This isn’t a trailer park anymore, BethAnn thought as she walked along Canary Place, the first of the bungalow roadways. It’s a junkyard.
It reminded her of the devastation following Hurricane Katrina, of the aerial images she’d seen on the news. Entire communities rendered unrecognizable, as if they’d been run through a blender and dumped back out. Once home to thousands elderly retirees, young couples, and growing families, then reduced to little more than…
…a junkyard, nothing more.
The town hadn’t bothered to clean it up yet. Not important enough, she figured. No big-money properties here, so no rush. In the meantime, it lay beneath the sun like a dead animal, flesh rotting from bone.
Random memories began to surface, small details she’d noticed when she lived here. On the right was the smashed remains of a cement bird bath that once stood on a tiny parcel of lawn. Sparrows and bluejays and the occasional sandpiper would splash around in it, and a heavyset woman in a floral sundress would sit outside in a folding chair and watch them, a cigarette tucked into the upper corner of her smile. She could always be relied upon to wave and call out a cheerful hello. BethAnn would wave back, then break eye contact to send the message she was too busy for socializing. The woman’s trailer blazed with the butterscotch yellow of the 1970s, along with white awnings and trim. One of those awnings had been ripped away during the tsunami and now lay awkwardly in the spot where she used to sit.
A little further down, two cars lay on their sides, the undercarriages facing each other. Both were mid-Eighties Corvettes that BethAnn recognized immediately. They belonged to Bill Harriet and his son, Cory, who loved automotive work as much as they loved making ribs in their smoker and drinking Miller High Life by the returnable case. Bill, an HVAC technician until an on-the-job accident in Philly put him on permanent disability, swore by those ‘Vettes. He’d had one since high school. The other was in the middle of being restored with the ultimate plan of father and son terrorizing LBI together. BethAnn didn’t know if Bill had insurance on them, but it was clear now that neither would be terrorizing any roads in any town ever again. The black one had a pair of snapped axles, and the red a badly twisted frame. Nothing but scrap, waiting to be hauled away.
As she turned onto Cardinal Boulevard, she saw the former home of a woman who until that moment had fallen completely out of mind—Vicki Goeble. Everything about Vicki got on BethAnn’s nerves, from her tall, skinny body to her big glasses and straw sunhats. Plus those idiotic Birkenstock sandals she wore when she was in the front yard watering the eight million flowers that made her property look like it’d been landscaped by Willy fucking Wonka.
Along with the flowers was an extensive collection of kinetic lawn decor—wind spinners and bird bobbers and fluttering butterflies, reflected to infinity off the gazing garden balls that lay nestled in the between-spaces like the eggs of some intrepid alien race.
Vicki’s semi-psychedlic menagerie was no more; the waves had seen to that. Not even a trace of it remained. And her unit had been moved, too, broken off its foundation and pushed back twenty feet or so. The front porch, once home to Vicki’s maddening collection of wind chimes, had been crushed inward. BethAnn spotted a single hanging chime—bamboo, with a parrot’s head—still attached to whatever remained of the ceiling. She surprised herself by feeling the tiniest bit sorry for the woman. She really loved those things. Vicki Goeble was one of those people who had no problem displaying her emotions in public, and the meltdown she undoubtedly had over these losses must’ve been epic.
BethAnn kept walking and eventually came to another overturned vehicle. After that, a trailer so violently ripped from its grounding that it had been driven into the unit behind it. Then a child’s bicycle with no front wheel or handlebars. Then a garage with its door crookedly set on its runners.
Then she came to what had been her own home.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
****
It was still on its foundation, but not by much. And like all the others, it looked like it had been beaten by a band of giants carrying war clubs.
All the windows were gone. A jagged flap of screening hung down from one of the empty frames, waving and whispering in the breeze. The side door was fully open on its hinges, flat against the outside wall. And while the two wooden steps leading to it were broken, the landing appeared to be intact, although not quite as level as it used to be.
As she went inside, a sensory cue rushed to the surface—the combined aroma of cigarettes and red wine and the cheap potpourri she used to get from Amazon. When all that intermingled with the native scents of the trailer’s aged carpeting and faux woodwork, they produced something unique that she’d always found oddly comforting.
But it wasn’t anywhere to be found except in her memories. What had taken its place was the acrid putridity of seawater soaked into that same carpeting, then deeper into whatever lay beneath and further ripened by a year of exposure and neglect.
She could tell there had been visitors. Looters and scavengers and other bottom feeders. Not that she’d had anything of significant financial value to take. In fact, she had never owned anything of significant financial value. Maybe some jewelry she’d picked up in high school, perhaps a decent pair of shoes or two. But there’d been no diamond broche handed down through the generations, no farmland in Idaho from a far-flung aunt or uncle. She simply did not come from that kind of stock. Survivors, they had always been. Nothing more.
The tweed couch was still here, as were the end tables on either side of it. Both had small cabinets and a shelf underneath. One of the tables lay on its side, the cabinet door open like a dangling tongue. The other table had miraculously remained upright. BethAnn opened that cabinet and found the large ashtray that had once belonged to her mother. It was the transparent color of pure amber and appallingly heavy. Her first impulse was to bring it along, then logic stepped in and reminded her that she could only carry so much when she boarded the flight to Oregon next week.
