The Strange Mix

I knew a guy named Jim who tried to rob a bank in Ohio with a kitchen knife. When I knew him, he was a student at an all-boys school, and so in my memory, he is always 15, in a jacket and tie, smiling with uncombed curly hair. The robbery came much later. I guess if you look at the map of this, if you want to examine the route from A to B, you can see that there were drugs involved, that probably somewhere after college and before Ohio there was a long sequence of drug fueled episodes, each one becoming more dark and depressing than the one before it; but still, I wonder if a fortune teller had sat him down in 10th grade, if she would have been able to see it coming.

I didn’t know him well to be honest but I remember that he was lanky, quiet and smiled easily. His nickname was Tiger, a name that was both childish and cool. He played soccer, and though he wasn't the guy who scored the goals, he was the guy who ran fast. How do I remember such things? And do we always remember the fast kid? The head down, the legs in motion, the almost flight. The graceful faking one way and going another. I don’t know, but I did. I went to an all-girl’s school and we used to go to the boy’s games and watch. We stood on the sidelines in jackets and lip gloss and bare legs, aware of each other in a way that was equal parts nonchalant and intense.

Aware. The word has such a lightness to it unless it’s applied to yourself, and then suddenly it has gravitas. It has depth. And is being aware, yes, I was aware of the situation, the same as being able to see where you are headed? I knew, for example, that I had a strange mix of curiosity, openness and fear, but I was much more aware of others than I was of myself. I couldn’t have told you that in less than eight years I would be a mother, but I could have told you how (and with what strange mix) I would meet that possibility.

As it turned out, the person I ended up being a parent with, whose name was John, was friends with Jim. When everyone heard the news that Jim had robbed a bank, John recalled the story that one Christmas, his mother suspected that Jim had stolen a pair of down slippers that she had bought for her husband. The story had long been a source of ridicule for her. Down booties! Why would a teenager steal an old man’s pair of down bootie slippers? That’s insane! The teasing was relentless and was brought up regularly every holiday just so someone could say Tiger stole the down booties.

I don’t know if Tiger/Jim stole the down booties or what exactly led him to bank robbery, though the kitchen knife suggests a pretty high level of desperation. There could have been any number of dark scenarios that led him to pull into the parking lot of the Cleveland Fidelity, ones that were set in motion even before high school when we all knew him, but I do know one thing. I’m sure that when he got out of the car he went towards the door fast, that he ran with his head down, his legs in motion, almost flying.