It was never about her.
And it was never about Tonawka.
— The Cage
A few days after I handed Linda the pie, I went back to her house. Just creeping around.
She went to church on Sundays, and as you correctly assume, I didn't. That's when I let myself in.
The front door was locked, but I managed to slide one of the basement windows high enough to squeeze myself through. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I hoped to find something that could explain why this lovely lady was living such a lonely life.
Nope.
Everything inside the house was just so... solitary? Decrepit? Depressing.
The living room was dark, even on a bright sunny morning. All the buttons on her TV remote were dusty except for the three and the eight. Oh, God. Home shopping and the church channel.
She. Had. Knitting. Stuff. Everywhere. But nothing was done. Everything was still in the process of being knitted, presumably because none of it was for anyone.
She must have made soup the night before. There was a covered bowl in the fridge, and the rest was in the freezer, divvied up into Tupperware cubes with little dated labels. That's evidence of life, but not of A Life.
Past the kitchen, there was a dining room with a big table that had nothing on it but a creepy candle holder with no candles. I found those in an unopened box.
A narrow hallway led to a den with a frumpy recliner, an atrocious old lady couch with green flowered fabric, and a coffee table with a goldfish bowl, but no fucking goldfish. She was using it as a candy bowl, but the candy had old fashioned wrappers and looked like it was from back when years didn't even start with a twenty.
The real showstopper was on the other side of the den. This lady had a bookshelf with no books. Instead, it had row after row of plates. Cheap little decorative plates, perched on shitty wooden stands. There must have been around fifty of them.
Each plate had a name and picture of an interesting place a shut-in like her would surely never go. Paris. London. Sydney. Tokyo.
I snatched Singapore.
Not because I wanted it. Oh, good lord, I did not want it. I just wanted to know what she'd do if it was gone.
I went back a month or so later to return it, but it was already there.
"WHAT?!"
She'd bought another Singapore.
Say no more. That's fucked up for sure, and it raised an obvious question. What would happen if she had two?
I took Tokyo. I put the spare Singapore in its place.
A few months later, I returned to find a new Tokyo. Oh, whoa.
And oh my God.
I want to be clear here. I wasn't fixated on this woman. I only snuck into her house maybe five or six times over a year and a half. And it was never about her.
It was about her life.
Her lack of life.
And how that happened to her.
And if it could happen to me.
And if it was because of Tonawka.
I went back one last time, to steal Chicago.
Fuck it.
Chicago was close enough to Tonawka to feel realistic.
I said, "If she's not going there, I am. Someday."
When I think back on everything that happened in Tonawka... Stealing food to not go hungry. My mother's death. Hiding in attics and cellars because I was homeless for a fucking year.
I knew I could handle it. All of it. And more, if I had to. I could. I'm a survivor.
But this?
This lady and her house represented a fate that shook me to my core.
Her sad life became the benchmark against which I measured everybody in Tonawka, and I couldn't honestly say their lives were better.
The disappearing fake uncle.
The cop who walked away while a kid was being beaten.
The kid who watched cartoons loud so he could drown out the sounds of his mom whoring herself to the cop who then punched her, which filled her with anger, which she took out on the kid as she beat him and beat him while the cop walked away without even offering up a shrug despite hearing it all.
I was not like those people.
I wasn't even like my mom, with all of her demons.
I was not.
I did not want to live one of their lives.
Not even Walter's.
His disappearing act was a great trick, but it can't be all there is.
A life of nothin' was still nothin'.
I wanted more.
I kept that Chicago plate for three years. I kept it under my bed until I no longer had a bed. Then I kept it wrapped in a sweater, in my backpack, until I fell and it broke. And when it broke, Tonawka broke me.
It was June 29th, exactly two months after I turned eighteen.
The afternoon rain made the town look less filthy, and a peek of sunshine through the clouds made the street sparkle just enough to seem optimistic. The air felt alive, and it smelled like the Earth and sky had become one.
I was headed to Becca's place. She said I could crash with her for a few days. I assured myself it'd be fine. "Yeah, she's weird, but never look a gift horse or a crayon eater in the mouth. And that was a long time ago." I even giggled at the thought.
I strolled along, one foot after the other, until for some unknown reason, one of my feet decided to do something else.
"WHAT?!"
Whoooop!!!
Thud.
I laughed at my clumsiness as I picked myself up off the ground.
And that's when I heard it.
The clink.
It would have been an unremarkable moment in an otherwise unremarkable day, except for the part about being homeless and walking around with a decorative plate in my backpack. A plate I'd stolen from some sad lady and kept for three years, because it represented the existence of possibilities beyond Tonawka, and more so, the as yet unfulfilled dream of...
Clink.
"Huh?"
Clinkick.
"MOTHERFUCK!!!"
Clink-crack. Tchk.
I broke the plate.
Crunch.
After surviving everything I'd been through, it was that crack in the sidewalk, which led to breaking the plate, that finally broke me.
For a split second, and I swear to God no longer than that, I thought about sneaking back into Linda's house to steal the Chicago plate she replaced it with, because surely she did. But it was never about the plate, just as it was never about her. And it was never about Tonawka.
It was about the fear of never itself.
Small town life felt like living in a cage, never to escape.
I needed to be free.
Early the next morning, I hopped on a train for the last time, headed out.
Swore I'd never come back.