The Fantasy Years

THE MILLIONS OF VOICES vented their anger about the nation’s desperate state of affairs. They fumed. They beat their fists into their hands just thinking about the myriad threats to freedom. Some one needed to say it and saying it felt good in a bristly sort of way.

It gave everyone something to feel. And when they heard that others felt the same way, well, life in America didn’t seem so isolating. The voice on the radio clamored: “That feminazi in the White House wants to foist socialism on us. Like they have in…in….”
“Scandinavia!” cried a voice.
“They have national healthcare in Scandinavia,” said another.
“And they also have months without sunshine and six feet of snow in the winter? Does she want us to have that, too?”
“Don’t forget about their blessed Nobel peace prize and their neutrality.”
“And taxes at sixty percent?” from a voice in North Carolina.
“And sixty percent of kids born out of wedlock.”
“And porn in their TV commercials?” asked a voice in Oregon.
“And the highest suicide rates in the world.”
“Does she want us to have that, too?”

“Liberals want us to have health care like in…in…” a voice in Nebraska.
“France!” His friend responded almost chipper with the outrage. “Do they want us to go on strike every year too?”
“Do they want us to surrender to whatever army invades us too?”
“Do they want us to stop showering?”
“Do they want our women to stop shaving their legs?”
“Or our men to drink their coffee with their pinkies out?”
“Oh, but you forget: France is PC.”
“Of course, it’s PC. What could be more PC than France?”

The conversation was just like the conversation between a couple of sporting good store managers in Ohio.
“The liberals want us to have healthcare like in…in…”
“Canada,” the other voice said, helpfully.
“Yeah, Canada.”
“Oh, great. Do they want us to still have the Queen on our dollars too?”
“Do they want us to use the metric system too?”
“Or register our guns?”
“Or get our news from the government?”
“My cousin is married to a Canadian and his wife says she had to wait nine weeks to see the doctor up there.”
“Oh, but the liberals would love it.”
“Yeah, just like Canada.”
“Heck, they even speak French there. How much more PC can you get?”
“Canada,” the other voice snickered, then turned aside and spat.

Jenny stood before her wardrobe mirror trying to remember the word her sister Lilly used to describe her own body after childbirth. Transformed. That was the word. Yes, Jenny concluded, as she rubbed her hands over her widened hips, she’d been transformed. It seemed like just last week she was young, slim. Even kind of pretty. Now, she had been transformed into a chubby housewife, going out to her office job.

Her twin boys Joshua and Jakob sat in their bouncers on the floor, cooing blindly into the space before them. Rick, her husband, helped her put them in their car seats which were buckled into her minivan. She kissed him good-bye and the family split in two. Rick went to work 20 miles away at the construction site he was wiring now.

Jenny drove to the baby sitter, a girl about Jenny’s age named Naomi who babysat for the local working moms.
This is when Jenny wished she were closer to home in Cedar Rapids. Where she had her mom. Where she had Lilly, her sister.

Ah well, Jenny pulled into Naomi’s driveway, the front door opened, revealing a warmly lit hallway, its yellow glow calling out into the slate blue-gray of the cloudy morning. Naomi was already mobbed by the four kids dropped off in her completely childproofed home. She babysat all ages. Naomi had said she was just doing it for the money but she was good.

Jenny left her van running, got out, unbuckled Jakob and Joshua from their car seats, and brought them through the doorway, the handles of the convertible baby seat carriers clutched in each hand.

“Where should I put them?” she asked.

Naomi, dressed in her usual overalls, indicated a patch a carpet near the fireplace. Immediately, the other kids began circling around. “Stay away for a second,” Naomi pled and assembled a low plastic fence around Jakob and Joshua, show sat helplessly in their carriers.

Jenny unslung the backpack with their bottles of formula, teething rings, burp rags, diapers and wipes. With a hiccup of remorse, Jenny got down on her hands and knees, as if bowing to Mecca, and kissed both her sons good-bye. Their innocent attention bobbled away and she got up, said goodbye to Naomi and headed out to her minivan.

Mike sneezed. ”Easy, easy, easy,” he muttered to himself, backing his rig into the parking lot. Mike had taken the plunge and finally quit delivering furniture to yuppies. Now he delivered food products to restaurants. The pay was slightly better and he didn’t have to go to people’s homes.

Mike backed up to a shadowed loading bay. In his rearview it looked like a gaping cave he was rolling backwards into — or maybe that was just the way he felt about his life, he thought.

Mike was glad to be driving a Peterbilt again, though. That’s what he used to drive when he was a trucker. It felt good to be sitting up high, above all the civilian traffic. Even if he seemed never to get the chance to open up on the road and really let fly.

Mike checked his rearview mirror and saw the guy who gave him so much trouble the last time he made the delivery. The swarthy, thick-lipped guy gestured that he didn’t like how Mike maneuvered his truck in the parking lot. He made up some chickenturd excuse about why Mike had to be careful. As if he wasn’t careful. The guy’s complaint was enough to make Mike want to pin the guy against the base of the loading bay with the grill of his truck. Now that was a fantasy.

Instead, Mike dutifully worked the brakes and the shifter, back and forth, back and forth in a series of lurches, back and forth, Rush ranting from the speakers the whole time. Mike would rather hear Rush than to hear the mutterings of the guy waiting on the loading dock.

Easy, easy, easy he said to himself. Easy, easy. Maneuvering his Peterbilt in a space the size of a basketball court. Gotta do it just right. And just when he was easing his truck into the spot, he put the brake on, held still momentarily and sneezed.

In the instant it took to jerk his head back up, an unpleasant thought had entered his mind. Maybe he’d made a mistake in switching jobs. Maybe for all the hassle of delivering furniture, it was better than delivering food products to restaurants. Delivering furniture sucked but at least he had contact with people in that job. At least he saw people who were glad to be getting their stuff.
With this job he was lucky if he got to deal with a semi-illiterate tough guy giving him dirty looks for his driving. Like this fish-lipped prep cook. This was Mike’s human contact. The rest of the time he worked in isolation.

Whoosht! Within miles of Omaha, down Route 29 in St. Joseph, Missouri, Dennis clashed with his cousin, Marc, who said: “It’s not about making us like Switzerland—-for heaven’s sake. It’s a matter of modernizing our healthcare.”
“It’s about collectivizing it.”
“It’s about streamlining it.”
“It’s about socializing it. And who asked them? Who asked this unelected woman
to change our healthcare?”
“Bill Clinton did.”
“I didn’t vote for her!”
“I didn’t vote for him. But he won the election,” Marc said. Dennis loved hanging out with his cousin for times like these.
“Not with a mandate to put Big Government between my doctor and me.”
“It’s what the rest of the world has—”
“—By which you mean France. If you liberals love France’s healthcare system so much why don’t you move there?”
“But…”
A triumphant smirk rose on Dennis’ mouth. Then he reached for the inhaler, raised it and then Whoosht!