She made a perfunctory glance into the kitchen. Mold had formed on nearly every surface. She held her breath and went in, opening more cabinets and a few drawers and then the fridge, which was tilted to one side and contained nothing but more mold. Back in one of the drawers, however, something shiny caught her attention. It was an articulating corkscrew, the chrome kind with the two small arms on the sides and the squarish handle at the top that doubled as a bottle opener. Ten bucks in any supermarket, or fifty cents at a yard sale. But it made her smile because a flood of happy memories came with it. Having a few friends over on a Friday or Saturday night. Playing cards, watching movies, passing a few joints around. Friends from whatever job she’d had in any given month, or maybe the one or two she could still tolerate from her hometown of Somers Point. And this thing helped them get the booze flowing. There was one kid, Tommy Gill, who’d always pull the curly part up and down to make the rest of it look like someone doing jumping jacks. Then he’d go “One-and-two-and-three-and-four,” like an idiot, and the silliness of it made her laugh. Gill never understood the magnitude of his achievement, for BethAnn had known few reasons to laugh in her life.
It wasn’t so bad back then, was it? a voice in her mind asked. Be honest.
She reached down and touched the corkscrew as if it was some holy talisman. In a way it was, because more of those memories came back in that moment. Sitting around the living room, some people in folding chairs taken from the shed, some cross-legged on the floor. There was quite a bit of laughter in those days. The biggest crowd she ever entertained was twenty two, and she knew this because she made a point of counting that night. They even brought food with them so she wouldn’t get saddled with all the cooking. It hadn’t been her suggestion to do this, either. Someone put out the word that everybody needed to carry a little of the burden so the host didn’t have to.
Because they cared about you, the same voice told her. Isn’t that right?
She shut the drawer and walked away.
****
Next was the bedroom, where she found two tee shirts and a pair of jeans she’d always liked. They were filthy but subject to resurrection with a good washing. The sheets and blankets had been ripped from the mattress and now lay in a jumble in one corner. She had loved that comforter, with its big quilted squares and silky surface. But unlike the jeans and shirts, it was beyond the point of salvation.
She slid one of the closet doors open and found a pair of blouses still on their hangers. Everything else was on the floor. She saw one of her beloved Adidas sneakers, white with green trim. The other was nowhere in sight.
High on the closet shelf, no longer in a neat stack but still there, were the board games—Monopoly and Life and Operation and Mousetrap. This triggered another round of suppressed recollections. More great nights filled with laugher, and more of the warmth one can only acquire from the company of others. Those make you feel relaxed and easy and okay to be yourself.
And want you in their lives. Truly, sincerely want you there. What did you think of that back then? the voice asked. How did you react to it?
BethAnn’s initial impulse was to say Fuck off and slide the door shut again. But—perhaps for the first time in her adult life—she didn’t act upon that impulse. She reigned it in and stood there for a time, allowing her thoughts to wander elsewhere.
She last went into the bathroom at the back of the trailer. It was small, but it had everything—sink, toilet, shower, and just enough space to turn around. There was a good amount of light in here. At first she thought this was because of the empty window frame. Then she saw that the roof had been peeled back in one corner, affording a limited view of the blue sky and the lazy spring clouds passing through it. A fitful ocean breeze moaned through the eaves and caused the torn section of roofing to bob and rattle.
BethAnn never felt more alone than at that moment. And when she caught sight of herself in the mold-specked mirror, all other thoughts disappeared. In one respect, she saw what she always had—a young girl trying to survive by little more than her wits. She was not pretty. (Although, the voice reminded her, you could be if you wanted to.) She was not smart. (But who’s fault that, really? Who made little to no effort in school and then used the bullshit excuse that you were ‘just being rebellious’?) She was not social. (You are when you feel like it.) She was not rich. (No, but you could certainly be richer if you’d just apply yourself to a job rather than search for a reason to quit or a manufacture a way to get fired.)
“The world sucks,” she said to her reflection. “That’s why I never applied myself. Why I never got involved in anything. Because why should I even…”
Bother? the voice cut in. She gave it a name now—The Little Voice of Truth. The voice that had tried to issue its inconvenient brand of commentary at various times in her life. But she’d always ignored it because…well, because it made her uncomfortable.
It has nothing to do with how shitty the world is, the voice went on, and you know that. Yes, this is a shitty world we’ve got here. And there’s no one to blame but us. People, humans. We’re responsible for all of it. Evil exists nowhere else but in the human heart. So when something goes sideways, we’re to blame. Not the animals, not the trees, not the oceans or the seas—US. And the reason you know that is because you’ve hated people all your life. The absolutely shitty treatment you received at the hands of some of them when you were a defenseless little girl, and some of the absolutely shitty things you experienced even when you WEREN’T in that shitty house, those things made you angry. It flared an anger inside you, and it’s been burning on low simmer ever since. It made you believe that everyone, absolutely EVERYONE, was the same. And every time you checked the news or visited some online chat room or watched Jerry Springer, that was reinforced. But then things changed, didn’t they? Then you started seeing something else. Another side of humanity that you didn’t expect. Good people, kind people. People with open hearts. People who liked you for you and didn’t care about your imperfections or beat you for not being the smartest kid in class or whatever. And you didn’t know what to do with that. You scrambled back inside the castle you built around your soul and pulled up the gate. Not because you wanted to, but because you were safe there. Maybe some of those people really WERE good, you realized later on. In a way that you never believed anyone could really be. A way that you weren’t even sure YOU could be. But to find out, you had to gamble. That’s what would’ve been required. Yet you didn’t have the cash in your emotional bank account. That’s what you told yourself—I didn’t have enough to play. But playing was free, and you knew that, too. Yet you still couldn’t do it. And why? Come on, say it—why wouldn’t you ever take that chance? Because…because….
“I was too goddamn scared,” she whispered.
Even when…
“…I knew they were good people. Even when I fucking knew.”
Okay, so what now?
BethAnn shook her head.
“Can you maybe shut the fuck up for two seconds? Can you do THAT much, please?”
The voice went quiet.