Social Work.

There was once a woman named Darla who grew up in a very bizarre household.  She was an only child, and yet her mother kept saying “I wish you could be as well-behaved as your sister.”  She finds out later that her twin sister died in infancy and her mother never forgave herself for the partial miscarriage.

Darla is a very good artist.  She paints, but she only finds time for it at night.  She says to a friend, at a coffeeshop, “You know, I wait all day and I wait all day.  And I only want to paint at night.”  When it starts to become dusk, she gets up from her chair, and takes her coffeecup with her.  She walks back home, and sits by the window, painting in the late afternoon light.

She went to school at Yale and studied graphic design, history, philosophy, and art.  And yet she always was fascinated with this idea that she could help people, just by talking to them.  Her friends all said she did a good job of it; well, the ones that took her advice; and when random occurrence caused conversations to grow between herself and complete strangers, she found that she had an immense urge to help them understand.

“You know, it’s like we all got words on our foreheads.  All of us.”  She says, at a coffeeshop one day.  “They’re written right on top of our faces, and when we look at them in the mirror, they all read backwards.”

“What’s mine say?” says a wealthy man of medium build and medium age, an average looking man except for his way about direct eye contact.  Most men look the other way or stare off into space when talking to women.  This one looked right at you when he talked, and while you were talking, his eyes were locked.

“It says you’re sick of people kissing your butt.”  (Now get lost, she thought).  And he did walk away, around the corner, up to his office, thinking the whole time, (Is that true?)

When he got to sit down, the first thing that happened was his secretary came in and told him how much she admired his new watch.  She then said “My poor son can’t even tell time.  I tell him to go to bed at 7, he’s still awake at 10.”

“Sounds more like he doesn’t listen, not that he doesn’t grasp ‘time’,” says the man.
“No, it’s worse than that.  He can’t even get to school on time.”

The secretary looks out through the closed blinds.  “You never let any light in here.”
“If I want light, I’ll go outside.  All I need is to be able to see my screen.”

And she pauses.
And she leaves.

Five minutes later he receives a phone call.  His brother has just died in a boating accident off the southern coast of Canada, in the Great Lakes region.  They say he was on his jet ski, trying to record it all on his iPhone, and that he crashed into a boat.  And that the boat sank, but the phone survived and they still have the video.  Mr. Bagel didn’t care.  It was still another member of the Bagel family, gone for no good reason.  His family was so large and so careless, this happened all the time.  This one particular incident happened to hit extremely close to home, because this was the brother that was closest to him in age. This saddened him the most. It was a reminder of his own life's fragility, as well as the loss of someone close.

That feeling of loss stayed with him throughout the duration of the funeral.  There was a vote, about whether to play the video, and everyone voted “no.”  Time stood still as he watched out the window and saw nothing but beautiful white clouds, over a field, like a pasture, where all these souls lay to rest.  He thought, why couldn’t the weather cooperate, and be a bit more sinister, with a tremendous storm that forces us all indoors.  Instead, a calm breeze and chirping birds made him think that his life was nothing better than a commercial for soap.  Clean, harmless, not very tasty and utterly boring.

Ted went back to work shortly the next day.  Everyone around him didn’t know how to react.  Many people tried to look very sad for him.  That didn’t help, because he knew none of them had ever met his brother.  The guy hadn’t come to work in over 16 years.  The family owned the Bagel Company, which licensed the use of the word “Bagel” so that anyone who wanted to use the word to describe their product had to pay the family a small fee.  This was a wise investment by his grandfather, who won several litigations in his favor, mainly on account of the coincidence of his name.  “It’s Yiddish,” he said.  “Clearly my family invented it.  Why else would it be called that?” he told the judge, and the court awarded him settlement with bagel companies again and again.  Ted’s job was just to manage the firm, and keep the checks coming in.  Albert, his brother, didn’t see this as necessary and just had the money sent directly to his account.  That way it didn’t interfere with his hang-gliding, laboratory touring, and other adventures.

People looked sad and everyone was afraid to talk.  Nobody could relate to the experience, he thought.  All of these people, who he called his workers, behaved like animals, afraid.  A human would console with words, he thought, it would get all this tension out of the air.  And I’m not going to be the one to break it.

