This Ain’t No Ya Ya Sisterhood

JANUARY 7, 2010

After complaining about our heat for several weeks, using space heaters to keep warm, our building management finally sent over a couple of guys to fix our drafty windows. We have three bays with four windows each for a total of twelve panes. The guys took them out, one by one, and replaced each window’s worn-out insulation. It was roughly 20°F outside, and I put on a coat and a hat while they worked.

Neither of the guys spoke English very well, I think they were Polish, and it was hard for me to understand much of what they said, so I wasn’t sure I heard right when, as they were about to put in the final window, the boss told me that I wouldn’t be able to open them anymore.

“Huh?”

“You can’t open,” he said, and mimed trying to open one.

“For how long?”

“For always.”

“What do you mean? I can’t open the windows ever? That’s ridiculous.”

Both of the workers shrugged.

“What if we burn something on the stove? What if we want some fresh air, what happens come summertime and the blazing sun turns the place into a greenhouse?”

“I understand,” said the boss, “but the building don’t wanna pay.”

“Pay for what?”

He pointed to the window frame and showed me that the mechanisms for opening the window had completely rusted. “The windows ten years old; this part needs replaced in all the windows,” he said. “But they don’t wanna pay.” He fished out his original estimate, which included replacing the parts in question, and showed me how the building manager had crossed the items off the list. “He say, just fix draft, that’s it. I tell him the windows won’t open, he says just fix draft.”

“That’s unacceptable. And I’m sure it’s a code violation.”

The guy shrugged. “You tell them, and then we come back to fix. I try tell him, I tell him it cheaper to do this all at once, but he say no, just fix draft.”

It’s par for the course with our building management. I expect it will be another several weeks, if not months, before we get it sorted out. In the meantime, the windows are still drafty.

I went to see the orthopedist again. After I had new X-rays taken, I was led to an examination room and told to wait. A few minutes later, the orthopedist’s assistant came in and called up my X-rays on a computer screen.

“Oh, nice. Good. Excellent. Looks great.”

“The pow-pow-power of positive thinking,” I said, but when she tilted the screen in my direction, and I saw the image for myself, the bone still looked pretty smashed up to me.

When the doctor came in, she said the same thing as her assistant: “Very good. Excellent.” She pointed to what looked like a sloppy weld surrounding the break and said it was all new bone. “It’s looking really good.”

“If you say so.”

“With new bone like this, not everything shows up on the X-Ray. There’s more here than we see. I know, we usually say six to eight weeks for the bone to heal, but it’s generally more like ten to twelve. The first six weeks are a protective phase, where the goal is to keep the bone immobilized while it begins to heal.”

“How about the sling?”

“You’re done with the sling. You don’t need it anymore. We’ll get you set up with physical therapy and see you back in another six weeks. Judging from what I see here, you should be done by then.”

Physical therapy. Let the fun begin.

Several months ago, a girl I was friends with in middle school came across my website and contacted me out of the blue. We traded a few small-talk emails before she got around to asking me about the novel I wrote. I’m not sure how she knew I wrote one, but if you Google my name, a few links will come up. I suppose that’s what happened. She asked if she could get a copy.

“I have several copies lying around,” I told her, “but I’m a little hesitant to send you one. When I first finished it, I was proud of it and gave them away like party favors, but I have mixed feelings about it these days. If you really want one, I can send you a copy, but you have to promise not to send me any critiques.”

Not that I was expecting her to be too critical. For the most part, people who read it seem to like it, but I know it’s not a masterpiece. That’s not to say I’m not proud to have written a book — proud to have finished it — but I know it has faults. I’m not interested in hearing about them anymore.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “My lips are zipped.”

Not long after that, she wrote to tell me she was having trouble getting through the book. “I’m on page 97,” she said. “Does the narrator ever get to a point when he likes anything about women?”

Apparently, she felt the main character was a misogynist:

“The inner angry voice is pretty loud. The anger is palpable on every page. In the language, in the flashbacks, the memories. Does Drew give any woman any credit for their role in life? Does he value anything they offer? You said you handed these books out like party favors. Seems a little diabolical to celebrate. Understandable, given the influences of our time, but I guess I expected you would hold a higher regard for women, given your background. Are you married? Did you give this book to your mother-in-law to read? I’m curious to know what she thought about it.”

Asking if I let my mother-in-law read it is like saying, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

I told her, “Yes, I am married, and yes, I love my wife, and yes, I treat her with kindness and respect. But no, I have not let my mother-in-law read it. Deborah’s parents are born-again Pentecostal fundamentalists who live in rural western Pennsylvania and rarely leave the house except to go shopping and attend church. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the only thing they read is the bible. I see no reason to tell them I wrote a book, much less offer to let them read it. My wife, on the other hand, did read it, and she married me anyway. And, by the way, would it surprise you to know that the book’s editor was a woman, and that a version of her appears in the book?”

“Bravo,” she replied. “No need to be defensive, Jamie. It’s all yours, and I never said you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Didn’t she, though?

“Just because a female editor is in the book doesn’t mean it’s not anti-women,” she continued.” But that’s mine. And I’m not ashamed to say it.”

So much for keeping her lips zipped.