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Palm Springs

November 14, 2022

We’d been in Palm Springs for more than a week, longer than what would have been a normal vacation. I began to feel unstuck in time; I had to think hard to figure out where we were in the calendar. There was no such thing as Wednesday hump day, TGI Friday, or sad Sunday night.

What day was it?

Who cared?

Not me. I was sitting outside drinking coffee, aware that I was living every midwesterner’s fantasy. Coffee! In the morning! In November!

I inhaled deeply. In the moist, mossy world we’d come from, I’d thought of smells as heavy and pungent. Here, the air smelled clean, crisp, and dry, with hints of loose dirt and wood chips.

I recorded a video of myself holding Basil’s Craigslist mug (that was his first Tony Award) to send to him. I let it pan out to Grant’s yellowed paperback copy of Riders of the Purple Sage, which sat beside me. He’d bought it for a quarter at Revivals, the consignment store filled with casserole dishes and luggage left over from last season’s snowbirds. Jeanie and Gene went there every day to treasure hunt and talked about the store as if it were the biggest attraction in town, and it did yield some scores. I’d never been to a thrift store where you could find Ferragamo flats or a Louis Vuitton bag for ten bucks. With Thanksgiving coming up, along with a visit from March, Grant and I had stopped in to buy some essentials for Basil’s bachelor kitchen. When we paid for a whisk and a Crock-Pot, the guy at the front desk didn’t even bother to ask if we qualified for the senior discount, which kicked in at fifty-five there.

Grant looked at me, baffled. “Are we seniors?”

“Only in Palm Springs,” I said.

The volunteer and Grant struck up a conversation that ended with him suggesting Grant pick up a few shifts. To my great surprise, he took an application.

Jeanie calls me the Box Queen because every day there’s a delivery. A mattress pad because the bed is too hard. A television—Basil doesn’t have a single TV. You couldn’t cut through water with his dull knives. I bought shelving units for the kitchen cabinets so I can see what we have. One morning, I shrieked when a gecko slithered out of our Raisin Bran box. Now we have a full set of airtight containers. You’d think a guy with so much money would have good sheets, but even the cheapest set we ordered are softer than his.

“Here’s what we did,” Grant said. “We drove two thousand miles in order to turn another person’s house into the home we already had. Brilliant.”

In my video I next zoomed in on Jeanie and Gene sitting in matching zero-gravity chairs on the neighboring patio (the proximity of Le Desert’s units was hard to get used to after living across the street from a nature preserve) and panned to Grant swimming laps in the surprisingly large pool, setting into motion a dozen blow-up flamingos floating in the pool’s west end. I found the flamingos haunting. When they bobbed up and down, usually in clusters, it seemed as if they were gossiping about me. Cassie was practicing yoga on the pool deck, which might explain why Grant was putting extra effort into his stroke. She was playing Indian sitar music on her tinny portable speaker, and her expression was incredibly focused and intense. She’d stop periodically to rub her mala beads, or to take photos of herself in her glimmering yoga shorts and bra, rays of sunlight bouncing off the diamond in her belly button. She’d set up a camera on a tripod and posed first with some groovy sunglasses, catching every angle, then she took selfies holding a container of what looked like candy perched on her outstretched hand, and more with the candy between her perfectly white teeth.

I sent the video to Basil, then to my group chat with Octavia and the girls. Just another day in paradise. Octavia responded two seconds later with a screenshot of the weather forecast in Madison: thirties and clouds. I hate you. I love you. It’s complicated.

In Vienna for the weekend, Dort wrote.

We weren’t always the best at communicating, but Dort and I shared an appreciation for art and often sent photos of work we loved or hated. She attached a photo of Egon Schiele’s nude portrait of himself. It was amazing how he made the viewer’s eyes go straight to his balls, raw and red. I’m at the Leopold, where I’m supposed to admire (!) the art of a child molester.

March posted a GIF with the art museum scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and a sad-face emoji. Work jail. Huge project. I’m not going to make it to Palm Springs for Thanksgiving, Mom. Sorry.

