Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2007

Cover of Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2007
Kathleen Holt
EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Leigh van der Werff
PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
Allison Dubinsky
COPY EDITOR
Editorial Advisory Board
Tom Booth
Brian Doyle
Debra Gwartney
Julia Heydon
Marianne Keddington-Lang
Guy Maynard
Win McCormack
Camela Raymond
Kate Sage
Linny Stovall
Rich Wandschneider
Curt Yehnert

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Garbage Night

Doing (or not doing) a Man's Duty

By Scott Nadelson

Monday, 6:20 a.m. I woke to the same sounds I'd woken to every Monday morning for the past three years: screeching hydraulic brakes, rumbling engines, grinding gears, and clanking mechanized parts. And as on every one of those Monday mornings, I turned over in bed, propped myself on an elbow, listened groggily, and thought, Garbage day! Shit!

The trash can under the sink was stuffed to the point of overflowing. Bags of recycling filled the coat closet. One had broken open, spilling junk mail and unclaimed student papers and old manuscripts across several pairs of shoes I'd worn out years ago and should have gotten rid of long since.

The truck was still half a block away. If I hurried I could still get at least a bag or two out to the curb on time. All I had to do was get out of bed, throw on some clothes, dig a pair of shoes from the closet, find some twisty ties... But before I finished the thought, my head was back on the pillow, a pair of earplugs muffling the noise.

Later in the morning, on the way to my car, empty plastic bins turned over on their sides taunted me with their cleanliness and simplicity. All you have to do is put something in here, they seemed to say, and poof! Like magic, it disappears. What could be easier?

I have a problem with trash. Or, more accurately, a problem getting it out of my life. But until recently, it was a problem I managed to ignore for the most part, knowing that sooner or later odor would force my hand. The kitchen garbage, filled with rotting banana peels, the ends of carrots, and leftover pasta, would eventually make its way out to the bin a day or two after the trucks had come. And the bags of recycling in the closet? Well, they didn't smell, so what did it matter?

But now I was moving out of my little apartment, out of the city, into my girlfriend's house in a small country town. After I'd packed all my boxes and was ready to clean, I suddenly went cold with embarrassment. Alexandra watched as I gathered my collection. From beneath the sink came bags of plastic milk jugs and aluminum cans and glass jars and beer bottles I'd once intended to exchange for a refund. And out of the coat closet and storage area, maybe fifteen bags of paper and cardboard and old magazines.

Alexandra's eyes went wide. I tried to ease her horror with a joke. "I've been preparing for the next ice age," I said. "If the place froze, we could burn all this."

But that wasn't everything. In the bathroom she found six empty bottles of Drano and as many cardboard tubes that had once held Comet and Ajax. In the refrigerator were eight empty jars of pesto, six crusty containers of mustard, and half a dozen bottles of dried-up salad dressing.

"Oh boy," she said, looking stricken. "Is there something I should know? Do you have trouble letting go of the past or something?"

I wanted to assure her that she needn't worry: this wasn't a sign of some deep psychological issue. I had no attachment to Drano bottles or pesto jars, I just hadn't gotten around to cleaning them out yet in order to recycle them. Weren't they better off in the back of the bathroom closet or the back of the refrigerator than in the sink or on the kitchen counter?

She didn't answer.

Disposing of garbage was my father's primary domestic responsibility when I was growing up. This isn't surprising, I suppose, since taking out the trash is traditionally a male chore in American culture, along with mowing the lawn and cleaning out roof gutters.

But my father never cleaned out the gutters or mowed the lawn. He didn't own a mower or power drills or electric saws. His toolbox was a disintegrating cardboard box containing a hammer, a set of pliers, and a handful of rusted screws. He also had the telephone, to call plumbers, electricians, housepainters, landscape crews, and handymen.

