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PORCH PRESENTS
i came home for a weekend recently after nearly a month on the road
promoting my new novel, and I was not in good shape. I had one more week
of travel and promotion ahead of me, and I told one of my best friends that
this time I was serious about hanging myself. "That doesn't really
work for me," he said. "I need you still to be around ... at least briefly."
I'm aware that an author on tour has a lot of gold-plated problems -- the
luxury of being sick of room service, for instance, the luxury of bad TV
reception, the luxury of too much attention paid to oneself. But still, I
felt like a miserable little kid at the end of a long, bad day of travel with parents who have
recently decided to get a divorce. My hands were shaky, my mind was paranoid and
delusional, like Chief Broom in his fog machine in "One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest." And I wondered if I had done permanent harm to my central
nervous system.
So there I was, at last able to be at home briefly, trying valiantly
to savor the 48 hours I got to spend at home with Sam. And I was actually
aware
that I was being showered with what my friend Praise-the-Lord-Sarah calls
"porch presents" -- a little something someone slips you on the porch when they
first show up, that's wrapped in newspaper so you'll know it is not a big
deal, and that no thank-you notice is expected. Everywhere I went, I kept
getting these little presents -- tiresome interviews canceled at the last
minute, a baggie of
homemade heart-shaped chocolate chip cookies from a fan in Ann Arbor, Mich.,
someone's 14-year bronze sobriety chip in St. Louis.
The one fly in the ointment about my Mother's Day weekend, though, was
that I had to spend Saturday giving a lecture on writing to a small group
of magazine editors and writers in San Jose, which is two hours away. I
tried to pump myself out of myself and out of my bad mood by remembering
what Breaker
Morant said: "Live each day as if it's your last, because one of these
days, you're bound to be right." Still, I felt a little bitter.
My friend Neshama was going to come along, because it would be her
only chance to see me for another week. But I had to leave Sam behind
with a friend, and I had to leave my house in a shambles, which was further
demoralizing. Of course it would all be there when I got back -- Sam's stuff
all over the place, the dishes in a pan in the sink, breeding malaria. Who
knows, I thought: Maybe God would manage to lure someone inside while I was
gone, some sort of caseworker with cleaning supplies.
Neshama and I got to the hotel in San Jose on time and walked down a
long hallway to our conference room. We passed a very Diane Arbus wedding
reception -- everyone in terrible, bright, lacy clothes, a pile of discarded
shoes at the top of the stairs -- until we located the couple who had put
together the all-day conference at which I was to be the afternoon speaker.
They were hanging out in the lobby near the closed door to the conference
room. I was not due to speak for 10 minutes, so after a moment of small
talk, Neshama and I went looking ... for drugs.
NEXT PAGE | My mind began to wander, even though I was the one talking
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