My mood instantly deflated. Sometimes it seemed perfectly normal for the girls to be out in the world on their own, doing their thing. That was what we raised them to do. Other times, like that morning, I couldn’t understand how they could be so very far away from us, living their own lives. Now, at last, we had all the freedom I used to dream of when my life was mired in sippy cups and naps, dance recitals and shopping in bulk.

Grant emerged from the pool, shaking his wild hair like a dog, and sat down next to me. Already I could see the effects of the almost daily hikes he’d gone on with Hobie. He’d lost a few pounds, and his legs and torso were starting to show more definition. Driblets of water were stuck in the beard he’d insisted on growing. I wouldn’t let him kiss me because it felt as if he were sanding my face.

“Who needs a therapist when you can swim?” Grant asked.

“I’m glad you find it relaxing.”

“I wouldn’t call it relaxing. That was quite a workout.”

“I’m sure Cassie was impressed.” His blush always gave him away. “I’ve been looking for things for us to do.” It felt strange to plan activities for us to partake in together, as though we’d just started dating. “We can go to readings at the library, talks, the theater… They have their own film festival, and modernism week is in February.”

I wanted to impress him with the array of cultural and recreational activities available in the area. I needed to undermine Grant’s belief that our winter here would be as mindless as the time his mom and stepfather used to spend in Florida, where they napped all day, watched television, drove around in golf carts, and broke out the sherry at four o’clock. No, Palm Springs was like a beautiful starlet, so pretty you might think she’s not very smart until you learn she has actual interests.

Hobie’s little dog started to yelp hysterically from the pen Hobie had made when he’d strung some chicken wire between the shrubs that flanked his sliding doors.

“Oh, hi there, Audrey!” Jeanie waved, and the little dog grew even wilder. It was as close to a scream as a bark could get. “She’s a soprano! Did you know Hobie named her Audrey because he thinks she looks like Audrey Hepburn?”

She did. She had skinny limbs and big, sad eyes.

“Bless his heart, Hobie drove all the way to San Diego to get her after what happened to poor Mushman. She’s a rescue.”

Gene said, “He didn’t have to go all the way to San Diego. There are so many Chihuahuas in this town you’d think they sell them at the dollar store.”

“She’s our hiking buddy,” said Grant. “She stares at me from Hobie’s carrier. I swear she can see right into my soul.”

Jeanie leaned forward to speak in a hushed voice. “A few people around here aren’t too happy about Audrey. There’s going to be a war over that dog, mark my words. There are wars over everything.”

Gene said, “This nice couple just got here last week, we don’t want to scare them.”

“Cassie!” Jean waved her hand. “Stop spending so much time upside down or you might get stuck that way.”

“I’m shedding my goddess skin.”

“If I had your skin, I’d keep it. When you’re done, come on over here.”

A few minutes later, Cassie stood, brushed herself off, and walked to the patio carrying her phone and her mesa. She’d explained this was a traveling altar filled with special rocks and totems. The older couple fawned all over Cassie. She was so earnest and sweet, but she remained a mystery to me. In all the time we’d been here I hadn’t seen her go to work. How she lived her life was none of my business, but she must have been around the same age as the twins, so I couldn’t help but feel a motherly worry over her.

“I’ll make you an egg,” Jeanie said. She had good and bad days. So far, this was a good one.

“No eggs! You know how I feel about eating animals. Peace begins on your plate.”

I’d had this same conversation about veganism with Dort a thousand times. It was strange to live in Madison, where half the residents were vegan but the restaurants served up offerings that were almost exclusively pork based.

I returned to my compulsive planning. I was in search of the very best of everything Palm Springs had to offer—happy hours, museums, day trips, activities. I felt like one of those people with big eyes and empty stomachs standing in line at the buffet. On the one hand, I didn’t want to miss a thing, but I also loved being at Le Desert and felt little desire to leave the premises.

“We could see a show at the community theater,” I said. “They even have a bookstore here.”