It wasn’t until several weeks later that Darla crossed paths with Ted Bagel once again.  She was sitting at the coffeeshop and saw him and hid her face behind the newspaper.  “What the duck did I say to that guy last time?”  She tried to remember.  All she knew, it was bad, because she knew there was a reason she felt she needed to hide her face.

As the man walked by, he said, “Hello again.  You were right, by the way.  I am sick and tired of having my butt kissed.  What do you do?”

“I’m an artist, but I like helping people.  I thought that by saying that before, I was helping you in some way.”

 “And you did.  That did help me out, immensely.  It’s the first time that anybody could tell me something that I believed, straight to my face.

He thought about the pastor, and the message of God, and all the stories he couldn’t visualize.  The bible was like a desert with a lake in the middle.  It felt like everyone was always fighting over who had the rights to that lake.  At least that’s what he thought when he read all the stories, about tribes and their feelings of righteousness.  About the words, and who had control of them.  All he could think was that he had spent enough time listening to miraculous stories about babies and loaves of fishes and stuff.  He wanted to know, Where the hell did my brother go, and when do i get to see him again.

It was then that he realized something about this girl that he often saw at the coffeeshop.  There was something about her that was not like his wife.  His wife was all business just like everyone else, and never talked to a stranger in the entire time he was alive.  But here was this woman, who was not in business at all, but clearly was smart enough to read his mind.

That’s when his mind started working overtime, trying to devise a situation that would cause the conversation to extend in the direction of a better understanding.

Every day, at 10 AM, Darla sat outside with a copy of the New York Times, which she would never read.  She would sometimes sketch drawings of things.  She’d bring an old book and copy the images.  Or an Audubon field guide, with pictures of leaves, which she’d meticulously copy, while she sipped her tea.

It was at that time when her conversations with Mr. Bagel began to form into one long conversation, broken into smaller parts over each and every day of the week.  At first, it was just one sentence, passed along to another.  Then there were three volleys.  There was even a five minute conversation.

1.  “What kind of art do you do?” asked Bagel.
Darla said, “I paint.”
2.  “And how do you help people?”
“I tell em what it is, to their face.”
“And they like that?”
“Well, people usually give it right back to me.”
…
“But I can take it.”

3.  “Have you thought about applying for school?  Maybe in a psychiactric department?”
“Maybe but I’d be fired in a day for the stuff that comes out of my mouth.  No, I’ll never make it as a social worker or a professional psychiatrist, or anything like that.  But if you could hear the things I say to people...”  she laughs to herself about her social ineptitude.  “I’d be the one they thought needed the treatment.”

“You were right on point with me.  I didn’t exactly know how to respond, but I can see how you catch people off guard.”
“You have no idea.  You have noooo idea.”

On a walk home one day, she ran into a man who was homeless.  At least that’s what he said, because more recently she noticed him emerge from a nearby public housing building.  Can you spare me a dollar or something?

“What on earth are you going to do with a dollar?”
“I’m going to buy something to eat.”
“That’s nonsense because more than enough at the soup kitchen.”
“I need to get me a little something something.”

There, right down to the heart of it, was a man caught in a lie, who gave an excuse.  A typical behaviour pattern for a man.  Only this was especially an issue, because it was along her normal route between her studio apartment and the coffee shop; this would become a never-ending battle over time if it wasn’t dealt with right away.

 “I don’t have any money for you.  In fact, I’m never going to have any money unless you can come up with a very good reason.  Presently I think you’re giving me a load of garbage, and I got my own trash to take out, so if you’ll excuse me.”

And she walked away.

Two weeks later, the man came up to her.  “My sister just died.  She’s in Jersey.”
Oh great, she thought.  That’s a tough one.
“How did she die?”
“Of a heart attack.”
“That’s so sudden.”
“Yeah, I know, that’s why I need you to help me so quick.”
“Well, guess what- your sister isn’t in Jersey.  She’s dead, and you can never see her again!”

Darla started tearing up at about “guess what” and ended the sentence entirely unintelligibly.  The man vanished for a few days, and re-emerged weeks later but would no longer ask her for money.

