Bingo Territory

Abstract

Bingo Territory Marion Boyer (bio) My husband and I have seen too much grimness lately, managing our parents’ care. Long corridors, steam trays, wheelchairs. To escape Michigan’s bitter winter and the bite of age, we drive to Florida for the month of February. We’re trying out a retirement mobile-home community. Discreet signs indicate that it’s “Deed Restricted,” meaning if you’re younger than fifty-five or have kids, live elsewhere. We’re renting a double-wide “manufactured home.” The word “trailer” draws frowns. Neat sidewalks line streets named for flowers. We live on Delphinium. Everyone who walks or bicycles by waves. The women have that bobbed-hair-capri-pants-and-T-shirt kind of breeziness. To me, it looks vaguely reminiscent of a 1950s postcard of the Community of the Future, just before the nuclear cloud burst. There’s a heated pool and clubhouse. We can join the morning water aerobics class or sign up for bocce ball and bingo. There’s beginning harmonica and a manifestation class, in which we are invited to “manifest peace, harmony, and prosperity.” Next Sunday is a party for anyone in the park from Michigan. We’re encouraged to “wear Michigan clothes,” but I’m not sure if that means University of Michigan, something touting any Michigan location, or a parka, scarf, boots, and [End Page 83] mittens. I sign up to bring dessert. We declined the pancake breakfast, and a few heads tilted, brows furrowed. Maybe going to the Michigan party will make up for that. A brief car ride takes us to Venice Beach, where the major diversion is to hunt for fossilized shark teeth. The beach is known for this oddity--shark teeth continually wash up here by the thousands. They are jet black, usually in a Y shape, and small enough to fit on a nickel. Everyone ambles the beach, head down, often pausing to examine a tiny bit, then pocket it or cast it aside. My husband and I find eleven shark teeth in one hour’s walk. We’re disproportionately proud of ourselves. It feels like a very productive afternoon. We’re keeping the teeth in a jar so we have something to show for ourselves. We visit “The Dome,” a nearby produce and flea-market park. A man sells fish from a chipped red cooler, and there are some bins with fruit and vegetables. Beyond that are stalls with jewelry made from crystals, assorted wallets and handbags, second-hand furniture, tables of athletic socks, used paperbacks, and plastic visors. Roundish couples browse. We are one more wandering couple in the mob. I feel claustrophobic and escape to the jammed parking lot. In the afternoon we enter Bealls Department Store, and color explodes against my eyes. All the colors from Michigan’s clothes washed out and drained down to Florida. Coral, turquoise, peach, lime, rose, melon. Dazzled, I pile up four pair of the same capri pants, thinking of course I’ll wear the same pants in yellow, green, aqua, and pink! Oh! Look! Coordinating shirts! And wow! Matching hats! Handbags! Thirty percent off. And! This is “senior day,” with an additional discount! My husband wants to know how long I’ll be. Should he stay or wait in the car? Why are we doing everything together? We hunt shark teeth together. We grocery shop together. We negotiate unfamiliar routes together. We peck away at our laptops. Together. We never do this at home and have come to realize each other’s habits are unfathomably time-consuming and pointless. I turn sixty-five this month and will celebrate far away from our children. My husband and I will search out a lovely restaurant near water and choose some kind of fish. We will order wine or an umbrella [End Page 84] drink. The restaurant will be crowded. We will eat without anything to say to one another. I want this Florida trial to be good. I want to think, ah, we can do this again every winter when we are glum from the overcast sky and fed up with snow. I want to imagine I will enjoy my older years in a safe, clean...