“A bookstore? We have more bookstores than bars in Madison.”

Even though we’d come here to relax, I worried that one too many naps by the pool could push us down a slippery slope. Already I knew exactly what time the mail carrier showed up, which day the gardeners came by with the dreadful leaf blowers, when the pool guy would dump chemicals in the pool. I watched Hobie survey the premises each evening, picking up any stray bit of garbage and making sure the pool umbrellas were cranked down. If we weren’t careful, we might discover that we actually enjoyed relaxing, and we would become lazy and… old.

I continued, “There are drop-in, pay-what-you-want workouts in the park. There’re also tai chi, drum circles, pickleball tournaments, bike rentals, hot springs, the tram. We could go to one of those pot bars with ‘budtenders.’”

Grant said, flatly, “Hamster, meet wheel.”

“Tomorrow there’s drag bingo,” Gene said. “We go every Wednesday.” It was hard to picture Gene in his T-shirt that said WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA in a room with a drag queen. “We love Barbara Ganush. You should see the room light up when she calls out O-69!”

A hummingbird darted into and out of our airspace, its beak as big as a fingernail clipping. The bird’s feathers were iridescent purple and green, her energy limitless. She was less bird, more Tinker Bell. She finally paused for a moment on the branch of the loquat tree, whose genus and species I’d learned when Grant and I had toured the botanical garden the day before. We learned that desert plants have adapted to the dry conditions by becoming succulent and spiny, growing only tiny stems. Their roots do not reach very deep and instead extend out and out. I wondered if the metaphor applied to the people who lived here, too: if the environment changed them on a cellular level; if it was changing us, and we were learning to adapt. Already I felt different.

Grant said, “I miss my office at Mounds.”

I waved. “Hello? Can you just be here with me for five minutes?”

“I waited years for that office to be mine. Years. The door had my name on it. It had a fireplace. And those huge windows looking out into the tops of the oak trees. I could see everything. I knew all the squirrels. One had a mangled tail. I named him Hanson.” Grant took a sip of my coffee. He told people he gave up coffee to prove he had discipline, but, really, he just drank mine. “It was a very nice office.”

Witt Hall had once been a Carnegie library. It was easy to imagine what it must have been like there over a hundred years ago if you could look past the institutional furniture, flickering brass light fixtures, drab paint on cracked walls, and posters advertising speakers, shows, and study-abroad opportunities.

“I thought I’d die of a heart attack at my desk, just like Garvin did when he’d had the office before me. When they discovered his body, a red mark was running down the page he was grading. That’s every professor’s dream, working right up till the end.”

“You hated grading.”

“Still, that’s how I thought I’d go. They kept that paper in the college archives. I’ve seen it.”

“Oh, Grant.” I reminded myself that Grant had always been supportive of me when I was unhappy with my job.

“What do you think they did with the archives? All the old yearbooks and newspapers, the photographs and diaries? Do you think they just loaded the college’s entire history into a Dumpster?”

“It’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me, Kim. I spent twenty-six years of my life there.” A small breeze rustled the pages of his book, a western by Zane Grey. Grant said, “His real name was Pearl.”

“Whose?”

“Zane Grey. Pearl was his actual name.”

“Grant, that book smells like cat pee. I can smell it from here.”

“Fine!” He threw it across the patio. Gene, Jeanie, and Cassie looked at us with alarm. Our hummingbird flew away. Audrey began to bark. A few of the yellowed pages escaped the binding and flew loose. It was like a living thing.

In my quietest voice I said, “What is your deal?”

“I’m trying to have a conversation, Kim. Sometimes you remind me of your mom, wanting other people’s problems to just go away. I want you to care, and to listen. You aren’t listening.”

“Are you kidding? I do care, Grant, and I am listening. I’ve been caring, and listening, and loving you for a long time. But I’ve got issues of my own, you know.”

“Issues like what?”