Most weeknights he came home from work just in time for dinner, and while my mother was bent over the stove, stirring soup or steaming vegetables--she, too, worked full-time, but as a child of the fifties and daughter of a devoted housewife, she did all the cooking and cleaning and laundry, and as far as I know, never complained--he set down his attache case, picked up the newspaper, and spent ten minutes relaxing before being called in to eat.

On garbage night, though, he didn't even take off his coat. Even in the dead of winter, he went straight for the kitchen trash and then to the garage. From the warmth of the house I'd hear the clattering of the big metal cans as he dragged them down our steep driveway. A long, solitary journey, it seemed mythic, at least in my memory. When he came back inside his cheeks and nose were red, and he had to blow into his hands before he could pick up his fork.

Then there were Saturday mornings. He bundled up his newspapers and the few glass jars we'd used the previous week and hauled them across town to the municipal recycling center, which happened to be next to the local library. "Off to the dump," he'd say stoically, with just a hint of glee, while my brother and I ate breakfast or watched cartoons. The reward for his work? After discharging his load, he'd take a few hours' peace with the library's new magazines, with aisles of books he'd browse carefully, picking things out not only for himself, but also for my mother and for me, a kid who, to my father's utter astonishment, didn't like to read.

When he came home with his stack of books, he'd say, "You won't believe how much people in this town drink." They came to the dump with bags full of wine bottles, he'd tell us, and cases of beer. One woman had seventeen bottles of Jack Daniel's. This was no exaggeration; he'd counted.

The solitary hero had returned, with tales of a strange land and the wondrous sights he'd seen. Did I want to come with him next week, and maybe pick out a book of my own? I shook my head. I was happy to stick with cartoons.

After witnessing Alexandra's horror during my move, I began to worry too. What was my problem with trash? Did I have some deep psychological issue? Was I reacting against my father's model: the responsible family man carrying out the duty of his sex? Was I still afraid, at thirty-three, of accepting my status as an adult? Or was I just embarrassed to have my neighbors count how many wine bottles I finished in a week?

In the days following, what came to me instead of rational answers were visions of Richard Dreyfuss's character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His slow unraveling after seeing a UFO reaches its peak when he dumps his family's trash onto the street. At this moment in the film we know for certain his distraught wife and children have lost him, that he'll break for good from the life he's known. If it weren't for the garbage scene we wouldn't be prepared for him to go off with the aliens at the movie's end. We'd wonder how he could leave everything he cares about behind.

Alexandra and I have been living together for a month now, and in all honesty, it's been the picture of domestic bliss. We've put in a vegetable garden. We've hung cabinet doors. We've built bookshelves for the living room. I've learned to use an electric chop saw. True, last week, Alexandra opened the refrigerator to find the ends of four different loaves of bread, and a dijon jar with enough mustard for maybe a quarter of a sandwich.

But I've discovered something, too: Piles of clean laundry that linger on the couch for days, bundles of fresh sheets that migrate from one part of the house to another. "I don't mind washing clothes," Alexandra says. "I just hate folding them and putting them away."

A beautiful evening in early June. We've just finished cooking and eating a terrific meal. We're washing dishes together, the model of an equitable relationship. Then, from the open window, comes a noise: plastic wheels crunching gravel, glass rattling against glass.

Our neighbor, rolling his bins to the curb.

I go stiff. I pretend not to hear. Alexandra says, "Garbage night."

We look at each other for a long moment. She's waiting. I want to be a responsible adult. I want to be a reliable domestic partner. I want to be all things to her, but right now my hands are wet and I'm trying to scrub burnt onions off the bottom of a saucepan.

She smirks, bumps me out of the way with her hip, pulls the trash bag from under the sink. As she heads out to the garage, something in me kicks into gear. I dry my hands and call sheepishly, "I can help."

I grab the bin overflowing with our wine bottles and follow her outside. The driveway's flat and hardly longer than our cars. It's warm out, not yet dark, but already I can see dozens of stars. The aliens, if they're out there, will have to look for someone else. I lay down my bin, and together, we head back into our house.

Published in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2007 Oregon Council for the Humanities