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Circle | Jan 23 2007

My sister Andrea and I visited the circle yesterday. The circle is where we grew up; it’s a cul-de-sac. We were driving to Target to return her vacuum cleaner when Andrea suggested a quick side trip.

We parked in front of Bruce Goldberg’s house. Bruce doesn’t live there anymore, none of the Goldbergs do, but I still think it as Bruce Goldberg’s house.

One time when we were kids, Bruce’s sister Rhonda, who was fat, sat on Andrea, who was tiny, and Rhonda refused to budge. I can’t remember why Rhonda did this, but someone told me about it while it was happening and I came running. Andrea and Rhonda were on the lawn in front of Bruce Goldberg’s house (which naturally I thought of Bruce Goldberg’s lawn), surrounded by a crowd of kids, many of whom who were yelling and pointing.

I would like to report that I made Rhonda get off my sister, but instead I simply stood there laughing. It was Bruce who pulled her off.

Also, Bruce’s father is the person who told me my first dirty joke. It happened in Bruce’s kitchen as Bruce and I sat at the kitchen table, eating something. Bruce’s father stood by the counter, drinking a beer, and simply started telling us a joke which from the beginning was not like any joke I’d ever heard before. Actually I’m not certain about the beer; that may be a detail I added later. But I remember the joke exactly as Bruce’s father told it to me. The punch line included the word tits, which was an amazing word for an adult to say, in a joke or otherwise.

I believe Bruce became a doctor, but I have no clue what happened to Rhonda. Their mother died recently, of cancer. I don’t remember her at all, which strikes me as almost shameful. How many times did I see her walk in or out of Bruce Goldberg’s house? A thousand? Five thousand? I can’t even remember the color of her hair.

Andrea and I made a circuit of the street, reminiscing about the inhabitants of each house. (By inhabitants, I of course mean former inhabitants.) It’s always so strange to return to that street again. Everything is so much smaller than I remember. Naturally I tell myself to expect it to be smaller, and yet each time I’m surprised by how small it is. For some reason I can’t reduce my expectations enough to match an ever-diminishing reality. Also, the houses keep moving closer together. In memory there’s enough room between each house to fit in an additional house, but those spaces are nearly gone now. It’s as though the circle is continually contracting, houses and all.

And the people are gone as well. That’s what strangest of all—the fact that the circle is inhabited by usurpers who don’t even realize they’re usurpers. As we headed back to the car, Andrea and I watched a bald man stroll into Bruce Goldberg’s house. Naturally I realize that Bruce and his family left that house over twenty-five years ago, and yet it still confused me to watch this stranger act as though he owned not only Bruce Goldberg’s house but everything inside the house, including, for all I know, the kitchen table where I sat listening to Bruce Goldberg’s father tell me my first dirty joke.

Oh, the lawn. The bald man believed—you could tell this—that he owned Bruce Goldberg’s lawn.