“Well, I really don’t like my job. I mean, I care about what Go Green does, but Vic makes my life miserable.” Wendy had emailed earlier that morning and said we’d lost funding from the Schufro Foundation. I knew Go Green would probably cut some staff positions as a result. How could I tell Grant that I might not have a job after this sabbatical ended? Instead I said, “Who wants to hire someone my age?”

“Trust me, I know how you feel.”

“I push folks around in wheelchairs at the airport,” Gene piped in. I was mortified that he’d been listening to our entire conversation. “You could do that. I meet the nicest people.”

Jeanie added, “I’m a wonderful nurse. I never have to stick a person twice when I start an IV.”

“Honey, you haven’t been a nurse in almost twenty years,” Gene said gently.

She smiled, baffled. “Is that right?”

I could see Gene’s heart breaking. Jeanie’s slipping memory put our own drama into perspective.

“How about picking up a hobby?” I said to Grant, lowering my voice. “It seems like you’re enjoying hiking. I started painting again. I was just making a sketch.” I’d begun what I thought might become a series of scenes from our time here. I’d already painted Cassie sitting cross-legged, meditating. The one I was currently working on was of Audrey standing up on the fence.

Cassie chimed in, “The trouble is, you’re blocked, Warby.”

“Warby?”

“That’s what we call you,” she said. “Warby Parker, those glasses you can buy online.”

Grant said, “Who needs an education when everything you need to know is on Instagram?”

“Careful,” Jeanie said. “Cassie here says she’s an influencer.”

“Yeah? What do you… influence?” I asked.

“Everything that matters, and some of what doesn’t. Like hair twisties and gummy vitamins that make your skin glow.”

“You wouldn’t believe the money.” Gene whistled. “When I worked for the power company, I could light up a whole city for what you make posting a photo online.”

“That’s not my true calling, of course. It just allows me to share my message about integrating heaven and earth to exit the matrix.”

I waited for Cassie to laugh. When she didn’t, I said, “I honestly have no idea what that means.”

Gene said, “We don’t get it either. It’s all blah-blah-blah to us.”

“That’s because you’re still part of the matrix,” Cassie said serenely.

“What matrix?” Grant asked, genuinely intrigued.

She lit up. “The mental construct your mind gets stuck in. You need to awaken and question the nature of the virtual reality you’re in. That’s how you become liberated. Then you can find other liberated souls and escape. You achieve freedom when you find truth and autonomy.”

“You basically just described what I taught my entire career,” Grant said, sounding appreciative, as though at last someone finally understood him.

“You need to exist in the world of possibilities instead of probabilities. Maybe it’s probable that you can’t teach again, but what are the possibilities that exist for you? You can change your story.”

Even though I wasn’t entirely clear about what Cassie meant, it felt as if she was describing our whole reason for coming to Palm Springs, and it actually made sense. “What’s your thing ?” I asked. “You know, that makes people follow you?”

“I’m a shaman.” She became somber. She lowered her voice. “A pampa mesayoq.” Cassie looked like someone who worked at lululemon.

“Yeah?” Grant said, always the encouraging teacher.

I would have thought Grant would find this all laughable. I thought we’d joke about it later the way we joked about Denim and DNA; instead, he found it fascinating. She started talking about following your heart path, being brave, and expanding your line of vision. I could feel a little fuse blow in my brain. “You can live your own calling through the heart.”

Grant asked, “Okay, but how?”

“Start by journaling.”

“I already have a journal. It’s where I share all my tender thoughts and feelings.”

This was a joke I’d heard before. Judging by Cassie’s response, she wasn’t any more amused by it than I was. “This is different. Try auto-writing for twenty minutes a day about what’s in your heart.” Octavia and I used to have a drinking game when we watched The Bachelor where we’d take a shot whenever someone said the word heart, a word that felt co-opted, so cheapened and overused it meant nothing. “It doesn’t matter what you say,” Cassie continued. “You write differently when you plan to burn the pages in a ceremony.”

“I’ll do that. And maybe I should learn how to meditate. Can you help me with that, Cassie? Because you know what I do when I swim?” Grant paused and looked right at me. “When I’m underwater, I scream. I scream my head off.”