His eyes filled with tears and he did not bother to wipe them away. He had no energy. He was at the bottom. He was drowning.
“Ramon,” I said. “Ramon, look at me.”
It took a bit for his eyes to meet mine, his shoulders shaking. People, I have found, can’t meet your eyes when there’s no self-esteem to meet them with. “You said you took online classes in jail and also classes where the professor came in to teach. What did you take?”
“I took everything, Miss O’Shea. Math, science, literature—that was one of my favorites—history. I love books. That’s where I go to hide, books. I taught my brother how to hide in books, too. I got my GED, started on the college classes. I took landscape design. Ten classes. I studied all these landscaping books, wrote papers, watched videos, looked at all these gardening magazines and studied them.” He paused for a second, looked a shade sheepish. “I like flowers. Sometimes I paint gardens with secret places, you know, a bench in the back, or a gazebo with vines, paths, gates. . . . If I ever get a house I’m going to have a garden.”
I thought for a few quiet seconds. “Tell me about yourself, then tell me why you robbed that bank.”
He stood up and paced, back to drowning. “I had to drop out of high school when my mom wouldn’t quit drinking and kept disappearing. I worked construction because my younger brother was at home and we were broke. I had a full-time job building houses and doing landscape stuff, like fountains and walls, but I had to bail my mom out of jail because she’d been locked up for driving drunk, again. So I didn’t have money for rent and my brother needed all this stuff for football and we didn’t have any food, and I got desperate. And I was pissed off and frustrated. No matter how hard I worked at my job, nothing was ever right. Then the construction market started to slow so I took a newspaper delivery job, too. My mom was always passed out or screaming at me and my brother, telling me I was nothing, telling him he was shit. Years of that. Years of her screaming shit.”
I closed my eyes on a wave of pain for this guy. Wave of pain. Some people should not parent.
Ramon rolled his shoulders. “I needed five hundred dollars. That was it. Five hundred dollars. So I robbed a bank, got caught, did four years, and now . . . my brother’s in foster care because the state took him from my mom when she crashed in a car with him and had meth in there, plus she assaulted someone with a pickax and she’s in jail now, but if I can get a job and prove I’m responsible, I can get custody of him instead of visitation only.”
He slumped into his chair again. “I have to get my brother back, Miss O’Shea, I have to. He’s only twelve.”
“Ramon, you can mow and edge a lawn, pick weeds, plant flowers?”
“Sure. Yes. Absolutely.”
“These paintings that you make. Can you transfer the painting into reality?”
“You mean, can I look at one of my paintings and take a bunch of dirt and turn it into something cool in someone’s front yard?”
“Yes.”
Hope peeked through his eyes. “I know I can. I spent hours and hours in prison studying, drawing . . . I even went online and talked to landscapers and gardeners, asked them all sorts of questions. Plus, I know how to work with cement, build brick walls, that sort of thing because of the construction work I was doing before jail. I like being outdoors, Miss O’Shea. I like working in gardens. In fact, I worked in the prison garden.”
He was proud of that, I could tell. “Tell me about it.”
“We had all kinds of fruits and vegetables, all the time. I built a whole bunch of raised beds, used organic everything, planted seeds and starts. I built a huge grape arbor, a shed with shelves, brick pathways all over the garden, a huge wood deck, a rock wall, a cement patio with a trellis over it. I planted nasturtiums and edible flowers that the cook put on the guys’ plates sometimes—that’s why all the guys in jail called me Flower. Because of the flowers. Even the warden thanked me. He wrote me a recommendation, so did two guards from jail, but no one will hire me.”
I thought of the house that I didn’t like. Boring grass, dying. Plain. Dirt. “I’ll hire you.”
