Who Beat?

And I’m hiding in Honduras, I’m a desperate man….. Send lawyers, guns and money- the shit has hit the fan…..hoy…. Warren Zevon
In truth, as of late, I feel as though I could be floating in a translucent haze just about anywhere. I woke up the other day to the sound of dog claws on a hardwood floor. This was a bit disturbing, as I had been waking up the previous thirty or so mornings to the distant sound of clocks ticking and clanging, and on mornings when I had left the sliding glass door open the previous evening it was the constant, familiar drone of crickets that had served as my morning greeting, rather than as a wake up call. But the sound of hounds’ claws was now starting to trouble me- that and the steady, low sound of breathing just to the right of me. It was still dark, so I was doing the blind locator thing, trying to figure out where the intruder dogs were and how they had gotten in to begin with. And of course, there was the growing, troublesome mystery as to what was breathing a few feet away from me in the dark of early morning. Nothing was making sense, and the panic was beginning to settle in when it finally struck me- I was home, the dogs were friends, not foe, and since it was still very early here as opposed to the time three zones to the east where I had been residing for a month, Wendy was still asleep and breathing peacefully, as it should be.

In the two weeks since that rude awakening I have always become conscious in the morning without worry of where I was or what was mysteriously going on around me. On the other hand, it seems that I have not quite reset my inner clockworks, as I have regularly been falling asleep on the couch around 9 or 10 pm, only to wake up around midnight, stagger upstairs to bed and then toss and turn from three or four in the morning until the arrival of the first light leaves me no excuse for laying around anymore. Since the muck and mire of the past month remained behind in New Hampshire, the conversations I was having in my head back there mostly stayed behind as well. But instead, I have spent some time trying to remember if I had related a certain story in these pages before. What I finally decided was that I hadn’t- that my most recent retelling of the tale only happened at my mother’s memorial service almost four years ago. Reading through multiple past columns to clear this up didn’t seem to be  a good use of time, and since I had plenty of time in the tossing and turning, I’ve decided to go with the memory rather than the reading and finding.

There was a time when I played tennis on a somewhat regular basis. It wasn’t something I did a lot of, and it usually involved some kind of family outing and activity. I hadn’t thought about it for a long while, but it seems that when we lived in upstate New York there was a family membership at an indoor tennis club. But the time that has been coming to mind as of late was either in spring or early summer since I see puddles on the outdoor court in the fog of memory. I was on one side of the net and my sister was on the other. It was my mother, however, who had suggested we go play- I don’t remember why. Since it never was a good idea to argue with mom, we went, but neither of us was feeling terribly motivated that day. We cracked open the can of tennis balls and proceeded to lob the ball back and forth across the net. I’m certain there was conversation, but I have no recollection about what. I do believe that at least some of that banter had to do with the fact that we were not keeping score as the ball either did or did not traverse the center court barrier. We both knew that this lack of win or lose tally would annoy mom to no end. To her, there was the victor and the vanquished and never the twain shall meet as they say. Coming in second was not an option, as I was reminded whenever I came home from a swimming meet with only a silver medal in hand. As it turned out, on this particularly uninspired tennis day, we were correct in our expectations, since the first words from my mother’s mouth when we walked through the door were: “Who beat?”

I think of this story often, as I did when I opened the email from my lawyer in New Hampshire this morning. In pausing, and reading that line again, the feeling of fogged perceptions and unexpected realities creeps in once more. This morning email included an attachment outlining all the money related accounts and things that seem to be in need of justification regarding my parents’ estate and trusts. I have never been great at math, but when I was handed the list of my parents’ assets upon my returning back there a month ago, a quick mental calculation left me a bit more than curious as to where a large chunk had vanished to. Because of my math deficiencies I sat on my initial summing up, until my sister’s claims of placing the proceeds of the sale of the Florida house in a certain money management account did not make any sense any more, given the paucity of funds indicated on the papers I had been handed. When my sister’s answers continued to not make any sense I decided to go to the source, which involved a lovely drive through the New Hampshire countryside and the location of a parking space not far from the money institution’s door.

I walked inside and was greeted pleasantly, and when I had voiced my concerns I was directed to the person who had handled my parents’ accounts. I noticed bike ride posters on this person’s wall, and before getting to the main reason I had come, we talked about the Cannondale Synapse he had just purchased with a full Ultegra groupo. It was something I could understand. What I didn’t understand, but of course had suspected, was that after carefully checking three times through both accounts, he could safely tell me that that money from the Florida house had never passed through their doors, as I had been told by my sister that it had. It was a vindication of sorts, this revelation, but it also gave another meaning to the term Pyrrhic victory.

The question- “what would Mom have said?’- came up a number of times while I was back there. We knew what she would say when we came home without a game score on that certain tennis day. With a different kind of court looming on the horizon, I have no idea what my mother would have said, but I’m fairly certain it wouldn’t have been “Who beat?” As it was, on that wet tennis court, neither of us won. But in this brewing battle, regardless of the outcome, I am feeling that we both lose. So. Mom. What do you think about that?