Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

put instead of hid.
I never cared about puzzles one way or another until this weekend, when I completed the
crossword in this week’s People. The clues were, I’ll admit, pretty simple. “All ___ ___ Family.”
“Singer once married to Sonny.” It was on a fifth-grade level, but after I’d finished, I couldn’t stop
staring at it.
I showed it to Hugh and then went through the recycling pile on the curb and found two more
Peoples. I love getting stoned and doing the crossword, but they’re even better first thing in the
morning.
March 27, 1998
New York
Ken Shorr is in town and dropped by this morning. We went for a coffee on Sullivan Street and
were sitting at an outdoor table when an elderly man approached and asked if we could help him
lower a plant into a hole he’d just dug. It was a strange and unexpected request, so we said yes and
allowed him to lead us up the street and into a building I must have passed five hundred times. It had
an elevator, and he pushed the button for the basement, explaining that this was his son-in-law’s
apartment. “He’s Chinese,” he added, “and is composing an opera. I hoped the maid could help me
with the plant, but unfortunately she’s not strong enough.”
In the basement, we walked down a dark narrow hallway and into a clean-smelling apartment. It
opened onto a small backyard, where the man gestured to a good-size tree, its roots contained in a
sizable burlap ball. It must have weighed three hundred pounds, and he needed it carried up four steps
and then dragged to a hole six feet away.
Ken and I tried to lift it, but it took all we had and within seconds it was back on the ground with
us over it, panting. “I can’t believe…your maid couldn’t…handle this on her own,” Ken said, gasping
for air. “Mine could carry two…trees and still manage to…breast-feed…the children.”
The man blinked.
On the second try, we got it up a single stair. Then another and another. On nearing the hole, we
realized that it was way too shallow. Someone needed to make it deeper, but it wasn’t going to be
either of us. The man was so frail that it might have taken him hours, so we said nothing and lowered
the tree into the too-shallow hole, where it looked pathetic.
March 28, 1998
New York
Hugh and I went to visit Helen in the hospital and throughout our half-hour stay I wondered if we
didn’t have the wrong room. She’s been literally defanged, and without her teeth, it was difficult to
understand what she was saying. “How are you?” Hugh asked.
She pointed at the wall and told him to open the refrigerator.
Her hair has grown out since I last saw her. The copper-colored henna is gone, and she looks a
good twenty years older. She later told her daughter, Ann, that two men had stopped by. She didn’t