of me? My beard is overgrown, my eyes are perpetually bloodshot, and my ragged clothes smell musty and dank. I can understand that from appearances I am not like people she is used to. But I want her to see past appearances, to know that I can help her and that she will like me.

She doesn’t walk through the tunnel the next day, or the day after that. But on the third day I see her in the passenger seat of a green Toyota. I can’t quite make out who is driving the car because they are going thirty miles per hour and my eyes, my eyes are getting old. But now I know to watch the road, to watch for license plate number 1869THG, and two days after that, I see her again. This time there’s a long line of cars backed up all the way to my hill, and through the bushes I strain my reddening eyes and when I see that the driver is Carol, I choke on my own spit.

My mind races from the shot of adrenaline that stirs emotions I have long forgotten. Yes, there is resentment, yes there is anger, but Carol’s passive features and slender hands upon the steering wheel remind me of how beautiful she is. I remember what it felt like to be completely, stupidly in love. I burn inside to tell her how much I loved her. I want to run down and bang on her window and scream into her calm exterior. Then my mind turns to the girl who must, by all rationality, be the daughter. So, while I was rotting in jail and living on the streets, Carol and Dustin Maloney were raising this perfect baby girl who could have been my child! And I know that the love they give her is not enough. No, they are horrible parents and they are ruining their daughter’s chances for happiness. She is perfect and they do not deserve her. It feels like someone is pulling a pickaxe through my gut.

 

For twenty-seven days Carol drives the girl in the green Toyota. For twenty-seven days Carol’s face tortures me and I sense myself nearing the breaking point. On the twenty-eighth day, I watch the road, but rush hour passes and still the Toyota has not driven through. Then, when it must be near eight o’clock, I see the girl. She walks slowly, her limp brown hair resting gently on her backpack straps and on her bulging black coat. The white headphones lie firmly in her ears and her eyes point down to the shadows on the uneven concrete.

I have to act. I pull the sleeping bag to my ankles, brush the twigs out of my clothes, and amble down the hill, stopping directly in her path.

She sees me at once, and I can see the recognition in her expression.

“Excuse me,” she murmurs hastily, trying to pass. I step in her way.

“Listen,” I stammer. “I know Carol, your mother.”

She stops suddenly and looks up at me. “What? How do you know my mom’s name?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but, long ago, we were married.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she shakes her head. She’s confused. Her eyes trace my face for an answer. Such beautiful brown eyes, just like the song. Then it hits me.

“You have brown eyes!”

“I...I have to go,” she says, trying to pass on the other side. But I step in her way again.

“Your mother and father have blue eyes and that’s biologically impossible. How old are you? What’s your name?”

She tries to get past me again, but I put my hands on her shoulders and force her to look at me.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but I loved your mother very much and you have the right to know that...that I think I am your father!”

“What?” She sucks in her breath, trying to read my face. “No, just let me go, I have to go home!” She starts to struggle free, but I can’t let her leave without knowing, I can’t let her out of my life. We can save each other, I tell myself, so I tighten my grasp and push her against the cold wall of the tunnel.

“Let me go,” she shouts, her lips trembling.

“What’s your name?” I persist, trying to make my voice calming and friendly.

“I won’t tell you. You’re a crazy homeless man and you don’t know anything about me. Let me go!”

“Calm down and listen to me. I’m your father and I can prove it! Just let me tell you the whole story, and then I will love you more than Carol and Dustin have ever loved you.”

“Help!” Her eyes dart back and forth across the dark, deserted tunnel. “Help, somebody, police!” Her shrieks are hoarse but loud. Without thinking, I let go of her left arm and clasp her mouth shut with my hand.

“Shhhh! I’m not going to hurt you!” Her teeth sink into my ring finger. She flails her head, trying to free my hand, but I only press it harder into the wall. Then, with her free hand she reaches into her coat and pulls out a small red canister. Mace.

“Ahhrrrgg!” Now all I can do is rub my burning, stinging, foaming eyes, and try to extinguish the pain that sears across the inside of my contorted face. The girl pushes me down to the ground and steps over my writhing limbs.

“No, come back, my... my daughter.” I force my eyelids to part. The scene is blurry, splotched with red and gray. Her dark figure stops and turns momentarily.

 “You’re not my father. My father’s name is Richard and he has brown eyes and you’re crazy!” Then she runs.

No, there is no Richard. Why would my daughter lie to me? The burning has not diminished. I watch her run farther and farther away from happiness, becoming merely a silhouette against the dark street. She did not come back, she did not glance at me again. But I know that I already love her unconditionally, and she left me, and honey, I forgive you. I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you.