He looked shocked. “You will? To do what?” He snapped his fingers. “I could be your janitor. I could be a janitor for this whole building. Can you tell somebody here that I can clean? I did that in jail, too. Cleaned all the time. Cleaned good—corners, too. The guy in charge of the kitchen, Mr. Morriston, he didn’t like when I worked in the garden, because he wanted me in the kitchen helping him, every corner, every wall, I cleaned. . . .”
“Nope, nope, and nope. Ramon, you need to shoot for where you want to be, so to speak. Do the Shoot High O’Shea program.”
“The Shoot High O’Shea program? What’s that?”
“It means, don’t shoot low, shoot high. Shoot for what you want, who you want to be. Ramon, my yard is boring. Only grass, and the grass is dying. Draw out a plan for my yard and we’ll work out a price. I’m up in the hills, so if the yard turns out great, I betcha you’ll get more business.”
He was stunned. “You’re hiring me to work on your yard?” “Yep. Here’s my address. Get on up there. Think about it, give me a drawing, and I’ll give you a check. How’s that?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. You have a record, you did something tremendously stupid, and it’s going to be hard for you to get a job. So, you’re going into business for yourself. You have a pickup, right?”
He nodded. “My uncle died. It was all he had. He willed it to me, along with his tools.”
“I’ll pay you half up front for working on my yard. Get signs for the sides of your pickup truck advertising Ramon’s Landscaping Services, get cards and flyers printed out, take photos of my yard before and after.” I saw his face. “No camera, right? I’ll take the photos and give them to you. When you’ve got some cash, get a Web site up and running.”
I scribbled down my address. “You’re in business, Ramon. You own Ramon’s Landscaping Services. Now get on up to my house and turn it around.”
He was starting to grasp the Shoot High program. “So I’m going to be a landscaper?”
“Ramon, you
are
a landscaper. And you have a lawn-mowing business on the side, that’s what you tell people.”
I saw his chin tilt upward.
“You’re also a businessman.”
I saw his chest puff a wee bit, the tears drying on his cheeks. “Pretty soon you’ll have employees, and you’ll go to clients’ houses and you’ll bring them paintings of what you’re going to do to their yard to transform it, and you’ll smile, shake their hands, look them in the eye, be friendly and honest and get every job done on time and done right, because you want everyone to know you’re trustworthy and honest. You’re going to work harder than any other landscaper in the area and you’re going to build your company on the backs of your happy clients.”
He nodded, nodded again, his breathing shallow. I could tell he hadn’t breathed right in a long time, either. Maybe ever.
“Wow. Me. A businessman!”
“Yep, and a landscaper. Off you go.”
Finally,
finally,
on that exhausted, beaten face, I saw a smile. I saw a glimmer in his eyes. I saw hope. Without hope, life is dead. “Thanks, Miss O’Shea. Man, thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome.”
This wasn’t gonna be perfect. He was young, inexperienced. But he had a shimmer of hope. He had a goal. He could do it, he could build from here.
By the time I got home, late that night, there was a painting on a two-by-three-foot canvas of what the front yard of my square spaceship house would look like. A second painting showed my backyard.
I sank down into an Adirondack chair on my back deck.
The paintings themselves were stunning. His clients would want to keep them. Ramon’s ideas were in keeping with the lines and modern feel of my house. There was a fountain, brick stairs to the entrance, white and pink cherry trees, a retaining wall, an arbor that mimicked the roofline with a vine growing over it, and layered borders of shrubs and flowers.
I grinned. Darned if I wasn’t proud.
Ramon, the ex-con, was in business.
I sent him a check. In the memo part I wrote, “Fear not.”
The rest of my week was filled with clients, in particular corporate types, one of whom said his life was so filled with meetings and technological input, he believed he had become an emotionless robot. I told him he was correct and helped him rethink his life. “RTYL,” I told him. (Rethink your life.) “Draw a picture of who you want to become.” I gave him six feet of butcher paper. He drew a smiling travel writer with a small laptop, multipocketed vest, and camera.
