I trained myself to sleep on my feet. From 4:34 to 4:40am, I stood suspended in gelatin on the steps of Main House. The sound of Nelson’s wheels reconstituted my bones.
I had hoped for a taxi as yellow as a marigold, but this was my Poughkeepsie, not my mother’s Manhattan. I was a Gap sweater in the suburbs, not a black sheath on the rooftop.
I wore my best sweaters for my internship. I would be Oldies 97.7’s first Vassar girl, a novelty under the pinions of DJ Bobby Miller. “She loves Neil Diamond more than N’Sync!” he informed the airwaves. “She’s going to anthropologize the morning show!”
First, I was going to need to get across Poughkeepsie. This was Nelson’s responsibility. Contracted by the college to transport carless interns, United Taxi Team was a fleet of minivans. Friends who took calls for the county executive or filed papers for PETA confirmed that their drivers were not Nelson. Their drivers said, “good morning” and “have a nice day” and played NPR or even Oldies 97.7.
Nelson said, “Praise the Mercy!” and “This is the day!” He played with the sound barrier to save Poughkeepsie. His minivan thundered with reggae. The volume could split continents into islands, then gather them up again. The men – they were always men – sang, “did you speak to the King this morning?” and “Will you love the Love that loves you best?”
The first time I fell into his backseat, Nelson needed to confirm a few things.
“You are Daisy Barlow?”
“That’s me.”
“Going to Oldies 97?”
“Yes.”
His eyebrows performed an original dance in the rearview mirror. “Did you speak to the King this morning?”
I had not expected Nelson. Nelson had not expected me. His personal carbonation kept Poughkeepsie above sea level. He had arms elastic and ecstatic enough to enfold the hemisphere. I was the daughter of the socialite with a Bible verse in her signature line. I had Type I diabetes, a crush on Roy Orbison, and an active mononucleosis infection.
“This morning and every morning.”
“Praise the Mercy!”
My numbers were higher than the machine could read. “Most people take a leave of absence under these circumstances.” Dr. Zitzman was not impressed with me. “There is no medal for collapsing on the sidewalk.”
“I’m not going to collapse.”
I was also not going to tell my mother. My mother was dealing masterfully with our first extended separation. My mother dealt masterfully with everything from power outages to the silence of God. My mother required me to check in by 9am daily, to confirm that hypoglycemia had not hastened me into God’s lap overnight. My mother did not need to know that guerrillas had taken my immune system. They would give it back. I just had to get to Oldies 97.7.
“Who is your best friend?” Nelson never asked why a Vassar student time-traveled to bask with the Beach Boys. He never asked why I snapped from soggy to al dente the moment his wheels stopped, although he did call me “long tall noodle” and “God’s spaghetti lady!” Nelson had other questions.
“My Mom.” This had been the honest answer since I cartwheeled in utero. The socialite became a school psychologist while remaining a poet. She sped her cub to the suburbs. She dealt masterfully with my diagnosis and my conviction that I would die daily unless she sang both the Our Father and Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O!” at the bus stop. She read me Ferlinghetti and the King James Version. She refused to rescue me when I announced I was dropping out of Vassar because I missed her too much. “You will give it two semesters.”
I had answered Nelson incorrectly, and he yelped. “Your Mom!”
Most people found my answer heartwarming. “Yes, she—”
“—your Mom, she is the ray!” Nelson’s eyes fixed on the rearview more often than seemed wise, but the minivan never crossed the median. “I am a ray! You are a ray! Your best friend is the Sun of All Righteousness!”
I asked Nelson where he was from, and he pulled a Trinidad flag air freshener from his glove compartment. “A Nelson souvenir, so you will remember your brother!”
“Nelson, I could never forget you. Do you ever miss it?”
“Trinidad?”
“Yeah. Is your family still there?”
I should have known. “They are, miss, but I miss nothing!” He pointed at me in the mirror. “I keep my eyes fixed. We are tomorrow people!”
When we reached Oldies 97.7, Nelson leaned out the window. “God bless and keep my skinny lady!”
I needed it. By my calculations, the walk across the lobby was six hundred kilometers. That is farther than the distance to my mother’s living room. It is a testament to Nelson and my mother that I never did collapse.
Bobby Miller was always on air when I arrived. “Pleasure it is!” he shouted as he went to commercial. He had questions of his own.
“How does a nice nineties genius like you get stuck in the 60s?”
“It’s my mother’s fault.” The studio chair was soft from a thousand DJs, and my elbows found rest next to the “Mute” button. “She used to play the classics every Saturday morning while we cleaned the house. It’s stuck in my capillaries.”
“Are you going to tell all of Vassar the truth about me?” He pulled back the puff potatoes of hair that wafted above his ears, grimacing like the gargoyle of pizzazz. “Are you going to tell them I look like Phil Collins mated with Prince Valiant?”
“I’m going to tell them everything but that.” Bobby Miller never noticed when I put my head on the counter, because he was too busy wiggling. There were fire ants in his spine. When he raised his arms over his head and danced with himself to “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” he almost looked as young as my mother.
“Do you hate me?” He asked me this almost every week.
“Why do you ask me that?”
“Because I’m a toasty old fart.”
I borrowed that line for my thesis. I had intended to write about how suburban DJs cultivate ferocious loyalty, disembodied voices grafted into an artificial tree. Instead, I was breaking the news that the world is booby-trapped with friends. I did not know what my anthropology professor would make of Nelson. He gave me an A and published my work in a journal.
I got my invitation to the anthropology honors society, which was what I thought I had wanted. On the last day of my internship, my bones knit together, and I did not sleep from 4:34 to 4:40.
“What is your favorite song, tall Daisy?” Nelson knew it was our last morning but proceeded otherwise.
“I don’t think I can answer that.” Six months earlier, I might have said Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” or that song where Neil Diamond is sad that not even the chair will listen to him.
“But you are the radio lady!”
“There are too many songs, Nelson.”
He turned down the radio. I kept talking.
“And the older I get, the more I need them all.”
“Yes, and Amen!”
I wanted to give him something. I wanted to tell him that I would still have his air freshener when I was forty-two. I wanted to tell him that all the peers who reviewed the Anthro journal would be jealous of the homesick autoimmune fiasco who got to meet him.
“My Mom and I will pray for you, Nelson.”
He nodded above the air, where the Breath lives. “My family has prayed for you, Daisy!”
“You have?”
“And we will! Not! Stop!” He turned the radio back up. “You were sick, but you are galloping to health!”
“How did you—”
“—just praise the Mercy!”
I told Bobby Miller that I loved him, but none of his secrets were safe. “And I’ll think of you every time I hear ‘Whiter Shade of Pale.’”
“I do need to get to the beach more often.” He pulled his potato tufts. “I am a hideous man!”
“Stop it, you toasty old fart. I thank God for all that you are.”
He pressed his palms together and bowed. “And I thank all four Beatles that you’re feeling better.”
Now this felt like a conspiracy. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you stubborn girl.”
There is no medal for training yourself to sleep standing up. The whole dial is booby-trapped with mercy. My mother has not entirely forgiven me for not telling her.