On another occasion, a shop keeper at a local jewelry store watched her look around for jewelry.  “Are you looking for something for yourself or for someone else?”  And she just wouldn’t answer him.  “Is she a man or a woman?  Are you gay?  Is she famous?” and he would not shut up.  And she said:

 “Look, the stupid ring is for me.  I looked at my finger the other day and I felt like it was missing something.  I don’t have time for your stupid questions just like I don’t have time for a relationship.  Thank you very much.”

She found one she liked and put it on the counter.  He asked, timidly, “Are you like this with everybody?”  And she said, “Yeah,” with a sigh, as she stared out the door, as the folks with the dogs and the pets and the kids in the strollers rode by.  “Maybe you need to try a chill pill.”  And she replied, “That’s why I can’t stand shopping in these hippie places.  Drugs aren’t the answer to everything!” and she storms out.

She thought about putting the ring on her “married” finger.  What will people think? She wonders.  How will people act?  She tries to imagine the wonderful man her husband is, and how he must have spent his last dollar at the store to have bought such an unornamental gift.  That he proposed in the place where they met, which was nearby, while he was panhandling perhaps, playing a guitar on the side of the street.

Occasionally, panhandling youngsters did serenade the people passing by.  They were better than the rest of the homeless class, because they were sharing the sound of music with the rest of the world, and Darla considered that a role the world needed.  But no matter what group or guitarist was out there playing, it was never quite good enough.  She thought, I wouldn’t ever listen to this at home,” but then again, she could always count on hearing the acoustic guitar being played on the street.  Especially in the summer, on warm evenings when the world seemed more focused at night.

One night there was a bunch of kids playing music.  One of them had a trumpet.  As she walked by, they began to play “Pretty Woman.”  She stopped, but didn’t give them any money.  She just stared at all their faces until they stopped.  Once they put down their instruments, she said, “Do you know how offensive it is that you play that?  Do you even know what that movie’s about?”

And the kids all just kind of looked at eachother, dumbfounded, and one of them said, “We just thought it was about a pretty woman.”

“How many times do you play that per day?  Is it every time someone about between 5’7” and 5’11” younger than the age of 45 strolls past?  Don’t you ever get sick of it?”

She drops all the money left in her wallet and throws it into one of their stupid cowboy hats.  “Here.  I’m giving you this, in exchange for that you never play that song again, when either I nor any other female, like the ones that I described, walks by.  Have you got it?”
She walks away.
“Maybe she’s a hooker.”
“Maybe she retired.”

Everyone thought Darla was such a bitch, that it became assumed that anything she created would be equally as bitter, cold and nasty as her personality sometimes was.  But in fact her paintings were amazing.  And the most amazing part of it was that nobody was allowed to see them.

In a New York Gallery she visited once per month, an old classmate stood by the window in the loft space, staring out at the cityscape surrounding them.

“The world is just way more than my paintings.”
“Darla, what’s that mean?  They’re so good!  People could really use these kinds of paintings in their life.  Don’t you agree?  I don’t know why you won’t let anybody see them.”

She thought about it on the train ride down to Manhattan that the conversation would head in this direction.  “I do think that they’ll sell.  But I’m not sure others will appreciate them they way I do.  Those paintings are my memories.  How would you feel if your memories were left stranded, at some stranger’s house?”

“Darla, those are paintings, and you’re running out of room in your studio.  I think you should take the ones that you like the least, and put them out here.  Like a garage sale.  Except don’t have a real garage sale with your paintings,” she laughs nervously.

“I’m never going to be famous, Julia.” she said.  “People really hate me.  My personality will ruin it, and I can’t even allow myself to want it.”

“You won’t be famous.  You’ll just have a little more money in the bank, and more room.  Maybe you’ll explore a different medium.  Maybe you’ll find a different muse.  Maybe you’ll...”

And the voice drowned out in the distance to the sound of the honks of the horns in the cars, trucks and busses that drove by.  All full of people whom Darla wasn’t sure ever really felt their true emotions, as her own seemed to be so mispercieived and stifled by the world.