The other was a tightly closeted, repressed gay artist who worked as a CEO. “You’re a hypocrite,” I told him. “You won’t live until you get rid of your lies.” I made him stand with me on a table and yell out the truth about himself until he felt comfortable with his truth. He cried when he was done. Good tears.
I counseled a number of homeless/troubled youth (always for free) from Youth Avenues, a nonprofit group that Swans Grocery Stores financially supports with the mission of helping young people, with lousy beginnings because of lousy parents, get their lives on track. When I meet these kids, if I see potential, if they’re sober and
want
to go to school, I direct them to a scholarship fund Swans sponsors at our local community college. Free tuition, plus a stipend, and they get to change their lives. If they want to be sober and want treatment, we pay for the treatment, too.
I also went with Granddad to a board meeting for Youth Avenues, a dinner at a fancy downtown hotel, to honor Portland area employees of his stores, attended another charity dinner for a hospital and wrote a huge check, and I wrote a column about lifestyle versus job. Basically: If you were going to be dead in a year, would you want to be where you are? No?
Then what are you waiting for? Don’t die with a dead life in back of you!
On Friday, May sent me a Bouncer. It was a bra with silver sequins sewn over the whole thing, with matching silver-sequined thong underwear.
I had a feeling, from an adult perspective, that my momma would have grabbed that sequined bra and thong, wriggled her curvy hips, and danced around for my dad in them. Annie and I would have been able to eat my dad’s chocolate mint brownies and watch TV for hours.
But me? No.
I would not wear it. The Bouncer and thong would not, could not, be worn, as they were not a part of my armor.
I put them back in the box. The box went under my bed.
I could see my momma throwing up her hands in exasperation.
On Saturday morning, about six o’clock, I left for The Lavender Farm. I had been up since four o’clock, anyhow, worrying the deep worry of someone who was being blackmailed. I watched the sun rise through a mist, noted that the mist seemed wistful, said good-bye to octagonal head man, and left.
I drove down my winding hill, past homes that seemed to be built on air, hanging almost completely off cliffs, spindly stilts beneath them, past buildings, high and low, down two freeways, and out into the country. I passed orchards and farms and a big red barn that sells the best apples on the planet. I passed a creaky old grocery store, a cut zinnia business, a church advertising a spaghetti feed, and a café that sells fruit milkshakes.
My granddad was up when I arrived. He believes that “being busy is being productive. Being productive is being useful. Be useful.” I waved at him across the field. He was chopping wood. He blew me a kiss, I blew back, then headed for the house. Granddad does not like to be interrupted when he chops wood. It’s his “thinking” time. He gives wood away every year, to all our neighbors. He owns a ton of stores, he’s a multimillionaire, and yet every year we troop around in his pickup and unload wood for everyone, more for families who are struggling.
I made orange tea with milk and sugar, and an hour later, on the dot, Grandma rushed in. She was exquisitely dressed, as always—a sparkly brooch in place on her white blouse under a white sweater with jeweled buttons and pressed blue slacks.
“Where is Ismael?” Grandma asked in agitated French. She pointed at a painting she’d created of two swans kissing on a pond. Behind them, the trees were on fire, a red and orange mass of destruction. “Where is he? Is he burning?” She sank into a chair at the table.
“He’s not burning.” I kissed her on both cheeks, as we always have, as the French do. “But I
still
don’t know who Ismael is.” I smiled at Nola.
Grandma abruptly stood up and banged her fists on the kitchen table, the huge diamond in her wedding ring catching the light. “Yes, you do! You know who he is! He’s your son. How could you not know who he is! Where is he? Is this a joke?”
That hollow place in my stomach, perhaps that empty ache that so wished for children, spread a fire of pain.
Where is my son? I don’t have a son. I don’t have a daughter. I have no children. I can’t even make love to a man.
“It’s not a joke, Grandma. Here, I made orange tea, let’s have some.” I pushed a flowered, almost translucent teacup toward her.