Free Coming into the End Zone by Doris Grumbach Page B

is called the greenhouse effect. No one except scientists seems especially worried about it because it is so cosmic a concept that, like the thought of death, no one can contemplate it for more than a few seconds. The world will end in heat and fire, we are told. In addition the ozone layer that surrounds this planet, an area I never heard of before this summer, is severely threatened. Further damage to it will cause skin cancer and glaucoma among the world’s population.
    Where are the old, set-in-stone verities about the familiar earth? Like a rock slide, like an avalanche, they are falling, wiping out what we thought was our sure footing. Birds in all their awesome variety have abandoned the seashore. The gulls at Moody Beach in Maine, where we used to summer, have left the shore and gone inland to Route I to lunch and dine at the refuse heap behind Howard Johnson’s. They dote on the remainders of fried-clam plates.
    Today it is too hot to write on the deck at the back of my long, thin Victorian house. The fine American elm between the house and my study is afflicted by what appears to be, in early August, premature senility. Leaves droop, the trunk seems to hang down like a dispirited elephant’s, instead of lifting up above the carriage house. The branches are wilting and look too tired to serve the tree. Squirrels and cats, who usually lead a noisy, adversarial existence in the backyard, are somewhere else. No birds are here at all, as if they too are so affected by the wet heat that their feathers have dragged them down into some cool, subterranean hideaway.
    Is the elm aging, like me? I notice I am unhealthily aware of signs of growing old, everywhere. At the Munsons’ last month, I noticed their endearing way of surrounding themselves with old things: the horse, their aging dogs, the elderly cat with its deformed ear as the result of a hematoma, trees that they tell us are close to the end of their lives, antiques for sale in their barn that look as if they had reached the extreme edge of possible endurance. I admire their hospitality to less-than-perfect old animals and, I like to think, people. Like me.
    The summer heat has increased the number of homicides in this city, once a peaceful place. The streets are dirtier than I can ever remember, more crowded and, I learn from the evening news, full of people exchanging stolen money and goods for drugs. Recently, a woman was attacked across the street at one in the morning. Sybil heard her cry out, ‘Help me!’ Sybil leaped out of bed, awakening me (my deafness prevented me from hearing the cry), dialed 911. A few minutes later the police were there, a small group of people had assembled, an ambulance roared up. Next morning we learned the young woman had been knocked down and her shoulder hurt by a young black male who had left a car to push her down and grab her purse. He then ran back to the car and sped off. Across our quiet, ‘safe’ street.
    So the city grows ever more threatening. At night I park my car (which was stolen and trashed last spring by a fourteen-year-old boy) and sit patiently in it until I am sure there is no one on the street. I walk to the market with money in my pocket, nothing else. I feel myself becoming paranoid and what is worse, racist, and I hate the feelings.
    I wonder how long I will be able to see some humor in my beleaguered state. The boy who drove around all night in my car until the police caught him had jimmied the ignition in order to start it. A policewoman in Anacostia called to tell me the car had been found. ‘Come and get it,’ she said, ‘and bring a screwdriver.’ A screwdriver? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘To start it. Your keys may not work in the car.’
    I hung up. Then I heard myself laughing. I had forgotten to ask if I should bring a Phillips-head screwdriver or the common variety. I decided to take both. The car started with a key, I was relieved to discover. I